On all property and rights to property ... Bobby thought. Then he muttered, “There’s no fucking way, Josh. There’s no fucking way out. Hundred percent penalties! It’s the damn Empire Strikes Back, is what it is. No wonder people are sick. We’ve been betrayed by our own government. How’d Granpa say it? ‘First you have to sell your crop.’ He didn’t tell me what to do when the government doesn’t want you to sell your crop. They’re killin us, Josh. Aw, fuck em. We’ve been broke before and bounced back. We can do it again.”
Bobby sighed, flicked the pen from the file, let the cover close. It was wearing him down. Last night, after everyone had left, Sara had donned a salmon-colored silk teddy, had caressed him, had looked so beautiful, so sexy, Bobby’s silver Jumping Mary medallion hanging in her cleavage, and he had fallen asleep.
Bobby yawned. He looked at the sheet he’d begun. “Egalitarian inclusiveness,” he’d written. His concentration had been broken. He could not remember where he’d planned to go with that idea. On a new sheet he wrote:
Just as if any sector of a defensive perimeter is breached the perimeter is breached; and if any sector of our economy is ailing, the economy is ailing; or if any cell in our body is sick, we are sick; if any human on earth is denied hope, freedom or opportunity, our hopes, freedoms and opportunities become tentative, precarious, subject to denial.
It is 205 years since the words “When in the Course of human Events ...” gave birth to this nation; and 194 years from the penning of “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility...” These founding documents projected their ideal, their plans, pan-generationally 200 years into the future. These documents, their spirit and their reach are models for us today. Dual citizenship of the state of residence and of the United States—though not formalized until the ratification of Article XIV in July 1868 (when the concept was a radical departure from existing systems of government)—has today, in 1981, become so accepted as to be virtually unnoticed, unrecognized as a concept, and in reality has become a system of triple citizenship—citizens voting for, and in turn being taxed by, local, state, and national governments.
The future must be one in which Human Beings will have triple (or quadruple) citizenship of (town), state, nation and world (“We the people of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations ...”). The concept of world government is not original. It predates Caesar. But putting the power of that government into the hands of the people as citizens, world self-government, has never been attempted. A 200-year plan must be one of universal, egalitarian inclusiveness.
For years Bobby had mulled these concepts, let them foment. The urgency he felt in September 1981 motivated him to condense his notes. All citizens of the world were to be seen as created equal, with equal rights and equal opportunities under a unified system of global laws—which Bobby conceived of as equally restraining citizens and governments. Bobby was aware of the potential for great abuses, exactly as the founding fathers of America recognized the potential for the great abuse of a federal system of government and the needs for checks upon the powers of that government—not just internal checks and balances between the branches, but external checks by the states and by citizens. Bobby recognized how any government must first be a servant of the people, not first a controller of people. Therefore this new system of world government necessarily would have a federal form—a union or federation of independent governments, not a dominant world government that might deform into a dictatorship ... perhaps evolving in stages, citizens of Europe, citizens of North America. A form that would be limited; that would deal only with abuses recognized internationally—either between states, by multinational commercial bodies, or within renegade states tyrannizing world citizens who were simultaneously citizens of that state.
Of course, having been subjected to out-of-control government—“The rights of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated”—being caught in the grasp of the IRS and the administrative authority of OSHA, Bobby saw the potential for tyranny, via taxes and bureaucratic regulations, in his strong global formation. Therefore, to give it teeth to deal with abuses yet to restrain it so that it itself would not become abusive, was the dilemma to be resolved. Bobby wrote, “How not to create a monster! The system must be able to expand for crises, then must have a built-in mechanism that automatically shrinks the system when crises pass.”
Bobby stopped. This one concept, this multilevel citizenship concept, would be the basis for a global plan, an expansion of the Great Experiment that is America. “I, too, have a dream,” Bobby wrote.
I dream of a community, a nation, and a world not polarized into ethnic or racial factions, of a citizenry not fearful of stepping from their homes, not fearful of losing their homes ... of a world citizenry that puts private interests and personal gains second, behind the glory of a worldism in which each separate nation, each separate state, each separate community lives and exists in a mutually profitable manner. ... I want to see every man, woman and child living in their land in environmental harmony with the world ecosphere....
Become intoxicated with the myth, with the dream for your own good and the good of all your neighbors on earth....
... without abandoning the primacy of nationalism, for a hazy homogenized all-humanism;
... without abandoning individualism and distinctiveness for robotic conformity;
... without adopting the new dehumanizing aspirations of the mega-techno-capitalists with their economic primacy theories that seek to inherit personal and national sovereignty via the piece-by-piece transfer of power and influence to the officers of international corporations without the consent of the governed.
His juices were flowing yet he was exhausted. “The American dream,” he wrote, “is a human dream. It is one an individual creates because he has the freedom and opportunity to create it. It is NOT something anyone is, or can be, given.”
Bobby breathed deeply, closed his eyes. He could feel an expansion of human spirit, feel it through his back, from the back of his head, a four-dimensional image in time and space exploding from him, behind him, quick but not violent, expanding inclusively from past generations through him to the present, to the future, without him, happily, sensing himself nothing more than a temporary vehicle, weightless, a conduit ...
