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Our Man

[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 “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.

tokyo junkie [sic]

The Book of the Week is “tokyo junkie [sic], 60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys… and Baseball” by Robert Whiting, published in 2021.

Whiting was born at the dawn of the 1940’s in northern California. In January 1962, while in the U.S. Air Force, he was assigned to Fuchu Air Base in a Tokyo suburb. He fell in love with Tokyo and the culture of its people, despite its sexism, pervasive sex trade, hatred of foreigners, and government censoring of its media.

Tokyo was undergoing a makeover to prepare for its debut as the venue of the 1964 Olympics. During the Vietnam Era, American college campuses exploded in protest against the war. The Japanese government supported the war. By 1969, Japanese students were protesting, too.

Over the course of decades, the author witnessed how the city changed from a war-ravaged backwater to an economic powerhouse. After WWII, the U.S. maintained a military presence in Japan, and nursed it back to economic health. This process was reflected in Japan’s education system, which mandated rigorous, nerve-racking entrance exams, which had a decidedly capitalist bent.

Another aspect of Japanese culture that showed its emulation of the United States, was the popularity of its professional baseball. However, the Japanese put their own twist on it. They allowed a few Americans to play on their teams, but criticized them for doing too well or too poorly. Too much competition would make the opposing team feel bad, but a player yielding too much to an opposing team, would be told to do better for his own team. Cooperation and sacrificing for one’s own team were key aspects of play.

The author noted one positive behavior pattern the Japanese were taught from birth. That was– maintaining the highest respect for other people’s property, and for public property. Their “lost and found” returned personal items to their owners (even cash, without a penny missing!) as a matter of the right thing to do. Tokyo is one of the cleanest cities in the world because the people feel a collective sense of ownership of their streets, so they don’t “foul their own nest.” Ironically, their politicians are notoriously corrupt.

Read the book to learn much, much more on the author’s take on how Japanese culture changed following major historical events such as Olympics, financial ruin, earthquakes, tsunamis, and globalization.

My American Dream

The Book of the Week is “My American Dream, My True Story As An Undocumented Immigrant Who Became A Wall Street Executive” by Julissa Arce, published in 2016.

The author was born in 1983 in Taxco, Mexico. In 1994, she moved with her parents to San Antonio, Texas on a tourist visa. Because she was going to school (a private one) she was actually living in the U.S. illegally. Her parents (who were legal immigrants) didn’t understand the implications of such a situation. They simply wanted her to get a good education. Americans’ tax dollars weren’t even paying for it.

The upshot, though, was that Arce never got a Social Security Number, and couldn’t get any kinds of government or financial services: healthcare, a driver’s license, a bank account, or financial aid when she applied to go to college.

By living in the United States, Arce’s foreign status became her single biggest life-problem, especially when she was in her late teens. That problem led to others. If she moved back to Mexico, she most likely would be unable to return to the United States for at least ten years, unless laws changed.

Arce needed to earn “off the books” money to support her family, and pay her mother’s medical bills. On top of that, she had a drunk, abusive father. She was accepted to a college at the last minute, based on academic and student-participatory merit, and thanks to a new Texas state law. As is well known, many students are accepted to schools based on “legacy” or alumni-bribery practices, or on athletic rather than academic merits.

After many more hardships, the author got a job in the real world. She initially omitted the inconvenient fact that fake identity papers would allow her to work at the job only until she got caught for having a fraudulent Social Security Number. It appears that both her employer and the IRS turned a blind eye to her situation, as the former was able to pay her less than it would a non-foreign employee. BUT her employer was still withholding taxes from her paycheck. So why should her employer fire her? She was a model worker. She had to be– she was under the constant threat of deportation. She had to try harder than everyone else to please everyone.

Fortunately, several people in Arce’s life gave her good advice:

get the best education she could;
always strive do be the best at whatever she did– regardless of what it was;
be persistent;
associate with the appropriate people;
be professional at all times; and
continually socially network.

Arce was actually a shameless social climber, but she also showed she was a team player– unselfish with her time and talents. When the author achieved the pinnacle of what she perceived to be success, she wrote, “I felt normal– just another drunk Wall Street analyst on Stone Street on a Friday night.” And yet, she realized she still wasn’t truly happy.

Read the book to learn much, much more about Arce’s life experiences, and additional (true!!!) information (not emotionally-charged political propaganda) about immigrants in America.

The Rascal King

“He had a stake in leaving basic problems unsolved, the better to manipulate the frustration that meant votes to him.”

-written of James Curley– the Massachusetts politician who labeled the state’s Democratic convention as “crooked” when he wasn’t nominated for governor in June 1934.

The Book of the Week is “The Rascal King, The Life and Times of James Michael Curley (1874-1958), An Epic of Urban Politics and Irish America” by Jack Beatty, published in 1992.

In November 1874, Curley was born into a poverty-stricken family in Boston. He made politics his career. By 1884, organized crime among politicians had become excessive. A good-government group called the Mugwumps sought to return ethical behavior to politics. In Massachusetts they voted for Grover Cleveland rather than James G. Blaine. The former was the presidential candidate with the less dishonest reputation.

Additionally, Massachusetts copied the British in introducing a civil service system by which government workers were hired based on test scores, rather than patronage from politicians. However, the tests were (deliberately given) in the English language– not understood well by immigrants.

In 1902, Curley co-founded a men’s political club with his fellow Irish Catholics that competed with the previous local Party boss’s. They knew all the tricks for winning elections.

One trick consisted of camping out all night at the polling place so that the next day, election day, he and his cronies could get their candidates listed first on the ballot, where immigrant voters would be more likely to check their names. So, third-party candidates would do well to remind all voters repeatedly not to be trigger-happy– to scroll down on the ballot to see the names of candidates for whom they really want to vote.

