Politician, Political Worker or Spy – An Account – education and deconstruction.com

The Taft Story

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The Book of the Week is “The Taft Story” by William S. White, published in 1954. This volume was a chronologically disorganized hodgepodge that described the various facets of conservative Republican Robert A. Taft’s ideology and candidacies for U.S. senator from Ohio and for U.S. president from the 1940’s into the 1950’s.

Born in September 1880 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Taft was a son of the late William Howard Taft, a U.S. president and then chief U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Senator Robert Taft, who had earned an Ivy-League law degree, believed that the following order should prevail in terms of federal power: Congress (pursuant to the Constitution), the courts, and then the president (of course, he was a member of Congress). He believed that only Congress could pass a Constitutional amendment, but he also interpreted the Constitution literally.

Yet Taft was a political hack– would say or do anything to get elected or reelected. After WII, he made bold statements (which would be viewed as sociopathic and politically incorrect nowadays) reasoning that since America was biased (as a winner of the war), individuals accused of war-crimes (such as Nazis) wouldn’t be able to get a fair trial in the international tribunal at Nuremberg, and that punishment wouldn’t be a deterrent to future war crimes, anyway. He opined that the trials were held simply for the purpose of political revenge.

Taft and some of his fellow American Republican politicians were resistant to change, but valued liberty, fiscal restraint and patriotism. For his staff, he hired loyalty over competence, and surrounded himself with intellectual inferiors. He was, in short, an isolationist, hyper-partisan, hater. Democrats, on the other hand, thought free trade would help achieve liberty and peace.

Taft and his ilk (Republicans from the Midwest) had “…bitter and undying hostility toward those Eastern, internationalist Republicans typified by Henry L. Stimson– FDR’s secretary of war– who were not only interventionist, but unforgivingly pro-British.” Taft’s Republican counterparts were flexible and willing to identify aspects of the New Deal and Fair Deal that could benefit their own party. In addition to Stimson, they included Wendell Willkie, Dwight Eisenhower and Thomas E. Dewey.

When Taft ran for president in 1948, in the primaries, Dewey’s people kept repeating the slogan, “Taft can’t win” in order to demoralize him. It worked. Read the book to learn of additional “deja vu all over again” kinds of goings-on in Taft’s political arena.

Speaking of history’s repeating itself, it appears that Trump shares some political ideology with Taft, but here’s a little ditty that states Trump’s ultimate goal– what he’s telling his claques, flacks and sycophants.

Immortalize Me

sung to the tune of “Let It Be” with apologies to the Beatles, their estates, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

I rescue America in times of trouble.
My expert team comes to me, finding all the ways, to immortalize me.
All the Democrats brought darkness.
My saintliness is surrounding me.
I’m making America great again. Immortalize me.

Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Using all my wisdom.
Immortalize me.

And all the suffering American people, living in the world agree,
I’m the perfect answer.
Immortalize me.

The process I have started.
I’m better than past statesmen, YOU will see.
I’m the perfect answer. Immortalize me.

Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
I’m the perfect answer.
Immortalize me.

Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Using all my wisdom.
Immortalize me.

When the fight gets bloody,
I’m the light that shines on thee.
Shines forever and ever. Immortalize me.
I’m shaking up the ground-of-the Democrats.
My saintliness surrounding me.
Using all my wisdom. Immortalize me.

Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Using all my wisdom.
Immortalize me.

Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
I’m the perfect answer.
Immortalize me.

Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Immortalize me.
Using all my wisdom.
Immortalize me.

Sledgehammer

The Book of the Week is “Sledgehammer, How Breaking With the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East” by David Friedman, published in 2022.

First of all, the title of the book is an exaggeration. The author, an alpha male with hubris syndrome, penned this bragfest– along with his “funny, smart and strategic” boss (president Trump)– to take credit for campaigns he helped implement with regard to Israel and America’s Arab allies, and to express his views on Israel. He served as America’s ambassador to Israel during Trump’s presidential term of January 2017 to January 2021.

