Industry Insider Had Attack of Conscience, Was Called “Traitor” & Was Ostracized (Cancel Culture)

The Trading Game

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The Book of the Week is “The Trading Game, A Confession” by Gary Stevenson, published in 2024. This blogger highly encourages the reader to peruse the entire “Wall Street” and Economics categories of this blog in order to gain a better understanding of financial matters and economics.

In March 2007, the 1987-born author began working on the Fixed Income Trading Floor at the Short Term Interest Rates Trading Desk in the Foreign Exchange section of Citibank in its London branch. He had grown up in a tough, poor neighborhood in East London. He beat the odds for someone of his demographic group, considering the fierce competition in both getting accepted to a prestigious university and getting a job in currency trading.

Stevenson nurtured an aspiration to make lots of money. Fortunately, his talent and hard work in mathematics allowed him to score high on standardized exams. He attended the London School of Economics where he rubbed shoulders with mostly male, wealthy elitists whose fathers gave them a leg up in life, and whose futures were almost guaranteed to be bright. At school, when he won a game involving hypothetical securities trading, Stevenson’s life turned around. For, he won an internship which turned into a career.

After a few lucky breaks and bold moves on his part, the author was just hitting his stride in work-experience when he happened to be at the right place at the right time to earn extremely large financial gains from a triple-whammy disaster. In March of 2011, about twenty thousand people died in Japan due to an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown of three power plants. Amidst the resulting financial turmoil and previous turmoil of the 2008 worldwide financial crises, Stevenson made a percentage of the millions upon millions of dollars he earned in currency trading for Citibank.

Stevenson alone in his department had been correct in gaming the situation. Everyone else had been wrong and they lost money. Nevertheless, he was still emotionally troubled. He bore two major similarities with Alan Turing– another genius: social dysfunctionality, and indifference to how he looked and what he wore.

Stevenson was one of the proverbial three kinds of people (geniuses in the minority)– the kind who knew what was happening and made things happen. The vast majority account for the other two kinds of people– brainwashed, unwashed masses who watched what was happening, and then still wondered what happened.

In the early 2010’s, the author came to the realization that there would NEVER be economic recovery of any financially-struggling countries in the European Union while the Swiss National Bank kept interest rates at or below zero. The other traders in his department optimistically kept repeating that interest rates HAD to rise sooner or later, because they had bet wrong.

But, the tiny percentage of the super-wealthy, super-powerful people of the world sought to maintain the then-status quo, because it made THEM even richer, and the poor, poorer, as the cliche goes. The income inequality of the world would eventually result in a slave-based economy (as existed in ancient times) all over again.

Read the book to learn much more of Stevenson’s personal and professional life, and his times. As is well known, the United States is one of the major economic superpowers of the world, and its politics are part and parcel of that. Here’s a little ditty on its momentary political situation.

LET THE BEST TEAM WIN

sung to the tune of “Let the River Run” with apologies to Carly Simon, BMG Gold Songs C’est Music and Tcf Music Pub Inc.

[Spoken: We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.]

Let the best team win.
Let’s all peaceFULly watch the changes.
Come the new, new Washington.

Brilliant ideas rise.
The media lies, about, and smears them.
And celebs get themselves in your face.

It’s asking for the taking,
blaming, deep-faking.
Oh, Americans are aching.
We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.

Through the hate and all.
It’s who we are:
Place a trail of desire
on the White House lawn.

It’s asking for the taking.
Just hold on now.
Democratic convention will be a show
you’ve never even seen in political history.

Oh, Americans are aching.
We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.

It’s asking for the taking,
blaming, deep-faking.
Oh, Americans are aching.
We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.

Let the best team win.
Let’s all peaceFULly watch the changes [watch the changes]
Come the new, new Washington.

Oath and Honor – EXTRA BONUS POST

The Extra Bonus Book of the Week is “Oath and Honor, A Memoir and a Warning” by Liz Cheney, published in 2023.

As is well known, in November and December 2020, Donald Trump filed sixty-one lawsuits contesting the 2020 presidential election. He lost sixty of those lawsuits, even those decided by judges he himself had appointed. In connection with his political career, he was charged with ninety-one felony counts. Even if a third of all of those felony counts were truly legitimate, that is still a huge amount of criminality, compared to that of other white-collar criminals.

