W.D. Ehrhart

This is Democracy?

by W.D. Ehrhart So here we are at the outset of another new year. A Happy New Year? Well, as Shakespeare’s Lady Anne replies to Richard III in Act I, Scene 2, when he asks if he can live in hope, “All men I hope live so.” Of course, she’s talking to one of the Bard’s most villainous characters. And though he eventually gets his in the end, we folks (men and women both) these days can—well—only hope that our future works out so nicely. I can’t help finding myself wondering how much longer our American version of democracy is likely to last. Will it …

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You Want To Serve Your Country?

by W.D. Ehrhart I recently received the following e-mail: “First off, Mr. Ehrhart, thank you for your service. My main question is this: what wisdom do you think you have gained from experiencing the Vietnam War? Do you think that younger generations could learn something from you and your experience?” “Thank you for taking the time to write,” I replied. “What wisdom have I gained from experiencing the Vietnam War? What could younger generations learn from me? I hope I don’t sound too cynical, but what I learned was to question everything I’m told by those in authority. Donald Trump lied to the American people …

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Do You Believe in Unicorns?

by W.D. Ehrhart Steve Bannon, the Trump-pardoned Breitbart founder, former Trump strategist, and current Trump ally, said in a podcast on January 5th, 2021, “Strap on. All hell’s going to break loose,” and just last week declared, “We are taking over school boards, we’re taking over the Republican Party with the precinct committee strategy. Suck on this!” Number 45 himself defended supporters who chanted “Hang Mike Pence” during the insurrection, saying it was just “common sense” given Pence’s refusal to deny certification of the 2020 election. A teenaged white kid carrying an illegally obtained high-powered assault rifle across state lines to defend the property of …

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It’s a Big Universe Out There

by W.D. Ehrhart In December 1985, I made my first postwar trip back to Vietnam. I had gone there in 1967 as an 18-year-old Marine, which had turned out to be a very bad idea and a life-changing experience. Eighteen years later, I wanted to see and experience the country of Vietnam, not the Vietnam War. It turned out to be both a humbling and a healing trip. Very early on, my interpreter, a young man old enough to remember the war but not old enough to have fought in it, asked me if I had been wounded. When I said I had, and then …

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More Fun Facts About American History

by W.D. Ehrhart Lately I’ve been ruminating on American history, in particular on how little most of my fellow citizens know about it. I recently wrote an essay in the Gazette (September 24, 2021) that took note of the missing stanza of our national anthem that condemns the British for offering freedom to American slaves, the missing stanzas of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” that criticize capitalism and the owner class, the overt anti-immigrant racism imbedded in American society, and a number of other fun facts most Americans are oblivious to. I wrote a whole essay (Gazette, October 8, 2021) about a Virginia …

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Re-Thinking American History

by W.D. Ehrhart I have spent my entire life reading. As Emily Dickinson wrote, “There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away.” Even in Vietnam, as an 18-year-old, I read whatever I could get my hands on from John Updike’s Rabbit, Run to Voltaire’s Candide to John Cleland’s Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. I don’t read many books more than once because there are so many good books to read, but I’ve read multiple times David Howarth’s 1066: The Year of the Conquest, and Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the …

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