authoress – education and deconstruction.com

Chasing Hope

[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 “Chasing Hope, A Reporter’s Life” by Nicholas Kristof (not to be confused with Bill Kristol!), published in 2024.

In 1959 the author was born in a lower middle-class rural area in Oregon, where boys saw violence as an admirable trait to be used to used to achieve frontier justice. Although his neighborhood was rife with alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence and crime, Kristof grew up in a stable, intellectual, loving home environment. That coould be why, as a teenager, he chose to become a journalist who revealed the world’s ugliness– to try to reduce it.

Kristof witnessed martial law in Poland and China, and the nature of the heroin trade in Pakistan and Afghanistan. While in Congo (formerly Zaire) he heard firsthand about the atrocities and genocide in Rwanda. He wrote stories on the dictatorships and crushing oppression in North Korea, Venezuela, Turkmenistan and many other places.

After a few decades of reporting on human rights abuses, he took a break to run for office. Professionals told him to change his language, so that “gun control” became “gun safety” and “inequality” became “opportunity.” To be fair, he admitted that Portland had serious problems that were caused by Democrats because it was mostly Democrats who governed it.

But the bottom line for him was, “What matters is improving opportunities and quality of life, and that’s achieved not by waving fists and shouting slogans but by a painstaking process of following evidence, building coalitions and solving problems.”

Read the book to learn much more about Kristof’s life and global times.

Crossing Lines – BONUS POST

Here’s a little ditty on the current situation in the American government.

CROSSING LINES

sung to the tune of “Borderline” with apologies to Madonna and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Backroom deals are SHOWing criminality.
Trump didn’t want to be a prisoner so his sycophants set him free.
It’s his usual history.
It’s no mystery.
Both parties let us down.
Election year is done.
The bad guys have won.
THEY’RE back to fooling around.

They’re, just undermining our land.
They get away with all they can.
Trump’s sycophants set him free.

Crossing lines.
The justice system lost its mind.
Just like when Ford pardoned Nixon.
They are crossing lines.

Crossing lines.
The justice system lost its mind.
Just like when Ford pardoned Nixon.
They are crossing lines. Crossing lines.

Backroom deals are SHOWing criminality.
When someone’s power is so great,
they defy reality.
Both parties let us down.
THEY’RE fooling around.
The truth just can’t be found.

The hypocrisy’s so rife.
You can cut it with a knife.
[The original lyrics are so bad. That’s life.]

They’re, just undermining our land.
They get away with all they can.
Trump’s sycophants set him free.

Crossing lines.
The justice system lost its mind.
Just like when Ford pardoned Nixon.
They are crossing lines.

Crossing lines.
The justice system lost its mind.
Just like when Ford pardoned Nixon.
They are crossing lines. Crossing lines.

When Ford pardoned,
when Ford pardoned,
when Ford pardoned Nixon…

CRIMinality.
CRIMinal-government.

No punishments.

duh duh duh duh
duh duh duh duh

This Is What America Looks Like

The Book of the Week is “This Is What America Looks Like, My Journey From Refugee to Congresswoman” by Ilhan Omar, published in 2020.

Omar was born in the early 1980’s in Mogadishu, Somalia. When she was about ten years old, her mother passed away of malaria, so her aunt served as a surrogate parent.

In 1991, her family suffered many hardships when they fled their homeland’s anarchy. She eventually launched her political career in Minneapolis, beginning with volunteering for the Democratic party, and then working for a City Council candidate.

In October 2013, her boss was subjected to smearing: “That’s when we were blindsided by these blogs he had written when he was an adolescent about such subjects as his drug and pornography use, cutting himself, and making rockets with explosive chemicals. It was bad.” When she showed up at a caucus despite receiving a menacing warning that she shouldn’t, she herself suffered a concussion in violence against HER.

In summer 2019, Donald Trump held a Greenville, North Carolina rally at which Omar-haters chanted, “Send her back [to Somalia]!” Xenophobia, racism and misogyny– among other abominations of angry human beings– have waxed and waned in American history.

