October 2023 – education and deconstruction.com

The Longest Race

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The Book of the Week is “The Longest Race, Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team” by Kara Goucher with Mary Pilon, published in 2023.

Born in 1978, the author grew up in New Jersey and the Duluth, Minnesota area. Goucher became a professional runner. Like many of her fellow athletes, the author– who experienced an early childhood trauma– found at a young age that competing in footraces is cathartic.

Goucher focused on her training and reaching the finish-line first, rather than getting all worked up about the numerous stressful situations she endured in everyday living. However, she rationalized away some of the wrongs committed against her, because speaking out against them would ruin her career, her marriage, her friendships, etc.

In the United States, the way runners go professional is to convince a corporate, non-governmental sponsor to pay them to race. Goucher and her husband both signed contracts with Nike, the monster-sized corporation best known for making athletic shoes. The company provided her and her fellow runners in her working group with the best, cutting-edge scientifically and technologically advanced resources for winning races.

However, the Gouchers’ status with Nike was as independent contractors, so they had less legal recourse than that of employees with regard to any illegal goings-on in their field of work. Their coach and immediate boss was the celebrity runner Alberto Salazar. In the single-digit 2000’s, he led the “Oregon Project” which was an attempt to help Americans win races again around the world; their victories had been woefully plummeting for years.

Salazar did boost Kara’s confidence and helped her perform better than she thought she could. But, his behavior and many of his training practices were inappropriate and illegal. He and his colleagues (an alleged psychotherapist and medical doctor) wielded a lot of power over the Gouchers, who owed their careers to their sponsor. Salazar’s underlings hewed to his training methods through fear and force. “He [Salazar] got testy when called out for having a third drink. I could only guess how he would react to being called out about sexual harassment.”

As a female, Kara had to deal with Nike’s double standard of suspending her pay when she ran an insufficient number of races in a specified time period pursuant to her contract. Male runners were punished this way when they got caught in doping scandals or had injuries. She was subject to those same conditions, but she couldn’t race because she was pregnant. In connection with exploring her career options, Kara wrote, “… I found myself again and again in rooms of male executives explaining women’s running to me. There seemed to be more interest in how I would look on a poster than in how the sport could evolve.”

Fighting “City Hall” in so many different areas of life is difficult. Anyone who attempted to do so in professional running in the single-digit 2000’s would have to deal with Nike. It held a near-monopoly with overwhelming power and influence over regulators. Whistleblowers would suffer doxing and death threats.

BUT, it is an age-old truism that when more and more courageous people come forward with firsthand information about wrongdoing by an institution or a particularly powerful individual– the less the harm that will be done in the future because the collective mood of the community will shift against the wrongdoer. Eventually.

Read the book to learn lots of additional details of the Gouchers’ experiences in their professional running careers– their trials, tribulations and triumphs.

When the Media Love A Romance – BONUS POST

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Here’s a little ditty that explains why Taylor Swift is still a “thing.”

Sung to the tune of “When A Man Loves A Woman” with apologies to Percy Sledge.

WHEN THE MEDIA LOVE A ROMANCE

When the media love a romance
Taylor Swift must stay on viewers’ minds,
and nothing else.
The media THANK the Lord
for the easy money they’ve found.
They report on triVIA when they see it.
She can do no wrong.
Turn their backs on wars-trials-elections.
They award her a CROWN.

When the media love a romance,
she spends her last PR dime
trying to hog the attention she needs.
The media CLING to their comforts
and stay in the tabloid lane,
but that’s NOT how it ought to be.

Well, American media LOVE a romance.
And they do everything they can
trying to promote the NFL.
Lonely, sad viewers eat it up.

When the media love a romance
deep down in their soul,
they want to distract from misery.
Always playing viewers for fools,
it’s a highest-bidder show.
Hard news is impossible to see.

When the media love a romance
She can do no wrong.
Unless more money brings another queen.
Yes, when the media love a romance…

We Were the Future

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The Book of the Week is “We Were the Future, A Memoir of the Kibbutz” by Yael Neeman, published in 2016. Readers might argue that the author and her cohorts were raised in a cult– brainwashed from birth. The kibbutz movement strove for 100% socialism– the economic system in which all the people (not the State) collectively owned everything; and collectively governed themselves.

