Love and courage will defeat Trump

Vice Admiral James Stockdale (Hoover Institute)

I’d like to share a story with you this Sunday morning about indomitable character and courage.

More than anything else, the test at hand for the American people is a moral one. The issues at hand are about right and wrong. Once again, a battle thought won has been recast and stands undecided. The battle between the light and the darkness is eternal. After a long languid season of progress and peace the ground has quaked, and the furies have woken. Too many have forgotten the war before the world was saved by America. They cannot remember what has faded to mist — or never knew about in the first place.

Let us be honest. Trump has thrown the whole world out of balance. He has disrupted the peace of the world. What are we to do?

The lines between decency and indecency have become blurred in America. We have lost sight of the difference between toughness and cruelty, between patriotism and jingoism. We have lost sight of ourselves, and because we are a government of the people, by the people, for the people we have lost connection to the purpose of our nation.

Many of you ask, “What can I do?”

The answer is simple.

You must act.

Some will say, “What can one person do? I am not rich or famous, and I don’t have many followers.”

My response is, “You can change the world.”

Some will say, “But how?”

Here is where I fear I may frustrate you.

I will not answer this question with specific suggestions around what tasks you should complete, or what organizing efforts you should join. You must decide these things because you are a free American.

Rather, I would prefer to answer the question within a framework around how to think about this vile era, this specific moment. I hope to fortify you with the resolve to properly face it, by reminding you of some things we don’t talk about in public much anymore.

Words like love, honor, commitment, duty and obligation.

First, it goes without saying that these are dark, unnecessary and depressing days. But, these are not hopeless days — far from it.

I wish the storm had not come, but I would rather face it now than see a different Trump rise in this country at a later time. Let us put this insanity down, and make sure that it does not rise again in this country for several lifetimes. Let us leave a record of warnings steeped in humility behind for our descendants that answers a question finally, and for all time.

It is this: could it happen here?

Forevermore, the answer in America will be “more than yes.” It will be “it happened,” and it will stand as a mark of shame in this country as indelibly as our most grievous sins. Let us pray for the wisdom to face down what must be confronted, and the grace of restraint when it is defeated — which it will be.

I am grateful as an American to be able to take an American stand in a consequential hour.

When this MAGA madness ends in catastrophe, and Trump’s extremist cause is stamped out, when it is harder to find an American who admits to voting for Trump than finding gold in your front yard, when his henchmen are disgraced, his courtiers reviled, the giant technology syndicates broken up, democracy fortified and America renewed, the cause of opposition to this wretchedness will be held by the American people in the same esteem that every other movement has been that raised up liberty to crush tyranny in America.

There is a tyranny rising in America, a new serfdom, a callous and sinister techno fascism that is inhumane, cruel and threatening. It is at once overbearing, officious, controlling and suffocating. The world’s richest man, elected to nothing, addicted to Ketamine, and utterly convinced of his genius, has decided that America is his, and we are to be his serfs.

The Democratic Party will become America’s patriotic party — or it will die.

The party will either stand up for the foundational ideas of the United States, or remain yoked to a narrow, tedious and strident set of interest groups that are self-serving, out-of-touch, and as hostile to the precepts of American freedom as MAGA.

The core difference between MAGA and the woke left Democratic interest group is the latter have no chance of ever winning a national election, but have somehow managed to become energy pioneers as the developers of the world’s first inexhaustible and renewable fuel supply.

Tragically, the fuel serves a singular engine: MAGA extremism.

American politics is a vicious affair in which the currents can lift the reputations of the lowest, while dragging down the best.

Vice Admiral James Stockdale was such a man.

Certainly, there was no person who appeared on a national ticket for the office of vice president who was a greater philosopher and thinker than Stockdale — with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson.

There was never anyone more heroic, loving, or tough than him.

He was among the most exceptional leaders that the nation ever produced, but he was turned into a punchline by graceless skits that made a mockery of a great man’s disability, rendering judgments about his character.

When considering the seeds of destruction that led to 40-year-old JD Vance lecturing President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, as his master became the first president in American history to betray an ally, switch sides in a war and surrender to aggression, it should be noted that the hollowing out of virtues and casting this nation’s greatest heroes as punchlines did more than its fair share to lay the foundations for an epic moment. It was a political, moral and national disaster — and it was a long time in the making.

When he passed away in 2005, The New York Times headline was a travesty, but represented perfectly the narrow worldview of the institution:

Though he had a distinguished military career, Admiral Stockdale is perhaps best remembered as Mr. Perot's running mate in the 1992 campaign. Mr. Stockdale was first selected as a stand-in on the ticket, since Mr. Perot needed to name a vice presidential candidate in order to qualify for the ballot in several states. Mr. Perot later kept Mr. Stockdale on after he fired his professional advisers, who wanted him to run a more conventional campaign with a better-known and more experienced running mate.

