My First Book

                                             A BOXING RING IS SQUARE BECAUSE…

                                                               August 8, 2025

The other day marked the 60th anniversary of what many consider “The Greatest Sports Picture” ever taken. Perhaps a contributing factor to the title is its subject, Muhammad Ali, a singularly gifted boxer who frequently proclaimed himself “The Greatest.” The photo was taken moments after Sonny Liston, the heavyweight champ of the world, kissed the canvas subsequent to a blow by the challenger. Ali is shown disdainfully shouting down at Liston, “Get up and fight, sucker!

The fight was his first after changing his name from Cassius Clay. As with all things Ali, this new moniker was proclaimed with much fanfare, blaring emotionally charged phrases. He said that Clay was a slave’s name, one foisted upon him and his ancestors by white overlords who profited from America’s Original Sin. This former gold medalist, who not so long before represented the U.S. on the Olympic boxing team, now held up the dusty mirror of national self-reflection; America didn’t like it. Ali didn’t care.

He was now in the Nation of Islam and embraced the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. He became a Black Muslim, internalizing the religion while externalizing the raiments. Traditional African garb festooned his 6’ 3” frame. He labored to embody the tenets of the faith, but Allah had bestowed this boxer with too much mojo. I remember a post-fight interview where he shoved the news guy aside and nuzzled up to the camera so closely that his breath nearly fogged the lens. “I can whup any man watching this!” he crowed, shaking his fist at everybody in the world. “I am the GREATEST!” Pugilistically speaking, that was hard to argue. He was dazzling and lethal in the ring. Irreconcilably, his religion demanded he lose the lethality outside the ropes—he sought Conscientious Objector status from the draft board.

For any able-bodied male in the U.S., during the height of the Vietnam Conflict, claiming an allergic reaction to snuffing select members of one’s own species was tantamount to dressing in a chicken suit and poking a poster of John Wayne with one’s plastic pecker while shouting, “I am a Commie who hates America and drives a Japanese import!” But, for the Louisville Lip to refuse induction into the Armed Forces? That was treason. Ali stood firm, taking all the incoming, periodically returning fire.

“Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong. Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home to drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?” Not surprisingly, this did not go down well with certain segments of the American populace. At his induction, he did not come forward three times when his name was called, which led to his arrest. He remained free for the 3+ years his various court cases were heard. Each time, he was found guilty of violating the Selective Service law. Each time, his lawyers appealed until the case landed in the Supreme Court where Ali was exonerated in an 8-0 decision. However, he had been stripped of his championship titles. His licenses were all suspended as well, so he could not box anywhere. Much ink has been spent musing on the “what-ifs” of these lost three years when Muhammad Ali was in his prime.

I have little to say on that because I know very little about professional sports. The facts scattered throughout the retelling of the Ali saga were researched for accuracy’s sake. Accuracy is important. Facts are important. . . yes, even in today’s political environment! We ground ourselves in these nuggets of truth and then venture into the hinterland of interpretation. If we work hard and get lucky, we can apply our research and draw some logic-based conclusions. There are questions raised in Ali’s Army saga that seem applicable to today’s murky milieu. These revolve around responsibility and complicity; in my mind, they relate to the faulty logic used all those years ago by The People’s Champion.

When the conscientious objector brouhaha was a-brewin’, the draft was ramping up. Vietnam’s gaping jungle maw needed feeding, and America’s poor disproportionately became the ground beef for that Sloppy Joe. Ali’s refusal to serve spoke to that disparity. I was almost sixteen when this all went down, and though I got his point (to the extent a post-pubescent White kid could), I recall a cognitive dissonance with his reasoning. Muhammad Ali would not join the Army because his newly embraced religion forbade his killing other humans. That’s understandable. . . at least the homicidal side of it; the refusal to serve in the Army of the United States of America did not.

Stop a second and think of Elvis. He was drafted in December 1957. His duty assignment would have been to the Special Services—he would have entertained the troops. Only his performances would have “killed.” Elvis served his time in an armored unit, due to the machinations of his manager, the Colonel, who didn’t want anyone making money off his boy except him. The Army could have recorded Elvis’s shows and sold them to TV or radio stations. So, it was the non-military Colonel who ordered Private Presley off the Easy Train of Special Services. Ali would surely have boarded that same choo-choo.

It isn’t even a remote possibility that the U.S. government would assign the heavyweight champion of the world to a forward combat unit. Ali was on his way to becoming the most recognizable person on Earth. He would not be butthole-deep in a water-filled mortar crater chucking grenades at “Charlie.” The new recruit would be touring military bases worldwide, giving boxing exhibitions, spouting doggerel to the dogfaces and issuing challenges to go mano a mano with Ho Chi Minh.

