Mutual trust - what Nugan and the patriots lacked
K: Frank Nugan, Hand, Yates, TPs (True Patriots), Houghton, Colby. 2 Sep 08 #001
Ace cheater who wanted courting
Their “truth” and where it got them
Trust is higher than faith and hope
Interestingly, trust is the main thing Nugan and the true patriots (Hand, Yates etc) lacked. They had plenty of hope in belonging to the best club, and faith in the power of dollars through Nugan Hand’s money machine. But where was the trust?
Man sometimes tells the truth; man occasionally mixes the truth with some deception and self-interest. This is the history of Western civilization, seen clearly in Kwitny's 1985 participation in a forum debate with leading academics.
There's an analogy here in the difference between doing things in big organizations versus doing things freely. When people religiously organize things, they make club rules and member conditions and attempt to control (they call it motivate) each other by carrot and stick methods. The inevitable result is corruption, no matter how high- principled their club rules and conditions become. What gets corrupted is the trust, the love, as individuals become aware that they are expendable as more influential ones get conflicting needs met.
Frank hit on the get rich quick strategy of cheating the cheaters. Deep down he knew the consequences would one day catch up with him, but hoped all the (stolen) money would finance him into the big boy's club, from which he would receive a legacy of being remembered well.
He was attracted to the US officers and gentlemen's club which Admiral Yates called THE TRUE PATRIOTS (TPs). But Frank's dreams of belonging could never be realized, because the TPs only accepted court cards - Kings, Queens and Jacks who are United States courtiers. An Australian, Frank was just an ace in a game where he hoped that aces would be included as court cards. He hoped in vain. Not surprising - because we know he was a vain man.
This card game depiction of the characters has great potential. American audiences will see the irony. It’s the same way the TPs themselves chose to depict Saddam Hussein's courtiers, targeting them for capture in the specially-made cards they issued to their ordinary servicemen in Iraq in 2003/04.
TPs don't see themselves as ordinary American servicemen. They see themselves as courtier servicemen in an organization that's above ordinary Americans.
Michael Hand was an ordinary American serviceman who got elevated into the TPs because he excelled in their code of patriotism. It seems the whole of America loves heroes and hopes like Michael Hand to be accepted into the TPs. The TPs love them having this hope because it makes them useable as pieces in their games.
Aussie Frank thought his crowning moment (to cut it as a court card) would come after he met US President Jimmy Carter. Michael Hand must have had some love for Nugan, because he arranged the informal presidential meeting knowing how important it was to Frank. (I'd like to suggest a photo of Frank together with Jimmy Carter to do what you had intended to do with a watch.)
But Frank didn't get crowned as a king in the TPs. He didn't even get knighted as a Jack. That's tragic, because even Mongrel Houghton got to be a court card - probably a queen!
Nor did another NH insider get that acceptance. John Owens was a Brit with the same hope towards being accepted as Frank had. "Sorry, fellow-TPs," the Admiral must have said. "We can never accept them, but let's play along with these aces for what they can do for us". Perhaps like Hand towards Nugan they even feigned love for an ace, but it was conditional love.
What Yates and the fellow-TPs wanted was a status in work after retirement in keeping with having been US generals and admirals of the fleet. They hoped so much for this that they were prepared to lie, even to their wives and themselves, in turning a blind eye to NH's illegal practices.
The October 1979 Sydney Conference tapes starkly expose the truth of their involvement in contrast to how they justified themselves to investigators.
The crown these TPs sought was to be trade development courtiers (international deal brokers) to the nations in which they had gained influence through being US top brass representatives. I think T will relate with this choice of motive to explain their foolishness in getting involved with NH.
Their en-mass involvement was what gave NH such phenomenal, speedy spread across all Asia/Pacific, extending to Saudi Arabia, the US and Europe.
In the same way as a CIA code-member, the TPs honored the code that the good of the brotherhood comes first, even if it means lying under oath in a court of the land. That's how they allowed themselves to flout other nation's laws against foreign banks taking deposits and sending the money overseas.