It appears he and Trump moved the Embassy of the United States in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to get both of their names on a plaque on the wall in the main building there. They’ve secured themselves a footnote in history, as long as that building stands. Never mind the controversy and violence that ensued. Others might disagree– as they feel extremely strongly that there is archeological evidence that Jews occupied that particular location in ancient times, and therefore, they have a claim there. Another argument is that Jews militarily captured that location in the Six Day War in 1967.

One other hotly debated issue is sovereignty over territories where residents currently consist of both Palestinians and Jews; territories believed by the author to belong to Israel in the first place. Friedman thought the Israeli government should control those lands militarily and politically. The Palestinians of course, disagreed.

The author conducted endless discussions with the stakeholders (with a pro-Israel bent) to broker a peace deal with the Palestinians. There were wrenches in the works which included but were not limited to: the Israeli government was holding elections for its top leaders, so anything said in diplomatic negotiations might influence Israeli voters; there were a few groups spouting propaganda who negatively affected the talks; and the Israeli borders with its neighbors (except for Jordan) had yet to be exactly mapped, delaying the finalization of the sovereignty issue.

The breakdown in talks with the Palestinians actually ended up helping Israel become less hostile toward a few of America’s Arab allies. The personalities happened to play well together. The then-leaders of Israel and then-leaders of: Jordan, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco made verbal agreements, or signed a brief, vaguely worded document. This, for which they had an excuse to have a signing ceremony and declare peace (and have a better chance of staying in office or getting reelected).

It wasn’t as sensational and as difficult a feat as the author described. For decades, Trump’s predecessors have held talks to give peace a chance, given changing hatreds, alliances, and global economic and geopolitical conditions.

Bahrain and Jordan already had had diplomatic relations with Israel for decades, so they were just preening for the media. For Sudan, the initial overtures were the start of a beautiful friendship. Two and a half years later, Israel and Sudan normalized their relations. About two years after Israel and Saudi Arabia began their talks, planes coming to and from Israel were allowed to fly over Saudi Arabian airspace. The author made it seem as though all this progress happened over the course of his ambassadorship. One would suspect that he is a historical revisionist for Trump.

Anyway, read the book to learn many more details on Friedman’s take on the issues and situations.

Kissinger

The Book of the Week is “Kissinger, A Biography” by Walter Isaacson, published in 2005.

Kissinger was born in May 1923 in an eastern suburb of Nuremberg. His ancestors came from Bavaria. When he was in his teens, his family arrived in America. Toward the end of WWII, Kissinger served in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence division, engaging in diplomacy to de-Nazify a whole region of suburbs in Germany.

In 1951, Kissinger recruited tens of foreign-nationals and licensed-professionals for the Harvard International Seminar– a summer multi-disciplinary program featuring lectures and field trips that was later revealed to be a front for the CIA. Kissinger amassed a vast social network from the program. He had superior social-climbing skills, appealing to his betters (who were just as egotistical as he was) with flattery, but fiercely competing with colleagues of status equal to his own.

Kissinger always argued that injustice and order (a benign dictator) was preferable to justice and disorder (a revolutionary environment or anarchy) in a nation. He felt the purpose of a summit wasn’t to get a monstrously brutal leader to change his ways, but rather, to: reassure allies, get on the good side of neutral nations and show the world one’s own civility. Yet he was always listening to all sides in a debate in order to get them to agree with him.

Kissinger achieved full tenure at Harvard University in 1962. Less than a decade later, he served as a very close aide to president Richard Nixon. Just as parties are thrown to annoy those who aren’t invited, at the dawn of the 1970’s, the Nixon White House consisted of socially manipulative cliques who kept one another out of the loop of their own furtive meetings, memos and covert operations. The Nixon camp loved secrecy and tried to stop information from leaking to the press with their “plumbers.”

