Hodgepodge – Wordy, Redundant, Disorganized – Page 3

Children of Radium

[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 “Children of Radium, A Buried Inheritance” by Joe Dunthorne, published in 2025. The morbidly curious author wrote this book after engaging in “roots tourism” to learn about his (Jewish) great-grandfather’s and grandmother’s lives in Germany and Ankara in Turkey before, during and after WWII.

In the 1930’s, the author’s grandmother grew up in Oranienburg in Germany, the most radioactive town in the country. There was a chemical weapons factory there, at which her father (named Seigfried) worked as a creator and tester into the mid-1930’s. Just around that time, German schoolchildren were supplied with gas masks and taught how to protect themselves from wartime air-contaminants. The chemicals from the factory were disposed of through burying, burning or pouring into a river. One of the chemicals was phosgene, which smells like a freshly mowed lawn. In 1935, Siegfried’s family moved to Ankara, but he continued to test gas masks there.

In 1937, the Turkish government purchased chemical weapons from Germany to ethnically cleanse residents in Dersim in the mountains in eastern Turkey. Over the course of two years, the roughly thirteen thousand people who died presumably served as the Nazis’ preliminary test-case of the mass murder of the Jews a few years later. Toward the end of the war, in August 1944, it seemed Turkey had an attack of conscience (or else its strategic interests changed!)– because it broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, and detained a couple of hundred non-Jewish refugees, but granted continued liberty to war-refugees whose passports said they were Jewish.

From the 1990’s into the dawn of the twenty-first century, the author read his family’s documents archive, met with some neighbors of his ancestors, and went to see whether his family members’ homes still existed. Most didn’t. The Russians destroyed the aforesaid factory after the war. But decades later, an entrepreneur bought the site (which was still a toxic waste dump, consisting of 26,000 tons of poisons), and built a nightclub and swimming pool on it, complete with imported controlled substances.

In the 1990’s(!), there were still homes getting destroyed and people getting killed by unexploded bombs, and homes getting built on radioactive sand dating back to WWII.

Read the book to learn much more about the author’s adventures in learning about Seigfried’s state of mind as a Jew who was (possibly initially unwittingly) aiding in the German war effort, his activities, and those of his other family members.

Let There Be Water

The Book of the Week is “Let There Be Water, Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World” by Seth M. Siegel, published in 2015. For this redundant, wordy volume, the author obviously simply slapped together all his past articles on the subject, without regard to organizing them. His main message was: Hire Israel to provide expertise on water management– to save time, energy, and the earth!

Anyway, in Israel, all water ownership and usage is controlled by the government. Its socialist philosophy is: do the greatest good for the greatest number. Water is an essential resource for humans. Israel’s tiny geography and population allow its government to more or less dictate policies that minimize damage done by selfish, greedy people who hoard essential resources– much more easily than can a nation like the U.S.

In 1937, Levi Eshkol, Simcha Blass and their cronies co-founded and launched a water company called Mekorot. It became a capitalist entity in bed with Israel’s government, but profit can be a good motivator for spurring innovation, and improving people’s lives. Financial conflicts of interest can be forgiven in this case, as the water-entrepreneurs made significant positive contributions to the physical and economic health of the young nation, developing the best water-distribution method for farming.

Conservative Republican Americans would actually scream SOCIALIST!!! at such a system. It works in Israel. As is well known, such a system does not work in the United States because it encourages citizens to start entrepreneurial ventures via financial assistance while also taxing the super-rich on the back-end for having taken advantage of existing infrastructure and front-end incentives. In America, there is little to no taxing on the back-end for the super-rich.

Anyway, in 1949, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion struck a deal with Germany for the latter to pay WWII reparations for lost and stolen property of the Jews. Those funds, and donations by American Jews, through the next few decades, were spent on constructing water infrastructure, such as fault-tolerant water pipelines, environmentally friendly waterways, and waterfront tourist-attractions.

In the 1950’s, the Knesset began passing laws regulating the country’s water system. Israel’s geography, topography and meteorology are diverse from north to south, and present challenging desert-related conditions, so it’s complicated and expensive to deliver safe, reliable, available water to its citizens. The water experts found that recycling sewage by filtering it three different times and ways, made it potable. In 2008, the Israeli government began to make its people pay for the real cost of delivering their water.

