Nonfiction – Page 12 – education and deconstruction.com

As I Saw It

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“We in the government were at a disadvantage, having to keep our feet grounded in the realities of that conflict while exposed to sharp, uninformed, and often partisan attack.”

-Dean Rusk, secretary of state, regarding the Korean War

Unsurprisingly, there’s nothing new under the sun.

The Book of the Week is “As I Saw It” by Dean Rusk as told to Richard Rusk, published in 1990.

Born in February 1909 in a northern suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, Rusk had four siblings. They all pitched in on the family farm. The Farmer’s Almanac told his father when to plant crops pursuant to the phases of the moon. Every American household had the Sears Roebuck catalog, which was used for toilet paper. The school curriculum propagandized on the Confederacy, convincing young minds that there was nothing wrong with slavery.

During WWII, FDR was preoccupied with an overwhelming number of serious political issues. Rusk commented that, for whatever reason, the president failed to address the issue of pushing for the elimination of colonialism, especially in India, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and Indochina. But Rusk did say the United States used the Indians for cheap labor in transportation, supplies and infrastructure in China and along the Burma road, so it was in its best strategic interest to maintain the status quo.

“Reflecting on my experiences in government, I think we tended then (late 1940’s)– and now– to exaggerate the necessity to take action. Given time, many problems work themselves out or disappear.” Yes, civilized nations of the world began to take a dim view of colonialism, but it would not have worked itself out on its own. However, as is well known, countless lives were sacrificed in colonialism’s disappearance.

Rusk favored sending American troops to Korea in summer 1950 because he claimed that it was hard to gauge the intentions of the leaders of the U.S.S.R., North Korea and China. But then, that implies that America’s spies were incompetent. Perhaps that is why America got into so many foreign policy scrapes through the decades of Rusk’s career.

On the other hand, the Soviets didn’t correctly assess America’s national-security situation and attitude immediately following WWII, either. For, “If Stalin had invested ten years in genuine peaceful coexistence, he would have faced a disarmed and isolationist America. But instead, he embarked upon adventures which forced the United States to rearm and play a greater role in world affairs.”

It’s impossible to say how much better off the U.S. would have been economically if it had engaged in long-term detente with the Soviets. But, first off– there would have been minimal military spending and few needless deaths and ruined lives from war. And some American president would eventually see the advantages of trading with the rest of the world, including the Communists.

Although Rusk was pro-war most of the time, he believed in basic freedoms, such as the right not to be spied on. Rusk was vague on the time frame of an anecdote he related, but the upshot was that he forced an investigator to resign for claiming under oath that the investigator hadn’t illegally surveilled a State Department employee by bugging his phone and going through his trash, when in fact, the investigator had.

Anyway, read the book to learn Rusk’s take on many other historical incidents in American foreign policy, and his life and times.

Speaking of lying under oath, here’s a little ditty explaining Trump’s situation.

UGLY LIES

(Dirty Dancing version) sung to the tune of “Hungry Eyes” with apologies to Eric Carmen.

Biden got him indicted.
Agencies were on, Hillary’s side.
They violated his privi-lege, he cries.
He’s innocent tonight.
Now he’s got, Biden in his sights, with these

ugly lies.
One bad arraignment and his donations rise.
He’s got ugly lies.
He’s always the victim, in his eyes.

He held the records so you heard, him out.
They were his records, is what it’s all about.
He’s innocent tonight.
Now he’s got, Biden in his sights, with these

ugly lies.
One bad arraignment and his donations rise.
He’s got ugly lies.
He’s always the victim, in his eyes. He’s got
ugly lies.
Now he’s got, Biden in his sights, with the
ugly lies.

His act is no surprise.
He needs you to see,
he’s never, ever guilty.

He’s got ugly lies.
One bad arraignment and his donations rise.
He’s got ugly lies.
He’s always the victim, in his eyes. He’s got
ugly lies.

