Don Quixote at West Point
A recent incident at West Point involving my wife and our little daughter has given us much to ponder. The initial responses, and later silences, of the military authorities were both surprising and perplexing. I became even more reflective and pensive, however, after my own well-informed and honest and very candid West Point classmates further illuminated my deficient understanding and corrected my illusions by their own much more deeply discerning comments.
What might a Don Quixote himself have thought, said, and done—in light of his chivalrous naiveté and generous (though often cynically mocked) illusions and his own tradition-mindedness—had he been present there and encountered this “Tremendous Trifle” and “Prodigy” in his path? For, as we shall see, it was a sudden and surprising challenge, indeed: a somewhat staining adventure with a Very Model of a Modern M.P. Soldier. And soon there came his Defenders, his moral supporters and protective sympathizers.
How would Cervantes himself—or G.K. Chesterton in his Return of Don Quixote (1927)—have presented this scene and some of its implications? For, despite our reputed modern freedoms, it is still the case that we have as many Masters as we have Moral Vices. However, moral vices may certainly produce illusions of autonomy and freedom.
On a Wednesday morning in late October 2009, my wife and I made a brief visit to the West Point Post Exchange with our little daughter. It is a place where cadets and military families with their young children often visit. Shortly after our arrival, I turned to find my wife and suddenly faced a scene I had never before witnessed in a military store, especially not at West Point. A hobo was there, some 30 yards away, and walking sluggishly into the store more or less in my direction. He was plodding along vaguely and maundering still when he passed me nearby. I watched him all that time, stunned in thought.
This seeming vagrant and clochard had as part of his attire a gray Army shirt of official issue, in incongruous combination with big baggy pants, either cut-off trousers or elongated Bermuda shorts. What a picture!
But that was only the beginning. He had a hat on with a beak, but it was not turned completely to the rear as one often sees with fashionably shabby adolescents. Rather, the hat was turned sideways toward his left ear, bending the ear down and curving it outwardly. This touch imparted to his visage an especially goofy look. That goofiness was further amplified by a large drink he was vacantly slurping, as he further shambled on.
As he passed, he saw me gazing at him in silence, and he proceeded to stare at me. Still stunned, I remained standing where I was, but I turned to watch him. From what I then saw in his eyes, it even looked as if he were on drugs.
Since the man looked too old to be a military dependent of one of the Army families residing at or visiting West Point, I decided, after some minutes, to approach him and ask if he was himself in the military. He answered in the affirmative. I then asked, “May I know what unit you are in?” He responded, “The Military Police.”
I did not then ascertain, nor afterward reliably discover, his rank. I only knew that he was one of the guardians.
Things deteriorated rapidly. I formally identified myself and then asked his name. He became petulant and surly: “Why do you want to know my name?”
I replied, “I wish to speak with your superiors in the provost marshal’s office about your mixed and shabby dress and also about your deportment and demeanor.”
At once he became more brazen and defiant and suddenly expressed himself with a sneer and a smirk of contempt: “Hey man, you’re harassin’ me.”
“I beg your pardon,” I answered. “I ask you for your name, and you call it harassment? You must be a real stalwart. Have you no self-respect?”
Constable Clochard reached into his baggy pants and pulled out his cell phone. “Hey,” he informed his friends in the Military Police, “some guy is harassin’ me over here. I’m at the PX. Come on over.”
Assured that his comrades were en route, he became even more insolent. He gathered together in a little cluster with a few younger female employees of the store, muttering and grumbling among them. But he kept his distance until two junior sergeants of the Military Police arrived. One immediately took the approaching and welcoming constable by the arm and went with him to a more distant part of the store. The other young sergeant stayed with me. He was very polite, but his own words and, soon, his effective acts of omission were even more shocking to me than those of the querulous constable himself.
“Sir, what’s your problem?” the young sergeant asked.
As I started to tell him about the behavior and appearance of the constable, he interrupted me. “Sir, I don’t see your problem. I dress like this, too, when I’m off duty.” Although I attempted to discuss further his colleague’s disturbing fragility and acute rudeness, the young sergeant, though still polite, had had enough. There was no danger, he concluded, of any violence, and thus he and his partner wished to depart. The case was finished—on their terms.
Aside from a few ongoing glowering looks and sneers, Constable Clochard kept his distance after his comrades’ departure. Yet we had one final act of his baseness to face.
It was raining, so I came with my car to the entrance of the Post Exchange to fetch my wife and daughter. Unexpectedly, the constable reemerged and proceeded to copy down our car’s license-plate number, after which he sauntered off again.
My usually calm and poised wife was quite troubled by the constable’s implicitly threatening act. She feared some indirect form of revenge.
We decided to visit the office of the West Point provost marshal himself, to report these acts of dishonor and disrespect. We thought that the traditional ethos of honor of the West Point Military Police would informally correct the constable’s abuses. We were wrong.