Luckily, thus far, courageous, influential anti-haters have risked their lives to counter those immature people. Unluckily, America has reached another point in its evolution whereby the people have elected a PRESIDENT who embodies a hybrid of dictatorial behaviors, that includes such hatred, plus demagoguery, and excessive litigation as a plaintiff.

Luckily, his brain function is in decline, so his public appearances are waning, as is his influence!

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about Omar’s life and political career.

The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon

The Book of the Week is “The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon, The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady” by Heath Hardage Lee, published in 2024.

The future first lady Pat Nixon was born in March 1912 in Nevada. She was orphaned as a teenager. She faced numerous other hardships, so she was forced to play well with others; making her a skilled diplomat. In the second half of 1959, when her husband Richard (“Dick”) was running for president, she got her own campaign in order to attract female voters. There were buttons, banners, songs, and speaking engagements at social events such as teas and gatherings at women’s clubs.

Pat usually refrained from publicly expressing her opinions on her husband’s political activities, but she felt most strongly about gender equality. When he was finally elected president in 1968, she campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, and urged Dick to nominate female U.S. Supreme Court justices when two vacancies arose.

However, he hid behind the sexist American Bar Association’s assessment that the whole list of female nominees was unqualified for one reason or another, when he had to finalize his choices.

During Dick’s time as president, both individually and with Dick, Pat traveled extensively internationally to maintain friendly relationships with America’s then-allies. She still kept her personal life as private as possible, but complained she felt underappreciated in her diplomatic role.

People offered to help her write a book about her world-peace making. Yet, in her mind, publicizing her political activities was akin to her usage as a prop to promote her husband. But– isn’t that what politics is– managing the image of the big boss?

Beginning in the summer of 1973, the media covered nothing but the Watergate investigation. The special counsel who prosecuted the bad actors in the Nixon administration judged that the president “had entered a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice.” This, pursuant to the “smoking gun” consisting of a conversation between Dick and his aide Bob Haldeman, recorded on tape in June 1972.

John Dean, the president’s former attorney, participated in the cover-up by urging the labeling of the break-in as a matter of “national security.” Therefore, the FBI and CIA shouldn’t interview two key witnesses in the case. When Dean was charged with crimes, he provided damning testimony saying that Nixon was aware of all the wrongdoing all along.

In May 1976, Woodward and Bernstein, the two investigative journalists who broke the Watergate stories, revealed the whole incident-crowded affair in a book. According to Heath Hardage Lee, some of its contents were tabloidy. The book made the claim that Pat became a drunk loner in the last several months of her husband’s presidency. The TV comedy-sketch show Saturday Night Live (“SNL”) portrayed her thusly, too. But Lee pointed out that Pat’s image had been conflated with that of Betty Ford.

Another reason why Pat was smeared in this way, might be that it was actually the president who had become the drunk loner when his crimes were coming to light. This assertion has been recounted in various primary sources that described the president’s behavior in the presence of Kissinger, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman.

It is likely that the SNL writers were reluctant to mock the former president, as they might still have been subject to lawsuits and political retaliation. Anyway, read the book to learn much more about the public life Pat chose to have, and her struggles in trying to stay private.

ENDNOTE: Speaking of privacy, lawsuits and political retaliation– along with the issues of free speech, exploitation and the public’s right to know about how much of what their government is doing– modern communications technologies have muddied the waters. Even so, Donald Trump’s extreme litigiousness is his legacy.

Trump can dish it but he can’t take it. That’s why he’s suing everyone all the time. It’s a way to trot out the “victim card” to elicit sympathy from his base, and harass anyone who displeases him. Here’s what he’s singing now.

I WANT TO FORCE YOUR HAND

sung to the tune of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” with apologies to members of the Beatles, their estates, and whomever else the rights may concern.