Liz Cheney served as Republican Conference Chair. In late December 2020 (before January 6, 2021), she contacted all former U.S. Secretaries of Defense she possibly could, to ask them to warn Trump that the U.S military was not to be used to bully the nation into an election do-over.

As a member of the January 6 Committee, Cheney held meetings, generated memos and reports, and conducted interviews and attempted to get Americans to understand the vice-president’s role, and what is supposed to transpire in the certification process of votes in a presidential election.

On January 6, specific individuals were permitted to object to the vote counts of any states they chose. A few Republican puppets of Trump did. If the objections had succeeded, the votes of all Americans in those states wouldn’t have counted.

Shortly after January 6, Steve Scalise, a Republican and House minority whip remarked publicly that apparently, Trump could no longer lead the Republican Party. Nevertheless, three and half years later, sufficiently powerful Republicans are keeping Trump in power.

Read this eloquent book to learn about Cheney and the January 6 Committee, and the extreme amount of work, blood, sweat and tears involved in explaining to laypeople– how Trump’s actions on January 6– were so very damaging and dangerous for American democracy. This book was on par with the Pentagon Papers.

[Endnote: Eric Trump wrote in a recent mailing to American voters, “Biden’s wealthy Leftist puppet masters plan on spending more than $3 BILLION to defeat my father and keep Biden in the White House for four more years so they can continue destroying America with their Marxist agenda.”

Since Trump has stolen and twisted Reagan quotes, it is only fair to ask one of Reagan’s originals: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Eight years ago? How about sixteen years ago, when there was a Republican president in office, a crashed economy and two Republican-led, treasury-draining, America-involved wars? If Biden is draining the Treasury, it’s so more bridges won’t collapse, and more law enforcement officers won’t be injured by more Trump-influenced violence.

Here’s a little ditty explaining the current situation.

A DANGEROUS, EVIL MAN

sung to the tune of “A Well Respected Man” (Official Audio) with apologies to the Kinks.

Well, Trump GOT up on Jan. 6.
And he encouraged a violent time.
And his cult of personality,
AIDed his election crimes.

His world is BUILT on amassing power.
It never fails.
‘Cause he’s oh so thuggish.
And he’s oh so coarse.
And he’s oh so wealthy
with GOP candidates to endorse.

He’s a dangerous, evil man
still around,
appealing to the LOWest GOP constituency.

And he holds his scheming meetings,
while his lawyers play his games.
And he stirs up crowds with hatred,
while trashing his enemies’ names.

And he influences courts
as well as bills
WHEN-ever he can.

‘Cause he’s oh so thuggish.
And he’s oh so coarse.
And he’s oh so wealthy
with GOP candidates to endorse.

He’s a dangerous, evil man
still around,
appealing to the LOWest GOP constituency.

And he boosts his own resorts.
And he embraces dictators the best.
‘Cause he’s more powerful than the rest.
But others’ money smells the best.

And he hopes to grab more of this nation’s-loot
when democracy passes on.

‘Cause he’s oh so thuggish.
And he’s oh so coarse.
And he’s oh so wealthy
with GOP candidates to endorse.

He’s a dangerous, evil man
still around,
appealing to the LOWest GOP constituency.

And he plays the RNC.
And he goes to Davos and CPACs.
He TRAINS the girls next door
to recruit more political hacks.

But billionaires know
best about, PRESidential stakes.

‘Cause he’s oh so thuggish.
And he’s oh so coarse.
And he’s oh so wealthy
with GOP candidates to endorse.

He’s a dangerous, evil man
still around,
appealing to the LOWest GOP constituency.

By Way of Deception

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The Book of the Week is “By Way of Deception, The Making and Unmaking of A Mossad Officer” by Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy, published in 1990. The former’s slightly sloppily edited, detailed account asserted that the Mossad (a spying agency in Israel that acted like a self-regulatory organization– that conducted operations with neither the government’s permission nor knowledge, so that leaders would have plausible deniability) had become too big for its britches. By the mid-1980’s, the Mossad had about twelve hundred true insiders and an unknown number of agents or contacts worldwide.

