The Day After the Election 2024—Darkness Descends

 

I was wrong.  Dead wrong.  Everything I wrote and posted yesterday was an illusion.  This morning, I’m stunned and shattered.  I can hardly comprehend the catastrophe that has befallen us let alone begin to parse out and dispassionately analyze or explain it.  

I have endured dozens of political losses over the decades and a handful of satisfying wins.  My motto, oft repeated, has been “Suffer, grieve, suck it up, look to the long arc of justice, and go back to work and battle again.”

I just can’t find that resilience this morning.  This seems like the final battle against Sauron at the Black Gate of Mordor.  As desperate armies clash there is no Frodo Baggins to cast the One Ring of Power into the Eye of Mordor to save Middle Earth.  Permanent darkness and death and the  Edenic Shire will fall with all the rest. 

Or pick your own apocalypse metaphor. 

The morning after the first coming of the Dark One was also tough, but not as soul crushing as this.  In the little poem I scribbled there was at least  a glorious morning on which to mourn.  This year it is a glum November dying kind of Day.

                                                        The Day After the Election
                                                                November 9, 2016

    The day after the election—
            golden, crisp
            azure sky.
     Carrion crows
            from the tips
            of dying trees
            cannot keep silent.
    The calendar says
    Kristallnacht…

    —Patrick Murfin

Kristallnacht.

Election Day at Last--Civic Marathoners Ready to Collapse After the Finish

 

In a nation deeply and bitterly divided Election Day angst and exhaustion are the order of the day.  Will it be a dumpster fire for democracy? 

It's finally Election Day.  Here in Northern Illinois and adjacent states like vital Wisconsin it is raw. raining on and off, and blustery giving it a suitable Sturm und Drang cast that matches the anxiety so many of us feel.  In conventional wisdom these conditions suppress voter turn out.  People getting off of work did not like to stand in miserable lines outside jammed polling places or drive on rain slick pavement in the dark.  Casual or not deeply connected voters were discouraged.  Suburban Democrats in Red collar counties were notoriously easily daunted because they had faint hope that they had any chance for representation in important down ballot local races.  Increasingly right wing Republicans from the Tea Party to the MAGA crowd would, as I have observed many times over the years, "crawl through glass" to elect their candidates.  Advantage GOP.

But mail-in and early voting has changed that.  Democrats have pushed early voting here since Barack Obama's first election and the percentage of their supporters opting for it has grown steadily giving them an increasing edge.  In the last election Trump and his minions vilified early voting and falsely charged it as an opportunity for election fraud.  Instead, he urged his supporters to turn out on election day to insure that early returns before early and mail in ballots were counted to show election night leads.  

Trump thought otherwise this time out.  Now he encouraged his most loyal supporters to vote early to match or offset the Democratic advantage.  The question is, did the reprogramming actually work?  Older White men, the Orange Menace's prime demographic, still seem to prefer traditional balloting.

(Side note--as a member of that cohort I have to ask, just what the hell is wrong with men?)

Of course Illinois is one of the safest Blue States in the nation and has strengthening that tendency since the 1960 razor thin victory of John F. Kennedy.  Suburban Cook County and metropolitan collar counties which once nearly balanced the huge Democratic advantage in Chicago and conservative rural and Down State areas.  but many of those areas have turned purple or even flipped Blue like former bastions Lake and Dupage counties.  Even here in McHenry County where the Republicans still dominate local offices,  Obama won in 2008,  Joe Biden came withing a hair, and local voters have gone for Democrats for state constitutional offices, and U.S. Senate.

Neighbors and even family members are deeply split this election.  Personal relationships are ruptured adding yet more stress.

The difference has been women whose drift away from the GOP has accelerated and finally become a panicked stampede after the Trump puppets on the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade.

The national the Gender Gap is wider than ever and higher percentages of women actually cast ballots than men.

The pundits and talking heads still beat the band that the electorate is still split nearly in half and flickers either side of a dead heat in the critical six or seven battleground states that hold the key for an Electoral College victory and they have polls to prove it and keeping us all on jagged edge.

I think those polls under represent the rage and determination of women who have been the targets of intense voter turnout campaigns.  They will out-perform expectations.  So will blocks of voters with other key issues--youth voters and anti-gun violence advocates, climate change, LGBTQ+ rights and safety, election integrity and saving democracy, and minority rights.  Some "experts" wave their hand at the potential extra margins provided by these citizens claiming "liberals all stick together on a broad range of issues with the overlap of concerns limiting extra advantage.  True, as far as it goes, but at least some of those "single issue" voters are less motivated when they are not immanently threatened. Much depends on whose ox gets gored.  And all of these folks are likely under reported in the polls.

