Gender-Equality Issues – education and deconstruction.com

A German Generation

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The Book of the Week is “A German Generation, An Experimental History of the Twentieth Century” by Thomas A. Kohut, published in 2012. This hodgepodge of a volume alternated essays with personal stories of Germans coming of age during the Nazi Era.

After WWI, the German government brainwashed people into thinking the Versailles Treat was outrageously unfair to Germany. The government pushed extreme nationalism to make Germany (the “fatherland”) great again by trying to take back the territories (in Denmark, Czechoslovakia and Poland) it had occupied during the war. The Weimar Republic (1919 – early 1933) was chaotic, with lack of strong leadership to quell rioting and appease striking workers in Berlin amid sky-high inflation in 1923.

The Third Reich (early 1933 – May 1945)– father figures– encouraged kids, and former soldiers who were politically right-wing, rabidly anti-union and anti-socialist to join youth and social groups in which ability to withstand hardships would prove their masculinity.

All through the 1920’s, and 1930’s, both boys and girls in those groups, mostly middle class, went hiking and camping together, but shunned sex, alcohol and tobacco. The groups sang mostly military and hunting songs, played games and danced. Every couple of years, numerous groups got together, marching in uniforms, flying flags. They thought of themselves as self-starters, but nonpartisan. However, in 1932, all bets were off, as the Hitler Youth swallowed up all the other youth groups. Some people quit their group, as they recognized what a power-hungry megalomaniac Hitler really was, and didn’t like him.

There were various political factions, each with a different ideology: the two major factions wore brown (Nazis) or red (Communists). The National Socialist (Nazi) Party initially encouraged the cooperation of economic classes, and rewarded people pursuant to their accomplishments rather than pursuant to their good luck when they were “to the manor born.”

People volunteered to live communally, doing farm or household chores at work collectives in the countryside for a few months at a time. Teenage boys who had completed apprenticeships but couldn’t find work were sent there to keep them off the streets and out of trouble. Eventually, a stint in a collective became mandatory for everyone until 1933, when the collectives were disbanded. The Hitler Youth encouraged fierce competition in sports, music and work, and demanded blind obedience to rigid rules in a tattle-tale environment. There was extreme societal pressure to join the Hitler Youth, and when one got older, the Nazi Party.

In the first half of the twentieth century, there were paradoxes with regard to females’ roles in German society. They got the vote in 1919. In the mid-1930’s, they took on domestic responsibilities of the men who were drafted into the military. But the women were still expected to do housework and child-rearing. Through the 1930’s, the Nazi Party gave monetary incentives to encourage Aryan Germans to get married and have children, to help perpetuate the “master race.”

“The Gestapo strategy of focusing on target groups and leaving ordinary Germans alone continued during the war, although the pressure on ‘enemies of the people’ and on ‘community aliens,’ especially Jews, was increased.” Sounds familiar.

Read the book to learn many more details about: the experiences and mentalities of the Germans from the 1920’s onward; the yawning generation gap after the war; how the Germans were brainwashed by propaganda into cooperating among themselves while behaving fiercely competitively toward their perceived enemies (which included specific individuals in their own communities!), to coming together again, while rationalizing away their lack of courage in communication and action to stem the hatreds in their society.

Where Tyranny Begins

WARNING: VERY LONG POST

The Book of the Week is “Where Tyranny Begins, The Justice Department, the FBI and the War on Democracy” by David Rohde, published in 2024.

In this hodgepodge of a volume (which frequently contains the word “being” in the middle of sentences– awkward writing), the author described president Trump’s first-term shenanigans, that completely bucked established democratic order through making a mockery of the American justice system. The consequence has been that people now have total distrust of their government. On the other hand, there has been “creative destruction” that might be cause for optimism.

Interestingly, American voters have shifted from electing war-hero presidents (the last was George H.W. Bush in 1988) to electing draft-dodger presidents (except for Obama). And although the internet spreads disinformation of politicians’ cover-ups and denials, it also allows the sharing of stories among families and friends who experience genocide and atrocities.

There is actually more free speech than ever, as anyone can put in their two cents on the internet, in all different ways. The Nixon administration was suppressing free speech through the FCC’s power to license all kinds of broadcasting outlets, before cable TV was widespread. Yes, there were many more newspapers and magazines then, but ordinary Americans had to write “letters to the editor” and get them published, or call in to a radio or television show, if they wanted their voices to be heard.