In 1947, the total population of kibbutzim as a proportion of Israel’s (Jewish) population reached a high of 7%. It waned after Israel achieved sovereignty in 1948. The first half of the 1950’s saw global historical events (the trials of: Prague [1952], the Doctors in the U.S.S.R. and the Rosenbergs in the U.S. [both 1953]) that were jarring to Jews. The kibbutz movement split over ideological disagreements, especially after Stalin died in 1953 and his crimes were revealed in 1956. Adults around the the author held zero discussions about this recent history.

Neeman was born in 1960 in Kibbutz Yehiam (founded in 1946) in Western Galilee near the border with Lebanon. Her kibbutz was a branch of Hashomer Hatzair (meaning “Young Guard”), the movement’s umbrella organization that began in 1913. Their motto was, “For Zionism, Socialism and Brotherhood Amongst Nations.” Her children’s group consisted of eight boys and eight girls, who did everything together, every day. She was raised among them by women who collectively took care of the kibbutz’s children grouped by age; she visited with her biological parents, but didn’t live with them in the same building.

The lifestyle encompassed a number of major ideas:

“Family and education in the rest of the industrial world were considered bourgeois institutions.”
“Everyone knew after all, that work [on the kibbutz] was more important than school, more important than anything.”
Egalitarianism for all the people was key– all decisions were made by committee.

Contradictorily:

There was a hierarchical division of labor– upper and lower. The former consisted of high-level positions in the fields and factories; held by the founders of the kibbutz, the (mostly Hungarian) First of May group. The latter consisted of low-skilled, dead-end jobs such as peeling potatoes.
The kibbutz undertook a number of enterprises through the years, including a banana “plantation” which was the most “profitable.” [these words with nuanced meanings were translated from Hebrew, but even so, these were capitalist endeavors.]

Kids whose behavior was troublesome were exiled from the kibbutz, and sent to a “special institution.” At twelve years old, all the conforming kids began to attend what amounted to boarding school, located off the kibbutz campus. They had previously received an eclectic education of hands-on instruction on a myriad of topics. Beginning in adolescence, they were allowed to shape their own education, or lack thereof.

Currently, analogous experiments are underway in American education in which adolescents are placed in front of computer screens with no teachers. Educrats and profiteers expect the software to teach them. At that age, most kids have neither the judgment nor the discipline to acquire the knowledge and skills required for becoming mature, responsible adults who can financially support themselves.

Kibbutzniks were afforded too much freedom and not enough guidance and supervision within their tiny, limited community in their early childhood. So they had a rude awakening when they were permitted (on rare occasions) to see how other kids in the rest of the world lived.

One other interesting factoid: Neeman wrote, “In our biological home, we [she and her three siblings] were already allowed to smoke on Purim when we were in the first grade.”

Read the book to learn about a boatload of other ways Neeman’s upbringing was extremely unconventional due to her fledgling homeland’s exceptionalism.

Propaganda – BONUS POST

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Here’s a parody about the current worldwide situation– especially relevant in wartime.

PROPAGANDA

sung to the tune of “Pop Muzik” with apologies to M (the band) and Robin Scott.

Prop-prop-prop propaganda
Prop-prop-prop propaganda

Low down.

Prop-prop-prop propaganda
Prop-prop-prop propaganda

Radio, video
Buzz with every legal case.
Go living in a courtroom.
Outrage in the prez race.
Celebrities with heartache.
Lies, smears, photos fake.
Boss some, buy some–
attention whores can’t stay mum.

Putting out propaganda
Putting out propaganda

Poll-you, roll-you nonstop.
I can’t veriFY it.
Pop goes the idiot box.
It’s a Kool-Aid diet.

Poll-you, roll-you nonstop
Infiltrated.
Way overrated.

New York Times, CNN, WaPo, Fox slander.
Everybody fooled by propagander.

Putting out propaganda
Putting out propaganda

Prop-prop-prop propaganda
Prop-prop-prop propaganda

Reveling in the headlines.
Shuffle all the partisans.
Spin me a cover-up.
Aren’t they artisans?
Wanna be a war monger–
arguments ARE longer.
Blah blah drivel blather.
Get viewers in a lather.

Putting out propaganda
Putting out propaganda

Poll-you, roll-you nonstop
Lying like a rug.
Pop goes the idiot box.
Aiding the thugs.

Poll-you, roll-you nonstop
Social contagion.
Pop goes the idiot box.
Wily stagin’.

Insidious.

You buy what they’re sayin’.