This is where I feel the logic falls apart. Muhammad Ali joining the Army, supporting the troops through entertainment is no different than him paying taxes. The latter ponies up the pennies directly to the government, funding the Pentagon and the Intelligence agencies which directly supported the war effort. Entertaining the troops would have lightened the load of young GIs, mostly conscripted, who, unlike Ali, had no resources to direct their destiny.

I will skip conjecturing how refusal to pay taxes would have impacted the Champ; instead, apropos of today’s political realities, I will ruminate on what are our moral imperatives as thinking, caring citizens. The First Amendment to the Constitution affords us free speech and the right to assemble, to demonstrate a collective message to the powers that be. It happened with increasing frequency as the visuals of the Vietnam Conflict flickered on our TV sets every evening.

In 2025, the people are similarly taking to the streets to show antipathy to the policies and proclivities of the current administration. I did so once on No Kings Day. The morning standing in the shade while holding a handmade sign was no great sacrifice. After a two-mile drive, Myrna and I met some friendly, like-minded people; it was fun! What then are my obligations to my country, my conscience, my convictions? I served as an infantryman in the Army. I chose to enlist, but would I have done so had there been no draft? People now thank me for my service when I apply my military discount at Lowe’s while using my USAA credit card.

Vietnam began eroding the citizens’ faith in their leaders and institutions. Actions were predicated on lies and half-truths, on what policymakers wanted to be true. Then, as now, motivations were based on amassing more money and power. Morals were malleable. The U. S. of A. became a corporation. In 1906, Ambrose Bierce defined the word as, “An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.” [Sigh]

In the present, it seems that all USA corporate assets are for sale in any form of currency, real or crypto. Want those tariffs to go away? Carve off a cutlet of your country, and our relationship will develop, in the real estate sense. Want that media merger to go through? Bring the king the jester’s head and cut to the head of the line. America’s reality star-in-chief has more than doubled his estimated fortune in one year, according to Forbes magazine. The list of grifts is too long to enumerate here. We live in an era where morality is not the metric of success; money is. Ukraine gets missiles; America gets its minerals.

What, then, should I do? I abhor the institutionalized cruelty exhibited by the rococo racketeers running the country. Like Ali, I don’t like what the government is doing. What is the proper response? I have contacted members of the House and Senate and received their generic responses; non sequiturs, all. I am writing this blog which reaches my 30 subscribers and some random website visitors. There were 50 in May. That’s still in the tiny acorn range. I have been hesitant to write full-throated denunciations of the elected demagogue because there is SO much verbiage already out there. It might make me feel better, but what changes? Additionally, the man is inescapable. He has already stolen too much of my time. But what if he steals the government?

I hold the invertebrate Republicans responsible for their Faustian deal. Their complicity will be discussed in the history books. Meanwhile, I am left to assess my actions. When is my behavior rational, and when is it merely rationalized? I have been nearly catatonic regarding my blogging, second guessing nearly every aspect of our relationship with each other. I left this piece languishing on the clipboard, untouched for over a month, even starting an entirely new entry (which is also unfinished!). As one who lived his teenage years through the Sixties, I promise to soldier on. That includes paying my income taxes while negotiating this quagmire.

The Pathetic Peripatetic

The What? 

The PP. 

Excuse me! 

I know! It's so puerile!

So what?

Puerile? From the Latin, puer, meaning child. In English, the word means silly, childlike, immature. Let's skip the pronunciation because you are reading the word. Oh, you might want to use it aloud to impress your friends or intimidate your enemies? No? You would simply like to "pronounce" it in your head if you come across it in your reading (as you just did!). [pyoorəl] There. Now, we can both say it. 

With that out of the way, we can begin to explain the name of this blog. Here goes: Pathetic is used in the sense of having or being full of pathos. I am thinking of its ancient Greek meaning of feelings and emotions, not that of pity and suffering. For Peripatetic, we harken back to those Athenians again--Aristotle and his ambulating students strolling around the grounds, thinking out loud and pondering the questions of the day. Yeah, those guys. They were collectively known as the peripatetic philosophers. 

I put those concepts together because we are all walking around philosophizing--trying to make sense of the world by learning things about it. It's that learning that this blog will be about. Confession: I also put those words together because they are alliterative and playing with language is fun. Yes, it is. No, it is not puerile. Puns possibly are puerile, but not alliteration. Tsk! Tsk! 

With that, I beg you to read a blog or two. They will explain more than merely the title. Get your two cents ready. You will soon be sought to add your thoughts to this blog. Won't that be edifying? And fun!!