politics – Frank is Emptiness

Civil Disobedience

January 16th, 2026

Have you ever been to a protest demonstration? Have you ever been arrested at a demonstration? Did you ever go to jail for civil disobedience?

Some of you reading this article can answer yes to all of those questions. Well, so can I. However, I cannot say that I was ever teargassed or knocked to the ground by a law enforcement officer. I am sure that some folks reading my words have been exposed to that kind of violence at demonstrations. My experience with civil disobedience is limited to one specific event. In the scheme of things, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but it changed my life.

I participated in a week-long protest at Creech AFB in Nevada in the spring of 2017. Our group of protesters were demonstrating against drone warfare, and Creech AFB personnel were involved in that type of operation. One morning, a smaller subset of our team decided to engage in civil disobedience. All of us planned to block the entrance of the Air Force base during the change of shifts. Most of us were going to vacate the road after five minutes (the police made it clear that anybody still impeding traffic after that time would be arrested). A few of the protesters intended to remain the street and get busted. I had no desire to be part of that select population.

As it turned, I became part of that small group of malcontents. I stayed with them in the road and was arrested along with the other six people. Did I allow myself to be incarcerated because of a deep commitment to our cause? Hmmm, no, not really. I had been standing next to an older veteran, Ray, and he had put his hand on my shoulder and told me how glad he was that I was standing with him. The stone-cold truth is that I remained with him out of friendship and solidarity. As somebody told me later, I made a “game time decision”. My choice to get arrested was not terribly rational, however it was right. I have no regrets. Oddly enough, of the seven people arrested, five of us were vets. That probably doesn’t really matter, but I found it interesting.

The Clark County cops held us for about fourteen hours and then released us. That was the first time in my life that I had ever been arrested, and it made an impression. The police were professional about the intake process. It was a relatively painless experience, but it was still scary, at least it was for me. I learned a lot rather quickly. It reminded me a lot of my basic training in the Army. The one rule was “shut up and do as you’re told”. I have experience with that sort of thing, so it wasn’t too hard for me to adapt to the jail environment.

The reason that I am writing about a this is because of the current violence and chaos in Minnesota. My experience is vastly different to what is happening there, but I still have some thoughts.

When I got busted, both the protesters and the law enforcement officials made efforts to maintain a nonviolent interaction. The police made it crystal clear to us what they wanted us to do and what the consequences would be if we chose not to follow their instructions. For our part, we did not verbally abuse or harass the cops. This sort of protest had occurred at Creech AFB repeatedly in the past, so almost everyone knew the rules of the game. That was a very good thing. It is unwise to surprise a guy carrying a loaded Glock. When people get scared, they do stupid things.

I believe that a person in the United States has the right (or perhaps an obligation) to break a law that goes against their conscience. I also believe that when a person does disobey that law, they should be ready to accept the consequences of their actions. Nothing is for free. Valor has a price tag. A person should stand up for what is right, but they have to understand the potential costs involved with their decisions.

The goal is not to be a martyr. History is full of the names of people who died for their beliefs: Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Now there is Renee Good.

How do we work for justice without getting people killed?

An Honest Answer

January 8th, 2026

““We live in a world in which, you can talk about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” -Stephen Miller

There is almost nothing I like about Stephen Miller. However, the above quote sadly rings true. There is much handwringing about the collapse of the rule-based international order. There are those who contend that President Trump is demolishing it. Maybe. It’s far more likely that the order has been on the verge of collapse for decades, and he is just giving it one last nudge.

Miller’s quote specifically concerns Trump’s recent attack on Venezuela. That was not the first time that a great power has used force against a smaller country, nor will it be the last. Just since WWII, both the United States and Russia/Soviet Union have had their way with a number of weaker nations. On Russia’s scorecard we have the attack on Hungary in 1956, the assault on Czechoslovakia in 1968, the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and of course the current slaughter in Ukraine. As for America, we have the attack on Grenada in 1983, the intervention in Panama in 1989, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000’s. This list does not even count the U.S. covert operations to overthrow governments in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973. I’m sure that I am forgetting some of the acts of aggression, but you get the idea.

Both I and my eldest son served in the U.S. military. I was an Army aviator in West Germany during the 1980’s in the Cold War. The reason for me being there was to keep the Red hordes from invading western Europe. I guess that was at least somewhat true. Many years after I served in Germany, long after the Berlin Wall fell, I met a couple people who had served in the Soviet Army. Oddly enough, their perspective was radically different from my own. They thought they were protecting Mother Russia from the Yankee imperialists. Maybe we were both right.

After I was deployed to Germany, I spent my remaining time in the Army stationed at Fort Ord with the 7th Infantry Division. Our mission was to be a rapid deployment force if things went bad in Central America. We were training to go to Honduras as a staging point for an invasion of Nicaragua. This was back when Reagan really wanted to get rid of the Sandinistas. Fortunately, we never went to Honduras, but that was the plan.

My oldest son was deployed to Iraq in 2011. He was not as lucky as I was. He killed people and he got wounded over there. He told me once that when he was in Iraq his goal, and those of his comrades, had nothing to do with democracy or oil. They just wanted to get out of there alive, and they did.

Over the years, the United States and other countries have tried to justify their acts of aggression. We have always been claiming to be defending America and/or democracy. It was both shocking and refreshing when Trump said that we were going after Venezuela’s oil. That at least was an honest answer.

When it comes right down to it, the real reason why the United States or Russia or anyone else invades another country is:

“Because we can.”

