by Ken O'Steen
The Domino Theory
Among the preposterous hogwash used to justify the immoral war in Vietnam, was something called the Domino Theory, a delectable load of equine manure postulating that should one nation in Southeast Asia fall to the communist menace (dressed as nationalist defenders of their nation, natch) all of them would fall, one after another, like…yes, you guessed it. In the end, other than Cambodia, which Dracula and Henry the H. Bomb offered up for butchery for the sake of convenience, the fall of South Vietnam left nothing in its wake but a long line of standing dominoes.
In the same vein of grandiose, and splendiferous manipulation of the naturalized and native lambs of the land, there was the famous, and infamous “Light at the end of the tunnel,” pronouncement, circa 1967, by that grizzled and grizzly hack with the many shiny accessories on his duds, General William C. Westomoreland…meant to predict that victory over the peasant population of Vietnam was only a hop, a skip, and a jump away, guerillas in bamboo haberdashery no match for our strategy. Apropos, the military brass in ‘Nam had been famous for their press conferences each and every afternoon, eventually labeled by the long suffering victims, those attending reporters, as: The Five O’ Clock Follies, because of the quotient of bull cookies served up in their buffet. The program routinely began, with the emcee addressing the audience with the introduction: “for your dancing and dining pleasure, the Pentagon brings you: Los Fabulosos Flying Monkeys….”
I could tell I was flagging here, sensed I was about to drift, therefore I stopped. I nibbled on the sandwich some, and chugged water almost until I lost consciousness from the want of air. I got up, called the taxi in the booth at the corner of the lot, and sat back down. But it wasn’t long before I took the notebook up again and began to write, bending to the fate that surely would render no other skills available to me; at least not any sufficient enough to be exploited by me without considerable embarrassment and humiliation:
The Kirkpatrick Doctrine
Jeanne Kirkpatrick, beloved doyenne of whack-a-doodle right-wing foreign policy, and a one-time Ambassador to the United Nations under Ronald Ray Guns, swore on everything that is holy, while crossing her heart and spewing brain matter out of her nostrils, as demonstration of superior intellect, that never, absolutely never, could a communist authoritarian nation peacefully be transformed into a democratic one. She turned out to be exactly right, except for all of the nations of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union. Of course, to challenge the doctrine when it was being passed around in political circles like a super race of crablice was to invite deportation to Siberia, and a lifetime loss of respect by those whose respect would mark one’s legacy among the sane, to a degree more stigmatizing than death by drowning in a pool of Tidy Bowl. Of course, these garden variety scams and snookers, and repeated assaults on one’s miraculously returning virginity…
Once again, I felt myself about to wander. Indeed, my concentration was being lost to preoccupations I wrongly had believed to be unlikely to wake for a reliable length of time. It came to me like a bolt that a dram of vodka truly would hit the spot, the water refreshing, but greatly less satisfying as succor for my particular kind of thirst. I was comforted by the realization that upon the return to the house at the beach…no matter who was there, or who was not, vodka would readily be at hand.
Sitting, and staring toward the sun, until my retinas were burned with little images of blackened tennis balls, the pondering that had been my distraction, led me to say to myself, “I can foresee no circumstances under which I would return to my job at Pyramid.” Just as this was said in my head, the cab pulled up in front of me at the curb. Reaching for the door, I said out loud, this time, “Hey. I’ve got your Encyclopedia of American Political History right here.”