We met with the executive officer and the senior sergeant in the provost marshall’s office. The sergeant did most of the talking. Both were polite, and the sergeant asked me to write and give him my e-mail address as soon as possible, so that he could tell me how he handled the incident. The senior sergeant then said to me straightaway that current Army regulations regrettably permit mixed dress “off duty,” so there was nothing he could do there. But as to the shabby constable’s conduct—his open defiance and disrespect—the sergeant would attend to that at once. He was also polite with my wife, and even appeared to understand her anxiety about the soldier’s final rudeness and implicit threat.
That evening, I wrote to the senior sergeant and gave him my current e-mail address. I did not hear from him for two weeks, though I wrote to him twice. When he finally wrote back, he was so vague about what he had discovered and had purportedly done by way of correction, that I wrote him two more messages of inquiry, one of which (on November 11, Veterans Day) was a somewhat long and detailed description of what had occurred, a sort of Incident Report and Memorandum for the Record.
In response to my first message, the senior sergeant, copying his replies to his superior officers, wrote only a brief but indignant note—addressing me as “Mr. Hickson.” He instructed me that I should trust him to have done what was proper and altogether fitting, stressing, moreover, that the constable is “an Iraq combat-veteran” who has “proudly served his country,” and that he would tell me no more than that. The case was over.
When I contacted some of my trusted classmates from West Point and told them the entire story, I was told that the problem extends beyond the West Point Military Police. When cadets themselves are “off duty,” it is often difficult to say who is a cadet and who is a vagrant or suspect gangster. Moreover, a dignified woman in the West Point Post Exchange had told me that the dress and conduct of the constable was representative. Cadets and other members of the military increasingly dress and act in such a manner. “This is not, by far, the way it used to be,” she said. “But people don’t seem to care anymore.” There is a pervading indifference, as if to say: “I don’t care, and you don’t matter.”
My classmates informed me that the ethos at the academy is now so changed that a recent superintendent invited a very young, potential financial donor to stay overnight at his prestigious military quarters, while a decorated veteran general from World War II was put up at a nearby hotel. One of my other good classmates—not at all a curmudgeon, much less a pessimist or a fatalist—said, “Robert, the Corps has, and the Army has”—cadet slang for “the standards of the Corps and the Corps of Cadets itself have gone to hell, and the Army has, too.” I had not expected to hear these words from such a senior and distinguished man.
In any case, we shall not recover the flower of chivalry, much less its fuller fruits, unless we rediscover and are nourished by its roots, including its deeper religious roots. But as James Burnham writes, “To be defeated after losing well does not always lose so much as not to have fought.” Don Quixote would agree. (And, along with his courage amid the surrounding mockery and cynicism, he further displayed “the wisdom of his naivete,” especially by his prompt and sustaining desire for “chivalrous magnanimity” and for “a new order of voluntary nobility.”) As Chesterton once said, only a live thing can swim against the stream. Let us not be a drifter, nor a slothful tramp. As my Catholic Special Forces team sergeant once said to me: “Sir, let us flame out, not rust out!”
To see the place where I became a man show signs of dissolution does deeply affect the heart. To feel that one is an absurd and injurious anachronism is not a thing easily borne in a manly way, with integrity and true fortitude. I miss being part of a living, active tradition, especially in these late years of disrupted traditions.
As Burnham once said, man is nourished “by social experience acting through time—that is, by tradition.” That is especially true of the virtuous and deeply tested tradition of the Long Gray Line, where once there was a sincere faith in this tradition as a living and continuous force.
This article first appeared in the March 2010 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
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And I'd thought the Army had gotten it's act together. In Vietnam soldiers in the field decorated their helmet covers with ironic stuff like, "Black, young, and gifted," wore bushy afros with their caps off the side and back of their heads, peace symbols all over the place, beads, bracelets, headbands, etc. Less than useless in a firefight, and real trouble in basecamp.
When I got back to the States in '70 and was stationed at Ft. Riley there was a race riot of sorts, caused by blacks pushing whites out of line at the theater. When the 1st Mil. Police Co. arrived on the scene, about half blacks, the blacks went over and stood their ground with the rioters.
Dear Mr. Kenny,
What fine and exemplary comments you have so unflippantly transmitted to CHRONICLES and to me. On Old Fogeys and All That.
Your words are clearly a Monument of Unageing Intellect. W.B. Yeats would have been proud of you too.
I have so much to learn from you.
What would you have done with your wife and children had you been there, instead, at West Point?
Sincerely,
Robert Hickson
Thank you Mrs. Hickson for taking this up. Besides the clothing there are also the sickening and debasing tatoos, sometimes spreading all over the body and onto the head. Then there is the language of which expressions like "my bad" are particularly irritating. As for Mr. Kenny, he does not get it. Kids from 50 years ago could go to the drive-in because it was safe. One conforting thought is that at least these thugs that go through military training have to learn some form of discipline. Maybe at some point they grow up and change.