The president ordered that a total of seventeen secret FBI wiretaps be placed on the home telephones of high-level employees of his administration for as long as nearly two years for some, beginning in 1969. In 1973, when the media exposed this spying operation, Nixon claimed he alone authorized it. But Kissinger– a drama queen– had incited the emotional environment that led Nixon and his subordinates to commit the crimes they did.

In 1971, Kissinger participated in clandestine meetings with the Chinese government to invite trade with the United States, and change China’s mind on its claim on Taiwan. The U.S. was reducing its military presence in Vietnam, and saw that the Chinese and Soviets weren’t getting along. Thus, extending an olive branch to China was a supposedly geopolitically brilliant move on Nixon’s part.

If America got friendly with the Chinese (contradicting Nixon’s previously vicious anti-Communist stance), and negotiated arms reductions with the Soviets– America would stave off nuclear war with them, further weaken the alliance between China and the U.S.S.R., and get an economic boost.

China’s officials began the talks by requesting that the Americans tell them the issues thought to be deal-breakers. This saved a lot of time, as the Chinese considered Taiwan a minor issue and weren’t going to budge on it. They both secretly used Pakistan as an intermediate messenger. As a result, the Soviets got friendly with India. That turned into a cluster screw-up.

Kissinger could dish it out but he couldn’t take it. He became infuriated when Nixon’s aide, John Ehrlichman told him that a spy ring had been stealing documents from his office and leaking them to the press. Kissinger’s self-delusion was most cringeworthy on Vietnam. He rationalized the war’s aims, attempting to persuade ordinary Americans that the decade-long colossal human waste wasn’t the result of several alpha males’ stubborn insistence on America’s involvement (plus in Cambodia and Laos). In other words, Kissinger couldn’t admit that at least hundreds of thousands of people died for nothing.

One Bertrand Russell quote in connection therewith bears repeating:

“There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.”

There is nothing new under the sun. The media flip-flopped insofar as their stories on Kissinger brought them ratings and sold newspapers. In mid-October 1972, less than a month before Nixon’s reelection day, the New York Times and Newsweek celebrated Kissinger as he claimed to have achieved agreement on a peace treaty with North Vietnam from his confidential peace talks in Paris. He himself reveled in the glory of saving the world.

In December 1972, the seasoned propagandists turned around and labeled Kissinger a war criminal (which they should have been doing all along!) after he was found to have completely excluded the South Vietnamese leader from the agreement-announcement. Kissinger pretended to be outraged that Nguyen Van Thieu refused to sign the treaty. But the treaty’s wording hadn’t said what Van Thieu had agreed to.

Kissinger used the emotionally-charged, last-minute discord as an excuse to urge Nixon to order the resumption of America’s bombing of the North Vietnam capital Hanoi, and Nixon did. More than a thousand additional U.S. servicemen and civilians lost to history, died needlessly. Not unbelievably, given the fallibility and gullibility of human beings, in autumn 1973, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Peace prize.

In sum, Henry Kissinger achieved name-recognition in numerous communities of American life, in the following order: academia, presidential politics, foreign affairs, Hollywood, big business, and jet-set society.

As an aside, Donald Trump achieved name-recognition in the following, in the following order: big business (as a matter of inheritance), jet-set society, Hollywood, and then presidential politics. He hasn’t been all that competent in foreign affairs and academia, though.

Additionally, Trump bears many similarities to Nixon. Trump:

has a sidekick in Elon Musk as Nixon had a sidekick in Kissinger.
alternates between deep insecurities and megalomania.
appoints largely white alpha males in the White House (with a few white females thrown in).
was directly or indirectly responsible for sending to jail– almost every legally-troubled individual with whom he associated.
has a major goal of wreaking vengeance on his political enemies, using hush money when necessary.
claims attorney-client relationship and executive-privilege to weasel out of legal trouble.
projects the image of the outsider, and excessively exhibited mean-of-spirit, obnoxious behavior, but adjusted his image to become somewhat like the “new” Nixon in order to make a comeback.