In addition, the drumbeat of traditional Republican conservatives like Liz Cheney, George Wills, and former Trump Cabinet members and national security heavies,  seems to be eroding Trump's base.  Dems recognized that when they began to assure Republican women that they could safely and secretly vote differently from their husbands.  Many will boycott the top of the ticket or vote for Harris without tipping their hands to voracious and possibly dangerous neighbors.  Another edge to Democrats.

I boldly predict the Harris-Waltz ticket will out-preform exceptions, win the popular vote, carry most swing states, and even bring others into play as the late Des Moines Register poll that show Harris up by 3% in that deep Red state suggests.  In Pennsylvania 400,000 Puerto Rican voters, easily enough to swing the state, are reported outraged by the "Floating Island of Garbage" comments at last week's Madison Square Garden hate fest.  On the other hand hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Michigan could boycott the top of the Democratic ticket over the War in Gaza.

Finally, many voters are sick to death after years of Trump psychodrama and just want it to end. 

The influx of Harris support will likely carry down ballot giving Democrats a good chance of retaining control of the Senate and even re-capturing the House.

Of course, my record of electoral prognostication is somewhat sketchy.

Here in McHenry County many Democrats will gather for this watch party at the historic Woodstock Opera House, but we won's know the final outcome of the Presidential election when the venue closes at 11 pm.

It could be days before the final results are known because of delays in counting mail in early ballots and likely Trump court challenges meant to once again undermine faith in election integrity and results evoking traumatic memories of four years ago.

There is nothing left for us to do but suck it up and be ready for a wild ride.

 

Confessions of a Habitual Voter and Two Bit Pol—A Murfin Memoir

Election Day by Norman Rockwell. 1942.

Back when I was a young Wobbly hanging around at the anarchist Solidarity Bookstore in Chicago, the byword among my friends and fellow workers around election time was, “Don’t vote, it only encourages them.”  I would laugh along with the line and nod my head.  After all, I had punched my ticket as young radical and would hardly do anything to jeopardize that standing.  Then Election Day would roll around and I would look over my shoulder and make sure no one was looking and skulk over to a polling place in some school gym or Legion Hall, pull that sideways lever behind me closing the red, white, and blue striped curtain, and start flipping switches on the voting machine.  I couldn’t help myself.

I blame it on my parents.  Just like drunks lacing the apple juice with whiskey to “help the baby sleep” or junkies skin popping their toddlers.  Yeah, just like that.  I have very early memories of them hauling me and my twin brother Tim to the polls at some ridiculously early age.  Actually, I best remember standing by my Dad’s long legs, holding on to his wool suit pants while he did something mysterious and holy or going with my Mom and clinging to her official Jane Wyatt flaring skirts.  We didn’t do it often, but when we did it was apparent that it was really, really important.  So I caught the habit like I did standing up and putting my hat over my heart every single time an American Flag passed in a parade.  I still do that, too.  Yeah, I’m that hopeless.

I learned eventually that although both of the folks went to vote, they didn’t vote the same way.  Dad was a Republican of the Eisenhower stripe.  Mom with all of the fervor a woman who had gone hungry in the Great Depression voted Democrat.  Despite the fact that I emulated my father with all of the slavish devotion of hero worship in most things, I ended up in my Mom’s political party.

Senator John F. Kennedy with Wyoming Senator Gale McGee arrive at Cheyenne Airport for a brief campaign stop in 1960.  It's really his fault I became hooked on voting.

That was probably John F. Kennedy’s fault.  Yeah, that’s the guy. 

As a nerdy kid, I already had more than a healthy interest in politics.  I remember being fascinated by coverage of the national political conventions four years earlier when I was only 7—watching Walter Cronkite in a little box in one corner of the screen with his headphones on as grainy pictures of ecstatic delegates parading with signs and banners wavered across the screen.

And that year, 1960, I had sent away to Mad Magazine for the official Alfred E. Neuman for President kit—posters, buttons, bumper stickers, and a plastic boater hat with a red, white, and blue ribbon—and actually campaigned door to door in my neighborhood as if it were a real campaign.  

Before being hooked on Kennedy I wore a button like this as I earnestly canvased my Cheyenne neighborhood door to door. 