Now he’s got, Biden in his sights, with the
ugly lies.
His act is no surprise.
With his ugly lies.
Ugly. Ugly lies.
Now he’s got, Biden in his sights, with his
ugly lies…

The Impossible Takes Longer

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“The materialism here is dreadful, pitiless. To occupy oneself here with anything not directly connected with earning one’s bread, it is necessary to be either very rich or very talented.”

-Chaim Weizmann, commenting on England’s elitist, aristocratic bent– as opposed to France’s and Germany’s more meritocratic bent, at the dawn of the twentieth century

The Book of the Week is “The Impossible Takes Longer, The Memoirs of Vera Weizmann, As Told to David Tutaev” by Vera Weizmann, published in 1967.

This book’s subjects included both Vera and Chaim Weizmann. The latter was best known as the first president of Israel, but he was actually just a figurehead. His Zionism ought to be noted, though. His brand of Zionism harped on the fact that the “wandering Jew” was rejected most everywhere he or she sought refuge from oppression. By the twentieth century, Arabs, on the other hand, could find refuge in many countries which would gladly accept them if there was political turmoil in their homeland.

Vera, one of seven siblings, was born in November 1881 in Rostov, in the former Soviet Union. Chaim, one of ten siblings, was born in November 1874 in western Russia, in the Pale of Settlement.

In late 1932, Chaim delivered a lecture to the leaders of the Jewish community in Germany, raising the alarm on the dangers of Hitler’s rhetoric. Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, already provided a hint of his take on Jews. Chaim sat on various boards of Zionist-related entities. Controversies raged through the 1930’s, among myriad other goings-on, over violence in Germany, violence in Palestine, what to do about refugees, and whether to make Palestine a Jewish homeland.

In 1935, Chaim was pressured to become president again of the World Zionist Organization. He relented, but going in, he knew he would become a scapegoat for the wrongs committed by the British government. Great Britain was in a tough spot, as it wanted Arab oil and to keep control of Palestine, but part of fighting against fascism meant doing the right thing by helping the cause of freedom for all peoples of the world, including Jews.

In 1937, in a speech to the Peel Commission, Weizmann again urged Jews to leave Germany. He was the one who said there were approximately six million of them. At that time, pursuant to the British Mandate, a tiny percentage of them could obtain a certificate allowing them entry to Palestine. Between 1940 and 1944, only about thirty-two thousand people were allowed to move to Palestine.

Vera and Chaim’s Jewish ancestors had been oppressed in their native lands. The two moved to England at the start of the 1900’s to minimize the possibility of their own persecution. In 1900, when Chaim was in his late twenties, he helped found the Jewish National Fund, whose donors bought up land in Palestine for the Jews. Beginning in her late teens, Vera studied in Geneva, Switzerland to be a medical doctor.

Read the book to learn of what became of Vera and Chaim.

Oh What A Fight – BONUS POST

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Oh What A Fight

sung to the tune of “December, 1963 (Oh What A Night)” with apologies to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons

Oh what a fight.
Criminals STILL walk free in ’23.
What a noisy prez-race we’ll see.
Thug po-LI-tics.
What a fight.

Oh what a fight.

All the candidates, we know their names.
‘Stead of brains-and-maturity, we’ll see false claims.
Where’s the fact-checking?
What a fight.

Oh they, inCITE hostile-feelings in male viewers, of the news.
And oh, fren-em-ies’ll call in favors in-secret soo-oon.

Oh what a fight.
Frus-trating AND infuriating me.
Prah-paganda and lack of substance we’ll see.
Sour surrender, what a fight.

Some viewers, WISH they could roll with the elites,
reveling in opponents’ scandals and electoral defeats.
Oh what a fight.

Oh they, inCITE hostile-feelings in male viewers, of the news.
And oh, fren-em-ies’ll call in favors in-secret soo-oon.

Oh what a fight.

The whole campaign IS a scripted charade.
CLAshing egos, now it’s donor-made.
Hypocrisy-and-attorneys.
What a fight.