The author was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada in November 1949. He grew up in Canada and Israel, and began his Mossad training in the early 1970’s. At that time, the Mossad pretended to recruit women, but never actually hired any to be insiders; for, women were harder to protect, and even though women were used as enchantresses and seductresses (and were killed when necessary) no Arab men (Mossad’s main target) would accept them as their bosses.

For starters, the author passed months and months of numerous, rigorous hiring tests that required him to be dishonest yet naturally creative and charismatic– getting strangers to do his bidding. During his two years’ training to be a spy, the author was brainwashed into living a lie without a second thought. In his business, one also needed to be paranoid.

There were no second chances for the inexperienced. In June 1973, a PLO terrorist thought he was careful in checking his car for explosives (under the hood, underneath, in the trunk, and in the exhaust pipe) on every occasion prior to driving. However, he was killed by a pressure mine under his car seat.

In the 1970’s, France possessed the Exocet, a missile with cutting-edge technology– it could walk on water, undetected by radar. Israel wanted this weaponry, but its reputation in the world was tarnished, so France and the countries that bought it wouldn’t sell to Israel. In 1976, the Mossad stepped in and brokered a secret deal among Chile’s number two man under Pinochet, and Panama’s number two man under Noriega. The agency successfully paid a million American dollars for the head of the missile, which was all Israel needed to reverse-engineer it and manufacture it.

In the eventful year of 1981, the Mossad didn’t want to see peace in the Middle East. It launched a complicated operation involving missiles, raisins and hash that put millions and millions of dollars in its coffers (the revenue was a happy side effect) “… with the ever-treacherous PLO… the key was to ensure that everything was synchronized in Vienna, Hamburg and Frankfurt…” It wrapped up in July, when the said cities’ local police arrested tens of spies, and at least one person was killed.

Read the book to learn of additional ways the Mossad’s sociopathic operatives disregarded rule-of-law in order to achieve their missions in mostly playing adolescent-boy spy games, but occasionally orchestrating international incidents in which the course of history was significantly changed, and in which innocent people died.

Here, Right Matters

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The Book of the Week is “Here, Right Matters, An American Story” by Alexander S. Vindman, published in 2021. Some construe the word “right” in the book’s title as the political Right, which implies political power. In that regard, perhaps the author made a Freudian slip, or he got bad advice on the book’s title. By “right” he obviously meant moral. The author had particular expertise on the Soviet mentality, as his family was originally from the Ukraine. He was born there, was fluent in its language, but admitted he was never trained as an interpreter.

According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacks Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index), in July 2019, the author heard unethical and possibly treasonous utterances issue from the mouth of a representative of then-president Donald Trump in two separate conference calls among American and Ukrainian government officials. Pursuant to the chain of command, he informed his identical twin brother, who happened to be chief ethics counsel for the National Security Council.

The nefarious portion of the “Ukraine call” (the second conference call) whose unredacted transcript that was analyzed to death by the media circus, the American government, and every “news” junkie on the planet– consisted of the president’s asking a top leader of the Ukraine to gather any data that would smear Joseph Biden– the likely 2020 American presidential candidate, and to gather any data that would make Trump and his party look bad.

Administration officials who aided the president in this endeavor included (but were probably not limited to): the attorney general, his personal attorney, the White House chief of staff and the American ambassador to the European Union. In addition, the president withheld $400 million of American aid to Ukraine as a bargaining chip in doing his bidding.

The way the Trump administration handled foreign policy with regard to the relationship between Russia and the Ukraine obviously has raucously controversial international ramifications.

Profiteers, exploiters and human right activists would argue that military, financial and humanitarian assistance should be sent to the Ukraine. Profiteers and exploiters would trot out the age-old argument that Russia could ally with China in ways that would crush the United States. But that hasn’t happened. Activists would argue that Russian leader Putin and his military have been committing atrocities and war crimes, and theoretically they could eventually occupy Eastern Europe as the Soviets did in the 1950’s.