Graffiti

September 27th, 2025

Around the Waldorf school on Brady Street there is always some graffiti scribbled on buildings and signs. In the bathrooms of some of the coffee shops on the street there is often more writing than there is blank space on the walls. Sometimes, there is even graffiti written on top of other graffiti. The graffiti in the neighborhood near Asher’s school is not excessive, but it’s always popping up no matter how many times the messages or drawings are erased or painted over. After a while, the words or symbols become invisible to the people passing by them. That is, unless they are somehow thought provoking in an unusual way.

Occasionally, graffiti can be thoughtful and literate. I took a piss in a bathroom where somebody had taken the time to write down a quote by Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. It was about what it means to be brave. They wrote:

“The true meaning of courage is not whether or not you are afraid. It is whether or not you do it anyway.”

I was impressed by that.

Most graffiti are boring. Cryptic gang symbols are of interest to only a small subset of people. To me, and probably to many other folks, the images mean nothing. I have a Catholic Worker friend who told me once that national flags are just glorified gang symbols. I think he’s right. A flag is a kind of graffiti. It sends a message or tries to do so. For some individuals a flag may have deep emotional meaning, but for others it’s just a colorful rag flapping in the breeze. A couple houses in the area fly Palestinian flags. Those particular forms of graffiti are obviously important to the residents of the home, but they may offend or signify nothing to the person walking underneath them. An American flag can have the same effect.

Sometimes graffiti is political in nature. On the Brady Street bridge protesters love to write things on concrete with colored chalk. They sometimes write, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” I have also seen the statement, “Israel: your victim card has expired.” The slogans are eye-catching, but they probably only interest the people who already agree with what is written. The comments in chalk are mercifully temporary. A good rain erases it all and cleans the slate for the next author.

Graffiti can have religious messages. “Jesus saves” is an example of that. I have seen entire verses from the Bible written on the sidewalk. This kind of graffiti can be inspiring, or it can be very negative. Or it can be both, depending on views of the person reading the message.

Graffiti is too often obscene. That seems to be part of our culture. There was a time when if somebody wrote the word “fuck”, it grabbed the attention of the observer. That is no longer true. I, at least, am too jaded to give that sort of thing a second look.

There is one unique specimen of graffiti that I see every time I pick up Asher from school. All it says is,

“Entropy will triumph!”

That always makes me smile. It reads like a radical manifesto from a science nerd. Of course, the statement is true. In the physical world, things tend to move from order to disorder. This is not true in every case, but in the end the universe will probably suffer heat death, a state where there is only thermal energy and there is total disorder. The universe won’t go out with a bang. It won’t even go out with a whimper. So, the person who used a Sharpie to scrawl this message obviously knows something of thermodynamics, and they also have a dry sense of humor.

Thermodynamics has three basic laws:

The first law, also known as the law of conservation of energy, states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another.

The second law states that the total energy of an isolated system can never decrease over time.

The third law states that as the temperature of a system approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a perfect crystal approaches a constant minimum. This law implies that it is impossible to reach absolute zero in a finite number of steps, and it proves insight unto the behavior of systems at very low temperature.

(Note: these laws were found in Wikipedia).

What does all this mean? I once found a version of the three laws that was translated into layman’s terms. It said,

You can’t win.
You can’t break even.
You can’t quit the game.

That pretty much is what the graffiti artist was saying. I like that.

Illegal Orders

August 19th, 2025

I recently read an article in Military.com titled “4 Out of 5 US Troops Surveyed Understand the Duty to Disobey Illegal Orders”. In the essay, the authors state,

“Our poll, fielded between June 13 and June 30, 2025, shows that service members understand these rules. Of the 818 active-duty troops we surveyed, just 9% stated that they would ‘obey any order.’ Only 9% ‘didn’t know,’ and only 2% had ‘no comment.’ “

I have to mention here that the article and possibly the poll itself have a partisan slant. The authors are not fans of Donald Trump. Even so, the essay and the results of the poll are interesting to me.

I would have preferred to read that 100% of active-duty troops understand how to recognize an illegal order and know when to disobey such an order. However, 80% sounds realistic. Actually, I find that number to be encouraging.

I entered West Point as a new cadet in July of 1976. That was a long time ago. I don’t remember much of my first day at USMA. Most of it is a blur. However, I can distinctly remember when I stood on the Plain to take the oath to defend the U.S. Constitution. Did I really understand at that time what I was promising to do? No, but I figured it out as time went on and I realize how life-changing that oath really was and still is.

I suspect that most veterans can remember when they officially became service members. It’s hard to overstate how important that moment was. The oath that we took stands in stark contrast to the oath that German soldiers took in WWII. Those men (which probably including my father-in-law) swore allegiance to the person of Adolf Hitler. We did not swear allegiance to a president. We did not swear allegiance to a political party. We did not swear to protect a religion or a particular ethnic group. An American service member swears allegiance to the core document of our republic. In effect, we took an oath to defend a noble idea.

What does it mean to defend the Constitution? That’s where it gets hard. We don’t always get into situations where the line between right and wrong is crystal clear. Sometimes, we are forced to choose the lesser evil. Even in peacetime, a soldier may face an order that is illegal and/or immoral. My oldest son fought in Iraq, and he often found himself in extremely violent circumstances where the decisions had to made immediately without time for thoughtful consideration of the consequences. I am pretty sure that at those times he seldom thought about the Constitution. He thought about survival.

Can we expect service members to always fulfill their oaths? Probably not. However, it makes me hopeful knowing that the vast majority of them understand what they promised to do.