It seems that Trump’s inauguration is going to be like the 1945 Yalta and 2024 Davos conferences. On steroids. Here’s a little song about the situation.

INAUGURATION

sung to the tune of “Revolution” with apologies to the members of The Beatles, and their estates, and whomever else the rights may concern.

Trump’s gonna have an in-au-gu-RA-tion,
well, you know,
in 2017 he insulted the world.

It’s a see-and-be-seen cel-e-BRA-tion,
well, you know,
his frat boys will rule the WO-ORLD.

And if he goes through with DE-portations,
he’d have to kick his own family OUT.

You know he used to be,
all-fight, all-fight, all fight.

He says he’s got resolutions,
well, you know,
it’s called Project 2025.

Billionaires make contributions,
well, you know,
they’re keeping Trump’s image a-LIVE.

Big tech and media have money for people
who SPREAD around hate.
For a grown-up Vance,
we’ll just have to WAIT.

And you know he used to be,
all-fight, all-fight, all-fight.

Trump gets to interpret the Consti-TU-tion,
well, you know,
he owns most of the Supreme-COURT.

It WAS a respected insti-TU-tion,
well, you know,
He’ll pardon THEM as a last resort.

He’s getting friendlier with the world’s tyrants NOW.
Don’t worry,
he’s losing his mind, anyHOW.

And you know he used to be,
all-fight, all fight, all fight,
all-fight, all fight, all fight,
all-fight, all fight, all fight,
all-fight, all FIGHT!

Anyway, read the book to learn much, much more about how Kissinger prolonged his name in history due to his self-absorbed attention whoredom; about how his dishonesty shaped America’s never-ending, extremely complex political, ideological, cultural and economic controversies over its “detente” versus “might-makes right” mentality with regard to the Soviet Union, Soviet Jewry, Israel, global trade, human rights, weapons stocks, neocons (the description of which was murky), the Portugal/Angola mess, etc.

Unleashed

The Book of the Week is “Unleashed” by Boris Johnson, published in 2024. This large volume was a bragfest, but it also explained the author’s opinions and his government’s policies for laypeople.

Johnson was born in 1964. “Disaster” was his favorite word. As London’s mayor starting in May 2008, he began implementing some of the same crime-fighting and environmental initiatives taken by former New York City mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.

Beginning in June 2016, after 52% of the UK’s 17.4 million population voted in favor of Brexit, heated discussions were had by everyone, including Lord Chief Justice, Master of the Rolls, and President of the Queen’s Bench Division. In 2019, Johnson was elected UK prime minister, and he became the nation’s biggest Brexit booster. The nation’s moneyed classes, and those who were pro-immigrant, wanted to remain in the EU.

The EU leadership in Brussels controlled many aspects of the economies of member-countries because it set the terms and conditions on trade unions, customs fees, currencies, factories, distribution of goods, national-border policies, etc. Johnson felt the UK was hamstrung by all the petty rules. He claimed that Canada was able to export its goods to EU’s markets absent the regulations to which the UK was subject.

In April 2020, when the prime minister ended up in the intensive care unit with a bad case of COVID, “Outside in the corridors of the hospital, though I never saw them, were representatives of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, despatched by Donald Trump to revive me with drugs not licensed or approved in the UK.”

The COVID pandemic in 2020 was a game-changer. Johnson contended that because the UK was no longer a member of the EU, certain forward-looking, skilled members of his administration were able to secure a vaccination program that was more widespread and implemented sooner than EU members’ programs. Harm done to the UK’s people and its economy was therefore significantly less than that done to comparable countries.

Nevertheless, the line graph of COVID deaths followed a largely similar pattern for each nation where COVID’s effects on the population was tracked– regardless of the actions leaders took. Sweden’s policies on quarantining were optional, while China’s were draconian, but both of their graphs showed two peaks during which the death toll went up and down during the course of the pandemic.