I am sorry for the typo. Mr. Hickson.
Mr Bailey, if only it were so. I have seen more than one of them who didn't. White trash tend to stay that way, long-shorts wearing scum who use stupid language keep doing it after they leave the military.
I would have thought that West Point would be better than the rest, but how could I have been so ignorant? This is America, where everything degenerates more with each passing year and everything sacred transforms into the profane.
The US military in some ways has long been at the forefront (though not the vanguard) of social revolution. This is particularly so after large conflicts that have taken place overseas. This is hardly an original observation and many others have ably expounded on it. This revolutionary aspect however had previously been tampered by the necessity of a cohesive force and the discipline required to be effective. However since the development of technological dependence neither are considered as vital as previously. The military establishment has shifted its emphasis to weapons systems due largely to money and self-interest. It would be interesting to compare the discipline and levels of training between US conventional forces and special forces over the last four or five decades. Women openingly placed into combat took place some time ago. Now apparently homosexuals are to be openingly admitted. The US military has not be a conservative force in a deep sense for some time despite common misconceptions. I have no doubt that it tends to be more Republican, but that is hardly the same.
This incident reveals a deplorable lack of discipline and sadly reinforces so many of the stories I've heard from fellow former officers about what our armed forces have become. That a single soldier would dress and behave in such a way is disappointing enough but the response of the chain of command to a direct inquiry by a retired -I'm assuming Colonel - is despicable.
The military is not the place for anyone to "build their own world" but instead needs to be a stalwart force against the onslaught of the "me-first" culture that is degrading the society around us. Tradition has apparently become a four-letter word in modern America. We should instead heed another of Chesterton's aphorisms - "tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead."
In the 11th ACR I served in (late 70's/ mid 80's) this soldier/policeman would have been subject to at least some administrative punishment in addition to a likely session of "wall-to-wall" counseling from an unamused NCO unwilling to have his unit tarnished by this kind of behavior.
The future belongs to the young. The old should have the intellectual honesty and moral courage to let them build their own world in their own way.
They have been allowed to build their world in their own way. Thus the people who occupy the White House and the abyss.
Sadly Mr Hickson, the condition you find our Army in is not new, but has been going on since at least the 1990s and the disappearance of Cold War era standards of readiness and discipline. I can recall many similar incidents such as yours that were also met with indifference by leaders at all levels who believed more in "going along to get along" than in adherance to standards. And I wouldn't waste any more of your time on Michael Kenny. He is a well-known English left-wing internet troll on historical and military-related forums.
When I read this article in the print magazine, I sympathized with the writer, up to a point, and then filed it away under my all-purpose "waddya gonna do?" heading. Now the online discussion, especially the witty exchange between Professor Hickson and Michael Kenny, has rekindled my interest.
By the way, Mr. Kenny, ever see the line "the unwilling led by the unthinking to do the unnecessary" scrawled on a flak jacket? That was one of my faves, right up there with the more well-known variation on the Psalm's line about the valley of the shadow of death. I have to say, though, that Bryan's answer @9 is the correct take on our generation's, uh, creativity.
But where this really gets interesting to me is where Lone Racer (welcome back) enters the debate. I noticed that just upthread, Mr. Allen Wilson, whose posts I always read and usually agree with, assumed that the offensive M.P. soldier was "white trash". To begin with, this is a term that I dislike, for several reasons, with the most germane to this discussion being the same reason blacks use regarding "nigger": why use the epithets of our enemies? It may have its limited place in humor and fiction, but it is far too commonly used by those who should know better, and lends itself to the weakening of our already precarious position.
Now, it happens that the image I'd formed of this fellow was of a white kid, too. My assumption was based on the following: my perception that West Point is still predominantly white; my observance of black behavior, and especially habits of dress, led me to think that a black soldier, especially an M.P., would typically dress with more style; the way he followed the Hicksons outside and waited for his opportunity to have a parting shot exhibits a patience and purposefulness that is more likely to be found in whites; and finally, my sense that Professor Hickson is the type of white person who would feel uncomfortable challenging a black on his bad behavior.
Nevertheless, Lone Racer's post was a timely and important reminder. Certainly, Hickson was naive to expect the kind of old fashioned courtesy he did. But the more important point is the racial one. All areas of American life were dealt a grievous wound by forced integration. Whites must never lose sight of this fact, if we are to have any hope of a saving remnant repairing some of the damage. I would only add that, though it is true that much of the blame for this damage can be laid at the feet of "the generation which first really confronted racial diversification, at a time when the US was still ovewhemingly white, not just numerically, but even more importantly, spiritually and culturally", important pillars of our standing had already been kicked out from under us by the preceding generation via Truman's executive orders and the Warren Court's machinations.