“Bobby.” Louder, “Bobby!”
“Huh?”
“Were you asleep?”
“Oh.” He turned. His face was captured by a huge smile. “Sara! I didn’t hear you.”
“Are ... Why are you smiling?”
“I was just having these ideas. It was almost like ... like I could see the future. And it was beautiful.”
“Do you know it’s eight o’clock?”
“You’re kidding?”
“Unt-uh. The doctor’s been calling. He’s called three times. They want you to come in for a retest. He said your blood values were so far out of line there must have been a lab error.” She paused, cocked her head sideways. “What are you grinning at?”
“Just you,” Bobby said.
November 5, 1981—Vu Van Hieu could not smile. An urge to return had seized him, an urge to continue the resistance, to resist the tyrants. Viet Nam had joined COMECON, the Soviet-dominated economic alliance in 1978. No longer was Viet Nam a mom-and-pop-type independent contractor communist government but now it was a branch-franchise outlet under strict control of the Moscow CEOs. Directed by the distant corporate headquarters, the franchise had, in December ’78, invaded Cambodia, a hostile takeover of a competitor’s franchise, had expanded the rape, pillage, and plunder for higher shareholder profits.
But that was not all. Had it been only Viet Nam, he would have quit High Meadow immediately—maybe joined the resistance. But it was bigger. It was global. His new country, the world symbol for freedom, on this day, at the very pinnacle of
the Great Media Trial, had declared Robert J. Wapinski, d.b.a. the High Meadow Corporation and Environmental Energy Systems, Inc., to be insolvent due to unpaid and presumably unpayable back taxes. The “Service” had ordered all assets of the above to be seized and disposed of in order to make restitution.
Sunday, 4 November 1984
IT IS LATE. LATE in the day. Or maybe not so late, just dark because of the rain, the clouds. I hear thunder approaching. It is late in the year for such a storm, the kind of storm that used to make so many of us anxious as if the thunderclaps were artillery bursts; the kind of storm that brought thoughts, images, of monsoons, of jungle valleys or hilltops, Hamburger Hill for Bobby, mudslides, hamburger hills for so many under monsoon rains and darkened skies late in their year.
I’m sitting on the loft floor, my legs dangling, like from the side of a Huey, over the main assembly area, over the flanger machine. In the dimness, before the tables, they emerge as if it were 8 October 1981. There are the vets, most anyway, some of the wives, families. In addition there are students from Nittany Mountain College, and Professor Tilden and his associate, James Alban, an instructor in history; and Montgomery McShane. From town there are dozens including Ernest Hartley, Jr. and Detective Don Fredrickson (to keep an eye on things?), and Uncle James and John Pisano, Sr., my Pop.
Gary Sherrick is beaming. He is prepared, has prepared the teams through general allegations, bills of particulars, discovery, detailed interrogations and requests for documents and records (research exchange). Sherrick is beaming with pride. This is his masterpiece. He has coached, lectured, cajoled and encouraged. “There is a politically correct way to think about the Viet Nam War,” Sherrick has said. “There is an academically acceptable perspective from which to write about the war. There is a socially agreeable position; and there are media-tolerable projectibles. These manners, perspectives, positions and projections have fluctuated over the years but have swayed only slightly since 1968 when Lyndon Johnson declined to run for a second full term, and when Walter Cronkite converted and established an acceptable antiwar posture for nonradicals. That these ossified perspectives are narrow seems to have bothered few politicians, academics, John and Jane Does, reporters, editors or film makers. And after nearly a decade and a half most everyone is in agreement—and most everyone, because of the exact narrowness of the perspectives, is half wrong.”
Sherrick, obnoxious Sherrick, sounded more like Wapinski all the time. “It is only through ever wider, patient research and deeper analytical knowledge that we can gain true understanding of any complex issue. And it is only through true understanding that we can plot reasoned courses of thought and action.”
And there is Wapinski, as judge, sitting on the collector assembly table 1, now with his feet on the sheet metal break, which had been pulled over for a job I no longer remember, with the jury and the recorder, the bailiffs and opposing attorneys, the witnesses and researchers, observers and guests, and even ol’ Josh, all before him, about him, above him sitting on the floor of the loft with their legs dangling. “I vow”—as a judge he would not put up with bullshit, with games; this was truth-seeking, not adversarial or even competitive judicature—“to become unstuck, to grow, to expand beyond my self ...”
There is a lightning flash. Two. Three. Four. Now thunder, deeper darkness, heavier rain. Light, dark: a polarization accentuating differences. I can barely see the room now. The formal charges are about to be read.
32
Opening and Closing Arguments
and Highlights of
the Great Media Trial
SESSION ONE—8 OCTOBER 1981—“The Media,” Bobby began, “is hereby defined as the information promulgation branch of our society. This branch’s activities consist of collecting, compiling, analyzing, condensing and distributing information. The media includes, but is not limited to the major news organizations of radio, TV and the press; the entertainment adjuncts of film, TV, the visual and audio arts and literature; plus public historical, political and commercial presentations. We name here as codefendants the Free World and United States television networks; news magazines and newspapers; film studios; academia—in particular history, political science, government and law, and sociology departments; and the national political parties and their information arms.”