According to the author, in the early 2000’s, in Iraq, the Stryker brigade was used to move powerful, high-tech military equipment and supplies over long distances in record time. There is a risk that Putin could show his military might partly by using a version of the “Stryker brigade” in certain countries. But the takeover would probably occur only in those places where the older generation is resistant to change, or cannot afford to, or lacks the connections to leave their homeland to seek freedom and better living standards elsewhere. And most people who realized they had been oppressed, had a chance to leave in the last twenty-five years– if they had really wanted to.

In the 1990’s, different countries threw off their communist yoke at different speeds. People in the former Soviet Union had lived under communism for decades longer than their Eastern bloc counterparts. The older ones residing in the latter had known a better quality of life prior to Soviet takeover. Jeri Laber wrote, “They looked around them and saw corrupt, repressive governments, failing economies, contaminated water, polluted air, alcoholism, and apathy.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

When Siberians discovered freedom and consumer goods, they became like Americans. They started riding in cars instead of walking. They ate fatty foods for lunch and the men stopped exercising. The women started going to aerobics classes at the gym.

From a purely economic standpoint (a neoconservative viewpoint)– selfish, heartless and sociopathic– the United States would benefit the most by not risking the lives of its own people to fight for the freedom and security of the peoples of whichever territories Russia decides to occupy, even if oil prices rise.

By its inaction, the United States would maintain its economic dominance in the world. It is becoming wise to Russia’s “…hybrid warfare… fake news, insincere diplomacy, intervention in elections…” drones, cyberattacks and jamming of Ukraine’s communications.

Read the book to learn more information about the author’s life, career and morals.

Gunfight

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The Book of the Week is “Gunfight, My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America” by Ryan Busse, published in 2021.

The author’s grandfather’s generation of gun enthusiasts embraced Depression-Era values: “Principles. Safety. Camaraderie. Pride.” He believed in the New Deal, and the then-culture of the National Rifle Association: admiring the craftsmanship and power of firearms, using them safely for hunting, and the challenge of shooting targets consisting of inanimate objects; not the current goal of amassing money and power for the firearms industry and its trade organizations, human lives be damned.

Additionally, every incident is milked for funding demands from law enforcement agencies across the country. And most politicians insincerely grandstand “enough is enough!” but do nothing until dissatisfaction with the status quo reaches critical mass– until there’s a real threat to their reelection. Then, in their campaign, they promise to make relevant legislation a priority.

Anyway, in 1995, the author, born in 1970 and raised out West, began working for the tiny Portland, Oregon rifle company, Kimber. It made and sold high-quality guns to be used for collecting and hunting. Kimber had a checkered past because the big boss was a psycho but nevertheless he truly believed in the product.

The author quickly learned that gun sales have assumed a certain pattern in the United States of the last few decades. Whenever the political climate changes from conservative to liberal or when another unbalanced individual kills people in a highly publicized incident, the firearms industry propaganda machine generates phobia and fury among gun enthusiasts in convincing them that the government is going to take away their instruments of power and masculinity. These impressionable, mostly young males, have the mentality of cultists. They rush out and add to their collections, just in case the vicious rumors are true. The buying frenzy lasts a year or two.

The first major piece of legislation that touched off this angry cycle was the Brady Bill, signed by president Bill Clinton (who was scapegoated by Second Amendment promoters) in November 1993. Then, in September 1994, it was the assault weapons ban, sponsored by then-senator Joe Biden.

However, the bill became Swiss cheese with loopholes because the NRA exerted overwhelming political pressure on power- and donation-hungry Congress members to exempt or grandfather-in more than 650 kinds of firearms. Even so, the little regulation there was, arguably, prevented ten more shootings like “Columbine.” Unfortunately, it is impossible to prove what would have happened otherwise, but judging from what has been happening more and more and more, with almost total absence of preventive measures, some more measures might be helpful.

After 1994, the excitement died down, and gun sales plummeted for the rest of the 1990’s. Struggling financially, Kimber was forced to merge with a firearms distributor which sold cheap plastic handguns– made in South Korea, or with the name Daewoo– that were used in street crime.