Another political issue shared by all major governments of the world, is immigration. Johnson heard how Australia supposedly deterred uninvited people fleeing their homelands, from arriving on its shores. Its federal immigration agency transported those people– to have their asylum claims processed to– not the nicest destination, to put it mildly, 4,500 miles to the island of Nauru. Perhaps the U.S. could look into such a policy, given that it too, is overwhelmed with asylum-seekers who have arrived on its soil illegally.

Read the book to learn much more about Johnson’s political life and times.

Our Man

The Book of the Week is “Our Man, Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century” by George Packer, published in 2019.

“But he also helped smash up the last pieces of the postwar consensus, bringing viciousness and deception into the heart of government, making trust among people working for the same president impossible.”

Holbrooke, writing of Zbigniew Brzezinski– who sabotaged him during the presidency of Jimmy Carter

Born in April 1941 Holbrooke grew up in Scarsdale, a posh northern suburb of New York City. His high school classmate’s father was Dean Rusk, so he had a leg up in the foreign-policy social set of the United States.

As a junior diplomat, Holbrooke’s first major posting was to Saigon, Vietnam in June 1963. A few seasoned journalists there were reporting the truth, that the U.S. was already losing the war. But America’s governmental and military interagency rivalry (consisting of the usual power-struggling alpha males with hubris syndrome) put the kibosh on informed decision-making throughout the whole nine years of unconscionably wasteful military action.

In late summer 1963, Holbrooke was sent to the southernmost region of North Vietnam to try to capture the hearts and minds of rural villagers. He was kind of a hybrid neoliberal and neocon– providing food and materials to build infrastructure and establish schools, but also training the local militia to fight the Viet Cong (VC). Nevertheless, American soldiers were taught neither the Vietnamese language nor the locals’ culture. They were simply expected to be killing machines.

Holbrooke saw that the American military officers held fast to the mistaken notion that killing all the VC soldiers would rid the world of Communism. Those James-Bond wannabes threw around the term, “counterinsurgency.” But rather than killing no-name soldiers, the VC– supplied with weapons from China– sought to kill key military leaders; fighting smarter, not harder.

Holbrooke witnessed unspeakable horrors in his foreign service experiences. To salve his conscience for America’s shameful actions (and as a public relations move for Carter who would be running for reelection in 1980)– he visited and publicized the plight of refugees at a camp in Thailand. Also, he agreed with vice president Walter Mondale that countries should accept and provide more aid to refugees, at a Geneva conference in July 1979. In connection therewith, Carter signed the Refugee Act of 1980.

After Vietnam, America was once bitten, twice shy when international pressure was brought to bear to take action in the Balkans at the dawn of the 1990’s. There were other reasons, too, why Bill Clinton’s presidential administration dragged its feet on going to peace talks and committing troops to NATO: Bosnia didn’t have fossil fuels of sufficient strategic value to the United States, the genocide was against Muslims, and Clinton knew that a military quagmire would hurt his reelection chances in 1996.

Eventually, Holbrooke, a bigger credit-grabber than anyone else, did take charge of the negotiations. When American military advisors died in the region, talks got serious. He believed the U.S. had to act as the world’s police force.

Read the book to learn: of the highlights of Holbrooke’s career, his trials and tribulations, love life and achievements; and why the position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was vacant for a year: possibly showing how unnecessary America’s vote for world peace was even then (hint: the vacancy was a case of political retaliation). SIDENOTE: It’s time for a Reagan-style immigration bill.

What’s Left Unsaid

The Book of the Week is “What’s Left Unsaid, My Life at the Center of Power, Politics, and Crisis” by Melissa DeRosa, published in 2023.

Born in the early 1980’s in Rochester in New York State, DeRosa worked in New York State politics. By April 2017, she had achieved a high-level job in governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration.

The author wrote that the federal government under president Trump handled the 2020 COVID pandemic in a way reminiscent of the movie, The Hunger Games, pitting states against one another for scarce medical supplies.

