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The Long Walk

[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 “The Long Walk, The True Story of A Trek to Freedom” by Slavomir Rawicz with Ronald Downing, originally published in 1956. The author told a suspenseful story of how he stayed alive after having been sentenced to twenty-five years’ hard labor in Siberia.

In the nineteen-teens, Rawicz was born into a family who owned an estate in Pinsk. His mother was Russian, so he became fluent in the Russian language. In autumn 1939, he was a lieutenant in the Polish Cavalry fighting against the Nazis. He was arrested by the Russians, accused of spying, and sent to Siberia. He and some other men plotted to escape from their work-camp, which was encircled by three barbed-wire fences, guards and guard-dogs. They left in a snowstorm in April 1941.

The escapees endured countless life-threatening conditions during their walk of thousands of miles through rough terrain, meteorological extremes, and deteriorating health. Their food along the way included fish, hare, deer and snakes (in the Gobi desert). The one American in the group told them that beheading a snake would remove the sac containing its poison (if it was poisonous), and then skinning the body and cooking it would make it edible. When they reached Mongolia and Tibet, they were served tea with yak butter, oat cakes, gruel and mutton by herders whose culture required showing hospitality to strangers.

At the end of their ordeal, the author and the other survivors happened to meet members of the Allies who nursed them back to health. Doctors and nurses knew they would have what is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for the rest of their lives.

Read the book to learn the details.

Shutdown – BONUS POST

“Promises were broken, debt was imposed, dictatorships were supported and natural resources were depleted.”

–The United States. Or, according to Paul Farmer, Haiti.

The US Congress has been working intermittently but receiving full pay from 2020 to date. It seems there is taxation without representation here, what with Congress’s absence. This is an insult to all Americans who are not tax cheats.

In 2020, there was a lockdown due to a pandemic. Now the excuse is the disputes over funding of militaries under the president’s command. However, as should be well known, there are a total of five hundred thirty-five (535) elected officials in the US House and Senate, who have the power to impeach one (1!) president and also remove him from office altogether. He has been impeached twice before.

What might be the reasons for Congress’s failing to curb the president’s abuses of power in the past year alone?

Greed (profiteering) of powerful members of Congress?
Power hunger? (desire for reelection)
Fear of doxing or death threats? (Congress members are allocated taxpayer dollars for security.)
Lack of time? (If it’s important, you make time; if not, you make excuses.)
Fear that the vice president who replaces the president would lack the talents and skills required to lead the country? (With his dementia, the president is becoming a useful idiot to his handlers, so that argument is invalid.) Anyway, it’s debatable whether it matters, who’s in charge of the country– this capitalist tool, or that capitalist tool.

How about, all of the above? The solution: Vote these slackers out of office, if they’re running again!

Here’s what most Democrat Congress members are singing now.

SHUTDOWN

sung to the tune of “Small Town” with apologies to John Cougar Mellencamp, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Of-course I love the shutdown. I get full pay during the shutdown. We know why there’s a shutdown. Oh, there are secret unities.

Blame the GOP for the shutdown. My power is nil in this insane shutdown. My job’s easy in shutdown, while others work for free.

We’re-manipulative in the shutdown. Taught to fear DHS in the shutdown. I keep Instagramming, IN the shutdown, another social media fanatic, that’s me.

But I’ve seen the US fall in the shutdown. Having myself a ball in the shutdown. Arrogant Trump’s gall brought on THIS shutdown, he loves the shutdown, just like me.

No, I cannot forget where my votes and money come from. I get upset by the people who judge me. I’M not the one who’s prolonging the shutdown. People won’t let me be. They keep HOUNDing me.

We are against DHS in the shutdown. My paid vacation’s enough to say, let’s continue this shutdown. Senior leaders say shutdown, until we get back, democracy.

Well, of-course I love the shutdown. We all have phony outrage in the shutdown. People are dying in the shutdown. All I care about is me.

Election Meltdown

The Book of the Week is “Election Meltdown” by Richard L. Hasen, published in 2020.

This short, slightly sloppily-edited volume named names of incompetent or criminal election workers, and unethical, influential political workers, in connection with specific political races of the past couple of decades. The offenders are listed below, in no particular order. The location of their actions, where applicable, is in parentheses.

The incompetent ones included:

Brenda Snipes (Florida)
Susan Bucher (Florida)

The criminal ones included:

Brian Kemp (Georgia)
Mark Harris (North Carolina)
Mark Anderson (Florida)
Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr. (North Carolina)

The unethical ones who spread disinformation (one or more lies) via social media included:

Ken Paxton (Texas)
Donald Trump
Kris Kobach (Kansas)
Hans von Spakovsky (Kansas, Missouri)
Jesse Richman (Kansas)
J. Christian Adams (Florida)
Hillary Clinton
Kamala Harris
Michael Cohen (Trump’s former New York attorney)
Paul Ryan (former Speaker of the House)
Kayleigh McEnany
Christie McCormick

The author also named elections experts, lawyers and judges who refuted the claims of the above.