 But as the election drew near, I became more drawn to the charismatic young Democrat.  I bought and read his paperback campaign biography and then found a young reader’s edition of Profiles in Courage.  I watched the famous debate and thought Nixon looked like one of the shifty gamblers in a two reel western that the good guy shoots when he pulls a derringer out of his sleeve.  My Dad told me that Nixon was the grown up and Kennedy was just “a spoiled rich man’s son.”  I would have none of it.  Oh, how I yearned to go to the polls and be part of the history that I was sure would change the world.   Election night I stayed up well after midnight glued to the returns until it was called in the hours right before dawn.

On a windy day in late September 1963 I actually got to see the President as he flew in for a brief stop at the Cheyenne, Wyoming airport to make a quick speech and fulfill a foolishly made promise to visit all 50 states.  I pressed up against the chain link fence when he bolted from his security detail to touch hands with those along that fence to see him.  He passed right before me, his flesh missing mine by inches.  Less than two months later he was dead.  That day was the most traumatic of my young life.  But that’s another tale.

I turned 21 and finally eligible to vote in 1970.  I was already a veteran anti-war activist and blooming radical.  I had “voted” in the streets against the Vietnam War during the 1968 Democratic Convention.  Now I was a resident of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago living in the rundown, gang infested part of the old 43rd Ward—the epicenter of Lakefront Liberalism further east.  But where I lived on Howe Street, west of Old Town and the urban removal wreckage of Larrabee Avenue the Hillbillies, Puerto Ricans, and old Germans hung on desperately resisting displacement. 

I slipped away downtown one day in March right after my birthday and registered to vote at the County Clerk’s office.   I cast my first vote at the Fire House on Armitage just a block from my place.  It was a thrill which I could feel tingling in every part of my body.  I voted for Adlai Stevenson III for Senator.

A People's Party brochure for Dr. Benjamin for President in 1972.  I wrote him in in my first Presidential Election.

By 1972 I was living on Webster Avenue right across from the old DePaul University gymnasium.  That was also my polling place.  It was my first presidential election.  I wrote in Benjamin Spock, the nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party who was not on the ballot in Illinois, or very many other places outside of California.  It was the last time I would “waste” my vote on a protest candidate.

The next year I was a guest of the government serving a sentence for draft resistance.  When I got out, there was some fear that I would be ineligible to vote.  But Illinois is one of the states that does not bar felons from voting and later I would also be covered by Jimmy Carter’s blanket pardon of Draft offenders.  Over the next decade I moved around the city multiple times, but always made sure I was correctly registered at my new addresses by the time of any election—special, primary, or general.

After a brief departure for Madison, Wisconsin I returned to Chicago just in time for the infamous Blizzard of ’79 and as the snow slowly melted got involved in my first electoral campaign as a low level volunteer for radical Helen Schiller’s early unsuccessful run for Alderman in the Uptown centered 48th Ward. Four years later I was living on Albany Street near Diversy in Dick Mell’s 33rd Ward, and volunteered for Harold Washington in the Democratic Primary for Mayor.  In the General Election I was a de facto Washington precinct captain since the regulars were supporting Republican Bernard Epton. 

We voted at an American Legion Post.  For the first time I was able to bring my new daughters by marriage, Carolynne and Heather with me as I voted, just as my parents brought me.  I was determined to pass on the infection.

By the next round of election the whole family was relocated to Crystal Lake in the wilds of McHenry County where Republicans strutted unchallenged and lowly Democrats cringed and hid.  I didn’t care for that.  So I signed up to run for Democratic Precinct Committeeman.   It got to be a habit.  I walked the blocks and rang doorbells for nearly 28 years.  Found a few Democrats.  Encouraged others.  Not once did I carry that precinct, or even come close.  But I’d be damned if I would just give it to the bastards.

We first voted at a Dodge dealership just a block up the road from the house.  Voting booths set up amid the shiny new cars.  I brought Maureen, a three year old toddler holding my hand wondering what it was all about.  Later the polling place moved a bit further away, to the offices of Flowerwood Nursery around the corner on Rt. 14.  Then it was at North Middle School until the hysterics decided that voters were likely to be sex predators or terrorists and could not be allowed in the same building with their little darlings.  Those self-same darlings lost the regular awareness that voting was a part of life.  Congratulations for a job well done on that.

Next they moved our polling place out of the precinct over to the basement of Salvation Army several blocks away where we shared the space with another precinct.  After some years another round of polling place consolidations it landed at a Park District building next to North Elementary.  I could walk to and from all of these locations after I got off the Pace Bus after work in Woodstock.  Then after the last post-census reapportionment and redistricting I was assigned a new Nunda Township precinct number and more polling places consolidation ended up assigned to another Park District building, the Rotary Building of of Walkup Ave.  And that, alas, is too far an old man with a gimpy leg and a touch of A-Fib to walk to.   