Putting out propaganda
Putting out propaganda

Prop-prop-prop propaganda
Prop-prop-prop propaganda

Swaying the world.
Gullible you are.
At the speed of light.
Hear it in the car.
It can give you a fright.

cog cog cog cog cog cog cog cog cog
cog cog cog cog cog cog
cog cog cog cog cog cog cog cog cog
cog cog cog cog cog cog

Tabloids in the supermarket.
Read it in the magazines.
Messages in movies.
Your face in your phone again.
You get so, EFfing mad
at hypocrites WE’VE had.
Sunlight on the liars.
Deniers, war and fires.

Putting out propaganda
Putting out propaganda

Poll-you, roll-you nonstop
Hard to know WHAT’S fake.
Pop goes the idiot box.
When everyone’s on-the-take.
Poll-you, roll-you nonstop
Hard to know WHAT’S fake.
Pop goes the idiot box.

Insidious.

New York Times, CNN, WaPo, Fox slander.
Everybody fooled by propagander.

Putting out propaganda
Putting out propaganda

Prop-prop-prop propaganda
Prop-prop-prop propaganda

Low down.

Don’t listen!!!

Putting out propaganda
Putting out propaganda…

Shanghai Acrobat

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The Book of the Week is “Shanghai Acrobat, The True Story of Courage and Perseverance from Revolutionary China” by Jingjing Xue, translated by Bo Ai, published in 2021.

Born in 1947 in Zhejiang Province in China, the author was sent to live at an orphanage when he was two years old. He never did find out exactly why, as his biological parents were alive. Anyway, the Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe recruited him when he was nine years old. Other members of the group were as old as fourteen. He happened to possess the right temperament to endure its rigorous training (that included corporal punishment) and get good at balancing on his hands in various precarious positions.

There were daily academic lessons, too, and a lot of political ideology thrown in. The instructors constantly emphasized the teachings of Mao Tse Tung, and bragged about what a prosperous, wonderful country they lived in. Mao took the calculated risk of allowing performers and athletes to travel outside China where they might learn about other peoples’ lifestyles and defect– so that he could show off his own people’s greatness.

By the late 1950’s, the author was traveling and performing with the Troupe. In 1960, they went to cities controlled by the Soviets, and ironically, to African countries (such as Sudan, Ethiopia, Guinea and Morocco) whose native peoples were starting to throw off their colonialist yokes.

In the early 1960s, owing a ginormous monetary debt to the Soviets and not wanting to pay it, China decided the Soviets were wrong to stomp on the memory of the great leader Stalin (who had died in 1953 and whose crimes were revealed a few years later); Mao theatrically broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviets.

In 1967, Mao capriciously imposed his new twisted logic (a different set of ideas from that of his previous campaign)– the belief that the lowest economic class (the workers, the peasant-tenants) needed to fight the higher economic classes (the bosses and landlords)– because capitalistic activities were anathema. There were a few occasions in which the author was yelled at for saying the wrong things to some non-Chinese people, even though he thought his comments would jive with Mao’s teachings.

As part of the new campaign (called the Cultural Revolution, begun in 1965) to rid China of the dissidents of the moment– performing acrobatics was out of fashion. The radicals loyal to Mao policed the Troupe, finally disbanded it, and psychologically and physically tortured the director in public self-criticism meetings. The author’s acrobatic career was (temporarily, though he didn’t know it at the time) over. He was sent to the countryside for “reeducation.”

With 20/20 hindsight, the author wrote, “To those of us who had been through the Cultural Revolution, the Watergate political scandal was nothing. We couldn’t understand how the American people could force Nixon to resign for ‘peanuts.’ ” It is unclear what kind of propaganda the author and his contemporaries were fed to come to that conclusion.

For, they might have known nothing of Nixon’s real war crimes. But even if Nixon had been innocent of war crimes, he and his underlings still committed election crimes, and worst of all, violated his numerous enemies’ civil rights– evil actions that were considered against the law in the United States. The last fifty years have seen a bit more moderation in China’s political leadership. And radicalism in the United States.

Human nature is such that there has been some convergence (!) between China’s and the United States’ ideologies in:

surveillance of citizens
incarceration of citizens
economics
education, and
other areas of life.

It’s all in the propaganda fed to the people.

Read the book to learn much more about the author’s life and times, and his fate.