Read the book to learn much more about Israel’s water expertise, and how it is changing the world.

His Majesty’s Airship

“The New York Post wrote, ‘No more funds of American taxpayers [should] be squandered on these useless gasbags.’ “

The above is NOT a comment about the 2025 New York City mayoral candidates, but is a 1935 comment in reaction to the series of American airship crashes that killed hundreds of people.

The Book of the Week is “His Majesty’s Airship, The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine” by S.C. Gwynne, published in 2023. In this sloppily edited, chronologically disordered, wordy, redundant (but suspenseful) volume, the author recounts the history of airships through the late 1930’s.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Germans racked up significant construction- and flying-expertise with regard to airships with rigid frames. However, they had an abysmal safety record. They papered that over with jingoistic propaganda. The 1910’s saw a few conditions established to make airship flights less risky: flying only in summer and in clear weather with only light winds.

There was a high risk of fire because the hydrogen that filled the airships is easily combustible with just one spark. Helium is less so, but was expensive and difficult to obtain or make, and the Americans controlled the small quantity that was easily accessible.

The German government got the idea that in the event of a war, it could destroy cities at night via airships much more efficiently than it could with ground troops. In WWI, its submarines were actually more effective, because Britain wised up quickly– training searchlights on the airships, and shooting them into fireballs. By 1917, warplanes had become superior to airships, even with their mechanical problems.

Anyway, the author went off on a tangent, detailing the life-histories of a few different royal family members– main characters in the airships story. One such character was Lord Christopher Birdwood Thomson. Beginning in spring 1924, he persuaded the British government to execute his big idea of contracting with a company to make airships a fun, efficient form of global, public transportation.

The author tossed around the term “socialism” but did not elaborate. He described two competing British airship projects; one as capitalist, and the other as socialist. Here is a clarification (more details of which can be found in this blog’s post, “The Last Idealist” about Norman Thomas, in the “Politics – Systems” category):

With SOCIALISM, the people collectively own entities, and share and share alike. These can be profit-seeking businesses; or the government can own entities that provide essential services– health, education, welfare and large public transportation entities– that should not be profit-seeking (but some of their subcontractors are, anyway).

With COMMUNISM, the government owns profit-seeking entities (businesses) in whole or in part (as in the former Soviet Union and China). So yes, these include public-private partnerships in which there are clearly outrageous conflicts of interest that result in patronage and profiteering. So, arguably, the former Soviet Union and China have both Socialism and Communism to a large degree. The U.S. is not far behind anymore.

Furthermore, in America, the super-rich who pay no income tax, salve their consciences through philanthropy, which allows them to propagandize that they’re helping the poor. BUT income tax revenues are pooled so that they could end up getting spent on anything in the political budget. The super-rich specifically choose where to donate their money– whom to help, and it is a tiny percentage of poor people who are helped, compared with the number who are helped if money is provided through income tax!

Anyway, read the book to learn the outcome of the flight of R101 (hint: a large, expensive project run by alpha males with hubris syndrome– in which Darwin award candidates partake– rarely ends well) plus lots more historical background that explains why rigid airships are a thing of the past.

As is well known, the American government has been a large, expensive project run mostly by alpha males with hubris syndrome. Given the current overwhelming influences of money and sophisticated messaging via global, sophisticated communications technology, individuals need not even be physically present anymore to run the government. Like Elon Musk, they can be a mastermind of national policies in absentia. Here’s what Musk is singing now.

AMERICA

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

See my influence echoing on the Right.

These are the results of our secret conversations.

I and Trump pretended to have a fight.

Withdrawal from D.C. has let me discreetly plot to save my nation.

I learned from my old man along the way,

looking to amass resources to impose my brand of supremacy.

I turn to forceful people for-pay.

Scan the whole world, is I all have to DO.

It won’t take a lot to make my dreams come true.

My money has such power, I can lord it over you.

I act behind-the-scenes in America.