In mid-April 2020, the president declared that lifting the COVID lockdown in different areas of life nationwide, would rest on his authority. But conditions varied widely nationwide. Governors in seven northeastern states banded together to invoke the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which allows state governments jurisdiction over local law enforcement in the event of a public health emergency. Trump reversed himself in short order.

In late April 2020, DeRosa had a falling out with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. He was more worried about: voter-polling results (opinions) on COVID policies in swing states (that indicated whether his father-in-law was winning the then-presidential race!) than statistical medical data used to take actions to minimize the death rate.

According to the author, Cuomo’s people didn’t pick their battles with the media. They tried to fight them all– over every word in their every communication, making them appear contentious and petty. By May 2020, the collective mood of the nation was downright hostile over the COVID situation. The media took out its anger on Cuomo’s personnel.

As is well known, Cuomo became the victim of various acts of mean, nasty political retaliation. “Suddenly, you had a bizarre coalition calling for the governor’s resignation: Democratic Socialist AOC on the same side as MAGA Elise Stefanik in Congress, locking arms with the Democratic and Republican extremists in the state legislature.”

Read the book to learn about DeRosa’s experiences as a close Cuomo adviser in one crisis after another.

ENDNOTE: In order for public officials to achieve effective leadership of the United States: Numerous, diverse people must take years to analyze contemporary political issues while considering historical perspectives in order to understand how to make the necessary compromises required for workable solutions.

The top leader of the country has no time to do so after he or she has been elected. So, the public servants who accomplish the most to improve the lives of the highest number of people, are those who not only possess sufficient maturity and social skills, but those who have specific proposals that have been shown to work long-term, at-the-ready, before they get elected.

Not those who play well with the political machine, the media and their donors.

John Lewis

The Book of the Week is “John Lewis, In Search of the Beloved Community” by Raymond Arsenault, published in 2024. Lewis was America’s Nelson Mandela.

Born in 1940 in Alabama, Lewis became an extremely influential civil-rights activist and politician beginning in the 1960’s. He was fortunate to have teachers at his high school who inspired him to earn a higher-education degree in liberal arts. Ironically, the colleges which historically catered to blacks, had curricula that taught trades related to agriculture and construction, that kept blacks economically disadvantaged.

By the late 1950’s, Lewis had already met Martin Luther King, Jr.’s family. When Lewis applied to the all-white Troy University in Alabama, King warned him that he and his family could: receive death threats, get doxed (the pre-internet version), and even be physically harmed.

Starting in the 1950’s, major federal laws had been passed in order to eliminate the separate designations of eateries, restrooms, schools and other public areas for whites and blacks, in the Southern States. Historically, through such segregation, the blacks had been provided with inferior facilities and services in connection therewith. White inciters of hatred continued to obstruct the integration process.

Lewis became a leader or member of civil-rights protest groups such as the Freedom Riders, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), and SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). The groups adopted Gandhi’s nonviolent, “turn-the-other-cheek” philosophy. Lewis helped plan, organize and execute protests, marches and other events. He also participated in them. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a leader in the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference). King could be arrogant, and invoked God in excusing himself from protests he chose not to participate in.

In spring 1961, collaborating with CORE, the Freedom Riders planned to take interstate rides in Southern States on Trailways and Greyhound buses, and eat and use the restrooms at the bus stations along the way. Approximately half of the Riders were white, but the blacks (and the whites) still became victims of violence when they sat in the front of the buses or entered the (illegally) still-segregated facilities in the bus stations.

In one particularly ugly incident, the KKK had been tipped off as to where and when just over a dozen Riders on a bus going from Birmingham to Montgomery, Alabama, would get off at a rest stop just beyond the city limits. Haters (men, women and children(!)) were waiting for the passengers. The Riders were physically beaten to a pulp with common household items such as baseball bats, chains, tire irons, hoes, rakes– and the bus was firebombed. Law enforcement deliberately took its time in acting to stop the violence. It was the Riders who were arrested. During the first half of 1961, more than 300 of 436 Freedom Riders who took sixty protest-bus-rides ended up in a prison in Mississippi.