In nations that have free and fair elections, initially, disinformation helps get a leader elected. Eventually, if he becomes a dictator, dissatisfaction among the people will reach critical mass, and the pendulum will swing the other way.

Many people think they’re learning history from sound bites and trivia awkwardly written by AI. But the library’s history section contains entire books that are likely to be more contextually comprehensive, written by actual people (yes, some of whom are myth-makers). And yes, depressingly, so much of substantive human history has been about war. It’s still worth reading lots of books on all kinds of history to understand the big picture, even though there might currently be doom and gloom, and one might feel powerless to stop it.

Obviously, no matter how much people learn how devastating and expensive war is, a few people keep instigating it!

So how are these instigators (recently consisting of the unbloodied elite, chicken-hawks and profiteers) allowed to make war, considering there’s a majority against the war?

This is how the cycle goes, in the United States:

Careers in media, entertainment, sports, the licensed professions and academia have been politicized. Nowadays, it seems most jobs might be highly lucrative in the short term, but they’re fiercely competitive and stressful. Job security is uncertain, given cancel culture and an uncertain economy.

Young job-seekers who can’t afford an education, or whose prospects are poor for other reasons, join a federal-law enforcement outfit, or the military– where they are ordered by the instigators to go to war.

Bottom line: There are sufficient people who owe their jobs to the instigators of war!

Trump has not yet not sent American troops in great numbers to foreign shores, but he has exacerbated home-grown hostility, in terms of hyper-partisanship, conspiracy theories and mistrust and distrust of American institutions.

A number of cliches apply to the second half of the twentieth century, into the first quarter of the twenty-first; among them, “The people gets the government it deserves” and “There is nothing new under the sun.” It might be recalled that the 1960’s were a tumultuous decade. There was violence in the streets of certain cities and on college campuses. Journalist P.J. O’Rourke wrote, “The Baby Boomers threw a decade-long temper tantrum.”

Over decades, that rebellion has actually resulted in more societal tolerance for divorce, re-marriages, interfaith marriages, and various arrangements of people of different sexual orientations. Societal pressure has eased on getting married and having children.

Now Americans can stay single, live together, give birth to or adopt children, or not– and not be socially ostracized. Interestingly, Trump’s daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism upon marrying, for the purpose of increasing her family’s power in their social circles. Even she had to conform to the tenor of the times.

At the dawn of the 1970’s, Americans were gob-smacked by the crimes of the Nixon administration. Part of the wrongdoing was war crimes. Nixon finished what LBJ started: contamination and devastation of the countries of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. And Nixon’s secrecy only exacerbated the mistrust and distrust of Americans in their government.

The Nixon Era ushered in a whole host of cultural changes. Since then, two generations of the social manipulative boys who entered politics have learned that if they stick together, they can evade punishment (or even be rewarded!) for behaving disrespectfully toward people of different walks of life. At the very least, they immediately have a leg up in society having been born white and male.

This trend began with younger male Baby Boomers who didn’t serve in the military. A few circumstances have contributed to their continued domination. They:

didn’t have their lives interrupted or willingly risk their lives while the government supervised their every move for two or more years.
missed the life-or-death situations in war zones and the exposure to different cultures, religions and class differences that military service would have imposed on them.
came of age among their own kind; at private school, boarding school, and fraternities, but have still been able to take advantage of the “old boy network” to advance their careers because they still experienced the military-service environment of the abusive hierarchy which leads to male bonding.

The 1990’s saw various franchises (TV and movies) featuring two fictional male friends who exhibited some aspects of this teenage boy culture; among them: Beavis and Butthead, Wayne’s World, Bill and Ted’s, and Clerks.

Donald Trump has taken this trend to its logical extreme, to run the country. This nation has been brainwashed into saying, “Boys will be boys.” Now, the boys have nowhere to go but down.

The author briefly described how independent counsel Ken Starr launched an overzealous witch hunt into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s activities. The sordid episode began in 1995, when their enemies investigated a land-deal called Whitewater. The Clintons themselves were deemed not to have broken the law, so their enemies desperately sought additional sources of dirt.

As is well known, Bill Clinton was eventually caught lying under oath about having an extra-marital affair on company time. BUT, that affair was with a consenting adult.

Which is the worst:

war crimes,
financial crimes, such as tax evasion, accounting fraud, bribery or racketeering (that are NOT victimless; they hurt society by [excuse the cliche] making the rich richer and the poor, poorer), or
lying under oath about having committed adultery???

