ACCEPTABLE LOSSES WITH EXCEPTIONS

Acceptable losses come with a line.

Whether losses are acceptable or not usually depends on which side of the line you’re on.

If friends and family are on one side, and you’re not?

Either they’re on the loss side, or it’s you.

Then what? Since I’ve been around a while, here’s a few ideas:

If one side is reserved for drunks, drug addicts, and morons, also known as people living their best lives, welcome aboard.

Those new members don’t need to fuss with standards, like personal hygiene, health, and general appearance.

Real life is different than a TV show, unless the show is Hee Haw, or Petticoat Junction, which some see as low-brow entertainment and others see as a documentary.

Television warps reality like that.

What do they call a show where viewers can’t tell the difference between entertainment and a documentary?

It’s called a hit in TV land.

What are the viewers called?

A targeted audience with an attention span that welcomes the blurred line between real and not real.

While I don’t claim expertise in psychological analysis of television viewing habits, I do claim experience based on years of watching TV. Decades.

The first Star Trek series from 1966 to 1969?

I saw it as an eleven year old from the beginning.

 

Shortly after the cancellation of the series due to low ratings, the staff of the marketing department of NBC confronted the network executives and berated them for canceling this show, which had been one of their most profitable series without anyone realizing it.

They explained that although the show was never higher than number fifty-two in the general ratings, when running the numbers though the replacement of the Nielsen rating system, its audience profile had the largest concentration of viewers of ages 18 to 45.

In other words, not only did the show have the most sought-after demographic that television advertisers hunger for, it was also one of the most successful series the network had ever aired, and did even better in reruns.

 

I was not an exceptional kid, but I knew the difference between Star Trek and NASA which launched the Mercury and Gemini rockets on the same black and white television as Star Trek.

 

Acceptable Losses From Apollo 1

A year later, 1967, a fire swept through the command module of Apollo 1 taking the lives of three astronaughts.

The program continued toward the goal of reaching the moon before the end of the decade.

If not for the work done by former rocket Nazi Werner Von Braun, it was a long shot.

 

Though his important role in Hitler’s war machine will forever cloud his legacy, many believe that, without Wernher von Braun, America would have landed men on the Moon much later, if at all. The von Braun crater on the moon is named for him.

 

The cost associated with rocket research kept the program alive, which is quite an irony considering its origins.

 

By March 27, 1945, when the last rocket was fired, over 3000 V-2s had hit Allied targets in five countries (hundreds more blew up enroute).

Belgium received the most V-2 attacks (over 1660) but another 1400 rockets hit England.

In London alone, at least 2,750 people, almost all civilians, were killed by V-2s. It is estimated another seven thousand people were killed in attacks on the Continent.

Thousands more of the Nazi’s slave laborers are thought to have perished in the production of the V-2 rockets than were actually killed by the weapons.

 

Mr. Von Braun was accustomed to acceptable losses, took then in stride, for the sake of science.

The one-time POW made it to America and continued his rocket work.

He was scheduled to die before WWII ended to protect the work he’d done, chased to an American surrender by the very people he had served.

Terrified by tales of what the Soviet Red Army did to German prisoners, von Braun and his staff fled westward to the advancing American army.

The Nazi SS pursued the German scientists and engineers with orders to kill them and destroy their records. On May 2, 1945, von Braun was able to surrender his entire group to the U.S. Army.

 

More Losses in the 1960’s

The Vietnam War brought young men together whether they wanted or not.

Local draft boards processed the young men from their civilian lives to one of acceptable loss.

Young men were shell shocked and stunned before they got a haircut and a mean green uniform.

Old men in charge had seen it before.

Whether they joined, or got drafted, they’d seen WWII and Korean vets come home and make a life for themselves.

Everything was fine, so why all the whining?

The kids getting drafted were raised by their shell shocked and stunned dads who couldn’t say why they felt the way they did.

This is how we do things?

This is just how it is?

Men don’t cry?

Since then what’s changed?

Iraq 1 began when Iran and Iraq fought it out during the 80’s where America got around the no cluster bomb rules to help Iraq against a threatening foe.

Due to a misunderstanding, Iraq became a threatening foe to Kuwait.

Iraq 2 began with the Twin Towers and a yellow cake uranium misunderstanding.

Afghanistan was already ramping up.

 

By early 2002, with U.S. troops already fighting in Afghanistan, large majorities of Americans favored the use of military force in Iraq to oust Hussein from power and to destroy terrorist groups in Somalia and Sudan.

These attitudes represented “a strong endorsement of the prospective use of force compared with other military missions in the post-Cold War era,” Pew Research Center noted at the time.

 

Since there was no draft pulling kids from a large majority of American families, they beat the war drum.

Acceptable losses are easier when you don’t lose anything, when it’s someone else.

It’s even easier when you don’t have anything to lose, like self respect, dignity, and honor.

An old man who has ditched those three qualities has a wide appeal to large majorities of Americans?

Now we know.