The elephant-in-the-room question is, with all of the scholarly readings Lewis and other civil rights leaders had done in preparing for protests and marches, why did they (and media workers, too) not protect themselves against the worst-case-scenario?

In other words– wear full riot gear just like law enforcement officers did in later incidents when those officers were bashing heads and beating limbs with billy clubs? The Riders and other protesters also should have known and used ways to minimize the physical harm done by tear gas, water hoses and attack-dogs. Why did they not protect themselves? That would have been defensive (still nonviolent), not offensive.

The Riders’ goal was, through civil, peaceful disobedience, to overcrowd the jails. That would generate more good publicity than harming other people or destroying property, as did splinter groups that later branched off from the original aforementioned civil-rights organizations. The Riders endured disgusting jail conditions. Yet they opted to stay in jail even when they could have been released on bail.

In the early 1960’s, government leaders at all levels– with their reputations and thus reelections on the line– were initially at wits’ end about all the bad publicity they were getting for treating the protesters so badly. But eventually, they came up with some dirty tricks to influence public opinion and cause the groups to devolve into dissension.

Read the book to learn much, much more about Lewis and his times.

On a related note, it’s deja vu all over again (in terms of othering, civil rights and all that). “You-know-who” has become the poster boy for continuing to make incivility socially-acceptable in American society. His political opponents are the perfect target for his smears and hating on immigrants.

Yet, according to the History Channel, Trump is the descendant of immigrants– his grandparents, who came from Germany and Scotland. The German ones lied, saying they came from Sweden. “Trump maintained the ruse at the request of his own realtor father, Fred Trump, who had obfuscated his German ancestry to avoid upsetting Jewish friends and clients.” Heritage-whitewashing was not uncommon; the Schicklgrubers did it, too, the opposite way.

Anyway, if the truth makes you angry, you’re living a lie. Here’s a little ditty Trump has been singing of late. Of course, ladies and gentleman, the views of this man are not necessary….

SUPERIOR PEOPLE
sung to the tune of “Everyday People” with profuse apologies to Sly and the Family Stone, Mijac Music, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

I’m always right.
I’m never wrong.
My own beliefs are in my song.

I’m a birther, a big star, all-American and then,
you know I’ll make us great again.

I-I-I am superior people, yeah, yeah.

THERE are lots of FOReigners who SHOULDn’t
get a green card.
We’re MAKing them the fat ones
while DE-priving our excellent ones.

We’re way too nice. I’ll transform ICE.
I-could GO on and GO on.
De-PORT you and you and you.

(you’re caca) We CAN’T live together.

My family’s better. Yours might be too,
if your genes are GREAT in my view.

If you-elect me, you know,
I’ll breed the best.
You know, you can put me to-the-test.

I-I-I am superior people, yeah, yeah.

I’LL make a border that KEEPS out these CRIMinals.
YOU’LL be a rich one.
WE’LL keep out the POOR ones.

We’re way too nice. I’ll transform ICE.
I-could GO on and GO on.
De-PORT you and you and you.

(you’re caca) We CAN’T live together.

I’LL look at the yellow one but think-TWICE about the BLACK one,
and possibly the RED one,
but the BEST one will likely be the WHITE one.

We’re way too nice. I’ll transform ICE.
I-could GO on and GO on.
De-PORT you and you and you.

I-I-I am superior people.

In the Shadow of the White House

The Book of the Week is “In the Shadow of the White House, A Memoir of the Washington and Watergate Years 1968-1978” by Jo Haldeman, published in 2017.

As is well known, at the time this book was written, America was entering the Trump Era, some of whose aspects smacked of the Nixon Era. In addition, the author also could not escape writing with 20/20 hindsight, as almost fifty years had passed since her husband was implicated in the major historical event known as “Watergate.”