Over the years I helped on a lot of campaigns, local, state, and national.  I got elected a McHenry County Central Committee officer—Vice Chair and Secretary.  Even served a few months as Chair after Bob McGary suddenly died.  I did publicity and tried to make myself useful.  We made small inroads.  Even won a little victory here and there occasionally.  But mostly we lost elections.  A lot of ‘em.  And I voted in every one of them.

I even ran for office myself.  Got past a cavalry charge of an open, non-partisan primary for Crystal Lake City Council one year when the whole town was mad at the incumbents, but got my ass handed to me in the Municipal elections.  Not smart enough to know better, I tried again running as a Democrat for County Board and for the lowly post of Nunda Township Trustee.  A dead skunk would have polled as well.

One year the Democrats even gave me a plaque with my name engraved on it, a pat on the head, and let me ramble for a few moments at the annual Thomas Jefferson Dinner fund raiser.  That was nice.  No one ever gave me an award before and none are ever likely to again.  It looks semi-impressive on my study wall.

By 1972 I was living on Webster Avenue right across from the old DePaul University gymnasium.  That was also my polling place.  It was my first presidential election.  I wrote in Benjamin Spock, the nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party who was not on the ballot in Illinois, or very many other places outside of California.  It was the last time I would “waste” my vote on a protest candidate.

The next year I was a guest of the government serving a sentence for draft resistance.  When I got out, there was some fear that I would be ineligible to vote.  But Illinois is one of the states that does not bar felons from voting and later I would also be covered by Jimmy Carter’s blanket pardon of Draft offenders.  Over the next decade I moved around the city multiple times, but always made sure I was correctly registered at my new addresses by the time of any election—special, primary, or general.

After a brief departure for Madison, Wisconsin I returned to Chicago just in time for the infamous Blizzard of ’79 and as the snow slowly melted got involved in my first electoral campaign as a low level volunteer for radical Helen Schiller’s early unsuccessful run for Alderman in the Uptown centered 48th Ward. Four years later I was living on Albany Street near Diversy in Dick Mell’s 33rd Ward, and volunteered for Harold Washington in the Democratic Primary for Mayor.  In the General Election I was a de facto Washington precinct captain since the regulars were supporting Republican Bernard Epton.  

I got my first real baptism in active campaigning in Harold Washington's two Chicago Mayor races.

We voted at an American Legion Post.  For the first time I was able to bring my new daughters by marriage, Carolynne and Heather with me as I voted, just as my parents brought me.  I was determined to pass on the infection.

By the next round of election the whole family was relocated to Crystal Lake in the wilds of McHenry County where Republicans strutted unchallenged and lowly Democrats cringed and hid.  I didn’t care for that.  So I signed up to run for Democratic Precinct Committeeman.   It got to be a habit.  I walked the blocks and rang doorbells for nearly 28 years.  Found a few Democrats.  Encouraged others.  Not once did I carry that precinct, or even come close.  But I’d be damned if I would just give it to the bastards.

We first voted at a Dodge dealership just a block up the road from the house.  Voting booths set up amid the shiny new cars.  I brought Maureen, a three year old toddler holding my hand wondering what it was all about.  Later the polling place moved a bit further away, to the offices of Flowerwood Nursery around the corner on Rt. 14.  Then it was at North Middle School until the hysterics decided that voters were likely to be sex predators or terrorists and could not be allowed in the same building with their little darlings.  Those self-same darlings lost the regular awareness that voting was a part of life.  Congratulations for a job well done on that.

Next they moved our polling place out of the precinct over to the basement of Salvation Army several blocks away where we shared the space with another precinct.  After some years another round of polling place consolidations it landed at a Park District building next to North Elementary.  I could walk to and from all of these locations after I got off the Pace Bus after work in Woodstock.  Then after the last post-census reapportionment and redistricting I was assigned a new Nunda Township precinct number and more polling places consolidation ended up assigned to another Park District building, the Rotary Building of of Walkup Ave.  And that, alas, is too far an old man with a gimpy leg and a touch of A-Fib to walk to.   

Over the years I helped on a lot of campaigns, local, state, and national.  I got elected a McHenry County Central Committee officer—Vice Chair and Secretary.  Even served a few months as Chair after Bob McGary suddenly died.  I did publicity and tried to make myself useful.  We made small inroads.  Even won a little victory here and there occasionally.  But mostly we lost elections.  A lot of ‘em.  And I voted in every one of them.

 

  Hosting a torch light rally for McHenry County Democratic candidates from the Gazebo in Woodstock Square.about 2004.