Trump’s taking this time to do the things we always pla-a-a-anned. ooh ooh

We reach out to our friends on the Right,

and we’ve grown prosperous, assisted by our hegemonic companies.

I know I’m doing what is right, sure as I am aiming to gradually rid the White House of democracy.

I need world conquest, deep inside.

Priming the pump for the great times to come.

It won’t take a lot to make my dreams come true.

My money has such power, I can lord it over you.

I act behind-the-scenes in America.

Trump’s taking this time to do the things we always pla-a-a-anned. ooh ooh

Scan the world is all I have to DO.

It won’t take a lot to make my dreams come true.

My money has such power, I can lord it over you.

I act behind-the-scenes in America.

(I act behind-the-scenes)

I act behind-the-scenes in America.

(I act behind-the-scenes)

I act behind-the-scenes in America.

(Trump’s taking this time)

Trump’s taking this time to do the things we always pla-a-a-anned. ooh ooh

Wild Chocolate

The Book of the Week is “Wild Chocolate, Across the Americas in Search of Cacao’s Soul” by Rowan Jacobsen, published in 2024. in this wordy, redundant volume, the author described in great detail, the single-digits 2000’s trend:

In fragmented and complex ways, individuals and families have become the stewards of cacao trees and in environmentally friendly ways, have harvested their beans that are made into high-quality, expensive chocolate sold worldwide. The trend has been comparable to that of microbreweries of the 1990’s. The takeaway was that no one can corner the cacao-bean market anymore.

The author listed just a few different source-countries of cacao trees– Belize, Guatemala, Trinidad, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Ghana, and Ivory Coast. He also described just a few of the risks and dangers associated with the numerous steps of the complicated process of how chocolate products are made. Among them:

lack of access to cacao trees (when the kingpins of the cocaine trade are occupying the remote areas of the Amazon rain forest, or Mexico, where the trees grow);
the flooding of a river around the cacao trees;
lack of fermentation and drying sheds to accommodate the amount of beans harvested;
ruination of an entire batch of beans due to mishaps in connection with food chemistry; and
problems caused by animals’ (electric eels, anacondas, crocodiles, and tucanderas, etc.) sharing the same habitat as the cacao trees.

The author visited the Bolivian Amazon rain forest where the Indigenous tribes do slash-and-burn agriculture, growing rice and herding cattle. By the 1990’s, urbanites were deforesting the region for farming. In 1991, Volker Lehmann, a member of the German Volunteer Service (the equivalent of America’s Peace Corps) sought to re-forest the region via the wild cacao tree. He had to talk to the Chiname tribe.

In June 1991 in Bolivia, the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United States raided the cocaine labs in Santa Ana de Yucuma, but the cocaine trade continued, because growing coca plants (and poppies for the heroin trade) was still more lucrative than the alternative crops of bananas, pineapple or hearts of palm, offered by the German Volunteer Service.

Read the book to learn much more about how much time, effort and expense goes into making chocolate products.

ENDNOTE: The author interchangeably used the terms “jungle” and “rainforest” but they are different.

All the Worst Humans

The Book of the Week is “All the Worst Humans, How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians” by Phil Elwood, published in 2024. This short volume was authored by an alcoholic adrenaline-junkie and occasional drug addict who was happiest when he was afforded opportunities to use his creativity to help his clients weasel out of image-trouble, burnish their image, or launch a smear campaign.

Born around 1980, Elwood began to acquire valuable contacts in Washington, D.C. when he did a summer internship in the U.S. Senate. Elwood was pleasantly surprised that, after ruining his own reputation, one such contact wrote a recommendation letter on his behalf to help him get accepted to a different college.

Most of the time, the following publications are the major influencers on breaking news: Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, Politico, Axios, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. The last three have a paywall– users must subscribe to them, and pay to read their articles. As is well known, in the last several decades, elected officials and their staffs in Washington, D.C., the media, the entertainment industry, Silicon Valley, professional sports and Wall Street have all incestuously melded together to create one big gossip circle. Readers who are no longer willing to pay for news, miss out on the gossip.

