ustxtxb_obs_1965_11_26_50_00013-00000_000.pdf

Observations ” ‘Its the way him and his advisers have got us bogged down in that war over in Vietnam. Getting American boys killed; killin those Vietnamese people. To prove what? To prove that those poor devils is going to be ruled by a government that we like, whether they like it or not. Rate we’re goin over there, there won’t be a child old enough to walk in that country that will be able to stand the sight of an American. I think our Administration’s misreading history.’ “The Doctor, he harumphs, and says, ‘You feel mighty strong on the subject. Have you told President Johnson? Told him how strongly you object?’ ” ‘Hell, it wouldn’t do any good. He wouldn’t listen to me.’ ” ‘Now think real hard. This is important. I think I smell the direction your guilt’s coming from. Is the only reason you haven’t told President Jolfnson how you feel about his foreign policy, the fact that you don’t think he would listen to you?’ “I wrestled that one around for a long time before I answered. I was sweatin when I finally came out with it. ” `No, Doc. In fact that’s not the reason at all. I got sense enough to know that really the only way a citizen can be honest with himself and his country is by speakin up, whether he is listened to or not. I reckon I’m ashamed to tell you the real reason I’ve not been protesting. I’ve not even admitted it to myself til now. You see, down here in Texas, if you protest in public against our part in the war in Vietnam, the politicians, the newspapers, and most of your neighbors will lambast you. Start calling you names. Threatening you. So I keep my feelings to myself.’ “The doctor pulls his chair around to where he can look me right in the eye and says, ‘President Johnson’s doing what he thinks is right, don’t you agree?’ ” ‘Why sure. He’s sincere. He’s doing what he thinks is right. But its not what I think is right, not by a damn sight.’ ” ‘Yes, but you’ve got too much common sense to get mad at a man you elected and who is doing his best. So you’re not mad at President Johnson. You’re mad at the man who has just admitted that he is not doing what he thinks is right. A man you love, and yet are mad at. Guess who!’ ILIKE to have bounced plumb off that couch. I knew who it was. ‘Doc, I could hug you! You’ve done knocked my trauma into the middle of next week! You got any advice for me?’ ” ‘Yes. Try to avoid missing the next public meeting to protest our policy in Vietnam. Continue to protest as long as you experience the strong feelings that you do on the subject. Oh yes, and pay me my $25 fee.’ “Damned if I didn’t wake myself up, searching through my pants hanging on the bedstead for my pocketbook,” Uncle Jim Hogg ends up. Like I told you, he can knock the bark off the tree every time, when it comes to crackerjack dreams. Yours, Claudie Austin Most seers, sages, and prophets have mastered the fine art of hedging. They trim here and there until, if it turns out they’re proved wrong, they can point to a certain curve, a subtle indentation, that shows they anticipated the way things turned out after all. Doris Fleeson, alas, is a plainer kind of gardener in the grounds of prophecy. On Nov. 2, she wrote in the Washington Evening Star that, “If the voters approve, as expected,” the four-year term for Texas governors, “the virtually certain result is another four years in power for the conservative [Gov. John] Connally, starting in 1967.” Furthermore, Miss Fleeson intoned, “Texans widely expect that in 1970 Connally will disrupt the re-election bid of Sen. Ralph Yarborough, a liberal . . . Connally seems to believe that he . . . can form a conservative Democratic wing with power in the party which, given a reaction to the Great Society, could capture or greatly influence a Democratic national convention.” But, this neatsome row of dominoes failed to begin falling in the direction Miss Fleeson anticipated when the first domino fell in: the opposite direction. What next? Subscribe to the Washington Evening Star to get the inside. Or just get on Senator Yarborough’s frequency; nobody’s been so happy about an aborted prediction since Harry Truman mimicked H. V. Kaltenborn while holding the Chicago Tribune aloft in 1948. NO W T H A T the issue of the four-year term for Connally is behind us temporarily, anyway; one can’t tell when November 26, 1965 13 AMERICAN INCOME LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF INDIANA Underwriters of the American Income Labor Disability Policy Executive Offices: P.O. Box 208 Waco Texas Bernard Rapoport, President