Some viewers, WISH they could roll with the elites,
reveling in opponents’ scandals and electoral defeats.
Oh what a fight.

Dough-dough-dough-dough-dough, dough-dough-dough.
Oh what a fight.
Dough-dough-dough-dough-dough, dough-dough-dough.
Oh what a fight…

John Reed: Witness to Revolution

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The Book of the Week is “John Reed: Witness to Revolution, A Biography” by Tamara Hovey, published in 1975.

According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked a detailed list of Notes, Sources, References, and Bibliography), Reed was born in October 1887 in Portland, Oregon. The beneficiary of white male privilege, he graduated from Harvard, then bummed around Europe, and wrote stories and articles that were published in the magazines of the day; among them: American, Saturday Evening Post, Century, Smart Set, Colliers, and Trend. But he rebelled against the bourgeois values of his social class. The Masses did not pay its contributing writers, but featured short stories that realistically portrayed the struggling masses in America of the 1910’s. Many publications generously compensated their contributing writers, so Reed was able to scratch out a living.

Reed was given a press pass through the years by different publications to cover a few major historical events. In 1913, he wrote human-interest stories through immigrant workers’ eyes after witnessing violent labor trouble at the silk factory in Paterson, New Jersey.

Reed rubbed shoulders with the famous social activists of his generation. Showing their white-savior-complex– in June 1913, he, along with the independently wealthy Mabel Dodge (who owned a stately home on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan) and Robert Edmond Jones, staged a pageant whose performers consisted of downtrodden laborers at the old Madison Square Garden. The three served as planner and director, funder and arranger, and set designer, respectively. Their goal was to improve working conditions for the poor. After the pageant, Reed, Dodge and Jones sailed to Europe.

Reed spent four days in New Jersey’s Passaic County jail (whose conditions were very disgusting) in order to write articles that publicized the plight of striking workers who were denied due process. He was unlike journalists at most newspapers, who were puppets of: management (rather than labor), government officials, and law enforcement. Reed physically climbed into the trenches with German soldiers during WWI to get their stories. He then turned into a pacifist.

Read the book to learn what transpired when Reed developed a reputation as a radical (hint: he acquired a press credential from the American Socialist press in August 1917 in order to cover the Russian Revolution).

Congo Sole – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “Congo Sole, How a Once Barefoot Refugee Delivered HOPE, FAITH, and 20,000 PAIRS OF SHOES” by Emmanuel Ntibonera with Drew W. Menard, published in 2021. This slim paperback volume included no index, and its writing contained occasional grammatical errors throughout. But it was suspenseful.

The oldest of nine surviving children, the author was born in April 1989. He grew up in the city of Bukavu near the Rwandan border, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (hereinafter referred to as “Congo”). Living conditions were primitive. Life-threatening conditions abounded, including malaria, poisonous snakes, bacteria-laden waterways (used for drinking), and jiggers (which burrow under the skin and reproduce; if not removed, they eventually prompt amputation of digits and limbs, but are easily prevented from doing any harm if people wear shoes!).

When the first Congo civil war started in 1996, the family fled on foot many miles to the author’s grandfather’s village in the mountains of Eastern Congo. They did hard manual labor– growing cassava, tending to pigs, and herding cows and goats. If they shot a rabbit with a bow and arrow, they ate it. When the author was about eight years old, he, his father (who was a preacher and small-businessman) and two younger brothers walked back to Bukavu. His father’s dry-goods store had been looted and trashed.

It had been only a few years after the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Child-soldiers and refugees were still pouring into the Congo, and clashing with rival tribes. In 1997, the regime change in the Congo led to yet more atrocities, including raping of females of all ages. The author and his younger brother had somehow been warned not to be lured into joining the ranks of the child-soldiers. They ran away when recruiters came to call and offered sweets.

While nearly starving to death and suffering many hardships, the author’s family truly believed that petitionary prayer worked for them. At least, people’s outlook improves with petitionary prayer, as it has a placebo effect. People who have a bible that’s falling apart, usually aren’t.