A reelection trick his administration pulled was to mail cards bearing the alleged signatures of competing candidates of Curley, to voters in a district where numerous voters were to vote against him. Those cards listed the wrong polling location.

In 1914, Curley was elected mayor of Boston. He soon began living high on the hog, despite his low government pay. For instance, his mansion was renovated by sweetheart contractors. He traveled internationally on cruises for long stretches to the West Indies and Europe. In connection therewith, taxpayers paid for his and his family’s luxury transportation.

Curley claimed he was a victim of discrimination against Irish Catholics when his political rivals accused him of corruption. But, unsurprisingly, he was a hypocrite, as he encouraged scapegoating when it was politically expedient for himself.

In the 1930’s, Massachusetts’ Finance Commission investigated Curley for financial crimes. He had become such a powerful Party boss by then, he was able to fire troublesome members of the commission, and replace them with his allies. He did the same with the State Tax Appeal Board.

Curley’s two major accomplishments in his state consisted of creating (patronage) jobs, and beginning construction projects. However, starting with the Great Depression, Massachusetts began losing manufacturing jobs in textiles and shoes.

In June 1947, in one last desperate attempt to beg for the mercy of the court at a sentencing hearing for the criminal case against him, Curley’s lawyers recited a laundry list of medical problems from which Curley suffered. He was a very sick old man at age 72. But he ran for office again and again, anyway.

The author remarked that into the twentieth century, local politicians were able to get votes by handing out patronage jobs and financial assistance. But when the federal government began to administer programs to help the disadvantaged and senior citizens– such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security– local officeholders lost that power. The Reagan Era’s cuts to federal entitlements saw the local political bosses regain some of their power. That is one reason low-level politicians are fighting so hard against national healthcare!

Read the book to learn much, much more about Curley’s antics and adventures in various capacities during his long, long political career.

ENDNOTE: From the 1920’s into the 1930’s, some Americans suffered through administrations of at least two elected officeholders who became despots of an entire state: Huey Long of Louisiana, and James Curley of Massachusetts. As of 2020, a formerly elected candidate (Donald Trump) is attempting to become an all-powerful leader over the entire country (and the world).

But– unlike past leaders, Trump has yet to be fully punished for his numerous misdeeds, wasn’t shamed into resigning, and will never be shamed into behaving better. Fortunately, the nation’s economy is doing well enough so that he can’t blame a Great Depression on his successor.

The nation may have economically benefited from all this political fighting, as so many Americans in politics, the law courts, the media and the entertainment industry owe their jobs to it! Secondly, Trump began his political career late in life, during which aging is taking its toll on the functioning of his brain. Enough said.

Shadow

“… the isolated and powerful imperial presidency was over. The nation seemed to be falling in love with its new Midwestern president.”

-NOT January 2025, but August 1974. Regardless of where he (or she) is from, though, the absolute best American presidential candidate would have maximum life-experience, knowledge and wisdom, but still be lucid and sane.

The Book of the Week is “Shadow, Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate” by Bob Woodward, published in 1999. This primer on presidential power-struggles was written toward the end of the Clinton Era–prior to the historical revisionism and 20 / 20 hindsight of the resurgence of American presidential power.

President Jimmy Carter made a campaign promise that his administration was going to behave morally. Yet, in summer 1977, his budget director Bert Lance got in trouble for personal financial conflicts and hypocrisy. In 1978, Carter signed the Ethics in Government Act, some aspects of which turned out to be a can of worms for later presidents. Pursuant to the Act, an independent counsel was to be appointed to investigate illegal behavior of a president when there was probable cause. However, in the next two decades, overzealous, viciously vengeful, legally wily government officials abused their power to launch witch hunts. Any counsel appointed could never really be “independent.”

The Justice Department has the authority to investigate wrongdoing by a president. Nonetheless, the Department serves under the president, who is presumably considered innocent until proven guilty. But, most of the time, the president’s political enemies clamor for the administration to appoint the “independent” counsel (a prosecutor) whose job is to find wrongdoing.

By the summer of 1995, the above conundrum dogged president Bill and first lady Hillary Clinton. “The FBI couldn’t investigate itself. The White House was at the center, and the Justice Department also would have zero credibility investigating its own bureau or the White House.” “Independent” counsel Ken Starr twisted the Ethics in Government Act for his own purposes in instigating the tabloidy probes into Whitewater business transactions, the White House travel office activities, Vince Foster’s death, and later on, Bill Clinton’s sex life.

In May 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a private party could bring a civil suit against a president still in office. Thus, the Paula Jones case could proceed. Even so, at that time, now-Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh believed that Ken Starr was abusing his power as an independent counsel in maximally, mean-spiritedly probing the Clintons. Bill Clinton didn’t help his cause, though, by launching vigorous denials and counterattacks, instead of coming clean.

Anyway, read the book to learn of how post-Watergate presidents handled the changing political times in connection with presidential power amid increasing partisan hostility. As is well known, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Excesses reach a screaming crescendo; dissatisfaction reaches critical mass, and the people say, enough’s enough.

In order to boost their ratings (and profitability), the media incessantly teases Americans with propagandizing, incitement and phoniness. But, not to worry. When the nation is at its breaking point, there will be surprises. Again, DO NOT be fooled by Trump’s “new Nixon” act. Here’s what’s actually going on.

THE MINDS THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’

sung to the tune of “The Times They Are A-Changin’ with apologies to Bob Dylan.

Protect your history books YOU have at home,
beCAUSE revisionists around you have grown.
Stop fretting. Soon our government’s fate will be known.
If you vote, it’s democracy you’ll be saving.
It’ll be really exciting, you’ll see a new tone.