In October 1970, while backing his Republican party’s candidates at rallies during the midterm races amid expletive-shouting hecklers, Nixon said,

“The four-letter word that is the most powerful of any in the world is ‘vote.’ “

Strangely enough, in 1972, Nixon was reelected in a landslide due to low voter turnout– possibly due to influential propaganda and dirty tricks that discouraged or kept Americans from voting.

Bob Haldeman was the president’s advisor and lapdog, at his beck and call 24/7. He got the most face-time with Nixon as chief of staff, giving orders to underlings from wherever he was; it was not uncommon in the course of two weeks for the two to travel from Camp David to a foreign country to Key Biscayne in Florida (where Nixon had a residence) to another foreign country to New York City to San Clemente in California (where Nixon had another residence). Haldeman’s wife Jo and their four children sometimes accompanied them.

Nixon vacillated between: deep insecurities that required frequent consulting with his gatekeepers Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Henry Kissinger; and megalomania that led him to install a taping system in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room in February 1971. This, in an effort to record his administration’s every word and move, for posterity. He wanted to give his name undying fame. The listening devices of the two previous presidencies had been removed years before.

The author commented in her notes that in May 1974 (three months before Nixon resigned), “Although [Nixon] proposes national health insurance in a radio address, it goes nowhere and his public support continues to erode.”

The author’s husband was one of five defendants (there were many more) who were all tried together in a court of law for their roles in the Watergate scandal. Their cases dragged on through 1974.

The tenor of the times was such that alpha males with hubris syndrome populated the White House, Haldeman included. On August 6, 1974, he beseeched Nixon to pardon him and all his alleged Watergate co-conspirators (twenty-one of whom went to jail), and also to salve the leaders’ consciences– grant amnesty to all men who violated the Selective Service Act during the Vietnam War.

Read the book to learn Haldeman’s fate, and much more about the experiences of the author’s family during a particularly turbulent time in American history.

Angela Davis

The Book of the Week is “Angela Davis, An Autobiography” by Angela Y. Davis, originally published in 1974. Born in 1944, Davis, who is black, grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Through the 1950’s, when black people began moving into the previously white neighborhood where she resided, hostile whites bombed the blacks’ houses; the place was dubbed, “Dynamite Hill.”

Davis became a political activist. Through the 1960’s, the U.S. government and law enforcement felt threatened by her because she was black, female, and a Communist. She moved to West Germany for two years beginning in 1964. However, she was unaware of the then-law that all foreign visitors were required to complete paperwork at the local police station informing the government that they were there. But as an American, she was able to travel to East Germany and return from it, too.

In summer 1967, Davis was at an anti-Vietnam-War protest in San Diego. When pressed, a control-freakish police captain explained why three people in the crowd had been arrested: “As long as you are standing on the sidewalk, you may be considered obstructing pedestrian traffic.” Times have changed somewhat regarding incidents occurring on public streets; video has likely been shot from security cameras, body cams and witnesses’ phones. Yet hatred between certain groups and law enforcement, and distortion by the media haven’t changed. So evidential video footage doesn’t seem to be a deterrent to future incidents.

Davis wrote that there were two unrelated groups in the United States that included the words, “Black Panther.” One was the Political Party, and the other, led by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, was the “Party for Self Defense.” Davis became a member of the former. She soon became disenchanted with its sexist men who expected her to be a cheerleader and babysitter, rather than an organizer of the group’s events, such as rallies.

When crimes were committed with a gun licensed to Davis, she was charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. In autumn 1970, she was extradited from New York state to California to be tried for her alleged crimes.

Read the book to learn of what became of Davis, and much more about her activism, whose goal (at the time of the book’s writing) was to defend her “party, Cuba, the Socialist countries, the World Communist Movement, and the cause of oppressed people across the globe.”

The Rascal King

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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