Loyalty

      My favorite work of fiction is Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny.  It is, without a doubt, the great novel of the United States Navy and a contender for the title of “great American novel.”  It won the Pulitzer Prize and was subsequently made into a Broadway play (The Caine Mutiny Court Martial) and a seven Academy Award nominated feature film.  You can find a detailed summary of the novel here: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Caine_Mutiny).

      The book tells the story of the coming of age of Willie Kieth during his service as a junior officer onboard U.S.S. Caine, a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific during the Second World War.  Willie’s most important experience during his time in the Caine is his service under the martinet and apparently cowardly commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Queeg, culminating in the captain’s unprecedented relief during the crisis of a typhoon at sea by his executive officer, Lieutenant Stephen Maryk.  Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, a naval aviator and lawyer in civilian life defends and secures an acquittal of Maryk at his court-martial.

In the scene below, a drunk Greenwald walks in on a party at which the Caine’s officers are celebrating Maryk’s acquittal.  Greenwald proceeds to dress down the officers because he, himself, feels guilt at destroying Queeg at the trial to save Maryk.

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WILLIE

But no matter what – Captain Queeg endangered the ship and the lives of the men.

GREENWALD

Queeg didn’t endanger anybody’s life!  You did!  All of you!  You’re a fine bunch of officers! … I left out one detail in the court-martial.  It wouldn’t have helped the case anyway.

Tell me, Steve – didn’t Queeg, with nerves shot to pieces, come into the wardroom at Kwajalein – and ask for help?

MARYK

Yes, he did.

GREENWALD (bitingly)

But you all didn’t approve of his conduct as an officer … He wasn’t Admiral Halsey – so you didn’t think he was worthy of your understanding – or loyalty.  You turned your backs on him …

(to Maryk) Steve!  Let me ask you a question – you’re an honest man … If you and the others had given Queeg the loyalty that he needed – instead of ragging him, making up songs about him and figuring him out a paranoid – do you think the whole issue would have come up in the typhoon? … I’m asking you – do you think it would have been necessary to take over for him?

Willie and the other officers look at Maryk tensely, awaiting his answer.

MARYK (slowly to Greenwald)

It probably wouldn’t have been necessary.

WILLIE (impressed)

Then we’re really guilty …

GREENWALD

Ah – you’re learning, Willie!  You’re learning that command is – indivisible.  You don’t work with a Captain because you like the way he parts his hair!  You work with him because he’s got the job! -- (pounding the table) – or you’re no good.[1]

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      This passage calls to mind the current feeding frenzy that is growing around President Biden because of the opinion that his age and alleged feebleness renders him as unfit for a second term.  Of course, Biden is no Queeg but the consequences of the growing disloyalty of his party and the fear advanced by the punditocracy and media that he will bring about the victory of Donald Trump have the potential to make this outcome much more likely.

       Just as the officers of the Caine, by obsessing over Queeg’s shortcomings, forgot that their job was to rally round him and help him fight the Pacific War so too are those who see Trump as an existential threat to our democracy forgetting that their job is to rally round President Biden to help him stop him.  Only if we are united around our President with a strong, unified message that our democracy is worth saving can we stop Trump. 

 

        [1] Stanley Roberts with Michael Blankfort, The Caine Mutiny.  Screenplay based upon a novel by Herman Wouk, 1953, 302-303.

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