Mr. Perot and Admiral Stockdale received 19 percent of the popular vote.
Admiral Stockdale seemed out of his league in the debate with the major party vice presidential candidates, Dan Quayle and Al Gore.

He startled the audience and those watching on television with his opening remarks: "Who am I? Why am I here?"

While the statement transformed him into the butt of jokes from late-night comedians, he later wrote in The World & I magazine that he had chosen his words deliberately to showcase his basic view of himself that "I am a philosopher."

In the article, Admiral Stockdale said he drew his inspiration from the writings of Epictetus, a former Roman slave who was an adherent to the teachings of the Stoics.

"Stoics belittle physical harm, but this is not braggadocio," Admiral Stockdale wrote.

"They are speaking of it in comparison to the devastating agony of shame they fancied good men generating when they knew in their hearts that they had failed to do their duty vis-à-vis their fellow men or God."

Indeed. “Though he had a distinguished military career…Epictetus, a former Roman slave who was an adherent to the teachings of the stoics.”

Well, not exactly, but okay.

First, it was more than a distinguished military career, and Epictetus was among the greatest of the stoic philosophers, which made him a teacher and a student — not an adherent.

Here is how the US Naval Academy introduced Stockdale when publishing a lecture he delivered on stoicism to an audience of United States Marine Corps officers:

Vice Admiral Stockdale served on active duty in the regular Navy for 37 years, most of those years as a fighter pilot aboard aircraft carriers. Shot down on his third combat tour over North Vietnam, he was the senior naval prisoner of war in Hanoi for seven and a half years, tortured 15 times, in solitary confinement for over four years, in leg irons for two.

When physical disability from combat wounds brought about Stockdale's military retirement, he had the distinction of being the only three-star officer in the history of the U.S. Navy to wear both aviator wings and the Medal of Honor.

Included in his 26 other combat decorations are two Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Distinguished Service Medals, four Silver Star medals, and two Purple Hearts.

As a civilian, Stockdale is a college president (The Citadel), a college teacher (a lecturer in the philosophy department of Stanford University), and a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford for 15 years.

His writings all converge on the central theme of “how man can rise in dignity to prevail in the face of adversity.”

Here is what Stockdale said about morality as the fundamental basis for victory in warfare:

What kind of a racket is this military officership?

Let's go right to the old master, Clausewitz. He said: "War is an act of violence to compel the enemy to do your will."

Your will, not his will. We are in the business of breaking people's wills. That's all there is to war; once you have done that, the war is over.

And what is the most important weapon in breaking people's wills?

This may surprise you, but I am convinced that holding the moral high ground is more important than firepower.

For Clausewitz war was not an activity governed by scientific laws, but a clash of wills, of moral forces.

He wrote:

"It is not the losses of men, horses, or guns but in order courage, confidence, cohesion and plan which come into consideration whether the engagement can still be continued; it is principally the moral forces which decide here."

Moral forces! Conviction! Mind games!

I had the wisdom of Clausewitz' stand on moral integrity demonstrated to me throughout a losing war as I sat on the sidelines in a Hanoi prison.

To take a nation to war on the basis of any provocation that bears the smell of fraud is to risk losing national leadership's commitment when the going gets tough.

When our soldiers' bodies start coming home in high numbers, and reverses in the field are discouraging, a guilty conscience in a top leader can become the Achilles heel of a whole country.

Men of shame who know our road to war was not cricket. are seldom those we can count on to hold fast, stay the course.”

The moral high ground is an essential element in war and in politics.

The moral high ground is held by Ukraine against Russia’s criminal war of aggression.

The Ukrainians will never surrender, and they must be given the tools to break the will of Putin’s oligarchs and ministers, who alone can decide when Vladimir’s folly is at its end.

James Stockdale knew about war. He started the Vietnam War, and he knew his orders were built on a foundation of lies from Washington politicians because he saw the Tonkin Gulf incident from the air.

He knew nothing happened. When the bombing raids were ordered by Lyndon Johnson, they were commanded by Stockdale.

Here is his account:

As some of you know, I led all three air actions in the Tonkin Gulf affair in the first week of August 1964. Moral corners were cut in Washington in our top leaders' interpretation of the events of August 4th at sea in order to get the Tonkin Gulf Resolution through Congress in a hurry.

I was not only the sole eyewitness to all events, and leader of the American forces to boot; I was cognizant of classified message traffic pertaining thereto.

