December 2024 – education and deconstruction.com

Merkel’s Law

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “Merkel’s Law, Widsom From the Woman Who Led the Free World” by Melissa Eddy, published in 2024.

This short, sloppily edited, chronologically disorganized, redundant volume described the highlights of the decades-long (beginning at the dawn of the 1990’s) political career of Angela Merkel in Germany.

As much as the capitalist Americans scream “socialist!” at many aspects of the culture of Europeans, the latter are superior in gender equality! In approximately the last fifty years, several females have served as world leaders; Angela Merkel, Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir among them. But the United States has yet to elect a female president.

Interestingly, East Germany had a bigger selection of daycare centers than did West Germany at the time of this book’s writing. This meant a larger percentage of eastern German women (on whom the burden still largely falls to raise children and do housework) than otherwise, could have a career if they chose. It is still a myth that women can have it all, even in industrialized countries.

Additionally, the media pestered Merkel about various issues they wouldn’t dare have raised if she had been a male. They criticized her fashion choices. They treated her public appearances as a beauty contest. But Merkel did have a unique perspective, having grown up in East Germany under the yoke of Communism. She witnessed poor talent deployment under the crushingly oppressive system. Everyone was guaranteed a job, but there was wasted talent galore.

One behavior Merkel exhibited, for which a few male politicians have become known, was delaying making decisions until the last possible moment. There might have been various time-sensitive factors at work when she finally announced she was going to run for a fourth term as chancellor of Germany, that would begin in 2017. One factor included waiting to see whether American voters elected Donald Trump for president in 2016. Another was the possible influence outgoing American president Barack Obama had on her to run again.

On the other hand, making people wait is a control-issue. There is power in keeping information to oneself. The media has to monitor when an announcement is going to be made, and keeping viewers in suspense generates ratings.

Two major crises Merkel faced during her chancellorship, for which her reactions were lambasted– consisted of the overwhelming number of Syrian refugees coming into Germany beginning in the 2010’s, and the oversight of energy sources for Germany. Regarding the latter, Merkel chose to purchase more natural gas and stopped the use of nuclear energy after Japan became a cancer cluster from radiation. Japan suffered a meltdown of its nuclear plants from an earthquake and tsunami in spring 2011.

Many Germans thought Merkel sold her soul to the Russians on the energy front. However, all world leaders must make wrenching decisions for their nations in connection with goods and services (especially energy!), environmental friendliness (or not), economics, and diplomatic relations, because all kinds of issues are all interrelated and cannot be divorced from one another.

Nevertheless, the decisions of elected public servants tend to be selfish, as they always have their eye on reelection or their legacy. In a democratic country, the one exception is when a dictatorial leader’s decisions are all selfish– if they are in their last term due to term limits and they don’t care about their legacy.

Read the book to learn about Merkel’s career trials and tribulations, her strengths and weaknesses, and her legacy.

Kissinger

The Book of the Week is “Kissinger, A Biography” by Walter Isaacson, published in 2005.

Kissinger was born in May 1923 in an eastern suburb of Nuremberg. His ancestors came from Bavaria. When he was in his teens, his family arrived in America. Toward the end of WWII, Kissinger served in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence division, engaging in diplomacy to de-Nazify a whole region of suburbs in Germany.

In 1951, Kissinger recruited tens of foreign-nationals and licensed-professionals for the Harvard International Seminar– a summer multi-disciplinary program featuring lectures and field trips that was later revealed to be a front for the CIA. Kissinger amassed a vast social network from the program. He had superior social-climbing skills, appealing to his betters (who were just as egotistical as he was) with flattery, but fiercely competing with colleagues of status equal to his own.

Kissinger always argued that injustice and order (a benign dictator) was preferable to justice and disorder (a revolutionary environment or anarchy) in a nation. He felt the purpose of a summit wasn’t to get a monstrously brutal leader to change his ways, but rather, to: reassure allies, get on the good side of neutral nations and show the world one’s own civility. Yet he was always listening to all sides in a debate in order to get them to agree with him.

