Tag Archives: Iran Hostage Crisis

Back Strokes

“The normal cycle in the life and death of great nations has been first a powerful tyranny broken by revolt, the enjoyment of liberty, the abuse of liberty – and back to tyranny again. As I see it, in this country – a land of the most persistent idealism and the blandest cynicism – the race is on between its decadence and its vitality.”

Alistair Cooke

Now that 2025 has ended, we must realize that we’re officially more than a quarter of the way into the 21st century.  And, in the United States, we have a totalitarian despot as our President.  I never would have thought we’d be in this position – the self-proclaimed “Beacon of Democracy” has a self-righteous moron as its leader.

Reminder: we’re in the 21st century – C.E.!

Last November marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Francisco Franco, who came to power during Spain’s Civil War and ruled for more than three decades.  Western Europe’s last true dictator, Franco persecuted his political opponents, suppressed certain cultural aspects, manipulated the media, and just generally wielded absolute control over the country.  His death brought democratic relief to Spain.

It’s a familiar pattern that’s occurred across the globe and throughout human history.  Certain individuals promise – and initially bring – freedom to the people and then mutate into a brutal autocrat.  The masses get sucked into the chasm of false promises and righteous dreams…then are horrified when the truth comes out.

Sometimes it appears humanity will never learn.  I feel that way now about the United States.  In 2000 we all stood on the precipice of a new century and a new millennium.  The future was ours.  Then, here in the U.S., we regressed and inadvertently chose a leader who turned out to be ill-equipped for the role of “Leader of the Free World”.  And the first decade of the 21st century – C.E. – became lost to war and the morass of class divisions.  We should have been preparing to build a colony on the moon and sending humans to Mars.  Instead Americans were trying to figure out whether to pay for utilities or buy groceries.

And we’ve reached that point again.

In June of 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in this country.  It accompanied ongoing attacks on our literary culture, as book bans rampaged across the land.  Looking at all of it, I wondered how and why we were moving backwards.  Societies, in general theory, are supposed to move forward – much like time.  Conservatism may sound like a grand ideology, but it can be detrimental.

In November of 1979, I was a high school student and in San Antonio, Texas for a speech and drama contest, when we heard news that a band of rebels had stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran.  Some of my fellow students had no idea where Iran was, much less why it had become a target for protesters.  But we’d soon learn exactly why.  From then until January of 1981, a number of Americans were held hostage in Tehran as retribution for the U.S. support of their former national leader, Reza Shah Pahlavi.  Pahlavi had been forced from power earlier in 1979 by a populace who had grown weary of his tortuous rule.  Now Iran is in the grips of social unrest once more, and ironically, Pahlavi’s son is seeking to return to his homeland and lead his people into a new universe.

Again, the world has seen this happen before: Russia, China, France…the list is almost endless.  The citizenry gets tired of how their universe is functioning and decides to take action.  The result is often violent.

This year, 2026, officially marks the semiquincentennial of the United States – our 250th anniversary of existence.  I was twelve years old in the summer of 1976, when we marked our bicentennial, and I felt an extraordinary sense of pride and excitement.  The nation was still recovering from the brutal cultural upheaval of the 1960s, but at that moment, we all seemed to bond and become – as our founders intended – a truly united people.  I’m certain I’ll never live to see our tricenntenial, but it’s a pleasant dream.

It’s even more inspirational to know our nation will move beyond the likes of our current leaders who have no real sense of a future.  We’ll never be a utopia.  No community can ever achieve that.

Denounce me as naïve, if you want – I’ve often called myself cynical at this point in my life.  but I still hope for the best.

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Gang of Imbeciles

Woodall Rodgers Freeway, heading into downtown Dallas, sat nearly empty at 7:26 am on Tuesday, March 24, 2020 – the first morning after Dallas County’s “shelter in place”. This stretch of highway is normally packed with vehicles during morning rush hour. Photo by Lynda M. Gonzalez, Dallas Morning News).

“Greatness in the last analysis is largely bravery – courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.”

James Robinson

Crises can make or break a leader.  The 1979-81 Iran Hostage fiasco decimated Jimmy Carter’s final year in office and assuredly caused him to lose his 1980 reelection bid.  The 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing helped secure Bill Clinton’s image as a stalwart president.  The Hurricane Katrina debacle, on the other hand, proved George W. Bush was incompetent and ineffective as Commander-in-Chief.

The current COVID-19 scourge is Donald Trump’s national crisis.  It could be the savior of his presidency; the one element that ensures his place in the pantheon of great world leaders.  Or it could be his death knell; the catastrophic event which will equate him with failure, except his most devoted followers.  As things appear now, it’s turning into the latter.

Yesterday, March 26, Trump signed a roughly USD 2.2 trillion stimulus package unanimously passed by the U.S. Congress.  Because the COVID-19 mess has created a new set of “social distancing” protocols aimed at subverting the virus’ spread, a large number of Americans have suddenly found themselves jobless.  Restaurants, nightclubs, gyms, and tattoo parlors have been forced to shut down.  History will determine if that achieved its intended goals.  But, as of March 26, the number of jobless claims set a record at 3.3 million.  Who would’ve thought an invisible microbe could wreak such havoc?

Amidst this cataclysm, our dear leader, Donald Trump, has openly considered easing restrictions to the practices of social distancing.  Earlier this week, he suggested the U.S. could return to normal by Easter.  “I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” he said.  That’s akin to the captain of the Titanic shouting, “Pool party!”

It’s almost painful to watch Trump and his band of clueless minions pretend this crisis will obey a presidential command.  Many conservatives tried to explain George W. Bush’s pathetic handling of the Hurricane Katrina fiasco by claiming his adversaries wanted him to stop the storm from terrorizing the Gulf Coast.  I heard a few actually say that aloud!  And I had the pleasure of telling them, ‘No.  The issue was RESPONDING to the hurricane!’  Bush and the Republican Party were quick to declare war on Iraq in 2003.  But, when a REAL threat emerges, they failed miserably.

If anything, the start of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. some forty years ago proved how dangerous social conservatism can be to a health crisis.  Admittedly, thousands of people didn’t come down with HIV in a matter of days, as with the COVID-19 virus.  But the reality is that national policy should never be based on individual predilections or religious ideology.  Every time people make health-based decisions on their own personal religious beliefs, people die.  Every single time!

But the AIDS epidemic showed that a slow federal response to a health concern can be lethal.  I’m watching the COVID-19 pandemic unfold here in the U.S. in stark realism.  As of March 27, the U.S. has achieved the dubious distinction of the most number of COVID-19 cases in the world.  Meaning we’ve now surpassed China and Italy.  Trump always declared America is #1 – and what do you know?!  The old bastard has finally been proven right!

I really don’t want to see Donald Trump fail in this entire imbroglio.  It’s not good to wish your national leader stumble and falter as a national crisis of any kind grips the nation.  But, thus far, Trump has shown no real leadership, with the exception of the aforementioned stimulus package.

It doesn’t need to be this way for him – or for anyone.  This could be his golden moment to prove he’s an authentic leader, not the failed businessman / tax cheat others claim he really is.  Every country’s leader is forced to confront a national emergency of some kind or another.  It just comes with the territory.  The U.S. presidency, in this case, is not school a crossing guard-type of position.  It requires more fortitude and clarity than most jobs, when in fact, the presidency is not a standard job.  It’s more of a calling – kind of like human rights work, or teaching.

As I view it in this moment of national surrealism, Donald Trump is not listening to the tragic sounds of that call.

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