Counsel to the President

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“On the other hand, liberals felt it was intolerable to watch the First Amendment freedoms, the most precious ones bestowed upon us by the Founding Fathers, trampled by know-nothings masquerading as patriots.”

-Clark Clifford, writing of the (Joe) McCarthy Era

The Book of the Week is “Counsel to the President, A Memoir” by Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke, published in 1991. This volume was ginormous because the author wrote of the minutiae of interactions of the alpha males who ran the federal government from the 1940’s through the 1980’s.

Born in December 1906 in the St. Louis area, Clifford enjoyed a career in law and politics. In his generation, boys read the “Horatio Alger” book series, the rags-to-riches fairy tales of males who came by their success through hard work and ethical behavior. A bygone era.

In September 1948, Ronald Reagan endorsed Harry Truman for president. In those days, on the Sunday before election day on Tuesday, there was no campaigning. The candidates did not work, else American voters would complain it was the Christian Sabbath. Monday night, the candidates delivered their last radio addresses. On Tuesday, the author went to the home of a friend who had a television, to watch the election returns. Commentators displayed the returns on chalkboards. Battleground states in the 1948 race included Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and California.

In 1949, Truman introduced the Fair Deal initiative, which strove to honor Americans’ human rights, expand the economy and maintain world peace. Also, a Public Affairs department junior-staffer (who risked his career by not “staying in his lane”) pushed for Point Four, despite backlash from the State Department.

Influential speechwriters of the president inserted Point Four (which sought to aid poor nations through modernization) in his inaugural speech. Even so, because it was placed under the auspices of the State Department (which thought of itself as responsible for diplomacy, not charity), the foreign policy initiative went nowhere for more than a year. The speech included three other major themes: the United States’ involvement in the beginnings of the United Nations, Marshall Plan, and NATO.

Through an engaging anecdote, Clifford described the major role that social-drinking played in American society in the 1950’s. Baptist U.S. senator Bob Kerr (D.-OK.), a teetotaler, invited a group of political workers to a dinner party at his home. He duly warned them that he would not be serving alcohol.

A fellow Democrat, Stuart Symington, called all the guests privately, and invited them for pre-dinner drinks at his home. On the appointed evening, all of the guests arrived at the Kerrs’ home, drunk. A good time was still had by all. Clifford’s account strained credibility, however, as he claimed Kerr didn’t detect that his guests had been drinking.

Anyway, the McCarthy Era ended this way:

In 1953, U.S. senator Joe McCarthy (R.-WI) and his evil sidekick Roy Cohn were called out publicly for attempting to pull strings for Cohn’s draft-dodger friend, who had been drafted.
In retaliation, McCarthy used HUAC to brand a certain obscure Army member, a Commie. In March 1954, he pressed an Army general to provide more information on the accused. The general refused.
McCarthy was so incensed, he called for public hearings, to hash out his issues with the Army. Big error.
LBJ, Senate Minority Leader said the hearings should be televised, and so they were, beginning in April 1954. As is well known, McCarthy was called out for having no decency left.

Yet, upon getting elected to public office, LBJ never did divest himself of his significant interests in radio and TV stations in Austin, TX. Unlike profiteering with its attendant political conflicts of interest, one aspect of American culture that is changing significantly, is the increasing tolerance for people of different sexual orientations.

Johnson aide Walter Jenkins, a devout Catholic, was married and had six children. In October 1964, two undercover officers arrested Jenkins, whom they caught committing a homosexual act (which was illegal!) in the old YMCA building near the White House. The incident was leaked to the press. The Republican National Committee deemed Jenkins a threat to National Security. Jenkins was “cancelled.”

Moving on. When he ran for president in 1976, Jimmy Carter made a promise he could not possibly keep: to always be honest with Americans. He also implied that his administration would be benevolent and forthright. Of course, the voting public paid attention, because they wanted so badly to believe Carter was telling the truth– after the McCarthy Era, Vietnam and Watergate. The joke,

Q: What’s the difference between an honest politician and a UFO?

A: People have seen a UFO

is funny because it rings true.

The author then described a key way presidents can be perceived as effective (whether they’re honest is another story):

“They [a president] must summon the nation to share their vision and values, and by their priorities, symbolize their definition of what they want the nation to be.”

Read the book to learn about Clifford’s career, including how and why he flip-flopped on Vietnam in the second half of the 1960’s, and much more on the major historical events with which he and his political contemporaries had to contend.