DC audiences, outraged that not a single NH person went to jail for their crimes, will be interested in where they all are today. We can't know the answer but we can show what they hoped.
Frank lived and died with this hope. Almost all the others have since died too. Their hope was in being acknowledged as important members of the highest influential club.Certainly we can depict the last of the TPs ruminating over this hope while holding the highest office in the US veteran generals club, whatever it's called. Perhaps we can show his hope in the afterlife was to hold high office in the most influential club of all.
I don't think the ordinary ex-serviceman now in his last years in a caravan park has this same hope. Tragedy has a cleansing against being motivated by want of money and influence.
Frank's redemptive act to get himself into the kingdom club was to accept the assassination arranged for him. True patriots prefer being shot and hate being hanged - Nazi Germany's top hero Field Marshall Rommel's forced suicide, for example.
Vain, narcistic, romantic Frank really longed to have this kind of legacy, which makes the way we do remember him such a tragedy for him.
The assassination was noble and redemptive in his mind because it saved others that he loved from whatever the assassins were threatening. This fits with the idea that the rifle was wiped clean of fingerprints by the occupants of the car that he met in his car in Lithgow.
Viewers will see Colby meet a similar fate when the assassins pressure him to take his last canoe trip - seen in the film's closing footage about "where are they now".
In the gentlemen lodges of old, this kind of motivation is called falling on your sword. Jap audiences love this sort of thing.
Do Nugan, Hand, Houghton, Yates and the other TPs get to join a kingdom of heaven club? That's the question I hope we can get the audience wondering. It’s a question that must concern anyone who attempts to get there by being a hero, particularly an "all-American" one.
Aussies aren’t so easily hooked on such questions, unless it’s done with humor - the other face of tragedy according to Shakespeare.
J, you and I experienced being in the real kingdom club – more like a creation club. It operates right here and now as you and I read this. You'll know this by the hairs that rise on the back of your neck.
I remember a similar experience when in "Never-ending Story" the book said to the main character, a boy (the one who rode on a dragon with a hush puppy’s head): "The reason the kingdom is falling apart is because you’ve stopped imagining".
I believe in the kingdom that our imaginations create together - you, me and whoever else comes into this project. That's the keenness that we look for in ourselves and others (and the reason I go to Tuesday's small organic group, not the organized Sunday big group they call church).
Love is more powerful than hope in wanting to be seen as a hero and in faith any club or organization.
It's the same with us. There is tranquility, spontaneity and fraternity when in our meetings we rise above all the books, printouts and electronic documentation – the docs and databases that would hold us down.
Just like electronic docs are so freeing compared to paper, even more so is internalizing what’s in documents. We internalize in order to be freed to interact imaginatively. Imagination needs us to rise above cognitive thoughts, especially thoughts of expectations of each other.
Likewise with this website, let's use it to assimilate the facts, so the plot forms in us spontaneously.
All these words ending in "ity" can remind us about what elevates us when we decide to operate in love, which is in trust. I-T-Y = "I trust you".
Looking for trust is my driving emotion. Because of a past where money pulled me down, I prefer not to be paid. Instead I'd like to share in the added value that will surely come from preparing and meeting the ITY way.
Your acts of kindness like sending books to people you care about, J. Things like that are more important to me. I drink rough wine because that's all I have money for, but its silly for me to deny the good wine that comes via T as he encourages you and I to keep on meeting on Nugan Hand.
J, I'd like to tell G about the heights our meeting reached yesterday, in general terms of course. He and I always operate like that whenever we meet and he'll be so pleased that by his introduction we are now doing it too.
Please re-read the above to see which of the whiteboard points still need incorporating, which we can edit into this draft and yours at our next meeting. Like how an Owens insider or a Kwitny-like investigative journalist could fit the “policeman” review/commentator role you mentioned.
Cheers,
AC