So, Americans entertained or disgusted by Bill Clinton’s story might have concluded that the investigators were extremely incompetent, desperate for blood, or that there was a backroom deal not to break the story until after Clinton was reelected. When someone is dishonest about one thing, there is trust erosion in other things they might say or do. Regardless of real motives, this stupidity is one more reason to mistrust and distrust the American government.

As an aside, an inconceivably large amount of taxpayer dollars was wasted on frivolous investigations on the Clintons. Not coincidentally, people who pay little or no income tax, also don’t have their money wasted on that kind of nonsense.

At least Clinton complied with the rule of law. Trump dictatorially broke tradition by bypassing the Justice Department entirely when he signed an Executive Order to impose a travel ban on all Muslims from several countries. His philosophy was (pursuant to Moses’ line in the movie, The Ten Commandments): “So it shall be written, so it shall be done.” His thinking was, why should he need to fool around with pesky rule of law? He was the new sheriff (or rather, outlaw) in town, and his whole life, had always got his own way by bullying his opponents into submission.

Going into the 2024 presidential election, American voters knew what they were getting into. Obviously, they would rather have a brain-dead male dictator, than a woman president.

In any case, read the book to learn about Trump’s trials and tribulations in his first term, and the characters involved, such as Bill Barr– who became a hyper-partisan cheerleader for Trump, and a hypocritical crybaby to the media.

ENDNOTE: Speaking of politicization of employers, here’s a little ditty that explains the situation.

POLITICAL BOSS

sung to the tune of “Party Doll” with apologies to the Estate of Buddy Knox and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Everyone has got to have a political boss,

to punish you when he’s feeling cross,

to be involved in honest graft,

to run sweetheart contracts, like for aircraft.

No one wants a political boss,

no one wants a political boss,

but if you’re loyal, he’ll support you, help you.

If you’re loyal, he’ll help you.

Everyone’s got to have a political boss,

to choose candidates,

make you pay his costs,

to use media to spread-smears unfair,

to have lawyers on hand with tactics that scare.

No one wants a political boss,

no one wants a political boss,

but if you’re loyal, he’ll support you, help you.

If you’re loyal, he’ll help you.

Everyone’s got to have a political boss,

so when scandal hits,

you’ll take the loss,

to hand out jobs and to raise funds,

to add to his base, train daughters and sons,

train daughters and sons.

No one wants a political boss,

no one wants a political boss,

but if you’re loyal, he’ll support you, help you.

If you’re loyal, he’ll help you.

No one wants a political boss,

no one wants a political boss,

but if you’re loyal, he’ll support you, help you.

If you’re loyal, he’ll help you.

Mad House

The Book of the Week is “Mad House” by Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater, published in 2025.

This volume focused on the shenanigans involving Mike Johnson’s eventually becoming the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives during Donald Trump’s first and Joseph Biden’s terms. Children masquerading as lawmakers, due to a razor-thin GOP majority in the House, acquired a disproportionate amount of power.

“The ‘little bitch’ remark became an emblematic moment of the Congress: two MAGA mean girls [Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene] fighting loudly on the floor of the House, over who had the right to call a baseless, attention-seeking impeachment of [Joseph] Biden her own.”

The GOP has mastered saying all the right things– infuriating and depressing their base in a way that spurs them to vote. The GOP’s emotional messaging is most powerful because they cause their base to lose sleep. They resort to ad hominem attacks– more memorable than logical, reasonable, sensible, factual, rational arguments. Columnist Dorothy Thompson wrote in late 1944 (in reference to the decimating of Germany’s ability to make war again): “Hate is an emotion that should be confined in the heart. When it rises to the brain, the result is insanity.”

The GOP targets people in the middle of this political-emotional spectrum; the unhappy voters. Some members of this middle group protest in the streets. They revel in their anger together. Misery loves company. The media focuses on street protesters, regardless of their party, because they garner high ratings. But it’s impossible to prove how much this kind of activist accomplishes, if anything.

As an aside, activists accomplish nothing if they’re not attention whores, as the squeaky wheel gets the grease. However, there are very few concrete examples of activists who are able to prove they got legislation passed. None directly led protests in the streets without lots of additional campaign activity. Three from the past include Estes Kefauver, Saul Alinsky and Ralph Nader. To begin with, they were all white males, so they were necessarily more influential than other kinds of people. They had very specific goals, and the nation was ready to buy into their ideas.

