Noblesse Oblige
I ran across something fascinating about George Orwell. He died of tuberculosis just at the time when TB drugs were appearing in the US and he might have used his celebrity and wealth to obtain them to save his life. However, he hesitated because it might appear to “exercise privilege”. Where has that sense of honor gone? The Brits were very class conscious not only about privilege but also about duties, noblese oblige, a very nice balance of the two and that speaks very well of them.
Exercising privilege in the Third World is a given; it’s done by anybody who has power but what’s lacking is the noblese oblige part of the equation. I have a foreign friend here in the Philippines who lives in a gated subdivision where there are fees assessed to pay the guards and other shared benefits. One of his neighbors is some high ranking cop, or he’s protected by somebody very influential, and this guy refuses to pay for this year’s gate access decal for his car. It’s as if his thoughts are “I’m powerful so why should I pay that?” It’s not a lot of money but it feeds his fragile ego to get by NOT paying it.
That’s similar to the case of the Saudi princess in Paris who charged hundreds of thousands of dollars in shops around the city and refuses to pay for the items. I had a friend in Mexico City who lived in a lovely condominium on the edge of the city’s Sunken Park. Because of some unclear legal language the condo board assessed each member for water use. However, several owners simply refused to pay for the water, leaving the others to pay the whole amount. Why? Because they could get by with it! What despicable, crude, anti-social behavior all these Third World people exhibit!
Contrast that with Orwell passing on the TB drugs so as not to appear to be uppity. And you recall how the Titanic’s passengers so nobly allowed women and children first access to the boats while the band played calming music, the men unsure of their own survival. That’s because the passengers were British and Americans. Can you imagine what it would be like if the passengers had been Filipinos or Mexican? When the Superferry 14 caught fire here a few years ago do you suppose the crew aided the passengers to leave? Of course not; the crew had been trained in handling lifeboats and so they themselves abandoned the ship and left the passengers to their own fate. Ah, what a noble and cultured race these Filipinos are, eh? Do you suppose that’s why they have such a hard time with nation-building? Huh? Huh? Captain Smith of the Titanic went down with his ship!
(In all fairness I cannot now find the link to that story about the crew abandoning the ship. For many weeks after the disaster there were various conflicting reports appearing in the press. One of them was that of the crew leaving the passengers stranded on board, and the ship’s officers having subsequently disappeared into hiding to avoid legal charges. I did see that story but cannot now find it.)
Medal Inflation
Just what is the personality defect in people that makes them want recognition for things they didn’t actually do? This is apparently not an isolated phenomenon since so many stories about this have appeared over the years:
Atlantic City’s mayor has been accused of falsely claiming to have been a Green Beret in Vietnam.
There are so many phony ex-SEALs around that a group of legitimate former members actively work to expose them.
But this strange behavior is not limited to civilians posing as veterans; some military members do it too. Recall the admiral who committed suicide when he was found to be wearing a Vietnam service medal although he’d never served there. And of course there are John Kerry’s dubious Purple Hearts!
A Google search with the keywords “medal inflation” will get you over half a million hits.
I recently read “Backfire”, a great history of the Vietnam era; the author tells how a culture of mass medal distribution developed, and in its course, undermined the value of the awards, but even more alarming, undermined the ethics of military personnel.
I got in on that easy medal frenzy as well, albeit innocently. One time while at our base camp in Vietnam my entire company was called to formation on short notice. We stood at attention while the some high-ranking officer, after reading a short notice, passed the line and gave us each a Bronze Star. And it happened a second time as well, so my military record shows I have two Bronze Stars (Merit) with Oak Leaf Cluster. I have no idea what I did to “merit” them; I was just doing my job but the award orders stated that it was because we’d participated in such and such an operation. Well, okay, but I still feel a bit of guilt about this, thinking that these medals should be reserved for really special events and behaviors and not passed out like candy to kids at a picnic.
Here’s one more story and this one shows some really despicable behavior.
After being wounded I spent a few weeks in military hospitals in Vietnam and on a hospital ship off its coast. I never saw any of them because I’d taken a head wound and my eyes were completely bandaged during all that period. This was a high-anxiety period naturally, since I had no idea of the extent of the injury, especially the fear of permanent blindness was foremost in my mind.
The day came when the bandages were removed and I was relieved to find I had vision in one eye, the other unfortunately was irreparably blinded. So the next step was evacuation to a hospital in the US.
Not everyone in those days was transported in those contracted civilian airliners with the cute stewardesses. The Air Force had its own vast fleet of C-141s going back and forth across the Pacific, moving people and supplies. Troops going on leave or ending their tour of duty could be assigned seats on either type of aircraft.
