Man the air, ram the ramparts, take the airports!

This is the most memorable thing I've heard about Trump's "Salute to America" show on Independence Day (other than the fact that Melania was wearing a white dress without a bra, which became see-through in the rain -- well, at least it had sleeves, unlike that slut Michelle, am I right? 

The rain caused the teleprompter to malfunction and the text of Trump's speech momentarily to disappeared. Apparently, it was at this point that Trump was talking about the tenacious nature of George Washington's Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. During those troubling times, the Army -- Trump told his drenched audience, eager to learn from their president -- "manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do." Rammed the ramparts? Rammed them with what? 

So, because he couldn't see his prepared text, Trump just had to dip into his knowledge of military history and speak off the cuff. About airports. In the 1770s. Except they didn't exist. Surely, he was confusing this war with a different one (most American high schooler no doubt do the same thing, mix up Iwo Jima with Valley Forge, etc). 

Without the teleprompter, Trump went off script. Except. Except, he didn't. Probably remembering how he has blasted Obama in the past as a sissy for relying on teleprompters, Trump quickly assured his people, his AMERICAN people, that HE didn't really need the teleprompter anyway and that HE knew the speech "very well".and was able to do it without a teleprompter. 

Which must mean that Trump --- with his flawless memory -- correctly recited the speech from heart, including the line about the airfields that the colonials defended against the Redcoats. Which means that WAS part of his prepared remarks. Which means it must be true. Because he said it. 

Could there possibly be any other explanation? Any?

National Colors

On Sunday, I went running in the nearby woods with my wife, only the second time since last summer. 

When I say “running”, I mean “jogging”, at a pace that would barely qualify as a brisk walk, until my lungs can’t stand it anymore and I am forced to walk for a bit until I can manage to “run” again, all the while my wife, just to keep her pulse up, runs (actual runs) back and forth past me, like a deft crow again and again swooping past a slow gliding hawk.

She likes the company, I suppose, though I am by no means the ideal running companion.

This half-an-hour of cardiovascular hell was nicely timed to finish just as Finland’s latest matchup in the World Hockey Championship got underway, although I had to spend the first ten minutes of the game recovering on the porch collapsed in our Adirondack chair before I could come in to watch.

When I did, I immediately started rooting for the wrong team. I cursed when an aggressive attack by some strong skaters failed to score against…Finland. What? Huh? 

Credit: realismadder

It took me a few moments to realize it wasn’t the Slovakian goalie who was working mightily in front of the goal to keep the puck from going in. It was the Finnish. I was confused, and not only because my senses were dulled by my near-death experience on the running path.

The reason for my mistake was the color of their jerseys. On the TV screen before me were two teams whizzing over the ice at supersonic speeds, one in white jerseys, one in blue, both national colors of Finland. I’m somehow more used to Finland wearing white jerseys, but in this game the team wearing white was Slovakia, a country which shares Finland's national colors, in addition to one other, namely red. As in red, white and blue. On closer inspection, I could make out a small red stripe on Slovakia’s jerseys, hardly noticeable.

Of course, both teams have the right to wear the colors of blue or white on their uniforms. Still, with three colors to choose from, unlike Finland, I’m curious why Slovakia didn’t use red uniforms instead. Why use a color that could also be used by the opposing team when you have another color all your own? (And, yes, I do have too much time on my hands.)

I’ve noticed the same when Finland plays the USA. I don’t recall Team USA charging out on the ice in mostly-red jerseys. I think they’re usually blue.

Anyway, this got me thinking about why the colors red, white and blue are used by so many countries, some 30 in fact, including such diverse nations as Chile, Taiwan, France, or for that matter, Cuba, Russia, and North Korea.

The list also includes many of the Commonwealth nations such as Australia and New Zealand (neither of which, I’m told, is an exceptional powerhouse in ice hockey), nations that apparently came to use the red, white and blue national colors in the same way as America did – they adopted them from the Mother Country.

It’s kind of funny when you think about it. It appears the leaders of the American Revolution weren’t so revolutionary when it came to colors. They could have broken with the past completely and created an entirely new color scheme for a completely new nation, say, orange, green and yellow. Instead, while they did go for a radically different flag design, they retained the old colors of the hated enemy Britain. Go figure.