I even ran for office myself.  Got past a cavalry charge of an open, non-partisan primary for Crystal Lake City Council one year when the whole town was mad at the incumbents, but got my ass handed to me in the Municipal elections.  Not smart enough to know better, I tried again running as a Democrat for County Board and for the lowly post of Nunda Township Trustee.  A dead skunk would have polled as well.

One year the Democrats even gave me a plaque with my name engraved on it, a pat on the head, and let me ramble for a few moments at the annual Thomas Jefferson Dinner fund raiser.  That was nice.  No one ever gave me an award before and none are ever likely to again.  It looks semi-impressive on my study wall.

 

                With Barack Obama cut-out in 2010 at the Democratic Party booth at the McHenry County Fair when he was running for Senate.

There were high points.  In 2008 we carried McHenry County for Barack Obama and the whole statewide ticket.  Turns out that there really are Democrats out here, but they are generally too discouraged, too fearful of the opinions of their Republican neighbors, and too damned lazy to get out and vote most years.  That election and celebrating at the Old Courthouse in McHenry was one of the best moments of my life.  Four years later we managed just not to lose the country too badly, which is better than anyone expected.

Some folks wonder if I was disappointed in Obama.  Not really.  There is lots of stuff I disagreed with him about—especially his continuing reliance on the blunt instrument of military power—and I have not been shy about calling him out about it or protesting.  And I wish he could have done more—moved universal single payer health insurance—instead of the badly made half-loaf of so-called Obama Care.  But at least it is a half loaf and a lot of folks won’t go hungry because of it.  On the whole he did about as well and anyone could expect against the raging and united opposition of a political party gone mad and an assertive not-to-be-denied oligarchy.

In 2013 I hung up my clipboard as a committee person.  Someone else’s turn.  I took a pass  on meetings and rallies, phone banking and worse, fundraising.  I’m an armchair politician now.

But it’s Election Day has come around.  The alarm bell has gone off.  The old fire horse is up for another run.  But this year I won't get up in the morning and put on my Election Day tie—the one with the cowboys on horseback and big American Flags.  I can’t say it’s a lucky tie, because it has seen mostly lost elections.  But I wear it because the Republicans think they own the flag and it literally drives the worst of them into a frothing rage to see it worn by a commie/pinko/babykiller/fag/democrat.  I won't be lining up at the Polls--I probably couldn't get there.  I cast an early vote at a station in the Crystal Lake Public Library almost two weeks ago.

I was not alone--record numbers are doing it not just obscure McHenry County, but all around the country.  Many are women--really, really pissed off women, members of communities that feel like they have a target on their backs, folks simply freaked out and traumatized.  And I hear whispers out here that there are traditional Republics who will secretly vote for Kamala Harris out of sight of the most intimidating MAGA Trump loyalists.  That gives me hope.

No, election day will not feel just the same as the old polling place ritual.  I may hardly know what to do with my self all day amid rising Election Day anxiety.  Maybe after I get the family fed, I'll snag a ride to the Results watch party that my old pal McHenry County Board member and candidate is hosting at the Woodstock Opera House--a pretty nice spot with a bar.  Most local candidates and their key supporters will probably attend.  That's a tradition, too

And I will feel good.  Damned good.  I’ll have had my fix.

 

Godzilla Was The Monster Humans Made and Deserved

The original 1954 Godzilla was imbued with the destructive power and invulnerability of the Atomic bomb.

Just three days after Halloween  is the birthday of one of the most famous of all movie monsters.  She—and in many of her films she is identified as female—may be far younger than standbys like Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, or Wolfman, but she dwarfs even the mighty King Kong.  I would say she is one of a kind but she has spawned a swarm of imitators.

On November 3, 1954 Godzilla strode out of the sea for the first time and scared Japanese movie goers senseless.   The science fiction film was produced by Toho studios and directed by Ishirō Honda featuring special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya.  The lumbering dinosaur-like monster sank boats, terrorized peasants and made a mess out of Tokyo.

 

Godzilla was an actor in a rubber suit seen here taking direction on the set from Ishiro Honda.

The special effects were impressive, but not up the standards mastered in the American films years earlier by stop action animation wizard Willis O’Brien.  Only one brief scene used that expensive technology.  In the bulk of the movie Godzilla was portrayed by a man in a rubber suite rampaging through a miniature landscape and city.  But technical proficiency was not the reason for the film's enormous popularity in its home country and its soon world-wide influence.

Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka said, “The theme of the film, from the beginning, was the terror of the [Atom] bomb. Mankind had created the bomb, and now nature was going to take revenge on mankind.”  Ten years after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Japanese were processing the experience through a cheap monster movie.

Director Honda made that clear when he explained why the monster was nearly indestructible, “If Godzilla had been a dinosaur or some other animal, he would have been killed by just one cannonball. But if he were equal to an atomic bomb, we wouldn’t know what to do. So, I took the characteristics of an atomic bomb and applied them to Godzilla.”

In the end, the monster was destroyed by an even greater weapon than the Bomb—the scientist/creator made sure to burn his notes and committed suicide by cutting the air hose to his diving suit after the super weapon vaporized the monster so that it could never be used again.

A pipe smoking Raymond Burr as a reporter was edited into the American release of  the Japanese film which was re-titled   Gozilla King of the Monsters.

The film was only shown in Japanese language cinemas in America, but attracted the attention of poverty row Jewel Pictures, which bought U.S. rights.  They added scenes and narration by Raymond Burr as an American reporter covering the story and released the film as Godzilla King of the Monsters in 1956.  This is the only version most Americans have ever seen.  The original film finally did get a limited release with English subtitles in 2004.

The American version was also released back in Japan and became a hit on its own—part of the Japanese fascination with all things American despite—or perhaps because—of the war and the bomb.

Godzilla influenced films across the world.  Soon dinosaurs-like creatures were menacing London, Rome, and American cities.  They were joined by a wide variety of other giant critters including ants in Them!, an octopus in It Came From Beneath the Sea, the self-titled Tarantula, and grasshoppers in Beginning of the End. And that is just the short list of mid-‘50’s monster movies. 

Humans became giant monsters themselves when exposed to radiation in other films, including The Cyclops, The Amazing Colossal Man, and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

Meanwhile, back in Japan Toho studios did brisk business in other monster movies and Godzilla sequels.  After the first film they were shot in color and the special effect technology was ramped up to include more sophisticated stop action animation.  There were 27 sequels.  And over time, as post-war Japan prospered and grew confident as a world economic power, Gozilla morphed into a kind of hero, protecting the islands from the menace of other giant monsters ranging from the Smog Monster to King Kong.  Hero or not, Tokyo kept taking a beating in the ensuing battles.

Although Godzilla originally opened to at best mixed reviews in its home country, it has come to be regarded as a classic.  Two contemporary national surveys rate it as the 20th and 27th best Japanese film of all time.  British film magazine Empire rated Godzilla as the 31st of the Best Films of World Cinema in 2010.

 

The slimmed down version  of the monster was seldom seen in full, a trick to supposedly build suspense that offended many ardent fans of the original as did ridiculous casting of Mathew Broderick as the hero.

In 1998 American writer/director Roland Emmerich reconceived Godzilla for a new generation used to modern computer generated special effects.  The monster was slimmed down, stripped of most of its back plates, and let loose on New York City and a hopelessly miscast Mathew Broderick.  The flick predictably made a ton of money but was justifiably hated by the critics and reviled by true fans of the original.

In 2014 Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. rebooted Godzilla yet again with Gareth Edwards at the helm and a promise to return to the monster’s Toho studios roots.  Sure enough the look was closer to the original than the sleek version of the 1998 version which looked like a Spielberg Velocoraptor on super steroids.  With top of the line computer generated animation and special effects, and released in I-Max the film was a top grossing hit that summer.  A highly touted sequel, Godzilla King of the Monsters was been frequently delayed before its 2019  release and was followed with a flick paring the monster with another of Warner Bros. updated giant monsters in Godzilla vs. Kong.

In 2014 Godzilla was an ally of humanity battling other monsters and trashing several cities around the world in the process. 

Meanwhile, the Japanese went back to the well in in 2016 with Shin Godzilla recasting the original story to contemporary times.  Instead of nuclear angst, however, the slick production was said by critics to be a metaphor to a national debate on re-armament and what could happen to the nation if it was attacked without a sufficient military force.  This version, seen as competition to Warner Bros. new franchise, was frozen out of most U.S theaters and had an extremely limited run in the US but is sought after by loyal fans of the monster on DVDs, and as a download.

 

Col. La Balme and The American Revolution on the Frontier—A Mysterious Fate

Fouier-Major Augustin de La Balme of the Gendarmerie de France, a personal Gaurd Regiment of the King was decorated and respected cavalry officer despite his low birth.

Col. Augustin de La Balme was a French cavalry officer who came to the American shores as an early volunteer with the Continental Army in 1777.  The veteran officer had dreams of glory and advancement that were not realized.  Three years later he died in a desperate fight after being ambushed and besieged in a makeshift mud fort on the banks of an obscure creek in what is now Indiana.  How he got there and just what the hell he thought he was going to accomplish are matters of some considerable mystery and dispute.