Patients however were moved in the Air Force C-141s outfitted as ambulance aircraft, with seats for ambulatory patients and litters for those who could not sit up. As is the Air Force’s practice with all aircraft, seats not assigned were available for others on a space-available basis.
Imagine this aircraft on its long flight across the Pacific, filled with dozens of wounded soldiers, some dying or in very critical condition. There is a continual hubbub of activity from the nurses who are continually checking IVs and bandages and dispensing medication. Think of it as a flying hospital, which in fact it was.
It so happened that one of my seat mates was a young kid, a non-patient, who’d just finished his tour and was going home. We talked a bit and he asked what happened to me. I gave him a brief explanation and he responded with “I guess you’ll get a Purple Heart for that.”
I simply said “I guess so.”, not having given it much thought since fear of blindness and incapacitation had been my major preoccupations in those days.
He then said “I have a Purple Heart too.” then proceeded to tell me he’d been a company clerk and that he and a buddy wrote their own orders for the award.
What a low-life trashbag! Not only does he award himself an undeserved medal, he proudly tells me about it while we’re surrounded by those of us who did earn it. And even worse, he was so insensitive that he didn’t see that our lives would be changed forever because of our wounds.
I wonder how some people can live with themselves!
Mexico exploits Central American migrants
Mexicans facilitate the passage of Central Americans planning to illegally cross the US border, and make a tidy profit doing so.One time I’d been in Guatemala and was returning to Mexico. I crossed the border near Tapachula, the largest Mexican city in the region, and purchased bus fare to go to Mexico City. The sold-out bus departed about 5 PM and we moved without stopping for several hours. During the night the bus stopped in an unpopulated area and the driver opened the door but did not turn on the interior lights.
A man boarded the darkened bus, ordered us to show our documents, and then proceeded to use his flashlight to inspect them. After taking each passport he ordered the passengers, one by one, off the bus and into a nearby shack. He never shined the light in our faces but only on our passports. All of us, except my seatmate, who showed his Mexican national identification card, were ordered off the bus.
We entered a small shack near the road, where we saw another man standing near an old steel office desk. The one from the bus entered with our passports and stood behind the desk. Under the bright light I saw they wore green uniforms similar to that of the army but with insignia of the Immigration Service.
The officer began sorting the passports as if they were a deck of cards, with one stack for Salvadorans, another for Hondurans, etc. He came upon an American passport, mine, and paused a bit, glanced up but didn’t see me since I was in the middle of the crowd. He shrugged and put it down near the other stacks and continued sorting.
When he finished that task he announced that there is a twenty dollar immigration fee for each of us. Central Americans are mostly of an Indian culture and are usually very submissive and unassuming. One however was bold enough to say “Hey, we all have visas to be in Mexico; our passports were checked at the border. We don’t have to pay you anything!” Both officers stood erect and the leader opened his coat to remind us he was armed. He said “You’ll pay it or you don’t get on the bus!”
He then picked up the top passport from the first pile and read out the name. After a short pause the passport’s owner appeared from the crowd with a twenty dollar bill. The officer handed him his passport and told him to get on the bus.
As this was going on I was thinking “No, no no. . . I’m not going to let this guy get away with this. If I’m forced into this extortion I’m going to make a lot of noise when I get to Mexico City, calling newspapers and television stations and just generally make a real pest of myself.”
The officer continued working from that one stack of passports, collecting the money and ordering the passenger back on the bus. He finished that stack and moved to the next, then appeared to recall that lone American passport off to the side. He picked up my passport, looked around until he saw me, read out my name and simply handed it to me and said to get on the bus. He must have picked up the negative energy I was sending out because he didn’t ask me for money, but also wanted me on the bus so I could not witness what he was doing. Well, he was a bit late for that!
I got on the bus and began talking to the other passengers. They were all angry but felt trapped into complying. My Mexican seatmate said that every bus on that route is stopped like that. Our bus alone yielded a net profit of $900 for those two officers, quite a nice income for just 15 minutes of work.
When we got to Mexico City, all the Central Americans got off the bus about two blocks from the terminal, fearing another shakedown from officials there. Mexico City was my final stop, as it was for my Mexican seatmate. All the others were going to the US border hoping to cross illegally.
US visas are very hard to get but Mexico gladly “sells” its visas to Central Americans, knowing that those people have no plans to tour Mexico. Mexico earns a lot of money by facilitating the movement of Central American illegals to the United States, not just from the legal fees for visas, and the illegal collection of other “fees”, but also revenue that bus companies, hotels, and coyotes generate.