Returning to the political-emotional spectrum: on one extreme end, are the joyful simpletons. They are happy because they are blissfully unaware of what’s going on in the world. They stay away from news on governmental goings-on, and don’t vote. Or if they do vote, they don’t think too much about for whom they’re voting, which has recently been for Republicans. For, they’ve been influenced by talking with people they know and trust, who are targeted by the GOP. Case in point: The late comedian George Carlin (a non-voter) joked, “I didn’t even leave the house on election day!”

The people on the opposite end of the spectrum, voraciously read books in order to think critically about how voters get brainwashed by candidates, a multi-disciplinary body of knowledge: psychology, sociology, history, economics, etc. They do not worry because they take the long view of history and have faith that the worm will turn. Their philosophy is, there’s nothing new under the sun and this, too, shall pass. They’re the kind who vote, but they’re loyal to neither party. They’re very cynical, but they don’t get too upset about misbehaving leaders, either. For, John Maynard Keynes said, “In the end, we’re all dead.”

In recent decades, when covering the U.S. government, the media has given disproportionate attention to the said children. There appears to be more of a focus on females, as they are still just getting their sea legs in politics. BUT, in covering their cat-fights, the media’s ulterior motives are to draw high ratings, and set the women’s movement back decades! The owners and top executives of the American media oligarchy are still mostly men. Sure, there are lots of overpaid female noisemakers– talking heads– appearing on the idiot box now, but ordinary American women are still way behind in terms of equality in so many areas of everyday American life.

The authors named names of flip-floppers– politicos who sold out and joined Trump’s crowd in order to continue their political careers (in alphabetical order):

Lauren Boebert, Tom Emmer, Nancy Mace, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Chip Roy, Steve Scalise, Michelle Steel, Elise Stefanik, and Marjorie Taylor Greene

Karni and Broadwater also listed the principled few who resigned rather than sell out to a dictator. The petty, vengeful and mean-of-spirit Matt Gaetz and his followers sought to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy (described as “a sensitive grudge holder”), but had no plans for the aftermath when they met with success.

All through the autumn of 2023, Republicans were trying to get their act together. Steve Scalise (a “secretive backstabber”) threw his hat into the ring. Also running for the position of House Speaker– Jim Jordan, who had supporters who made death threats against his political enemies and their families. Jordan never apologized for the trauma he caused.

Democrats didn’t want to see Jordan become Speaker, because he would put the kibosh on aid to Ukraine, and they would have to fight over the budget bill again. He wasn’t a good candidate for Speaker anyway, because he wasn’t holding anyone hostage for political favors, and he hadn’t “paid his dues” in terms of experience.

Read the book to learn much more about yet another tabloidy episode in American politics.

The Acid Queen

The Book of the Week is “The Acid Queen, The Psychedelic Life And Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary” by Susannah Cahalan, published in 2025.

Rosemary was born in April 1935 in Saint Louis. Her family changed residences frequently through her childhood. At the dawn of her thirties, she made a friend and lover in a high place, in the form of Timothy Leary. Born in 1920, he was famous by then for his advocacy of LSD. He was still married, but separated from his second wife.

In the second half of the 1960’s, wealthy heiress Peggy Hitchcock owned the humungous estate up in Millbrook, New York State, on which Leary led a socialist cult. His purported goal was to educate his disciples in improving their lives by using controlled substances. Those drop-outs from society consisted of tens of upper-middle-class whites who were rebelling against their bourgeois lifestyles.

Leary’s lawyer helped him and Rosemary weasel out of legal trouble with drug possession and tax evasion, in arguing that the drugs were a tool of their religion. In September 1966, they legitimized their religion as a church by completing the legal paperwork, naming it League for Spiritual Discovery. It was monotheistic, urging its parishioners to alter their consciousness with LSD on a weekly basis, and smoke marijuana on a daily basis.

That same month, Leary and Rosemary raised funds by putting on a psychedelic and spiritually uplifting show that involved performance art, special-effects and preaching (of a hybrid Christianity and Buddhism), at a theater in Manhattan for a sold-out audience of more than twenty-eight hundred. Although he was already way older than thirty, Leary appealed to disaffected, countercultural American youths, doing the talk-show circuit on the idiot box, and doing the lecture circuit on college campuses.