However, one burning question that can’t be answered is: What is the percentage of people for whom petitionary prayer failed (who are unable to triumphantly say that it worked for them) because they died?

Read the book to learn: how the family survived, and about many more details on how the author came to start a foundation (hint: “…for the Congolese children, a pair of shoes was a treasure, not a fleeting status symbol to be discarded for the next trend. It wasn’t about a brand, logo, or label there; it was about protection, vitality. About hope.”)

one THOUSAND wells (sic)

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The Book of the Week is “one THOUSAND wells (sic), How an Audacious Goal Taught Me to Love the World Instead of Save It” by Jena Lee Nardella, published in 2015.

Born in the early 1980’s, the American author– raised in a strict Christian household– became an idealist, passionate about helping the downtrodden. By her teens, she was volunteering at a Colorado Springs homeless shelter. She worked at an orphanage in Tijuana. In college, she got to meet and work with the Christian music-band, Jars of Clay.

Together with other groups over the course of a decade, the do-gooders who formed a humanitarian organization in 2005 called Blood: Water Mission, would bring uncontaminated blood (for medical purposes) and water (for basic drinking and cleaning) to various underprivileged communities in Kenya, Rwanda, Central African Republic, Uganda, and other African countries. They would help them with the three major components of improving Africans’ health: clean water, hygiene and sanitation.

One of the first of many, many things the author learned in her quest to save lives, was that most Americans’ first impulse is to throw money at a complex problem to solve it. They mean well, but their white-savior-complex is a wrong-headed approach. As she gained experience in providing international aid to poverty-stricken, poorly-educated rural communities, the author saw how villagers were initially skeptical about aid workers’ promises; in the past, so many aid workers had failed to follow up or do anything.

The author’s group eventually elicited a grateful, cooperative response because an educator involved the villagers in raising their own standards of living. A few different aid groups who handled various aspects of a water project, did what they said they would do.

If their projects succeeded, women and children (before school– if they were lucky enough to attend) wouldn’t have to spend hours every day trekking on foot to a water-well or river (which might be used by hundreds of households, and was usually polluted with germs and who knows what else) located many kilometers from their living areas. Blood: Water completed one specific project in Rwanda that allowed eighteen hundred villagers to partake of clean water. Such a basic victory produced a great ripple effect in the community. School attendance soared because:

kids were neither fatigued by water-fetching nor plagued by water-borne illnesses (and all the people by other illnesses, for that matter) anymore;
villagers were neither sickened by, nor dying from the water they used; and
villagers had more time on their hands.

However, the author had rude awakenings on various fronts– a water project that failed, fund-raising struggles, and an episode of corruption by a local male aid-coordinator. She was also forced to do some soul-searching on her religious beliefs. She finally had to accept that it is better to have unanswered questions than unquestioned answers.

Read the book to learn a wealth of additional details about all of the above.

Danger Rant – BONUS POST

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In light of what current supporters, imitators and phony-enemies (the likes of Jim Jordan, Greg Gianforte and Ron DeSantis) of Trump are doing now, this is the current song of Ranting Republicans (a potentially great name for a rock band!).

DANGER RANT

sung to the tune of “Safety Dance” (the studio version) with apologies to Men Without Hats.

D-D-D-D-A-A-A-A-N-N-N-N-G-G-G-G-E-E-E-E-R-R-R-R-DANGER-DANGER-DANGER-DANGER-RANT-RANT-RANT-RANT

We can rant if we want to.
We can waste the House’s time.
Because if we don’t rant about con-spir-acy,
Trump won’t get a second try.

Say, we can go where we want to,
draft LAWS that are unkind,
and we can act like dictators
from the Third World
and leave your freedoms far behind.

And we can rant.

We can rant if we want to.
We can waste the House’s time.
Because if we don’t rant about con-spir-acy,
Trump won’t get a second try.

