Meeting Minutes

We had a wonderful time at our meeting today!  It felt good to feel that perhaps our meetings are having some effect, however slight or small, moving in a positive, constructive, and more intelligent direction and perspective.  I hope that maybe the vision that I had at first that spurred me to arrange these meetings will be fulfilled slowly but surely in this fashion. 

I want to send a heartfelt thanks to Louis Reyes, Senior Police Officer of the City of Lewisville for sharing his perspective with us and giving us guidelines and advice on how to think more critically through understanding and without prejudice.  I also want to thank Jeff Harrington and a tired, but alert Tommy Schultz for coming and being the sounding boards for thought that they naturally are.  Louis later called me and especially wanted me to let everyone know that he sincerely enjoyed our meeting!  We initially had 4 attendees, but were joined unexpectedly by one of Jeff Harrington’s classmates who by chance bumped into us at Clay Pit.  We had therefore 5 attendees at our meeting:  (from left to right) Jeff Harrington, VJ Arjan, Louis Reyes, Tommy Schultz, and Jeff Harrington’s acquaintance (cannot remember his name, my apologies).

Vietnam War

The bulk of our meeting was dominated, no doubt, by Louis’ horrible stories about his experiences in Vietnam.  Unfortunately, I can only relate some of his experiences to you as only those who were there at the meeting and listened to him relate them to us could know the intimate details of his situation.  But I will try my best to relate some of them to you.  According to him, nothing is gained by war – there are only losers on both sides.  Louis is deeply concerned about the general attitude of the young generation of today.  Their listlessness and apathy, he feels, will inevitably bring about another war that will necessarily shock some reality into them.  For he feels that the current generation who takes the freedoms of liberty and rights for granted and who did not bleed for any cause are currently living in a bubble of their own reality.  As Louis has aged, he feels starkly fearful about the future generations.  He feels that the next generation will be a generation of “fuck-ups” as he put it and they will go to a war that is much more sophisticated and disastrous than anything in the past (with the welcome aid of technology).

I must admit that listening to some of the atrocities he went through disgusted me thoroughly and I will try to relate some of them to you all as best as I can so you too can feel how undesirable a thing war is.

He has been wounded 4 times, therefore, he has 4 purple hearts, a military decoration awarded to those who have been killed or wounded while serving.

Vietnam, as some of you may know, is filled with rice paddies, and the soldiers would for days wallow and trudge in water to the point that their feet would become soaked, literally, like a sponge.  A small infection could grow across entire extremities, therefore.  Louis had sustained such an infection to the point that he described how the whole of his feet were literally covered in pus.  It took 7 army doctors to hold him down while they violently scrubbed it off his feet.

He wanted to relay distinctly how there was no glory in warfare, very much unlike what Hollywood has been so gracious to portray.  Real bravery and courage cannot be depicted in a movie.  He described how he would crawl into small tunnels that led to underground enemy bases and coldly shooting those who came his way.  His heart would literally be beating on his neck, so intense was his fear and his nervousness of finding an AK-47 starring down upon him.

He also related how Hollywood underplays the realities of war.  In some major motion pictures, one can see that people are shot by bullets and are intact and able to speak, etc.  This is not the case in real life.  To illustrate, the force of a bullet from an AK-47 is so intense that a hit in the shoulder would sever not only the entire arm from the body, but also blast off the head as well.  He recalls this very incident happening to one of his comrades in combat.

Prejudice

Louis told us very clearly that he thinks that prejudice is the main reason for intolerance and violence in the world.  The reason for prejudice is an unwillingness to see another’s history.  I will give you my example.  Although some may term me Indian, I am, as a person, not Indian at all excepting my skin tone.  In respects other than the skin on this body, I am not Indian at all.  I have been brought up in a culture that is decidedly Western.  However, the ability to label or judge someone based upon a physical trait like one’s skin tone, is, therefore, completely baseless.  This would fare no more or less for one who has black skin, or white skin, or yellow skin, etc.  The blind judging of one’s character without the intention of actually understanding why a person is the way it is, is a very dangerous concept, and one, Louis fears, may be eating this country up from the inside.  He partially blames the media for perpetuating these stereotypes, but also on the unwillingness of the people to challenge and think critically about what is presented.

He explained to us how most Muslim are so unlike what is seen on television.  In fact, a friend of his who served in Iraq relayed to him how extreme fundamentalist Muslims actually wait for the cameras to start rolling before they start screaming and yelling at the highest pitch.  And the media does not show the decent and nonviolent Muslims, because there would be nothing to comment about them.  I like to think of a certain news anchor that I particularly dislike, Sean Hannity, of Hannity and Colmes on Fox News.  He deliberately relates the message that will incite people to the most excitement, rather than the truth and reality, which may, in fact, spark no interest at all with its audience.  The media is looking out for its own best interest, its own survival as a business.  It is the very same reason why talk shows like Jerry Springer were so popular in its day because it stirred up excitement.  This excitement, however, does not have anything to do with the reality as it is.  The people who desire the excitement would stop watching the news stations at once if they found Muslims of the Middle East to be tolerant and peace-loving citizens.

He, therefore, finds racially separatists movements like the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers to be very dangerous organizations and feels that if the authority were left to him, he would completely “wipe them out.”  Most dangerous is the indoctrination of the children into a belief system so polarized as morally acceptable race superiority/inferiority.  This group can become very powerful especially in times like this when people can be driven to desperate measures.  Let us hope that reason, amidst the hard times, will triumph over “irrational exuberance.”