He was born as Augustin Mottin on August 28, 1733 in the shadows of the French Alps in the Saint-Antoine-l’Abbaye, which was also known as La-Motte-Saint-Didier.  His father was not a noble, but a tradesman a tanner.  His family was well enough off, however, to buy his admission as a trooper into the prestigious Scottish Company of the Gendarmerie de France, a personal regiment of the King and one of two Guards regiments.  Mottin was evidently a brave and competent soldier and despite his lowly birth rose to become an officer during the Seven Years War.  He was one of the few cavalry officers to survive the disastrous Battle of Minden in 1759.

Mottin subsequently became the Riding Master at the Gendarmerie Riding School in Lunéville.  He retired on pension with the rank of Fourrier-Major in 1773 and wrote two highly regarded manuals, one on horsemanship and the other on cavalry tactics under the nom de plume Augustin de La Balme.  The books made him well known in European military circles.

La Balme's tactical cavalry manual made him well known in European military circles.  He came to the Continental Army a far more experienced officer than the young Marquis de Lafayatte but failed to catch Washington's eye or affection.

In 1777 La Balme, as he was now known, became one of a small handful of French officers who without permission—but perhaps with a wink and a nod—came to the rebellious colonies the best known of whom was the younger, dashing, and noble-born Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.  Lafayette was rewarded with a commission as a Major General and quickly became an aide and favorite to Commanding General George Washington of the Continental Army.

The far more experienced La Balme was made a Colonel and appointed the Army’s Inspector of Cavalry, a post much more impressive in title than in reality.  The Americans had never really developed a cavalry tradition.  Outside of a few locally raised companies, widely scattered, and armed and trained to different drills and uses, there was no major Continental cavalry force.  La Balme hoped to create order out of chaos, consolidate training based on his own methods and eventually be placed in direct command of a regiment of mounted regulars.

Washington concluded that the creation of a regularized cavalry was needed, especially for operations in the South where mounted Tory units under Banastre Tarleton were proving devastatingly effective.  But the Polish officer Casmir Pulaski caught Washington’s ear and was commissioned to form the cavalry unit that came to be known a Pulaski’s Legion.  The Pole, not La Balme, became known as the Father of the American Cavalry and went on to glory and death leading an ill-conceived charge on English guns trying to re-take Savannah.

The French settlement of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River in the Illinois country in the late 1700s.  The Jesuit compound in the foreground was latter transformed into a Fort with guard towers at the corners of a raised palisade.  It was that fort that George Roger Clark took for Virginia and where La Balme materialized with his scheme to take far distant Fort Detroit. 

Disgusted at the snub, La Balme resigned his Continental Army commission in 1780.  He next appeared in the frontier town of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River in the Illinois country.  What he was doing there and under whose, if any, orders, is a bit of a mystery.  He showed up in the uniform and identity of a French officer, not a Continental one.  He brought with him a French Fleur de Lis flag, not a Continental banner.  

Apparently, he had a plan inspired by George Rogers Clark’s daring success in liberating the River settlements from the English and then marching overland to take Fort Vincennes.   La Balme planned to raise a force from among the French militia in the scattered settlements and make an even longer overland trek to seize the English western stronghold at far away Fort Detroit.  He expected the large French population in the region, including those in the fort, to join him.

Some say that he was operating under secret orders from Washington, but no evidence of this has ever been found.  Others think Washington gave tacit approval to the scheme.  Still others believe that La Balme was acting purely on his own and wonder if he planned to capture the fort for the Americans, the French, or perhaps to establish an independent French speaking country from what had been Lower Quebec.   Claiming it for France seemed to make little sense because the English were in firm control of Quebec and Upper and Lower Canada to the east and unlikely to lose that grip.  And he could not connect to the south with Louisiana which was then in Spanish hands.  

The sudden appearance of a French officer among them cheered the settlers of the Illinois Bottom.  They had chaffed at English rule and the disruption of their old fur trading patterns with the native tribes.  But they were also distrustful of their new masters, the Virginians.  La Balme collected the complaints and concerns of the local citizens and sent them by messenger to the French agent at Fort Pitt, presumably to be acted on by the Governor of Virginia, then Thomas Jefferson.