The author related that the Clintons argued that the reason for investigating voter suppression is to make sure it doesn’t affect the outcome of the election. But that should not be the most important reason. The most important reason to make sure there is no voter suppression, is to ensure that everyone eligible to vote, has a chance to vote. The reason Americans should vote is to show they believe in the process of free and fair elections.

Democracy requires that a significant number of people believe in it for it to work.

The bottom line is: Democracy is compromised when political workers engage in voter suppression, election crimes, or spreading of disinformation. All of those can result in low voter turnout, which in turn, can end badly. For example, in 1972, low voter turnout resulted in the reelection of the war-criminal Richard Nixon.

Read the book to learn many additional details regarding the above-named individuals’ actions, and about those who called out the liars.

Perpetual War / A Mysterious Country – BONUS POST

“To be fair, one cannot entirely blame the current Oval One for our incoherence. Though his predecessors have generally had rather higher IQ’s than his, they too, assiduously served the 1 percent that owns the country while allowing everyone else to drift.”

-written NOT about American “president” Donald Trump, but about George W. Bush, by Gore Vidal

The first Bonus Book of the Week is “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, How We Got to be so Hated” by Gore Vidal, published in 2002. America’s arrogance and international meddling obviously play a role in why it is hated by most of the rest of the world.

In this hodgepodge of a short volume, Vidal lamented over how the Bill of Rights was slowly becoming violated by American presidents’ signing of freedom-curbing legislation over decades. Just one current manifestation of that is the ever-present, ubiquitous government’s spying on Americans without their consent.

In 1996, president Bill Clinton signed the Anti Terrorism Act and in 2002, president George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act. The contents of both laws smack of Hitler’s 1933 Enabling Act. Clinton and Bush at least involved Congress in most of their actions. Trump has not. His goal is to outdo all presidents who came before him, in terms of abusing his powers in war, profiteering and political retaliation while evading punishment. He will not stop until he dies.

Anyway, to the date of the book’s writing, Vidal listed all military actions in which US troops were sent overseas to do “peace keeping” in regions of conflict from 1990 onward (but there may have been numerous other operations that are classified). Needless deaths, ruined lives, no doubt.

Asia: at least through the 1990’s, 607,600 troops;
Africa: 1992-1995, 1998-1999, 32,752 troops;
the Balkans: 1992-1996, 1998 at least through the book’s writing, 21,600 troops;
Central America: 1998-1999, 5,700 troops;
Haiti: 1994-1995, 21,000 troops

…not to mention 4,500 troops sent to Los Angeles, CA in 1992.

Read the book to learn additional information about how the United States is becoming a dictatorship, and on when and why the author started to feel this way.

The second Bonus Book of the Week is “A Mysterious Country, the Grace and Fragility of American Democracy” by Norman Mailer [his previous writings], edited by J. Michael Lennon and John Buffalo Mailer, published in 2023. This hodgepodge of a volume showed that decades after Mailer described political, cultural and social affairs in the United States– the old cliche still applies– The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Mailer reviewed LBJ’s book, My Hope For America in 1964. He wrote that 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater proposed there be a federal police force to protect ordinary Americans (especially young ladies) from “hate groups and bigots, Southern bullies and oil pirates.” In the 2020’s, the latter are alive and well.

Behind George W. Bush’s war, was the goal of eventual world domination. His supporters, who insecurely waved around the American flag as a way of showing they were patriotic, might not have even been aware how power-hungry Bush was. Mailer also thought Bush attacked Iraq to send a message to China that the U.S. was hegemonically superior.

According to Mailer’s description– “Terrorism is not attracted to negotiation. Rather, it would insist on no termination short of victory.”– Trump is a terrorist.

Read the book to learn much more information about the tenor of the times of Mailer’s generation, and how there has occurred more of same, in spades.

ENDNOTE: One Bertrand Russell quote in connection herewith 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.”

Such is the situation with Trump and his henchmen. Here’s a song Trump is singing now. [To avoid a spit-take, do not drink anything while singing this.]

I OWN THE WORLD

sung to the tune of “We Are the World” with apologies to USA For Africa, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

This is the time, when I maximize my gall, when the world must come under my rule.

There are people dying, and it’s time to force your hand.

My life’s the greatest of them all.

I will go on, spending every day, bossing everyone, everywhere.

My globe is making a change.

You are all part of helping my family, and the truth,

you know the world is all I need.