the rix mix

Robert S. McNamara, the powerful defense secretary who helped lead the nation into the maelstrom of Vietnam and spent the rest of his life wrestling with the war’s moral consequences, died Monday at his home in Washington. He was 93.

So you know I wasn't always crazy, I'll tell you what I really wanted to do when I graduated high school.

I wanted to get a no-brainer job, in a record or hardware store, or company mailroom. I wanted to play in a garage rock band, take piano lessons, & hang out with my girlfriend, & mind my own business. I wanted to attend night school at the community college, only two courses per semester, make some good grades to compensate for my lousy high school transcript, & after awhile when I thought I could handle it, transfer full-time into Montclair State or one of the new less-exclusive colleges Rutgers was planning. Beneath my nuttiness & anxious temperament I sort of knew who I was, & I had a reasonable assessment of my weaknesses & strengths. I stuttered, I had bad study habits, but I could read & write, & I loved music.

I couldn't do these things, or couldn't do them easily, although they were sensible, modest aspirations. There was a military draft, & if you were drafted you were probably going to Vietnam, like my oldest brother, who also needed time to sort out his life but surrendered to the draft when he couldn't keep himself in college with a deferment. He survived. Vietnam was tragic, useless war. It was fought mostly by young men who couldn't or wouldn't go to college, or flunked or dropped out of college. It split America by class & by race. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam today is the Vietnam I thought was inevitable when I turned 18, & Robert S. McNamara was Secretary of Defense. Robert S. McNamara was the architect of countless deaths & ruined lives, & a divided nation - our nation; even he came to realize it over time.

Occasionally, I catch glimpses of what America might have become without Robert S. McNamara as Secretary of Defense, & like what I see.

Labels: growing up, obituary