The author commented that there are currently a few tens of thousands of people who call themselves “journalists” while there are a few hundreds of thousands of people employed in the public relations industry. Very nearly all (except for this blog!) global communications are now sponsored-opinions, after so many decades of changes to information-sharing. Four of many milestones that set shameful precedents include:

In 1963, a journalist broke the taboo against prying into the personal lives of professional athletes when he revealed that Sandy Koufax was adopted. After that, privacy invasion became the norm.
In 1982, the New York Times eliminated the firewall between its editorial and advertising departments. Sports Illustrated did the same in the late 1980’s.
The year 1984 saw Republicans launch a fishing expedition of, and vicious smear campaign against Democrat vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s husband. Even for modern times, the high level of nastiness was extreme– and Republicans have continued such behavior to date, more than the Democrats.
Beginning in the 1980’s, the FCC relaxed its antitrust laws, allowing Rupert Murdoch to create a monster-sized multimedia empire (by purchasing the New York Post newspaper, Twentieth Century Fox, HarperCollins and the Wall Street Journal, to name a few propaganda outlets) with its attendant extremely large concentration of resources that allowed for infinite conflicts of interest that afforded him and his cronies the kinds of growth opportunities that free-market competitors couldn’t possibly hope to match.

To get additional information on how money, power and political hacks have corrupted every aspect of how people find out what’s going on in the world, feel free to read all the posts in this blog’s category “Publishing Industry Including Newspapering.”

Anyway, the author planted the following naive passage in his writing: “Salaries in some newsrooms are going up. Private equity is buying up media companies left and right. Foreign nations are investing heavily, too. Lines of ethics are blurring.” Newsflash: all these trends are decades-old!

Nonetheless, read the book to learn of the author’s adventures in image-management.

Along these lines, here’s a song about yet another downfall of someone once-rich and powerful (brought to you by Elwood-style PR.). This is what the Democrats are singing to the American president, whose name rhymes with “rump” and “dump.”

MIDTERMS-KARMA

sung to the tune of “Instant Karma” (1970 version) with apologies to the Estate of John Lennon and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Midterms-karma is gonna get you.

Gonna flip the states that are Red.

You’ll try to give yourself a pardon.

No one will shut up and take your bread.

All the world has had enough,

laughing behind your back,

all over the earth you’re a TACO.

They know you go low, yeah, low.

Midterms-karma is gonna get you.

A man like you is once-and-always.

Even the “new” Nixon wasn’t the “new” Nixon.

Yours is an open and shut case.

Your sins, the whole world is gonna see.

You’ll be blasting the fools in your GOP.

Everyone on earth knows who you are. A has-been tsar.

Far Right you are.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on. Everyone. Come on.

Midterms-karma is gonna get you.

You lay down with dogs, you got fleas.

You know a man is known by,

the company he keeps.

Everyone knows you’re outa here.

You’ve made so many live in pain and fear.

Why are you there, when you should be nowhere?

You got more than your share.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Gone and gone and gone, gone and gone.

Yeah, yeah, alright, uh-huh, uh.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Gone and gone and gone, gone and gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone.

Well, we all pile on.

Very soon you and your suck-ups will be gone…

The Loom of Time

The Book of the Week is “The Loom of Time, Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China” by Robert S. Kaplan, published in 2023. This redundant volume contained a hodgepodge of articles on the author’s observations, information and opinions gleaned from interviews, of his travels all over the Middle East over the course of decades, through wars, regime changes and anarchy.

Kaplan provided only a brief overview; for, all through the Post-WWII Era to date, America’s foreign policy has involved providing a lot of CIA-related (non-Congress-approved!) financial, military and / or humanitarian aid to its allies-of-the-moment, a lot of whose details have been kept top-secret, and are still classified.

Kaplan made generalizations on the evolution, advances and declines of Middle Eastern and Central Asian nations. He wrote that a nation whose military takes over its leadership, is one in decline. The author briefly described Egypt’s past leaders, including Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, and Egypt’s “Arab Spring” between 2011 and 2013.

During Mubarak’s ousting, ordinary Egyptians were traumatized by the street violence. They simply wanted quiet and economic security. Even after the regime change, free speech was banned, and dissidents were tortured and killed. Yes, the chaos had dissipated, but the people were still forced to live under crushing oppression.