I SUE, to tell you something: You’re under my command.
When I, sue-over everything, I want to force your hand.
I want your criticism ba-anned.
For your excuses, I won’t stand.

You must, cave in to me.
I’m a defamed man.
Oh jeez, you’ve pained me.
I’m in conTROL of this land.
You’re thwarting my best-laid plans.
You’re hurting THE Trump brand.

And when I crush you, I’m still not, satisfied.
It’s such a feeling that your abuse, I can’t abide.
You hurt my pride.
You all lied.

I SUE, to tell you something: You’re under my command.
When I, sue-over everything, I want to force your hand.
I want your criticism ba-anned.
For your excuses, I won’t stand.

And when I crush you, I’m still not, satisfied.
It’s such a feeling that your abuse, I can’t abide.
You hurt my pride.
You all lied.

I SUE, to tell you something: You’re under my command.
When I, sue-over everything, I want to force your hand.
I want to force your hand.
I want to force your hand.

I want to force your hand.

Merkel’s Law

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.

Our Man

The Book of the Week is “Our Man, Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century” by George Packer, published in 2019.

“But he also helped smash up the last pieces of the postwar consensus, bringing viciousness and deception into the heart of government, making trust among people working for the same president impossible.”

Holbrooke, writing of Zbigniew Brzezinski– who sabotaged him during the presidency of Jimmy Carter

Born in April 1941 Holbrooke grew up in Scarsdale, a posh northern suburb of New York City. His high school classmate’s father was Dean Rusk, so he had a leg up in the foreign-policy social set of the United States.

As a junior diplomat, Holbrooke’s first major posting was to Saigon, Vietnam in June 1963. A few seasoned journalists there were reporting the truth, that the U.S. was already losing the war. But America’s governmental and military interagency rivalry (consisting of the usual power-struggling alpha males with hubris syndrome) put the kibosh on informed decision-making throughout the whole nine years of unconscionably wasteful military action.

In late summer 1963, Holbrooke was sent to the southernmost region of North Vietnam to try to capture the hearts and minds of rural villagers. He was kind of a hybrid neoliberal and neocon– providing food and materials to build infrastructure and establish schools, but also training the local militia to fight the Viet Cong (VC). Nevertheless, American soldiers were taught neither the Vietnamese language nor the locals’ culture. They were simply expected to be killing machines.

Holbrooke saw that the American military officers held fast to the mistaken notion that killing all the VC soldiers would rid the world of Communism. Those James-Bond wannabes threw around the term, “counterinsurgency.” But rather than killing no-name soldiers, the VC– supplied with weapons from China– sought to kill key military leaders; fighting smarter, not harder.

Holbrooke witnessed unspeakable horrors in his foreign service experiences. To salve his conscience for America’s shameful actions (and as a public relations move for Carter who would be running for reelection in 1980)– he visited and publicized the plight of refugees at a camp in Thailand. Also, he agreed with vice president Walter Mondale that countries should accept and provide more aid to refugees, at a Geneva conference in July 1979. In connection therewith, Carter signed the Refugee Act of 1980.

After Vietnam, America was once bitten, twice shy when international pressure was brought to bear to take action in the Balkans at the dawn of the 1990’s. There were other reasons, too, why Bill Clinton’s presidential administration dragged its feet on going to peace talks and committing troops to NATO: Bosnia didn’t have fossil fuels of sufficient strategic value to the United States, the genocide was against Muslims, and Clinton knew that a military quagmire would hurt his reelection chances in 1996.

Eventually, Holbrooke, a bigger credit-grabber than anyone else, did take charge of the negotiations. When American military advisors died in the region, talks got serious. He believed the U.S. had to act as the world’s police force.

Read the book to learn: of the highlights of Holbrooke’s career, his trials and tribulations, love life and achievements; and why the position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was vacant for a year: possibly showing how unnecessary America’s vote for world peace was even then (hint: the vacancy was a case of political retaliation). SIDENOTE: It’s time for a Reagan-style immigration bill.