The company survived. However, the author reflected on how his industry was desecrating his philosophy (which he shared with his grandfather) when, in the single-digit 2000’s, he brought an industry contact of his to a national park to share in the breathtaking beauty of Montana. The contact was apparently sociopathic because he was able to rationalize away the environmental destruction that would ensue if the land was opened up to oil drilling. The NRA, via political front groups, was aiding and abetting backroom deals as they spoke (!)

In addition, a controversy also raged over whether owners should be allowed to carry concealed weapons, instead of having the world openly see them in a holster. As is well known, in twentieth century history, the kinds of people who armed themselves openly out in public included Nazis, the Red Guard, teenage thugs in Third World countries, and in Soviet satellites after the Berlin Wall fell– during times of strife, civil wars, and genocide.

Americans have never experienced that kind of scene (except in Western or Southern states until they became urbanized and did away with “frontier justice” or Napoleonic justice), and would not expect to, either (except in isolated incidents immediately after 9/11).

The NRA’s argument for allowing people to carry concealed firearms is that they should be allowed to defend themselves, if they are attacked. But, the only reason one would need to defend against attacks, is if one has angry, violent enemies. What is the character of these people who garner such enemies?? Or, if people are targeted in a random shooting, the argument goes that if the targets are armed, they can immediately shoot the shooter to prevent more carnage. Sounds as though NRA members think life is a violent video game, if they expect bullets to fly when they go out in public.

In addition, the NRA’s fear-mongering never ends, as it scares single females into thinking they’re vulnerable to street crime from strangers, if they must pass through high-crime neighborhoods, for whatever reason. And apparently, many people are led to believe that strangers perpetrate home-invasions left and right!

Further, the NRA has whipped up a frenzy of hatred and violence. Once a taboo is broken, it’s easier to break more and more taboos. Excuse the cliche, the fish rots from the head down: when the nation’s leaders behave badly, their underlings copy them in a free-for-all.

Professional baseball discovered that players’ alcohol consumption before and during competitions was bad for revenues in the long run. And not only because it compromises judgment and coordination, but also because fans imitated the players’ behavior, and lawlessness resulted. Eventually, such a revelation will turn the firearms industry around, because profits are one of its major goals. It will be curbed of its own excesses, by allowing regulation, slowly but slowly.

Anyway, in 2008, just to make sure its smear campaign against presidential candidate Barack Obama stuck, the NRA created war-glorifying videos aimed at couch commandos. It became a “… bought-and paid-for wing of the Republican Party…” and in 2016, “The Trump and NRA operations ran identically.” There was no more reason and accountability among supporters of those two. After years of seething silently at what was happening, the author acquired sufficient courage to express his displeasure with it, and advocate against it, even though he knew full well he and his family would be subject to endless harassment for being a traitor.

Read the book to learn more about: the author’s activities; a case of industry-ostracism of a perceived traitor-company; a victim of cancel culture (hint: besides the author: an old-school gun-industry writer who dared opine in 2007, that using assault weapons for hunting, was overkill); and more on the NRA’s extremely radical behavior, that was ongoing at the book’s writing.

Flying Close to the Sun

The Book of the Week is “Flying Close to the Sun” by Cathy Wilkerson, published in 2007.

Born in January 1945 in Hartsdale, a northern suburb of New York City, the author spent most of her childhood in Connecticut. At a young age, she was drawn to politics. At Swarthmore College, she joined the group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and engaged in political activism for decades. Many young people were brainwashed into thinking that the revolutions in China, Vietnam and Cuba had been successful in creating a societal paradise.

In turbulent 1960’s America, the counter-cultural attitude was:

“If corporations were stealing from us and selling us products that killed, then we too could steal from them and support the movement.”

As is well known, during the Vietnam War, more than a few American companies were cooperating with the U.S. government to supply the U.S. military with napalm and agent orange, two chemicals toxic to vegetation as well as humans.

In June 1969, SDS held a convention for its chapters across the country. However, there was lots of infighting over ideology and the direction of the movement. Later that month, a few SDS members wrote a paper that said that the United States government should be overthrown because it was imperialist, and oppressed blacks and the poor. The plan was that the revolutionaries would impose Marxist-Leninist socialism so that Americans in the new world order could live happily ever after.