The author contradicted himself in saying that the Obama administration chose not to aid ordinary Egyptians in ousting the dictatorial Mubarak, but later, Kaplan implied that the American government was somehow involved in the ousting. No more details were provided. Military man al Sisi became the new top Egyptian leader, while the extremist Muslim Brotherhood also gained significant political power.

The American Republican Party viciously smeared Obama for making Egyptians worse off. They say it was all his fault. Nevertheless, Egyptians varied in their views on whether the political situation had improved or worsened, depending on their own circumstances. A big hindrance to developing democracy in a country is educating the peasants, of which Egypt has a large number, who are easily brainwashed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Geopolitically, one thing leads to another. Egypt’s political instability was related to its inability to fulfill its water needs, as Ethiopia appropriated a portion of the Nile river in its own territory– building infrastructure to meet its own electricity needs.

The author commented naively, that “Quietly, methodically, in a strange way” China is becoming financially intertwined with Egypt. China has a controlling interest in a Suez Canal infrastructure project– a major international trading conduit– and urban construction projects. Perhaps Kaplan is unaware that for decades, China has been contracting with numerous countries to build infrastructure for them. It has significant financial stakes in many large American corporations.

The author goes on to describe how China signed on to pave streets, build new housing and transportation, skyscrapers and parks in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. China has already begun assembling highways and byways in the Soviet “Stans” territories, and is planning to ultimately build a paved trade-route beginning in China that runs through Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Eurasia.

The author visited Sulaymaniyah in Kurdistan in northern Iraq. American-taxpayer dollars kick-started the multi-religious political arrangement that has allowed the Kurds to live relatively peacefully since the Second Gulf War. The younger generation has technology, but the older generation is corruption-entrenched. Their uni-ethnic society (two factions of Kurds) is thus vulnerable to unrest from haters. There are free elections but the politicians go unregulated. (Sounds familiar!) Armed men run the country.

Read the book to learn a bit about the ancient history and recent geopolitics of various lands of Middle East and Central Asia; however, in order to connect the dots, the reader must pore over the entire book from cover to cover. Or already have gleaned context and background through the most efficient way to read history– personal accounts of politicians and leaders with historical backdrop, or “life and times” biographies.

The Spirit Catches You…

The Book of the Week is “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures” by Anne Fadiman, published in 1997. This volume alternately told the story of every last detail of the medical history (too much information!) of a child of the Hmong tribe from the country of Laos, and how the child’s fate was determined by the clash between American and Hmong cultures.

The history of Laos from the 1960’s onward is an infuriating and depressing one. Via their war-orders, American presidents destroyed Laos’ populated areas with land mines, bombs, napalm and agent orange in order to cut off a major North-Vietnam supply route called the Ho Chi Minh trail.

To start with, JFK violated an international agreement that Laos (neighboring Vietnam and Thailand) remain neutral in the event of war in the region; this, by secretly ordering, via the CIA– the recruitment, training and arming of a Hmong guerrilla army (even child-soldiers); at its peak thirty-thousand strong. This militia (consisting of the “Royal Lao”) continued fighting the (Communist) Pathet Lao (who behaved genocidally toward the Hmong), through the LBJ and Nixon administrations. Previously, the Hmongs had been farmers, growing opium-poppies and rice. This expertise of the Hmong, provided “Quiet War” funding.

The Americans’ delivery of rice (terminated in June 1974) kept the peasants from starving to death. When the Vietnam war “ended” in spring 1975, about 150,000 Laotians flooded refugee camps in Thailand (the nearest country that would take them due to funding from the United States and other “democratic” nations).

Long story short, the American government destroyed the Hmongs’ peaceful way of life of agriculture and herding in the mountains of Laos. Thus, some politicians sought to salve their consciences by allowing a few Hmong refugees to come to the United States beginning in May 1975.

Preference was obviously given to the few thousand Laotian military members who had aided the Americans, and thereafter, about 25,000 Hmong arrived through 1980. The Hmong felt a sense of entitlement in collecting American public assistance, because: the CIA broke its promises to aid the Hmong in exchange for their risking their lives to help Americans fight the Vietnam war; and the United States military wrecked their country.