The Bolsheviks did much better. Seizing control of the Russian government in the October Revolution and installing a government of “workers, solider and peasants”, the followers of Lenin tossed the historic red-white-blue flag of Tsarist Russia onto the dustbin of history.

To replace it, they created, in the vein of centuries-old socialist tradition, a simple red flag, with some tasteful Communist symbols in yellow -- the flag of the Soviet Union. It was a clear signal that this was no longer your dedushka’s Russia. Of course, that didn’t last.

I can’t finish without making a snarky observation about some other anti-establishment political hijinks that are much more recent. The most unavoidable symbol of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been his “Make America Great Again” cap. Trump, no slouch when it comes to marketing and branding, dreamed up this Average Joe headwear early in his run for the White House as a way to spread his insipid campaign slogan.

The caps seem to come in only two colors, red and white, no blue. (Okay, there’s also a camouflage version, but that’s just seems to be an afterthought.) The omission of blue has led someone in the media, maybe John Oliver or just some random Internet wag, to speculate that Trump is confused in thinking that he’s running for president of Canada. Or Japan. Or some other red-and-white country. Poland, maybe? Indonesia?

Why no blue? Does Trump have something against blue states, perhaps? Could be. Or maybe Trump, in a rush to cash in on a campaign that was never meant to last, simply forgot about the color blue when ordering up a consignment of chauvinistic merchandizing. I doubt we’ll ever know.

One quick aside: a Finnish correspondent in the US has reported that he was unable to order a Trump cap for himself because he is a foreigner. That seems to be true, as customers aren’t “buying” a cap, but rather “contributing” to a campaign (for which they get a cap), something that only citizens or legal residents can do.

Illegal residents are, therefore, excluded from buying a Trump cap of their very own. Presumably Muslims, as such, still can.

I can’t imagine either one of those groups would want to anyway. I know I wouldn’t. 

Trump in his cap, showing his colors (no blue!).
Photo: Gage Skidmore

Man of War Romney

I’m struck by the kind of small coincidences (and by “small” I mean trivial) that you run across every once and a while. This past week, while two US states and the District of Columbia were holding Republican primaries on Tuesday, I was making slow progress reading Chapter Eight of “The Glorious Cause”, a classic tome on the American Revolution by Robert Middlekauff. (“Tome” is exactly the right word – you could stop a freight train with this massive book.) 

As voters in Wisconsin, Maryland and DC were giving Mitt Romney a clean sweep in the polls, essentially guaranteeing him the Republican nomination and proving that in the end the GOP would not be jumping down the rabbit hole dug for them by the Tea Party, I was reading about the events in Boston in May 1768.

At that time, almost 250 springs ago, the British subjects in North America were in an uproar over taxation (sound familiar?), in particular the recent attempts by Parliament to make them pay duties on some items they had to import from Britain, such as paper, paint, glass and, not least of all, tea. To help enforce these extremely unpopular measures, the Royal Navy sent to Massachusetts a 50-gun man-of-war, HMS Romney. Her presence in Boston Harbor was not appreciated, and soon after arriving, the Romney sparked further outrage by commandeering a ship belonging to the richest man in America.

John Hancock, best known to modern Americans because his name is synonymous with a person's signature, was an extremely wealthy businessman, not unlike future Bostonian Mitt Romney (the man, not the man-of-war). Hancock also may, or may not, have engaged in a practice used by many of his fellow merchants to avoid paying duties, namely smuggling. 

A month before the Romney (the ship) dropped anchor in Boston Harbor, one of John Hancock’s sloops arrived from across the Atlantic with a cargo of Madeira wine. Royal customs officials suspected that Hancock had slipped most of the cargo off the boat without declaring it and paying the required duty. With the arrival of the Romney, they now had the muscle to act on their suspicions. The officials ordered the man-of-war to seize Hancock’s sloop – which was fittingly named Liberty. A riot, as they say, ensued, with the tax officials beaten bloody, but escaping with their lives. One more step on the path to revolution. 

If you are a Tea Party supporter (circa 2012) who, after this week’s primaries, is feeling some resentment over your movement being hijacked by an establish Republican like Mitt Romney, you might see a cruel metaphor in the fact that, back in the original Tea Party era, a ship called Liberty was confiscated by one named Romney. Me, I just find it all an ironic coincidence.  

"The Lost of the Romney", depicting the ship's demise after running aground in 1804.