European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 17, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes sunday August 17,1986 columns Tom Wicker or Cerf decades Are a time to throw away letters when the novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder turned 60 years old in 1957, Justice Felix Frankfurter wired him Welcome to the great dec Ades Wilder himself decided to take advantage of the new privileges he thought due anyone who had lasted that Long. I hereby serve notice on the schoolchildren of America he announced in the Boston Herald. Now thai 1 have reached 60 years old i m going to dump All their letters in the incinerator without Reading i have myself just entered the great decades but have not been much tormented by schoolchildren s letters which May symbolize the difference in Litera Ture and journalism i nevertheless intend in the spirit of Thornton Wilder to Avail myself of Erlain Perks of age i regard As Only modest compensation for much of what arrives in the times Mui bags emblazoned Withy name. To those of More recent Vintage these resolutions May seem unduly harsh. But to a Man bearing the Trace galls of six decades and suddenly Only five years away from social Security they seem reasonable and just. So i hereby serve notice i will no longer answer any letter Llinat demands that 1 go Back to Russia where 1 belong. Nor will i pay the slightest attention to lectures usually written in longhand on front and Back of five or six pages detailing every evil of communist Russia real and imagined Back to 1918. A history of Flora Lewis which the idler writer always declares the column writer obviously is ignorant. Any missive addressed to dear Tommy which not even my Mother dared Coll me after the first Lime will be summarily torn in shreds. No Effort will be made to decipher postcards whose every Square Inch is covered in infinitesimal scrawl i shall promptly throw in the wastebasket Oil letters alleging that must want some member of my family to be raped since i am opposed to the death penalty. Letters from liberals deploring my criticism of he jeffersonian democrats they think govern Nicaragua will be paper clipped to letters from conservatives deploring my Cut scism of Ronald Reagan s efforts to install a nicaraguan government of his own choosing. This will facilitate depositing both in the round file. Right on top of them will go any and All letter that question my patriotism for criticizing the presi Dent any president usually called our president for anything. I am devising a one sentence form letter to Send to All those who assert that i Only write what the publisher of the times and or the advertisers in the times Tel me to write. The form will read approximately As fal lows somebody is signing your name to idiotic the same form will go to sneering readers who knows a matter of fact that the Only reason the press pub Lishes alarming news criticizes the government and reports on business scandals is that Sueh stories sell letters from professional southerners who want haughtily that the civil War was really the War be tween the Stales or the War for Southern Independence will evoke Only the Stony silence they have a match and a big ashtray ready Lor any letter alleging that i must be anti semitic because a i do not condemn All palestinians everywhere for any act of terrorism anywhere and b i consider the israeli government As fallible As any other collection of shall ignore letters from feminists who see a calculated insult to their sex rather than a writer s dilemma in grammatical constructions that do not specifically include both sexes. Ditto letters from priggish men complaining about Competition from uppity incinerator awaits letters declaring thai opposition to nuclear War is surrender to communism thai big government is responsible for everything from George Steinbrenner to herpes and thai the Only reason people Are hungry in America is that they re too Lazy to this will dispose of most of my mail allowing me to proceed into the great decades without too Many stomach upsets and nervous disorders. But i have re served finally a special Fate requiring plumbing for letters asserting that i am a dupe of the communists the liberals the democrats the Eastern establishment the radicals the Blacks or the secular humanists. The fact is folks these columns Are my own fault. Lebanon Peru South Africa share the hate pit somehow my thoughts keep turning to Lebanon. It is mostly out of the news these Days partly because it s so dangerous to cover partly because in syrians Are imposing their draconian order on West Beirut again. The last Lime 11 years ago they calmed things for awhile but nothing stems to cure Lebanon s raging virus of violence. People around he world ought to relearning something from it. The endless disaster and distress give overwhelming proc of of the consequences of supposing the neighbourhood can be improved by killing neighbors. Once haired takes hold it runs amok and nothing can result but tragedy. These Are old verities but they Are constantly challenged by benighted souls who need an enemy in order to think something of themselves. In Hayden Lake Idaho a group calling themselves the aryan nations world Congress met recently and called for turning Washington Oregon Idaho Montana and Wyoming into a whiles Only male supremacist Homeland. Their Leader preaches that jews Are the offspring of satan through the line of Cain and urges a zoo inquisition an attack on the . Government which he Calls the zionist occupational the racists who signed a declaration of War against the zoo weren t Many and were greatly outnumbered by participants in a human rights Day Celebration in nearby Coer d Alene. But they showed that America can l be smug. In Peru after the prison massacre which putdown mutinous guerrillas the extreme left movement Sandero Luminoso issued a communique saying we foresaw 100 dead. There were 300. But every revolution has its Cost. There is nothing to regret despite All it was a political Triumph for the party. Thanks Louhis genocide apra the governing party has re moved its democratic popular mask. Besides the Lim ing was favourable. It was necessary to prevent apra s benefiting from the socialist International Congress which was being held in the guerrilla leadership deliberately sought to sacrifice their prisoners to increase militarization of the country and to fanatic ize the people. The army Obb ged. In Johannesburg sell Maz Buko who is Leader of the United democratic front in Soweto condemned the brutal deaths by neck lacing and the behaviour of youths trying to enforce a rent boy Coll by threatening elderly residents with burning if they pay. Maz Buko now in hiding said we be go to Stop this one or else there could be chaos. They would t do Elliis if Mem Bers of he Soweto civic association were still around. But we re All in hiding or in it is hard to imagine what kind of delusion makes South african president . Botha think he can bring order to his land by censoring Banning and imprison ing the leaders who could express protest peacefully and organize politically. That delusion makes him the fount of violence Anvil is Why president Reagan s stand that persuasion and common sense alone will turn Botha around is a dangerous fallacy. He does t use he apocalyptic language of some afrikaners but he evidently does t see that be is steering his country to apocalypse. He is destroy ing those who would veer away. The creation of enemies imaginary or real in response to provocation is a function of a mindless drive for Power. It comes from an attempt to claim inherent superiority by birth by divine Grace obviously not by Talent Wisdom or achievement. It in t about the people who arc targeted but about the haters themselves who cannot justify themselves except by their ability to diminish and destroy others. They become their own victims As they plunge blindly in their crusades. When they have enough strength they drive away decent people who acknowledge the world imperfections and try to nuke life tolerable so As to swell the ranks of the enemies they need. This is what brings Lebanon to mind. Ii is there for allot see a pleasant prosperous country which tortured itself Down Down Down into the pits. If Only narrowed obsessed eyes would open wide enough to glance at the Story of Lebanon they would find where they Are going