In 1980, the Lee family arrived. Born in July 1982 in California, Lia was the fourteenth child born to the Lees. As a baby, Lia was diagnosed with epilepsy. Even by the late 1980’s, not one tribal member who lived in their community– Merced, CA– spoke the English language. The language barrier plus lots of other cultural differences the Lees had with Merced Community Medical Center, led to many misunderstandings and serious physical consequences for Lia through the years.

The Hmong people perform rituals based on superstitions, beliefs and customs; for, they believe in honoring their ancestors, shamanism and alternative medicine in the form of herbalism and acupuncture. Their humungous families have multi-generational households, and their priorities consist of taking care of their families, then their clan, then their own tribe.

They stick together and their mentality is one of cooperation rather than competition. Here’s an example: “Then Jonas [who speaks five languages and works long hours; an anomalous member of the Hmong tribe in that he was educated and had jobs] drove home [of one residence] to his wife, his three children, his brothers, his brothers’ wives, his brothers’ ten children, and his ringing telephone.”

Read the book to learn much, much more about the cultural clash between the Lees and their American community, some history of Laos, and how, as is typical for war-refugees coming to America, the younger generation of the Hmong tribe is becoming assimilated in this country.

From That Place and Time

The Book of the Week is “From That Place and Time, A Memoir 1938-1947” by Lucy S. Dawidowicz, published in 1989. In this slightly sloppily edited, completely chronogically disorganized volume, the author detailed her: experiences during a time of anti-Semitism and war, and then 20/20 hindsight.

Born in 1915 in New York City, the author was sent to Hebrew school, but was only “culturally Jewish.” This, to American Jews, means celebrating the major annual holidays, but neither going to services nor observing the vast majority of religious laws on a daily basis.

The author’s parents came to the United States from Poland around 1908. They thought the Yiddish language would be the common element that would unify the Jewish community. Around the 1910’s, an American Jew, Chaim Zhitlowsky tried to popularize that idea. The author therefore was fluent in Yiddish.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, there were four different educational Jewish factions (contentious with one another) in New York City that taught Yiddish: Zionist and socialist, socialist and anti-Zionist, Communist-affiliated, and non-political but culturally Jewish (For a description of the different aspects of Zionism, type “Zionism” in the search bar on the upper right side of this blog; the term “Zionism” like “feminism” and “global warming” was hijacked for emotionally-charged propaganda purposes.). The author fell into the last group.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the author perceived that American Jews didn’t have the same fears of getting bullied and victimized by discrimination as their European counterparts did. The Americans weren’t “wandering Jews.” Of course, she was always among her own kind of people, so she wasn’t exposed or subjected to hatred against her group.

In 1935, there existed a group named the Freeland League who were searching for a homeland for the Jews, other than Palestine. One place they looked at, was Kimberley in Australia. It seems the current territorial disputes between Jews and Palestinians are focused on lands they claim their ancestors occupied for centuries, and no substitute territories will do.

Anyway, Dawidowicz’s father instilled in her a hostility toward the religious aspects of Judaism, as well as toward Zionism. “Furthermore, [in the mid-1930’s] in Palestine, the Zionists denigrated Yiddish and demanded that Hebrew alone be the national language of the Palestinian settlement.”

In March 1935, in rearming for world conquest, Hitler tore up the Versailles Treaty. Stalin felt he needed to make nice with the West in order to gain security for Russia. So in August 1935, the Soviet leadership announced a new policy that pivoted away from Marxism. It was the new Stalinism: collectively fighting against the Nazis and Japanese militarism.

In spring 1938, the Polish government hated its own Jews, and was looking for an excuse to refuse to accept Jewish refugees from Germany. Nevertheless, that autumn, the author went to study and do research at the Yiddish Scientific Institute in Poland. In August 1939, Stalin reversed himself and allied with Hitler so the two could take over Poland.

Read the book to learn of the author’s anguish at the historical events of the next decade, and how they affected her generation.