Say, we can go where we want to,
draft LAWS that are unkind,
and we can act like dictators
from the Third World
and leave your freedoms far behind.

And we can rant, and zing!

We can spite when we want to.
We hurt Americans all around.
We can act against China and the Dems
by passing bills that shut them down.

Say, we can hate if we want to.
We can and must DO Trump’s will.
As long as anger smolders,
we’ll get MORE-extreme and bolder.
It’s how we get our thrills.

Say, we can rant, we can rant.

We think we’re in control.
We can rant, we can rant.
We’re doing it from poll to poll.

We can rant, we can rant.
We can take liTIGious stands.
We can rant, we can rant.
We lose nothing by taking a chance.

Danger rant, oh well, the danger rant,
ah yes, the danger rant.

D-D-D-D-A-A-A-A-N-N-N-N-G-G-G-G-E-E-E-E-R-R-R-R-DANGER-DANGER-DANGER-DANGER-RANT-RANT-RANT-RANT

We can ban what we want to.
We’ve got Trump’s low base in mind.
As long as we please them,
to hell with reason,
everything’ll work out right.

Ah, say, we can rant if we want to.
We can waste the House’s time.
Because if we don’t rant about con-spir-acy,
Trump won’t get a second try.

And say, we can rant, we can rant.
We think we’re in control.
We can rant, we can rant.
We’re doing it from poll to poll.

We can rant, we can rant.
We can take liTIGious stands.
We can rant, we can rant.
We lose nothing by taking a chance.

Danger rant, oh well, the danger rant,
ah yes, the danger rant.
Danger rant, oh well, the danger rant,
ah yes, the danger rant.
Danger rant, oh well, the danger rant,
ah yes, the danger rant…

Haven

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The Book of the Week is “Haven, The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America” by Ruth Gruber, originally published in 1983.

As is well known, 1944 was a presidential election (or reelection) year. In June 1944, politician that he was– FDR announced that the United States would allow about a thousand (out of millions and millions of) European refugees from eighteen different nations to cross the Atlantic via ship (funded by relief agencies) and temporarily settle in a camp in Oswego in northern New York State, near the Canadian border. They had all happened to have fled to Italy. They weren’t counted in America’s then-quotas on immigrants coming from specific countries.

Gruber, who had friends in high places in the American government, got the coveted assignment to assist them. But first, she was vetted by the War Relocation Authority, the State Department, and the Public Health Service. Upon traveling to the transport ship in Naples, she received the U.S. Army title “general” so that she would be treated like a prisoner of war (pursuant to the Geneva Convention) if she was captured by the Axis Powers.

The refugees had suffered terrible hardships and traumas prior to their arrival in Oswego. However, they continued to live their lives as best they could while confined to the camp. The Jewish ones held a bar mitzvah, a wedding and a bris for the baby born there. The able-bodied were made to do various local jobs such as farm work or shoveling coal, for which they were paid eighty cents a day; insultingly enough– paid approximately the same as the Nazi POWs with whom they worked side by side.

When the end of the war was declared in spring 1945, the immigration status of the Oswego camp’s residents became a political football. In August 1945, about a twentieth of the refugees opted to return to their home countries. Thereafter, different stakeholders– government officials and political activists argued over whether to let the refugees stay in America, or go where they wanted, such as to Palestine.

Read the book to learn many additional details about the people involved, and their fates.

Settle For More

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The Book of the Week is “Settle For More” by Megyn Kelly, published in 2016.

Born in November 1970, Kelly was raised Catholic in the suburbs of Syracuse and Albany in New York State. She conveyed a few simple principles on life. One is, “The only place ‘success’ comes before ‘work’ is in the dictionary.”

The late, great college basketball coach John Wooden said one should be worried about one’s character, not one’s reputation. The true test of one’s character is: how you treat people who can do nothing for you. Like so many others, Kelly got caught up in worrying about her reputation when Trump and his followers smeared and lied about her.