The paper inspired some SDS members, including Wilkerson, to form a new group which called itself the Weatherman. She began to think that the only way to change the world was through revolution. Weatherman started to provoke the local Chicago police the way the Black Panthers had been doing. The former became very focused on the Black Power movement, at the expense of the women’s movement.

Wilkerson gave talks that advocated working with women of all ages around issues of domestic violence and workplace harassment. She was bullied at a self-criticism meeting about not being more against racism. She was told she was being selfish; that blacks were being treated worse than women. SDS leaders said that’s why blacks deserved more attention. The group should focus on the blacks and when they achieved equality, then women’s equality would follow.

In summer 1969 in Columbus, Ohio, two dozen SDSers recruited high schoolers in their hangouts such as streets, beaches, bars, etc. In three not-so-great neighborhoods, they incited blacks to riot and commit violence against the police. Unsurprisingly, the mayor called in the National Guard.

That same summer, SDS member Mike Klonsky resigned. He had realized that violence was a childish way to resolve conflicts, and suggested that instead, people work through their anger about injustice by pressuring politicians to combat racism, and raise awareness in workplaces.

The late 1960’s and early 1970’s saw incidents of unrest that scarred the American psyche; the most well-publicized included: Columbia University in spring 1968, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968, San Francisco State College beginning in late 1968, and Kent State in Ohio in May 1970. Wilkerson and others in the “movement” thought that these incidents indicated that activists were catching on and making progress.

As a low-level member of Weatherman, Wilkerson lived in the collective, and did what they did. She learned martial arts, exercised, and discussed and argued for hours about the agenda of the organization. The collective voted to do away with monogamy, as that would allow full participation of all members. The group wanted to have a collective sense of humanity– it was bigger than oneself.

Read the book to learn of a game-changing event that occurred in March 1970 involving Wilkerson, that radically changed her group’s and her circumstances, and of much more about her life and times.

Politics of Conscience

The Book of the Week is “Politics of Conscience, A Biography of Margaret Chase Smith” by Patricia Ward Wallace, published in 1995.

The author wrote,

“Or perhaps it was that after four years, the nation had witnessed his unseemly bullying, insulting, and humiliating tactics for too long…”

of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI). In the spring of 1954, the U.S. Army held hearings in order to give McCarthy a taste of his own medicine.

Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) took over her deceased husband’s U.S. Senate seat when he died, and was reelected in 1940. She received special treatment from Bangor Daily News columnist May Craig, in that Craig was assigned specifically to favorably cover Smith, but hardly ever, any other politician.

Smith was best known– aside from her gender, along with six other senators– for issuing a “Declaration of Conscience” in June 1950, that took McCarthy to task (even though she and he were both Republicans) for his dictatorial methods in rooting out accused Communists.

After Smith delivered an accompanying speech on the Senate floor, her group took no follow-up actions, ingenuously thinking that that one act of protestation would convince the rest of the government and ordinary Americans that McCarthy was violating people’s civil rights in capitalizing on Cold War hysteria. He retaliated against her, (as politicians of his ilk will) by pressuring senate-committee-leaders to deny her membership and assignments she wanted.

In 1952, the book U.S.A. Confidential was published. It was full of lies and smears against all parties who were automatically treated as guilty of associating with Communists (many through only the most tenuous of connections), or who were automatically Communists by virtue of a simple accusation (by their enemies, of course) against them, whether unfounded or not.

Smith sued the book’s authors and publisher for libel, as several of the book’s pages mentioned her. The defendants used every possible tactic to delay litigation, but finally agreed to settle the case in autumn 1956. It was a hollow victory for Smith.

In the 1950’s, some members of the United States government galvanized citizens to turn their fears of nuclear war into hatred of one enemy: the former Soviet Union. Nowadays, fears and hatreds are scattered between or among all kinds of groups, absent the threat of nuclear war.

One way American governmental authorities are again attempting to galvanize the people against one enemy is to direct it against a disease, through controlling the population in various ways.

And yes, the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 is soon to arrive, bringing with it threats to national security. But the government has known this anniversary would arrive, for the last twenty years; the most recent administration, for the last eight months. Just a thought.