In January 1970, the Nixon administration passed an anti-drug law to harshly punish all the kinds of people (those protesting the Vietnam War; employees of communications outlets who were propagandizing about drugs– raising awareness of them, and their uses; and those who believed in a libertarian lifestyle) on the president’s enemies list.

Read the book to learn much more about Rosemary’s life, times and social circle.

Speaking of a president with an enemies list who is harshly punishing all kinds of people: The current one is doing so, but he himself has yet to be punished in a way that fits his decades’ worth of numerous crimes! Here’s a little song that depicts the tip of the iceberg.

THE CRIME GAME

sung to the tune of “The Name Game” with apologies to the Estate of Shirley Ellis and to whomever else the rights may concern.

The crime game.

Tax-cheating! Tax-cheating. Tax-cheating. System-beating. Funny-money. Secret meetings. Oh my. Fines-defeating. Tax-cheating.

Treason! Treason. Treason. Base appeasin’. Spying, lying. All season. Oh my. Justice-teasin’. Treason.

Come on everybody. This is the time. I bet you we can make a list, of a fraction of Trump’s crimes. Committing of the crimes, he vehemently denies. But courts and courts, and courts contain his lies. And then we say the crime, then repeat, then we say a rhyme, then a phrase, rhyme, and oh my. Then we say a rhyme again, and the crime a third time. Then the verse is done. We could do this all day and for all time. And there’s hardly a crime that we can’t rhyme.

Failed coup! Failed coup. Failed coup. Chaos grew. Uncivil drivel. Trump’s nasty crew. Oh my. Hatred ensued. Failed coup.

But all of Trump’s crimes helped him amass power. So he got rich and he makes people cower. Like. No prez. Before. He controls the vast network Fox. Like, everyone should be wary, wary. Together, they’re scary, scary. To truth and justice, he is contrary. Okay?

Now say libel. [libel] Now libel repeated. Now say a rhyme, [rhyme] and a phrase. Now say a rhyme another time, then oh my, and the rhyme another time. Then the crime. And there’s hardly a crime that we can’t rhyme.

Everybody do fraud!

Fraud. Fraud. Court see-sawed. Appeals-deals. Rulings flawed. Oh my. Trump’s base is awed. Fraud. Pretty good.

Let’s do conspiring!

Conspiring. Conspiring. Illegal-firing. Steam-rolling, controlling. RICO hiring. Oh my. Gets tiring. Conspiring. Very good.

Let’s do racketeering!

Racketeering. Racketeering. Lots of smearing. Plugs for thugs. Lots of hearings. Oh my. Trump’s base is cheering. Racketeering.

Saming with defaming.

Defaming. Defaming. Situation gaming. Jeering and sneering. Cruel nicknaming. Oh my. False blaming. Defaming.

The crime game.

Nervous About A Woman – BONUS POST

While a woman has served as the top leader in numerous nations of the world (including Third World countries!), citizens of America would still rather have a male dictator than a female president. Here’s a little song about that.

NERVOUS ABOUT A WOMAN

sung to the tune of “Natural Woman” with apologies to the Estate of Aretha Franklin, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Looking back at 2016,

a dictator over female-prez, was hired.

After 2024, women still have to wait until someday.

Now– of that dictator, we’re tired.

The gender-biased AI vets you. Trump is so unkind.

Decades of messaging on your mind.

‘Cause Americans still feel,

Americans still feel,

nervous about a woman. (woman)

When a Wall was discussed,

and threats worked better to obviate it.

We didn’t know just how evil Trump would be,

until his ICE men became sadists.

Lots of Americans are regretful,

of what they voted for: greed and hypocrisy.

Trump is rotten to the core.

‘Cause Americans still feel,

Americans still feel,

nervous about a woman. (woman)

Now Trump’s courts are topsy-turvy, (topsy-turvy)

admin’s his personal PIGgy bank, (piggy bank)

aided by his wannabes, (wannabes) hoaxing you.

Who knows whether his brain is still alive?

‘Cause Americans still feel,

Americans still feel,

nervous about a woman. (woman)

‘Cause Americans still feel,

Americans still feel,

nervous about a woman. (woman)

‘Cause Americans still feel…

Fight Back and Win

The Book of the Week is “Fight Back and Win, My Thirty-Year Fight Against Injustice – and How You Can Win Your Own Battles” by Gloria Allred with Deborah Caulfield Rybak, published in 2006.