Anyway, Kelly wrote that there occurred an egregious breach of journalistic ethics during 2016, leading up to election day. It was this: some idiot-box interviewers of Donald Trump told him prior to airtime, the critical things they would be saying about him, so they would appear to be “fair and balanced” in their reporting. Trump knew to behave himself and didn’t react with hostility to those questions or comments. Scripting and rehearsals are the new unethical normal in “journalism” nowadays.

Unsurprisingly, Kelly was the victim of a misogynistic Tweet by Trump. He knew this Tweet would become the subject of a 2015 post-debate news story, rather than her debate questions and his non-answers. He is, after all, the master manipulator of distracting messaging. His distractions are analogous to the scene shown during the closing credits of the movie Animal House: While a parade is passing through the college town, a frat boy says to a guy, “Look at my thumb.” The guy does and the frat boy sucker-punches him and says, “Gee, you’re dumb!” the same way Trump makes outrageously offensive comments for shock value, and then watches the fireworks.

In 2016, Kelly was forced to confront an ethical dilemma in connection with sexual harassment in her workplace– Fox News. Having succeeded in two male-dominated fields, she advised her female readers to get some advice on how they sound, and the clothing and makeup they wear so that they will be taken seriously by their male coworkers and bosses.

That said, it is unclear whether Kelly had the authority to choose the photo (in which she is wearing skimpy clothing) appearing on the front cover of the hardcover version of her book. The question is, would a male TV-news-show host wear a sexy shirt in the cover-photo of his book? Resounding no.

Kelly’s choice in that photo could have been an act of rebellion, or an act of naivete and poor self-awareness, on her part. With it, she hurt her cause of telling female readers to behave in ways that even the playing field with their male counterparts. If Kelly couldn’t control the photo on the cover, one might suspect her publisher was engaging in political retaliation.

Nevertheless, read the book to learn about how Kelly became super-successful as an attorney and as a TV “news” anchor, and how she was also able to have a family life in her time and place in the United States, despite the fact that her society gives males advantages over females.

Disney, Disney – BONUS POST

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This is the song Ron DeSantis (governor of Florida) is singing now.

Disney, Disney

sung to the tune of “Monday, Monday” with apologies to the Mama’s and the Papa’s.

Call-ing, ALL ho-MO-phobes
Call-ing, ALL ho-MO-phobes
Call-ing, ALL ho-MO-phobes

Disney, Disney, [Call-ing, ALL ho-MO-phobes]
so expedient for me.

[Call-ing ALL ho-MO-phobes, call-ing, ALL ho-MO-phobes]

Disney’s learning all about how anti-woke I can be.

Oh, Disney’s torment, Disney’s torment is guaranteed.

[Call-ing, ALL ho-MO-phobes]

Anti-Disney donors, I do what they say,
’cause I need the MONEY.

Disney, Disney, I love power today.
Disney, Disney,
in my state
you’re not allowed to be gay.

Oh, Disney’s torment,
my Florida laws meant
you must go through me.

Oh, Disney, Disney, you can’t proceed
with your upgrading spree.

Every single day, every single day,
every single day of the week you’re mine, yeah.

And you’re under China’s thumb [and you’re under]
And you’re under China’s thumb.

You’re an easy target all of the time.

Disney, Disney, [Call-ing, ALL ho-MO-phobes]
so expedient for me.

[Call-ing, ALL ho-MO-phobes]

Disney’s learning all about how anti-woke I can be.

Oh, Disney’s torment, Disney’s torment is guaranteed.

Anti-Disney donors, I do what they say,
’cause I need the MONEY.

Every single day, every single day,
every single day of the week you’re mine, yeah.

And you’re under China’s thumb [and you’re under]
And you’re under China’s thumb.

You’re an easy target all of the time.

Disney, Disney, I love power today.
Disney, Disney,
in my state
you’re not allowed to be gay.

Disney, Disney, it’s time to pay.

Oh Disney, Disney…