The Playbook

The Book of the Week is “The Playbook, A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War” by James Shapiro, published in 2024.

In the 1930’s, American president FDR implemented programs to help the unemployed during the Great Depression. One was the Works Progress Administration, a sub-program of which, Federal Theater (hereinafter referred to as “FT”), put thousands of people to work. However, there were numerous complications every time the group wanted to put on a play, because there were a dozen unions with whom to negotiate.

FT produced thought-provoking shows that starkly portrayed the dangers and immorality of fascism, totalitarianism, slavery, racism, etc. It risked having its funding cut for its political correctness. In autumn 1936, FT was able to stage the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can’t Happen Here because MGM had decided not to make a movie of it.

FT opened the inflammatory play in eighteen big cities across America. In Seattle the cast was inter-racial. New York City performed the play in Yiddish. The traveling version lasted 133 performances. Fortunately, audiences interpreted the play all different ways politically.

In September 1937, FDR signed affordable-housing (what activists for the downtrodden would call “gentrification”) legislation that was diluted due to fears of:

government competition with the private sector;
over-regulation;
budgetary excesses;
and Southern states’ getting short shrift because they were more rural than urban.

In response to the above, in 1938, FT staged One Third of a Nation. That theatrical production demonstrated how stakeholders treated America’s slums, which accounted for where one third of the nation’s population resided, according to FDR, as of early 1937.

The movie version was Hollywoodized– its funders were purchasers of distressed assets and profiteers. They made it a story about poor whites with a romantic subplot involving a “kindly capitalist” (the absentee landlord, or in the real world– a slumlord). A suicidal arsonist prompted the landlord to rebuild the place with trees and a playground. Everyone lived happily ever after.

Anyway, FT’s most vicious enemy turned out to be Martin Dies, a U.S. Congressman from eastern Texas, first elected in 1930. He had the KKK mentality, with xenophobia and misogyny thrown in. In 1935, he got himself on the Rules Committee, the most powerful committee in the House.

Dies also fast-tracked his power accumulation with his endless persistence. In 1938, he finally got himself appointed the head of a special committee that investigated a hot-button political issue; this, by chance, through teaming up with the exact right person who could help him– Samuel Dickstein, a Congressman from New York City who was equally driven to amass power and attention. They secretly allied with vice president John Nance Garner, who was on their side.

By spring 1938, their committee was claiming it was trying to root out subversives, Fascists and Communists, and prevent violence at Nazi rallies in America’s streets. But they had questioned a politically active Nazi who stayed right under their noses, and they failed to investigate him further!

Their real motive was to execute a smear campaign against FDR himself, in addition to his New Deal, and unions. So FT became an easy target, too. Ironically, “He [Dies] envisioned the hearings touring nationally, moving from city to city, beginning on the West coast and ending back East.”

One of Dies’ star investigators, Hazel Huffman, ignorantly equated Progressivism, racial integration, anti-capitalism and anti-fascism with Communism in her testimony. She recited verbatim lines from the FT’s scripts, out of context as evidence of Communist propaganda. Dies backed her up. They were so entertaining– newspapers, magazines and radio broadcasters presented her nasty, biased utterances about the FT, as fact. Dies realized he needed to keeping directing fresh accusations at FT and the WPA to keep the media in his back pocket.

Read the book to learn yet again, that there is nothing new under the sun, in terms of demagogues who use age-old propaganda techniques to amass sufficient power to commit crimes, oppress their fellow citizens, and spread hatred far and wide with total impunity.

And So To America

The Book of the Week is “And So To America” by Cecil Roberts, published in 1947. Clearly, the author (who was an established British writer born in May 1892) had 20/20 hindsight of WWII at this book’s writing. He threw in the kitchen sink at intervals, of the history of specific people, places and things, of all different centuries.

In October 1939, Roberts began public-speaking tours in the United States to try to alert ordinary Americans to the dangers of taking no action against the Germans, who had already invaded Poland. In 1935, FDR sign the Neutrality Act that took effect in 1937. The Act denied America’s allies any military help in the event they felt they were in need of it. After the horrors of WWI, America had no interest in entering another war, and thought the Atlantic Ocean would offer geographic protection from the violence going on in Europe.