Kissinger achieved full tenure at Harvard University in 1962. Less than a decade later, he served as a very close aide to president Richard Nixon. Just as parties are thrown to annoy those who aren’t invited, at the dawn of the 1970’s, the Nixon White House consisted of socially manipulative cliques who kept one another out of the loop of their own furtive meetings, memos and covert operations. The Nixon camp loved secrecy and tried to stop information from leaking to the press with their “plumbers.”

The president ordered that a total of seventeen secret FBI wiretaps be placed on the home telephones of high-level employees of his administration for as long as nearly two years for some, beginning in 1969. In 1973, when the media exposed this spying operation, Nixon claimed he alone authorized it. But Kissinger– a drama queen– had incited the emotional environment that led Nixon and his subordinates to commit the crimes they did.

In 1971, Kissinger participated in clandestine meetings with the Chinese government to invite trade with the United States, and change China’s mind on its claim on Taiwan. The U.S. was reducing its military presence in Vietnam, and saw that the Chinese and Soviets weren’t getting along. Thus, extending an olive branch to China was a supposedly geopolitically brilliant move on Nixon’s part.

If America got friendly with the Chinese (contradicting Nixon’s previously vicious anti-Communist stance), and negotiated arms reductions with the Soviets– America would stave off nuclear war with them, further weaken the alliance between China and the U.S.S.R., and get an economic boost.

China’s officials began the talks by requesting that the Americans tell them the issues thought to be deal-breakers. This saved a lot of time, as the Chinese considered Taiwan a minor issue and weren’t going to budge on it. They both secretly used Pakistan as an intermediate messenger. As a result, the Soviets got friendly with India. That turned into a cluster screw-up.

Kissinger could dish it out but he couldn’t take it. He became infuriated when Nixon’s aide, John Ehrlichman told him that a spy ring had been stealing documents from his office and leaking them to the press. Kissinger’s self-delusion was most cringeworthy on Vietnam. He rationalized the war’s aims, attempting to persuade ordinary Americans that the decade-long colossal human waste wasn’t the result of several alpha males’ stubborn insistence on America’s involvement (plus in Cambodia and Laos). In other words, Kissinger couldn’t admit that at least hundreds of thousands of people died for nothing.

One Bertrand Russell quote in connection therewith bears repeating:

“There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.”

There is nothing new under the sun. The media flip-flopped insofar as their stories on Kissinger brought them ratings and sold newspapers. In mid-October 1972, less than a month before Nixon’s reelection day, the New York Times and Newsweek celebrated Kissinger as he claimed to have achieved agreement on a peace treaty with North Vietnam from his confidential peace talks in Paris. He himself reveled in the glory of saving the world.

In December 1972, the seasoned propagandists turned around and labeled Kissinger a war criminal (which they should have been doing all along!) after he was found to have completely excluded the South Vietnamese leader from the agreement-announcement. Kissinger pretended to be outraged that Nguyen Van Thieu refused to sign the treaty. But the treaty’s wording hadn’t said what Van Thieu had agreed to.

Kissinger used the emotionally-charged, last-minute discord as an excuse to urge Nixon to order the resumption of America’s bombing of the North Vietnam capital Hanoi, and Nixon did. More than a thousand additional U.S. servicemen and civilians lost to history, died needlessly. Not unbelievably, given the fallibility and gullibility of human beings, in autumn 1973, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Peace prize.

In sum, Henry Kissinger achieved name-recognition in numerous communities of American life, in the following order: academia, presidential politics, foreign affairs, Hollywood, big business, and jet-set society.

As an aside, Donald Trump achieved name-recognition in the following, in the following order: big business (as a matter of inheritance), jet-set society, Hollywood, and then presidential politics. He hasn’t been all that competent in foreign affairs and academia, though.

Additionally, Trump bears many similarities to Nixon. Trump:

has a sidekick in Elon Musk as Nixon had a sidekick in Kissinger.
alternates between deep insecurities and megalomania.
appoints largely white alpha males in the White House (with a few white females thrown in).
was directly or indirectly responsible for sending to jail– almost every legally-troubled individual with whom he associated.
has a major goal of wreaking vengeance on his political enemies, using hush money when necessary.
claims attorney-client relationship and executive-privilege to weasel out of legal trouble.
projects the image of the outsider, and excessively exhibited mean-of-spirit, obnoxious behavior, but adjusted his image to become somewhat like the “new” Nixon in order to make a comeback.

