Simple, Simple, Henry Knox
(I am party to an email group and we've been talking about censorship and government and other topics. I am just “spit-balling” here for a bit. Subject related to our dis-information topic but closer to my own sense of conflict, that being complexity. This is long and for that I apologize, but it comes to a point...eventually)
Every facet of my life (and I’ll wager everyone else’s as well) is affected by the underlying complexity of modern life. I remember thinking when I got our first computer, how amazing it was. And it was! It was a Commodore 64 and I got it for the kids but soon found myself sucked into the technology. There was so much I had to learn in order to get it to function-remember DOS? Just to get it to handle Mario was an accomplishment and there was so much more to come in this world of technology. I could see the future chasing me and I decided to get out in front of it and learn as much as I could so my sons would not pass me and my world narrow as I marched towards “geezerdom”. Next came my powerful 386 with 4 megs of RAM. I debated for a year on whether or not I should spring for 4 more but the hundred dollars it would cost was not in my family’s budget. In what seemed like a race came modems and file sharing and on-line existence began to nibble away at the edges of my real life. The boss gave me a computer and told me to keep my daily job records on it. Letter writing became emailing, skill-sets and lessons came from YouTube, vacation photos appeared, not in albums, but on phone screens. Flash forward…Suddenly every time I turned around there was another computerized innovation and I spent more and more time at a keyboard or clicking with a mouse or reading messages on a phone screen. The electric bill on-line. The auto insurance bill on-line. 5G. Fibre cable. Cell phone towers. Zoom. Covid.
To bring this back to our original (on-line) discussion, we are debating (or commiserating if you will) issues of “free speech” and treachery afoot in the halls of justice but we’re alone, in our homes, on our computers. We are all twisted into knots in the wires (or virtual wires) of our laptops. We are exhausted by a thousand channels of TV, our thumbs tired out in our evening search for entertainment. Grazing from channel to channel. The “news” comes in flavors to suit your taste so you never have to look at other side of an issue if you find it upsetting, just click on to the next talking head that agrees with you. The whole nation used to watch Walter Cronkite and discuss it at the drinking fountain at breaktime the next day. If the discussion got heated it was civil. If it got too hot the topic was switched to Mary Tyler Moore. Now the issues are not discussed, they are avoided because a rabid argument will almost always ensue.
So, we wander in a fog of technology, bruised by opinions expressed and enjoyed by only those who “Like” them. Razzle-dazzled by scammers whose foot hold in the halls of power seems unbreakable. We are led by men (and women) who lied about everything (G. Santos), by men who will do anything to continue to feed at the trough (D.J.T.) no matter who is crushed by their treachery and lost in the labyrinth of technology. What would the scientists who imagined this web have to say if they could see where it has gotten us?
I just finished a couple of books about the Revolutionary War and few of the people who were important to the effort. Mostly I was interested in stuff that happened close to my home in the Hudson Valley. One of the most fascinating men I read about was Henry Knox. A 25-year-old book seller living and working in Boston, he volunteered to serve in the army. The British army was in total control of Boston and the important harbor. This young man devised a plan and presented it General Washington, a plan to route the British and make them abandon Boston and the key harbor. Washington gave him the go-ahead.
Knox and his rag-tag troops marched in the dead of winter up to Fort Ticonderoga-300 miles- and brought back 60 tons of cannon and powder, crossing rivers and mountains, ice and snow, with oxen and sleds. Back near Boston he positioned the guns and built secure positions overlooking the town and harbor in the dead of night under the noses of overwhelming British forces. The ensuing bombardment caused the occupying army to tuck their tails in and run. The ships in the harbor took off lest they be sunk by this miracle insurgency. The commanding officer of the British force stated that his army could not have done in a month what the young American commander had done in a night. That commander, Henry Knox, was one of the great men who George Washington had at his side to win American freedom. Knox commanded the artillery and founded a school to train other men which we now know as West Point. He had not a single laptop. No telephone or GPS while he marched to Fort Ticonderoga. His men nearly froze over and over again as they pressed on with their cannons down to Boston, but through his sheer will and his integrity commanded his men and they followed. That is the simple story of the founding of a nation. Oh, commander Knox, where art thou? We need you here.