The author claimed the British government initially declined his offer of assistance on the public-relations front, but he did admit that it compensated him for certain services he performed for the British Embassy in America, and the British Ministry of Information.

Roberts also participated in a program that allowed about four thousand children and some of their mothers to move to the U.S. during the time that Britain was getting bombed via warplanes. Generous American families hosted them. Those Britishers’ families had assets in the U.S. that had been frozen by the Treasury. For, Great Britain had yet to pay America back for its WWI debt.

Beginning in September 1939, Republicans in the American federal government voted against three different pieces of legislation (that passed at FDR’s urging anyway) that would prepare the United States for war, through: military spending to rearm, reinstating the draft and repealing an arms embargo (which kind of negated the Neutrality Act).

In 1940, there were two major groups of Republicans, one of which opposed FDR in the presidential election– isolationists and the anti-New Dealers. They viewed his running for a third term, as dictatorial. Besides that, they were also thinking Germany would win the war, so they were preparing to reap the spoils when that happened. They were viciously vengeful against FDR, spouting the meanest, nastiest smears again him.

As is well known, in mid-August 1945, on the world’s various continents, people were homeless, still dying in frightful numbers from disease and starvation, from having participated in the war gone by, occupying the wrong place at the wrong time as an innocent bystander, or from just plain bad luck in not having been born a royal-family member!

Meanwhile, in Newport Rhode Island, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt threw a dinner party for some two hundred guests in lavish surroundings that included fresh pink flowers, two orchestras, and caviar and champagne. The author was there, rubbing shoulders with the elitists, a little disturbed about this cosmic injustice, but not enough to do anything about it.

Roberts also wrote, “In the following years [after WWII] one was very conscious of the India and Palestine questions. It would appear that large sections of the American people were perturbed about the reputed tyranny of Britain in these two places.” Read the book to learn a boatload more history and of the author’s adventures in the lap of luxury in America.

Eighty years later, the overall status of humanity in the world has improved a little, but not much.

For the last 45 years, Republicans in America have:

enjoyed their pet programs (military and security that kick out, keep out, or possibly trample on, the civil rights of, foreigners and poor people) while

been trying to justify eliminating what they consider government handouts (the social safety net that assists older or unlucky people, or those who have made bad life-choices).

Beginning with the George W. Bush era, the Republicans have become hypocrites because they ruined their own reputation for fiscal responsibility– they went on a spending spree that caused the deficit to skyrocket!

Here’s a little song that describes the current political situation in the United States– what the budget-busting Republicans are singing.

SLASH SLASH

sung to the tune of “Splish Splash” with apologies to the Estate of Bobby Darin and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Slash, slash, we’re doing the math,

long about a budget-bill fight. yeah

Snub, snub, just taxing-the Democrats’ club,

favoring everyTHING far-Right.

Well, jack up the deficit. It’s all Biden’s fault.

Open wounds around us, and we rub in the salt.

Well, slash, slash, we went back to the math, well, how were we to know Biden’s brain was all gone?

We’re Biden-bashing, healthcare-slashing,

wheeling and dealing, Dems are stewing and a-suing,

we’re complying with Trump’s lying. Yeah.

Bang, bang, we smear the Liberal gang,

dancing on the Democrats’ graves.

Yeah, no cops, pulling out all the stops.

This bill has the pork we crave.

Well there’s, big MON-ey, for ICE.

Forget the EARTH.

We Reagan wannaBES put America FIRST.

Well- a, we can’t forget about the math. We have to put our fancy PR on. Yay.

We’re polling and steam-rolling, wheeling and dealing,

Dems are stewing and a-suing. Slashing and slashing. Yeah.

Yes, we’re Biden-bashing, we’re polling and steam-rolling.

Yeah, Dems are stewing and a-suing. We’re wheeling and dealing.

We’re polling and steam-rolling. We’re complying with Trump’s lying. Slash slash yeah

mm slashing and slashing, all-time we’re Biden-bashing, whoo-wee, Dems are stewing and a-suing, we’re slashing and slashing…