It seems that Trump’s inauguration is going to be like the 1945 Yalta and 2024 Davos conferences. On steroids. Here’s a little song about the situation.

INAUGURATION

sung to the tune of “Revolution” with apologies to the members of The Beatles, and their estates, and whomever else the rights may concern.

Trump’s gonna have an in-au-gu-RA-tion,
well, you know,
in 2017 he insulted the world.

It’s a see-and-be-seen cel-e-BRA-tion,
well, you know,
his frat boys will rule the WO-ORLD.

And if he goes through with DE-portations,
he’d have to kick his own family OUT.

You know he used to be,
all-fight, all-fight, all fight.

He says he’s got resolutions,
well, you know,
it’s called Project 2025.

Billionaires make contributions,
well, you know,
they’re keeping Trump’s image a-LIVE.

Big tech and media have money for people
who SPREAD around hate.
For a grown-up Vance,
we’ll just have to WAIT.

And you know he used to be,
all-fight, all-fight, all-fight.

Trump gets to interpret the Consti-TU-tion,
well, you know,
he owns most of the Supreme-COURT.

It WAS a respected insti-TU-tion,
well, you know,
He’ll pardon THEM as a last resort.

He’s getting friendlier with the world’s tyrants NOW.
Don’t worry,
he’s losing his mind, anyHOW.

And you know he used to be,
all-fight, all fight, all fight,
all-fight, all fight, all fight,
all-fight, all fight, all fight,
all-fight, all FIGHT!

Anyway, read the book to learn much, much more about how Kissinger prolonged his name in history due to his self-absorbed attention whoredom; about how his dishonesty shaped America’s never-ending, extremely complex political, ideological, cultural and economic controversies over its “detente” versus “might-makes right” mentality with regard to the Soviet Union, Soviet Jewry, Israel, global trade, human rights, weapons stocks, neocons (the description of which was murky), the Portugal/Angola mess, etc.

Unleashed

The Book of the Week is “Unleashed” by Boris Johnson, published in 2024. This large volume was a bragfest, but it also explained the author’s opinions and his government’s policies for laypeople.

Johnson was born in 1964. “Disaster” was his favorite word. As London’s mayor starting in May 2008, he began implementing some of the same crime-fighting and environmental initiatives taken by former New York City mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.

Beginning in June 2016, after 52% of the UK’s 17.4 million population voted in favor of Brexit, heated discussions were had by everyone, including Lord Chief Justice, Master of the Rolls, and President of the Queen’s Bench Division. In 2019, Johnson was elected UK prime minister, and he became the nation’s biggest Brexit booster. The nation’s moneyed classes, and those who were pro-immigrant, wanted to remain in the EU.

The EU leadership in Brussels controlled many aspects of the economies of member-countries because it set the terms and conditions on trade unions, customs fees, currencies, factories, distribution of goods, national-border policies, etc. Johnson felt the UK was hamstrung by all the petty rules. He claimed that Canada was able to export its goods to EU’s markets absent the regulations to which the UK was subject.

In April 2020, when the prime minister ended up in the intensive care unit with a bad case of COVID, “Outside in the corridors of the hospital, though I never saw them, were representatives of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, despatched by Donald Trump to revive me with drugs not licensed or approved in the UK.”

The COVID pandemic in 2020 was a game-changer. Johnson contended that because the UK was no longer a member of the EU, certain forward-looking, skilled members of his administration were able to secure a vaccination program that was more widespread and implemented sooner than EU members’ programs. Harm done to the UK’s people and its economy was therefore significantly less than that done to comparable countries.

Nevertheless, the line graph of COVID deaths followed a largely similar pattern for each nation where COVID’s effects on the population was tracked– regardless of the actions leaders took. Sweden’s policies on quarantining were optional, while China’s were draconian, but both of their graphs showed two peaks during which the death toll went up and down during the course of the pandemic.

