Pine Nuts with McAvoy Layne: Declaration of Interdependence 2023
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Sun, 11/19/2023 - 5:18pm
What catnip is to cats, and frisbees are to dogs, inadvertent escalation is to men who are well armed, and it seems most everybody these days is well armed. I was once well armed myself, landing in Vietnam in the Marine Corps, armed with a .45, with which I could not hit an outhouse from the inside. Still, I was feeling pretty cocky.
Did I feel any animosity toward the North Vietnamese? No. I never had the pleasure of meeting one. But I was told they were trying to take over South Vietnam, and if that happened the dominoes would fall and we would all find ourselves living under communism, a fate worse than death. So off I went, hippity-hop, to Vietnam to draw a line in the sand.
I met some great men there, fellow Marines whom I call “Brother” today when we go fly fishing together, and together, away back then, yes, we must have killed a few good men. Did we accomplish our mission and save our country and perhaps the world from communism? Maybe, maybe not. People tell me I’m a good historian where facts are not essential.
All I know for sure is, we have no permanent enemies. We are on good terms today with all of Vietnam, not to mention Japan, Germany, Italy, England, Native America, and the Confederacy, did I forget anybody?
You give a 22-year-old male a gun and whisper in his ear that somebody is out to get him, well, he is no son of Adam if he does not break brush and climb a mountain or two in the hunting of that somebody. Nowadays, that 22 year-old male has not just one person whispering in his ear, but throngs on the net, with whom he is conjoining during 12 hours in the day.
So what do we tell Russians who are in Ukraine and Israelis who are in Gaza today? As one who has fired at a perceived enemy and missed, as did the perceived enemy in return, I would say, “Lay down your arms and abide by what a neutral body such as the United Nations shall instruct in all fairness.”
This is no longer your grandmother shouting to an eight-year-old boy to lay down his peashooter, no. Inadvertent escalation could quickly spiral out of control and destroy our every neighborhood, every ocean, every stream, every meadow.
Where we offer our thoughts and prayers to families of victims of mass shootings today, there will be no families of victims of tomorrow’s nuclear mass shootings. We can all bend over and kiss our assets goodbye.
Warring nations must defer to a neutral body such as the United Nations, lay down their arms, bite their tongues, and live in peace on a planet that grows smaller with each passing day.
I for one, intreat the United Nations to author a single paragraph, a Declaration of Interdependence if you will, that the world can endorse, with instructions to draw down in return for the fairest possible plan for peace. Until there is concurrence, the world will have no commerce with that warring nation.
Do I hear a second? Or should I content myself with shouting into the Grand Canyon, and hoping for an echo.
— For more than 30 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American." Go here for the spoken word version of this and other columns.