La Balme gathered his forces and began to execute his plan by ordering a diversionary attack on Fort St. Joseph at the mouth of the St. Joseph River on the shores of Lake Michigan.  That small force was consisted of settlers  from Cahokia led by militiaman Jean-Baptiste Hamelin and Lt. Thomas Brady, one of the few Virginia officers on the frontier.  After raiding and looting the supply depot for English allies the Miami and Potawatomi, the party was hunted down and defeated by a native force led by British Lt. Dagreaux Du Quindre at Petit Fort in the Dunes at the lower end of the Lake.  Instead of a diversion, the action alerted the English and their allies that military activity was picking up on the frontier.

The French officer was unaware and unprepared for the realities of campaigning on the frontier, including the grueling long marches over swampy ground, through thick forests, and across prairies where the tall grass waved high above men’s heads making navigation difficult.  There were only rudimentary Indian and deer trails, and sometimes none at all.  There were several streams and some good sized rivers to ford, luckily at low water, in the fall.  

He had also picked a time of year when the enemy tribes had hunting parties out preparing for the winter making an accidental encounter that would tip his hand more likely.  Fortunately his militiamen included not just bottom land farmers, but experienced voyagers and fur traders who knew the country.

La Balme left the country around Kaskaskia and Chahokia with about 60 men and expected to rally more at Vincennes.  After re-tracing Rogers’s march he arrived at Vincennes and indeed found eager recruits. From there he followed the Wabash and collected more men at the settlements of Ouiatenon (present day West Lafayette, Indiana) and Kekionga (now Fort Wayne). 

                                                            A French militiaman volunteer on La Balme's raid.

At Keionga he expected to capture the British agent Charles Beaubien, and a number of Miami known to be there—and perhaps even hoped to turn them into allies.  But the agent and most of the tribesmen were gone for the long hunt.  La Balme raised the French flag and paused three days to recruit locals and to loot the supplies of the trading post.  He sent out scouts to raise more volunteers, but none arrived.  

La Balme now had around one hundred men under his command and was still far from Detroit.  He decided to split his forces, leaving about twenty of his men to garrison Keionga while he marched on a quick side-raid on a trading post on the Eel River.  But the returning Miami hunting party had spotted the French flag over Kekionga.  The large hunting party easily overwhelmed the small garrison.

                                A probably unreliable but widely circulated portrait of Little Turtle as a young Miami war chief. 

Unaware that he had lost his base and his rear was exposed, La Balme pressed on.  Little Turtle, a local Miami chief from a village on the Eel River was alerted by runners from Kekionga who had easily gotten ahead of La Balme’s slow moving party.  Little Turtle gathered his warriors and laid an ambush at a key ford of the river.  La Balme marched right into the trap.

There was a sharp fight and both sides were, at first, evenly matched.  The surprised militiamen rallied and were able to dig mud fortifications along the river bank.  The battle settled into a siege with La Balme hoping for aid from Kekionga or from other French settlements.  Meanwhile more Miami gathered and his forces were picked off one by one.  

Accounts differ as to how long the French held out.  Some say days, some say a week or more.  It was unlikely at the longer range of the accounts.  On or about November 4 or 5 La Balme was killed.  Finally his men were overwhelmed and most of them killed.  Only a handful would live to return to their homes.

The mission was a failure and La Balme, far from winning glory, became all but forgotten.  This minor side show to the American Revolution had no strategic importance.  But it did accomplish one thing.  The English were so alarmed by the activity on the frontier that they decided they had to garrison Fort Detroit and a string of frontier forts with British Regulars and Major de Peyster subsequently deployed a detachment of British Rangers to protect Kekionga.  This diverted experienced troops from action on the frontier closer to the Allegany Mountains and American settlements.

The biggest beneficiary was Little Turtle whose prestige as a Miami war leader was enhanced.  By the end of the decade he would become the main war chief of the tribe and a key leader of the Western Indian Confederacy in its war with the United States.  He smashed an American army lead by General Josiah Harmar in 1790 and another led by General Arthur St. Clair a year later.  

The Confederacy, then under the command of Blue Jacket, was finally defeated by General Mad Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 after the wily Miami chief urged caution and making peace with the “soldier who does not sleep.”

The Indiana State Historical Marker near the site of La Balme's doomed stand against the Miami.

 La Balme may have fallen out of American history books, but he is remembered, a bit, in Indiana.  In 1930 the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) erected a small monument—a plaque on a boulder at the site of La Balme’s Defeat.  The Indiana Society of the Sons of the American Revolution commemorated the 225 anniversary of the battle in 2005 with decedents of both the French militia men and the Miami warriors present, a re-enactment and unveiling of a new, large state historical marker.

Nice, but not quite the glory the old cavalryman had in mind.