Another political issue shared by all major governments of the world, is immigration. Johnson heard how Australia supposedly deterred uninvited people fleeing their homelands, from arriving on its shores. Its federal immigration agency transported those people– to have their asylum claims processed to– not the nicest destination, to put it mildly, 4,500 miles to the island of Nauru. Perhaps the U.S. could look into such a policy, given that it too, is overwhelmed with asylum-seekers who have arrived on its soil illegally.

Read the book to learn much more about Johnson’s political life and times.

More Today Than Yesterday – BONUS POST

You American voters have actually elected grasping, calculating AI bureaucrats, who bring you Deep Fake News! Here’s a song about the situation.

MORE TODAY THAN YESTERDAY

sung to the tune of “More Today Than Yesterday” with apologies to The Spiral Staircase and to whomever else the rights may concern.

YOU do remember how in-your-face Trump was.

Ra-ally and press-conference obsessed, he was.

All we know is that he’s NOW-hiding from you.

And all his dreams came true.

He’s no-longer spending time with you.

Daily his PR team conveys, some-fluff to you.

With each day comes a fight for face-time, among his crew.

Every time he moves his lips, his mind starts to wander.

And if his VP’s dreams come true,

Vance’ll be spending time with you.

Oh, Trump’s absent more today than yesterday.

But not as much as tomorrow.

Trump’s absent more today than yesterday.

But darn it, not as much as tomorrow.

In-auguration time’s just a short way’s away.

Amendment 25 is needed now,

come what may.

Thank yourselves for democracy like ours,

that grows ever stronger.

Trump’s absence is a clue

that he can’t directly talk to you.

Oh, Trump’s absent more today than yesterday.

But not as much as tomorrow.

Trump’s absent more today than yesterday.

But darn it, not as much as tomorrow.

Trump’s every aide is power struggling,

egos pushing and shoving.

The end for him is humbling.

A new regime is coming.

Trump’s every aide is power struggling,

egos pushing and shoving.

The end for him is humbling.

A new regime is coming…

Butterfly

The Book of the Week is “Butterfly, From Refugee to Olympian– My Story of Rescue, Hope, and Triumph” by Yusra Mardini, published in 2018.

The author was born in March 1998 in a southern suburb of Damascus, Syria. Since her father was a swimming coach, she took up the sport with a passion.

In 2011, people expressed anti-government sentiments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in what became known as the Arab spring. During that year, Syria caught the bug. By summer 2012, armed soldiers and operators of heavy artillery and tanks, harassed protestors on the streets of the southern districts of Damascus.

By 2015, any Damascus residents who had yet to flee the violence, could die any day at any time from a fire, a bomb, shrapnel, a bullet, or a rocket-propelled grenade, aside from the more common ways life can end. Conscription into the Syrian military began at age eighteen, so early on, numerous teenage boys had already left for Lebanon, Turkey or European countries.

The author and her older sister finally decided to leave in 2015. Since they were from a middle-class family and they had been raised in a capitalist environment, they had resources that increased their likelihood of survival more than ever before in world history.

Western Union allowed them access to cash sent from their father (who had gotten a job in the country of Jordan). They had smartphones all during their journey. They and their traveling companions used the internet and its GPS feature to find hotels, eateries, train stations, and the precise dividing lines of countries’ borders. They heard cautionary tales that taught them what to do and what not to do, through not only face-to-face gossip, but also online information-sharing.

At one point, the evacuation process became like a game: “That night, we sit in Burger King [in Budapest] as the square grows dark, posting selfies on Instagram and chatting online with friends back home.”

Nevertheless, psychologists in the U.S. would probably diagnose the author with PTSD and survivor’s guilt, given what she wrote of how she behaved and what she was thinking. Her lifelong dream was to be an Olympian swimmer. But after resuming her athletic training, she felt helpless to solve the various life-and-death issues involving the war in Syria, and affect the fates of the flood of refugees in the world.

Read the book to learn numerous additional details of Mardini’s suspenseful story, and how she was able to make a difference, despite her doubts and individual powerlessness.