Bobby paused. Murmurs arose, crested. To the prosecutors—Mark Renneau, Don Wagner and Tony Pisano—the definition had been too restrictive. To the defense counsels—Gary Sherrick, Carl Mariano and Frank Denahee—the construct and designation had been too broad. From some vets came hoots of approval, from others jeers of derision. Behind the audience Arnold Tilden glanced at James Alban and both professors smirked. The atmosphere was light, happy, as if at the gala opening of a new play.
“Counsel for the prosecution,” Bobby said, “are you ready?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Mark Renneau answered crisply.
“Defense?”
Sherrick stood, looked at Wapinski, turned to Renneau, then to the jury. “Yes Sir.”
“Bailiff, read the charges.”
“Sir.” Kevin Rifkin acknowledged Wapinski. In a clear voice he said, “The Media is hereby charged with: collusion with the enemy resulting in Communist victories in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia; with willful misrepresentations leading to the polarization of American society; with conspiracy to undermine the U.S. government and military; with the malicious skewing of information, which has damaged the democratic aspirations of peoples around the earth; and with incompetence.”
“How do the defendants plea?” Wapinski asked.
“Not guilty on all counts,” Sherrick answered.
“Let it be so noted,” Wapinski said to the court, “that the defendants have entered pleas of not guilty.”
“Naturally!” Don Wagner blurted. Before he could be silenced, he added, “The media’s the only unaccountable element of our society. They always deny—”
“Order!” Wapinski rapped his hammer on the sheet metal break. “Order!”
“Put a cork in it,” Mariano snapped at Wagner.
“Order!” Wapinski raised his voice.
“Sanctimonious jackasses,” Wagner shot back.
Witnesses and observers began to laugh. In the jury box Calvin Dee nudged Felix Defabretti, was about to speak when Wapinski boomed, “SHUT UP!” That snapped faces forward. “Prosecutors, present your first opening argument.” Wapinski started his stopwatch.
Mark Renneau rose. Slowly, emulating Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, he sauntered to the jury box. He looked from juror to juror making eye contact with each. “Gentlemen,” Renneau said. “You meet someone. He says, ‘Who are you?’ You answer with your name. But he says, ‘You are not your name. Who are you?’ Again you answer but this time you tell the story of yourself because that is who you truly are.” Renneau paused. At the defense table Gary Sherrick scribbled a note.
“Gentlemen,” Renneau backed away from the jury, “you have heard the charges and the defendants’ pleas. The prosecution will break the Viet Nam War down into five phases and, in regard to each phase, will demonstrate the media’s guilt on each and every charge. We will detail the media’s collusion with Hanoi’s propaganda ministry and how this led to the debasement of the allied cause and the collapse of will. We will show how the willful misrepresentation of story by the media has led to or exacerbated many of our nation’s present political and social problems; how elements of the media conspired to undermine faith in and allegiance to this nation, its government and the armed forces legally raised, armed, and deployed by this government. We will present evidence of the malicious and purposeful skewing of information leading to the derailment of democratic aspirations. And finally, we will document the unquestionable incompetence of the media, particularly the broadcast medias, as a system for full, accurate, and unbiased information distribution to our society. And we will show that the ramifications of these acts have so poisoned our culture that our national myth, our story, Amer
ica as a concept, as a noble experiment, is endangered and on the brink of extinction.”
Again Renneau paused. He turned from the jury but did not return to the prosecutor’s table. Casually he edged to where Sal Ianez was tape-recording the proceedings. “You gettin this, Sal?” Renneau asked quietly. Ianez raised his one arm, shook his fist in affirmation. “Good,” Mark said. Then, to Wapinski, then turning to the audience and back to the jury, he said loudly, “Your Honor, we additionally will show that basic American actions and policies, and the causes and reasons behind those actions and policies, were justified and noble. And we will show that generally the policies were carried out efficiently, altruistically, and with competence. But first, the prosecution would like to establish the reach of the media into our lives and the importance to our culture of the story thereby told.”
“That’s your time, Mark,” Bobby said. “Let’s hear the first of the defense’s opening arguments. Then we’ll go back to the prosecution for ... Who’s going second for the pros ...”
“I am,” Tony Pisano said.
“Okay.” Bobby nodded. “Let me remind all of you that comments are limited to four minutes but that we will return to any counsel or witness as many times as necessary to fully probe, detail, and quantify the topic. Gary, your first counsel.”
“Thank you.” Sherrick rose quickly, moved quickly to the center before Wapinski, moved as if emphasizing the difference between himself and Mark Renneau. “Your Honor,” Sherrick commanded everyone’s attention, “the defense moves for immediate dismissal of all charges.”
“Excuse me?” Bobby was caught off guard. Again the ambient murmuring rose, filled the big barn with a cacophony of grunts, snickers, huhs? and ooooos.
“The defense,” Sherrick repeated, “moves for the immediate dismissal of all charges on the grounds that the defendants have been falsely charged with crimes they could not possibly have committed.”
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