I should have addressed my question about the flak jacket graffito to Dan@1.
I am sad to say I am quite displeased that Lone Racer's comment has been removed. I would like an explanation.
The explanation, Mr. Jacobi, is that Lone Racer/Leon Haller/any of the half-dozen or more other names he has used is not welcome on our website, because of his behavior in the past.
Mr Jacobi's post @10 is well taken and right on target, though of course I disagree with the use of the term 'white trash', since that's what they are.
I once heard an older black woman describe younger blacks who wouldn't work even when thay had a job as 'nigras', by which she meant that they fit the stereotype.
Even though 'white trash' would have referred to a different kind of white a mere generation ago, I cant think of a more appropriate term for worthless whites like the one described in thsi article, at least one that's not too offensive to use on this websit..
#11. Quite right, Mr. Jacobi. And we should not forget that the armed forces have been a major instrument of cultural destruction for decades now.
#15 Allen Wilson
I am aware that the term's referent has changed over the years, (and I'd be interested in hearing your description of this shift) but I didn't like it even back when its use was more restricted. I want the better sort of whites to be as aware as are their black counterparts that tearing down our less camera ready cousins (well ok, none of em are MY cousins) is bad for all of us. Literate folks like us should be able to come up with other ways of describing these people than by comparing them to garbage. I may (and have) call someone like a child-rapist/murderer "human garbage", but people who need an education, a bath, moral guidance/addiction counseling don't deserve that.
Mr. Richert,
I appreciate the courtesy of your reply. I understand that I do not have a vote in editorial matters and I think you editors do a splendid job of maintaining this site as an oasis of reason and high moral and intellectual standards. Therefore, I did not impulsively, nor groundlessly, I think, lodge my complaint. If I may take another moment of your time, here are my grounds for wanting to engage with Lone Racer/Haller.
I very much want to understand how people like him come to their position on racial matters. By people like him I mean those who have had, as I take it he has, limited personal contact with blacks; certainly not the kind of immersion in the everyday life of lower class and poor blacks I have had for close to 50 years now. His position is like mine, but I was just beginning to understand it enough to spot what I think are some interesting differences and formulate some questions, questions which I think would have provided good points for discussion on this site.
For instance, how and why does one, who has gone to Yale and lived in the higher socio-economic strata, come to focus so much on an issue which has comparatively little to do with his daily life, compared to someone like me, who must live every second of mine as surely surrounded, isolated, marked, and bathed in hostility as any remaining Serb in Kosovo or Christian in Sudan? I certainly bring up race when I think it's warranted, but I'd just as soon discuss Trollope, or Lenten customs, whereas with Racer it's race all the time.
What makes someone who has every option of distancing himself from the kind of people I must deal with as soon as I step out my door speak of blacks with the kind of bitter animus and contempt he uses? I have more grounds for hating blacks than any white I've ever met, and I do hate quite a few of them, past and present, yet I continue to give every black person I meet a chance to show evidence of his immortal soul, and am often enough rewarded with kindness where one might least expect it. I continue to give him time to show evidence of peaceful intent, though sometimes, late at night, I may only be able to spare a split-second before I must distinguish between friend and foe. I mourn real men and women I've known, who've been lost to drugs, crime, and in war. I mention this not to speak of myself, but to draw attention to what I think is the most instructive part of the difference between people like Lone Racer and folks like me: that is the difference between someone whose views are subservient to ideology and one who gets his by experience and contemplation. We find this in all areas of life, and it is our national misfortune that the former are usually in charge of the latter.
Sir,
I am a current West Point cadet. Quite frankly, I find your assertions with respect to my fellow cadets unfounded and most insulting. Never in my days at West Point have I ever confused a fellow cadet for a 'vagrant or a suspect gangster.' This is not that I can tell the difference despite their garb, given my time in the system(there are very distinct cadet mannerisms); this is simply that they do not dress in an unkempt manner, as you purport. Cadets are not allowed to wear civilian clothes until the second semester of their junior year; the effect of this policy is that cadets who are allowed this privilege (for, on post, it is a privilege) guard it closely. As, I assume, somebody with military experience, you are well rehearsed in SOP's. West Point has a very detailed uniform SOP that is enforced not only by the officers on post, but by the cadets themselves. We consider it the responsibility of cadets to maintain the quality of the Corps - to make corrections where corrections are necessary.
I will give you that there are flaws in our current system; I have no qualms in calling them by name, in the appropriate venue. However, please refrain from slanderous baseless claims; it seems that you make the fundamental error of hailing to 'the good old days,' when in fact, upon closer inspection, they are not to be found.
#19 James Myers
Well said, Mr. Myers. I thought Mr. Hickson laid it on a bit thick myself. It is good to know their are cadets still trying to maintain the quality of the Corps.