In April of 1970, I was deployed as a third-class petty officer on the USS Richard E. Byrd, DDG-23, “Sea Power from Pole to Pole.” It was a 6th Fleet warship, a destroyer with guided missiles that might have been nuclear-armed. We carried sufficient weaponry to defend and attack enemy submarines or open sea vessels.
On April 30th, despite his 1968 campaign promise to end the Viet Nam war by his “secret plan” for “Peace with Honor,” President Nixon announced his intention to expand the Viet Nam war into Cambodia.
As was their constitutional right, an American birthright, five days later, 500 Kent State students protested this breaking of faith with the American people, by enlarging an unpopular, ruinous, southeast Asian war.
The Republican governor of Ohio sought to tamp down the guaranteed free speech rights of young people, by sending the Ohio National Guard to quiet those Nixon called “bums blowing up campuses.”
To achieve this silencing, 28 of 100 M-1 carrying Guardsmen shot and killed four unarmed Kent State students, permanently paralyzed another, hospitalized eight more. Seventy bullets over 13 seconds aimed at working-class college kids was the U.S. mimicking Castro’s Cuba.
As a service member, patrolling an ever-volatile Middle East, I couldn’t reconcile the government extending a war, ostensively being fought to spread freedom abroad, while stifling freedom at home.
My disillusionment increased when considering my military oath, promising to defend the Constitution, which encompasses the rights of the First and Fourth Amendments, while the military was being tasked to control the people, not the betraying civilian office holders.
As a reminder:
- “I, Tracy Pyles, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”
- First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peacefully assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
- Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The disillusionment in that 22-year man-child, was no more than the disbelief in this 77-year-old veteran, when recently a mom of three, returning home from dropping off a child at school, was shot in the face by a sub-human calling her a “f*****g b****” as she slumps dying.
While that fellow who may be like many ICE agents, lacking the training, the temperament, the requisite intellect to have life and death authority over Americans, he is not without his sympathizers right here in Augusta County.
As sentient protesters, like the Kent State dead, took to the Augusta County Courthouse, a county couple drove by signaling their own protest of the protestors. A sign carrier responded with the ever handy, but unnice, reply of, FU. In the full, it was simply Americans using their rights as our Founding Fathers imagined.
Dismayed that their privilege was not embraced, the car demonstrators took to Facebook to broaden their disgust, by accusing all Democrats as complicit. But if one vulgar apple spoils the whole barrel, how rotten are those in our president’s orchard?
Before his first presidential win, the public heard him say that he as a “star” can grab any woman by her genitals and “they let you.” Do they, really?
Recently, this same top Republican, in response to not unfairly being called a “pedophile protector,” chose the same words as the courthouse demonstrator while emphasizing with the standard low-brow finger extension.
Where’s the outrage? The pearl clutching?
Protesting is a relief valve, for many, in place of violence. The president has recently spoken positively about Iranian protestors, condemned their killing, yet, inconceivably, loathes and kills his own.
Time moves on, but the power-hungry remain stuck in their insecurity.
My father instilled in me an obligation to stand up for myself and others. (It’s a poor hide that can’t take a tanning.)
Consider my father’s faithful instructions to remember sacrifice when considering all we have:
Two Flags: by Tracy Pyles, Sr.
When we see those two great flag friends
Whose crimson waves so cold but free,
Will our hearts beat true and loyal
For patriots who have set us free.
One is the flag of our Great Savior,
The other flies for you and me.
If we fly these flags together
We’ll keep our peace and liberty.
God’s great flag will never tremble,
However great the force may be,
For Jesus’ blood is written on it,
So that from sin we could be free.
The Stars and Stripes will never tremble,
However great the force may be,
Because American blood is written on it,
So that this country could be free.
So, when we see those two great flags friends,
Let our minds go into the past.
To Jesus and our soldiers dying,
Pray that freedom will always last.
Generational Democrats: me and my dad.
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