I knew for sure that our moral forces were squandered for short-range goals; others in the know at least suspected as much.

He was shot down in 1965, and would spend more than seven years in captivity. James Stockdale was the senior ranking POW in Hanoi.

His valor, devotion, leadership and wisdom were epic, and endure through this hour to all who know his story.

Here is how he described it to the Marine officers:

I met old Epictetus back in graduate school in 1962. It was my great luck; in fact, it was a fluke that put us together.

My favorite (philosophy) professor gave me one of Epictetus books as a farewell present before I went back to sea.

He had never mentioned him in class. Phil Rhinelander just thought Epictetus and I would make a good pair, and he was certainly right.

I had never heard of Epictetus; in fact, today his name recognition is in about the third tier of philosophers.

But his mind is first tier.

Everything I know about Epictetus I've developed myself over the years. It's been a one-on-one relationship.

He's been in combat with me, leg irons with me, spent months-long stretches in blindfolds with me, has been in the ropes with me, has taught me that my true business is maintaining control over my moral purpose, in fact that my moral purpose is who I am.

He taught me that I am totally responsible for everything I do and say; and that it is I who decides on and controls my own destruction and own deliverance.

Not even God will intercede if he sees me throwing my life away. He wants me to be autonomous. He put me in charge of me. "It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

The test ahead for James Stockdale would be one that few men could bear, but Stockdale did. In fact, not only did he persevere, he triumphed:

The time interval between my finishing graduate school and becoming a prisoner was almost exactly three years, September 1962 to September 1965. That was a very eventful period in my life. I started a war (led the first-ever American bombing raid on North Vietnam), led good men in about 150 aerial combat missions in flak, and throughout three 7-month cruises to Vietnam I had not only the Enchiridion but the Discourses on my bed side table on each of the three aircraft carriers I flew from.

And I read them.

On the 9th of September 1965, I flew right into a flak trap, at tree-top level, 500 knots, in a little A-4 airplane--cockpit walls not even three feet apart - which I couldn't steer after it was on fire, control system shot out.

After ejection I had about 30 seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed on the main street of that little village right ahead.

And so help me, I whispered to myself: "Five years down there at least. I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epicetus."

What does that mean?

Here is Admiral Stockdale’s Medal of Honor citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while senior naval officer in the Prisoner of War camps of North Vietnam. Recognized by his captors as the leader in the Prisoners' of War resistance to interrogation and in their refusal to participate in propaganda exploitation, Rear Adm. Stockdale was singled out for interrogation and attendant torture after he was detected in a covert communications attempt.

Sensing the start of another purge, and aware that his earlier efforts at self-disfiguration to dissuade his captors from exploiting him for propaganda purposes had resulted in cruel and agonizing punishment, Rear Adm. Stockdale resolved to make himself a symbol of resistance regardless of personal sacrifice.

He deliberately inflicted a near-mortal wound to his person in order to convince his captors of his willingness to give up his life rather than capitulate.

He was subsequently discovered and revived by the North Vietnamese who, convinced of his indomitable spirit, abated in their employment of excessive harassment and torture toward all of the Prisoners of War.

By his heroic action, at great peril to himself, he earned the everlasting gratitude of his fellow prisoners and of his country.

Rear Adm. Stockdale's valiant leadership and extraordinary courage in a hostile environment sustain and enhance the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

Very soon, 52 years will have passed since Admiral Stockdale and the rest of the American POWs returned from Hanoi. Fifty years will have passed since American combat operations stopped in Vietnam.

The Vietnam War defined the generation of Americans that fought in it, evaded it, and protested it. They have led the country since 1992, and have never entirely reconciled their conflict over that war. It has carried on for almost 50 years, and is at the root over the culture war that endures to this day.

“Five years down there at least.” It would be seven.

Four years would be spent in solitary confinement, and two years would be spent in leg irons.

Admiral James Stockdale would be tortured relentlessly, but he could not be broken. When the North Vietnamese were going to film him in a propaganda parade, he used a contraband razor to slice his scalp open. When they cleaned him up and put a hat on his head, he used a wood stool to bash his head and face.

He broke his face and disfigured himself so he could not be used to disgrace his country, the US Navy and himself. When he slit his wrists, he broke the will of the North Vietnamese to keep torturing him and his fellow prisoners.

After he slit his wrists, the torture and mistreatment abated.

Stockdale wasn’t just a heroic individual, he was a heroic leader who forged cohesion, unity, trust, and courage from men in the most vulnerable and hopeless circumstances.

He set standards of conduct and enforced them by modeling the conduct. He understood the risk of moral injury and shame for Americans who inevitably broke during torture.