Read the book to learn much more about Smith’s career, life and times.

L.A. Justice – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “L.A. Justice, Lessons from the Firestorm” by Robert Vernon, published in 1993.

In 1954, the author joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Through the decades of his career, he watched the LAPD become corrupted by the worst aspects of human nature. By the early 1990’s, the department had scrapped the civil service system in favor of using patronage in awarding promotions. This necessitated pleasing local politicians. Always a bad idea.

So at the tail end of April 1992, when the verdict was announced in the Rodney King legal case, law enforcement was unprepared for the rioting that broke out in South-Central Los Angeles.

The author, lately named assistant chief of police of Los Angeles, bragged about helping start a community program in 1990– successful at the book’s writing. It was called “Operation Cul-de-Sac” and involved transforming a high-crime neighborhood into a gated community. It was implemented in about seven hundred households in South Central Los Angeles. The author wrote, “… changing behavior must begin by influencing a belief system.”

The program must have done so, as it created support networks of families and friends, significantly reduced crime, and significantly increased school attendance.

Unfortunately, despite its success, the program was not to last much longer. The reason? It was funded by the LAPD– not special-interest political groups in the community. So local politicians were left out of the loop– unable to hand out patronage jobs.

Read the book to learn of all kinds of other frustrations suffered by the author in his experiences with the LAPD.

Blinded By the Right

The Book of the Week is “Blinded By the Right, The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative” by David Brock, published in 2002.

Born in 1962 in Jersey City, New Jersey, the author was raised Catholic. His mother– who was embarrassed that he and his younger sister were adopted– forced them to behave dishonestly to keep that secret.

As is well known in the United States, people have been displaying childish fury at emotionally-charged political issues, it seems like, forever. In connection therewith, the author recounted an incident at his liberal arts college, the University of California at Berkeley in the autumn of 1982.

As a believer of Republican rhetoric, he attended an event featuring a speech by United Nations ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick. The United States was interfering with the politics of El Salvador. In protest, hecklers who had poor impulse control threw blood at the podium and their screaming drowned out the speaker. Security lifted nary a finger to dispel such rudeness. The takeaway was that the hecklers had more of a right to free speech than did the speaker whose views they opposed.

The author wrote that upon realizing his homosexuality, he channeled his self-loathing into writing petty, vengeful and mean-of-spirit articles that attacked his political enemies– liberal Democrats. Here is an illustration of how political influencers indoctrinate impressionable young people:

A man is walking past a mental institution and hears all the residents chanting, “Thirteen! Thirteen! Thirteen!” Being curious about all this, he finds a hole in the fence and looks in. Someone pokes him in the eyes. The residents start chanting, “Fourteen! Fourteen! Fourteen!”

Anyway, in 1986, the author completed a fellowship for the Heritage Foundation, a tax-exempt group that (illegally) fronted for conservative Republicans. By the 1990’s, writing for American Spectator magazine, he had gone off the deep end with his propaganda, viciously defaming liberals. He got really famous (a dubious distinction) after his book, The Real Anita Hill was published. As was becoming more and more common among political propagandists, he was highly compensated for his ability to spew hatred articulately, and rationalizing his hurting others by saying they were hurting him, or his party, or his country.

Long story short: for a long time, the author was living a lie, socializing with largely shallow, homophobic (ironically!), anti-feminist, anti-intellectual conservative social climbers like Arianna Huffington, Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter.

About his tenure at American Spectator, the author remarked, “In twelve years of right-wing journalism, my work had never been fact-checked.” That’s comforting.

The 1990’s saw the start of a trend (which is only getting worse) in which people who call themselves journalists, cobble together some hearsay and tabloid articles and call it a book. Gary Aldrich was one such author, who used a third-hand quote from Brock in his salacious tell-all about then-president Bill Clinton.

Read the book to learn when, how and why Brock’s political views changed.

Underground

The Book of the Week is “Underground, My Life With SDS and the Weathermen” by Mark Rudd, published in 2009.

March 1969 saw the start of Nixon’s secret bombing campaign against Cambodia. The author wrote, “I was so sure I knew better than my parents; after all, their generation had brought the world to this state of affairs, if only by their acquiescence.”