Allred, a civil-rights attorney, was born in southwestern Philadelphia in July 1941. She wrote about the lessons she learned from her activities, and tried to inspire readers to stick up for themselves if they had been the victims of discrimination. However, her method of settling disputes through the courts is extremely expensive and emotionally wrenching. It was obviously in her best financial interest to promote the launching of lawsuits.

She recounted some of her most famous court cases, many of which involved tabloid-celebrities. She admitted to staging publicity stunts to get attention, thinking they would help her clients. Some people might think the actions she took were unbecoming an attorney. In the United States– the staging and scripting of media events (or non-events but merely pushing propaganda) is nothing new for people from all walks of life who protest perceived injustices.

Jerry Rubin, a member of the “Chicago Eight” spread disinformation just before the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Three TV stations bought his lie and reported on the local news that ten thousand “Yippies” (slang for members of Abbie Hoffman’s Youth International Party) planned to protest-march in the nude at the Convention. The media had visions of naked demonstrators getting their heads bashed in by law enforcement. Indignant letter-writing to Chicago newspapers ensued. Actually, fully-clothed demonstrators got their heads bashed in, and the idiot box and newspapers still got their sky-high fill of viewers and readers.

Political-front groups are nothing new. They are secretly funded by big-money donors who hire a handful of troublemakers who incite violence at street-demonstrations. Most of the people who attend such events are brainwashed into thinking they’re helping make political change, peacefully. They clearly haven’t read their history. They never learn!

Through the decades, street demonstrations alone have never effected significant political change in America. Not even when people died, as happened at “Kent State” in May 1970. The Vietnam war still dragged on and on.

The major historical events during which street-protests have worked (in other countries) include: the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution in 1918 (as seen in the treatment of the Romanovs) and in Romania in 1989 as seen in the treatment of the Ceausescus. Other instances (with ample help from the United States via the CIA), to name a few, include: the Marcoses in the Philippines, Duvaliers in Haiti, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. There is insufficient room here to elaborate on why, in these cases, citizens who took to the streets, were able to oust their country’s leadership.

Anyway, Allred’s political stunts have largely faded from the public’s memory, to be replaced by more recent ones staged and scripted or incited by the biggest publicity hound in American history, Donald Trump. Despite the number of lawsuits Allred has won against powerful people– even politicians– in her decades representing victims of discrimination, it seems the nation has regressed, because it tolerates Trump’s abuses.

In 1992, there was still a double-standard in connection with racism versus sexual harassment in the workplace. “If he [Oregon Republican Senator Bob Packwood] had racially harassed members of his staff, he would have been forced to resign. Why was it acceptable to sexually harass women?” It took three years to bring him to justice.

Read the book to learn additional details, and about lots of other legal fights in which Allred engaged in her decades-long career.

Slow Noodles

The Book of the Week is “Slow Noodles, A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss and Family Recipes” by Chantha Nguon, published in 2024. Born around 1961, the author endured the hunger, hard manual labor, bullying from the authorities and other aspects of her decades-long survival struggles through fantasizing about the food her mother cooked for her. Cooking became a life-saving skill later in her life.

In March 1970, Cambodia underwent a regime change. Lon Nol replaced Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and got a lot of financial aid from the U.S. for claiming he was anti-Communist. The new dictator also got military help in the form of American B-52s’ indiscriminately killing people in the countryside. The goal was to rid Cambodia of Vietnamese and non-Buddhist people. The author’s mother was Vietnamese, so the author was considered genetically Vietnamese, too. They were eventually forced to flee to Saigon.

All through the 1970’s, the region of Southeast Asia was particularly hard-hit by genocide, atrocities and torturous practices perpetrated by war criminals who obeyed their respective dictators. As an adolescent, Nguon was subjected to personal hardships, including the deaths of her older sister (who served as her surrogate mother until her mother arrived in Saigon) and her mother.

Nguon, like countless, anonymous hundreds of thousands of other refugees, could have died of disease, starvation, bombings, guerrillas’ bullets, pirates, or land mines, or a combination thereof. On rebuilding Cambodia after Pol Pot’s reign, she wrote, “The big foreign aid groups did their best, but they had no idea how to reshape a civilization from nothing. Who does? Donors, NGOs, and politicians want speedy tangible progress. The natural bias is ‘Hurry up and heal. We have other emergencies to attend to.’ “

Read the book to learn about the kinds of assistance the author provided to her fellow Cambodians, and much more about her food, life and times.

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.