His orders were to resist for as long as humanely possible. He developed an acronym — BACK US — to guide the expectations of behavior that was tapped through the concrete walls as the American prisoners of war communicated in secret from their solitary confinement.

Stockdale understood the necessity of the American prisoners maintaining their dignity and honor as fundamental to their survival.

After the war he recounted his initial experiences upon being captured. His leg was broken, and he was severely injured.

His captors told him that the war was over, and that he had to think about himself first in order to survive. When the war ended Stockdale recounted his thinking in the moment:

From this eight-year experience, I distilled one all-purpose idea . . . It is a simple idea, an idea as old as the scriptures, an idea that is the epitome of high-mindedness, and idea that naturally and spontaneously comes to men under pressure . . . This idea is you are your brother's keeper . . . That's the flip side of “What's in it for me?”

BACK US meant:

Never Bow to the Vietnamese captors.
Stay off the Air.
Admit no Crimes.
Never Kiss them goodbye, meaning never thank the captors for anything.
The last letters US stood for;
Unity over Self.

Stockdale was later asked about who didn’t survive the ordeal. He said it was the optimists.

Hopium has always had its cost.

They were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.

His approach was different, and it saved countless American lives.

I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.

This is what the author Jim Collins called the “Stockdale Paradox” in his estimable book on leadership, ‘Good to Great.’ He described it as follows:

You must retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties. AND at the same time…You must confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

The Warning commentaries are built on this duality. I am certain that terrible events lie ahead, and that an extremist movement that calls itself MAGA has done — and will continue to do — great damage to the country.

I believe the media as an institution is as unfathomably corrupt as our political establishment and many corporations, where self-interest has eradicated the concepts of duty, responsibility, obligation and patriotism.

I believe that it is naive, bordering on delusional, to believe the political media is adversarial towards the powerful people they cover as opposed to deeply invested in a business model that has forged partnership through a thousand information transactions that have accrued billions in revenue, and forged an iron triangle of corrupt interests.

These interests have crucified the interests of the American people who hope for peace, prosperity and domestic tranquility.

I have no doubt whatsoever what side will ultimately prevail in the struggle to move America towards her destiny — as a place where freedom and liberty flourish for all people, and where the pursuit of happiness is at the core of our politics.

That journey will be long and uneven, but in the end, the United States will triumph against both its domestic enemies, selfish interests and apathetic citizens who have lost faith in politicians and confused them with the character of their country and her people.

When Admiral James Stockdale died one prominent obituary referred to him as a “laughing stock,” referring to his vice presidential debate.

Who exactly decided that James Stockdale, one of the nation’s most brilliant intellects, a stoic philosopher, a warrior and a leader, was a “laughing stock?”

Where did the assessment come from? Did it come from the men who he led and revered him?

Did it come from John Glenn, whom he tutored in physics and math at the test pilot school?

Did it come from John McCain who worshipped him?

Where did it come from?

It came from the shallow American political media who as a whole weren’t bright enough to understand the deepest opening and most profound words that have ever been spoken in a nationally televised debate in the United States.

It came from the American corporate media and the moral smugness of The New York Times which mocked this country’s history, tried to rewrite it, denounced it and turned it into a story of shame as opposed to one of glory.

It came from lesser men and women who have made virtue a laughing stock, and depravity and vice into ratings gold.

It came from the people who mocked greatness, and gave us Donald Trump because the cameras couldn’t look away.

American politics is the only lifeboat we have to fix what is broken all around us. Make no mistake about how broken it is.

Listen to the sounds of media adoration and the tawdry transactions that will push their favorite candidates forward.

It’s important for you to know that the people they push are in their interest, not yours.

We would all benefit from the genius, generosity, toughness, compassion, love, and genuine wisdom of James Stockdale.

His spirit remains.

Think about it when you turn on the news and watch the freak show.

Remember who is bringing you the travesty and why.

Turning it off is the first step.

None of it is real.

America will endure because it produces men and women like James Stockdale and his wife Sybil, who was incredibly accomplished in her own right.

America will always be threatened because it produces men and women like JD Vance, Marco Rubio, MTG, Elise Stefanik, and many more. The band plays on, as they say.

Remember, when you feel depressed and hopeless, it is within your power to control and change it.

This understanding is the key to changing America, and rescuing her from the cancer of its MAGA, which is filled with the lowest collection of character in American history.

Their unworthiness is our burden, not our fate.

You should know more about James Stockdale, so the next time a version of him shows up you will understand something more about the people who would ever dare to call such a man a laughing stock.

Shame on them.

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