Rudd became the poster boy for the media as a protest leader at Columbia University during its period of violent unrest in the spring of 1968. He started his degree there in the autumn of 1965. At the time, the school employed African American female maids to clean the dorm bathrooms, a service included with the boarding fee.

Rudd joined the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in March 1966. He had grown up in a suburban Jewish family. His father had fought in the Second World War, during which Hitler was perceived as “Absolute Evil.” The United States used its powers for good to defeat the latter. However, twenty years later, when Lyndon Johnson’s war crimes began to be revealed, Rudd became disillusioned with his own country.

Rudd and his contemporaries didn’t support any presidential candidate in 1968 because “Electoral politics was beneath our concern.” He and his fellow political activists were concerned, however, about the deleterious effects of a senseless war perpetrated by the federal government, along with the university’s related and other nefarious activities.

For at least the last half century, hypocritical liberals have sought to “… co-opt the energy of radical young people into working for meaningless reforms…” However, with Vietnam, some would say the protests were justified. For, the American president started a needless war that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and ruined lives– recruiting cannon fodder against their will. The stubborn, arrogant president didn’t take a lesson from the stubborn, arrogant French, who epically failed in clinging to their fast-fading colonialism in mid-1950’s Indochina.

Columbia University had secret contracts with the U.S. government– researching both war weaponry for the Pentagon and war policy for the execution of the war. In spring 1968, this accounted for 46% (!) of the nation’s budget. The university was also abusing eminent domain in planning both to construct a segregated sports complex in Morningside Park, and more dormitories on West 114th Street off of Broadway near its campus. For years, it had quashed the formation of a union of black and Latino cafeteria workers.

Rudd and his fellow activists held rallies and went on protest marches. He wrote to school publications. The protesting led to occupations of campus buildings by, eventually, thousands of activists in the last week of April 1968.

Although Rudd’s became the most recognized name and face associated with the historical event (possibly because he was a white male), there were plenty of other activist organizations of different ethnicities whose members were arrested and got beaten up by law enforcement sent in by New York City Mayor John Lindsay; those fighting for civil rights, black-power, and peace.

The New York Times propagandized that the destructive and immature hooligans provoked the police; the police were the good guys. It should have come as no surprise to the cynical that the university was in bed with the newspaper. The school’s board of trustees claimed the newspaper’s publisher as one of their own. He was also an alumnus. The Times’ employees were alumni of the Columbia School of Journalism. Nevertheless, the university actually met about half of the six-odd demands of the activists.

After he was expelled from Columbia, Rudd became a recruiter for SDS, visiting various chapters and speaking at universities around the nation. The two major issues were always Vietnam and racism. Various groups within and without SDS, including the Weathermen (a spinoff of SDS), the Maoist Progressive Labor Party, the Black Panthers and the Revolutionary Youth Movement began arguing among themselves and with each other at conferences they jointly held in the next few years.

Rudd was in the Weathermen. He believed that the way to rebel against “the man” was through armed struggle. According to his FBI dossier, he urged college kids to kill cops. But his group was anti-racist, pro-Communist and anti-reactionary.

In the summer of 1969 in New York City, he and his fellow revolutionaries came across as so violent, they turned people off when they spoke at a Central Park rally. The other SDS factions thought the Weathermen (or, as they had renamed themselves, the Weather Bureau) were anarchistic, chauvinistic, masochistic and Custeristic.

In Chicago, there were clashes between sadistic cops and radical protestors. “Cook County Jail was overflowing with the addition of almost three hundred Weathermen, the total number arrested over the three days. The period was named ‘Days of Rage.’ ” After that, Rudd’s group went underground and broke off from SDS.

Rudd’s group’s heroes continued to be: Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Vladimir Lenin, Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers.

By the mid-1970’s, Rudd’s group had claimed responsibility for more than twenty-four bombings, which were intended to destroy only property. There occurred three accidental deaths of its own radicals from a botched bomb-making operation in Greenwich Village in spring 1970.

Read the book to learn a wealth of other details of the tenor of the times, the mentalities of Rudd’s contemporaries, and how Rudd fared after his Chicago arrest.