Politics – Dictatorial – Page 8 – education and deconstruction.com

Life Inside the Bubble / Losing America – BONUS POST

The first Bonus Book of the Week is “Life Inside the Bubble, Why A Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All” by Dan Bongino, published in 2013.

This slim, prophetic volume explained how the author came to choose a career in law enforcement, received a political education, and became a cynic about politics.

The author began his 1970’s childhood in Smithtown in Long Island, New York, but his parents divorced when he was nine years old. He, his mother and two younger brothers moved to Queens, and suffered financial hardships. To add insult to injury, his mother’s boyfriend was a mean drunk.

By the mid-1990’s, the author had become a cadet in the New York City Police Department. In summer 1999, he began training to be a Secret Service agent. Training took six months, first in Georgia, and then Maryland. During his law-enforcement career, he witnessed intelligence and investigative failures, due to “…internal and external politics, election cycles,…” inter-agency rivalry, laziness, incompetence, and hubris.

The author, an adrenaline junkie, enjoyed the constant busy-ness and challenge of devising a plan to keep government workers safe in high-threat, unpredictable and chaotic environments– such as at crowded transportation hubs, outside, and at speaking-venues.

Read the book to learn the causes of three major cluster screw-ups of the Obama administration, why the author quit his federal job, and the consequences (hint: more and more terrorist attacks and shooting sprees) the nation faces, if it does not streamline (eliminate redundancies which result in wasted work, inefficiencies and delayed investigations) its law-enforcement agencies and get them to cooperate with each other, and pass ILLEGAL-gun control legislation! It can only help, as statistics on black-market weaponry tend to be incomplete at best, as they are from the black market.

PLUS– Make it illegal for the criminally insane and violent felons to acquire firearms through very thorough background checks for all gun-license applicants. Over time, this will minimize the dangers to the general population, which shouldn’t have to fear getting shot at, in their day-to-day existence.

The second Bonus Book of the Week is “Losing America, Confronting A Reckless and Arrogant Presidency” by Senator Robert C. Byrd, published in 2004.

“Clearly, an administration so obsessed with ‘winning’ and ‘control’ will stoop low, such tactics are truly underhanded and vicious, and they deserve condemnation from us all… The reach of secrecy, manipulation and misinformation lengthens almost weekly.”

This slim, prophetic volume explained the author’s views on the actions and behaviors of a particular presidential administration, which wasn’t all that different from another, more recent one. In Byrd’s fifty-year career (beginning with president Eisenhower’s), he thought George W. Bush’s came the closest to resembling a dictatorship.

As is well known, president Bush, through bullying Congress (by smearing everyone as “unpatriotic” unless they did his will) sent U.S. troops to Iraq in March 2003; beginning a war that resulted in countless, needless deaths and ruined lives.

Bush’s henchmen were even sneaky about repeatedly requesting funding for the war. They omitted estimated war costs in the annual budget, and instead, spent most of the previous round of funding so that they could declare that the troops required emergency funding. This necessitated a supplemental appropriations bill, which allowed them to: a) cut short the time period for Congressional debate by forcing an almost immediate vote, and b) evade having to be specific about costs and consequences of allocating more taxpayer dollars to the war.

The numerous bad actors in the administration got away with the above because the decades-long political cycle in which the opposing forces of:

ethics,

and greed and power-hunger,

was still favoring greed and power-hunger among too many American government workers.

Sadly, only a small number of Senators was sufficiently courageous to hurt their reelection chances by speaking out against the administration: the author, Tom Daschle, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Paul Wellstone, Ted Kennedy, Carl Levin, Patrick Leahy, Jim Jeffords and Paul Sarbanes, and perhaps a few others.

Most of the above individuals are now retired or dead. So the most recent decade has seen a dearth of this kind of politician: who will propose the unpopular, but right thing to do. Fortunately, communications methods are evolving such that, even if the voices of the moral minority are drowned out by propaganda, there is ample opportunity for the public to tell the government its honest opinions so the government can reform itself to become more democratic again. And the (still democratic, for now) government better listen, or it will end up like the Romanovs, Louis XVI and his wife, or the Ceausescus.

Also fortunately– it may take some years– young, up and coming talented politicians will eventually behave similarly to the great ones who came before them.

Anyway, read the book to learn more about Byrd’s distress at the Bush administration’s activities, how history has shown what such activities lead to, and how the Senator tried to stop them.

Revolution 2.0 – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Revolution 2.0, The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power, a Memoir” by Wael Ghonim, published in 2012.

Born in 1980, the author attended high school in Egypt. The country had a rote education system, and cheating was rampant. The underpaid teachers derived the bulk of their income from private tutoring.

The 1980’s had seen the government of Egypt start to change for the worse. There was increasing poverty, brain drain, and oppression of religious groups. In 1987, Hosni Mubarak first came to power. He initially promised to serve only the two-term limit as president. But as he acquired more power, he acquired more ownership. And more power. And broke his promise. Every presidential “election” every six years thereafter, was rigged to allow Mubarak’s reelection three more times. There was only one political party. His.

While attending university in 1998, the author launched an Islamic website that featured audio tracks of the Qur’an. He was a technology geek, and became especially well-versed in Web communications. In 2004, a group of dissidents formed a group called Kefaya, meaning “enough” in Arabic. In 2006, ordinary Egyptians began protesting against the corruption of the regime.

In 2008, after eight months of numerous interviews, the author got a job with Google. In January 2010, in order to escape Mubarak’s oppressive regime, he and his wife and children moved to Dubai. It was around then that the author became politically vocal about Egypt’s rotten government. He wrote, “Out of hopelessness came anger.”

The author and a friend launched a Facebook page to promote an opposition candidate to Mubarak, as another “election” was coming up in 2011. The regime’s public relations machine was a master at smearing its political enemies; so it did, early and often.

In June 2010, the author created a Facebook page to tell the world about how the Egyptian government tortured and killed a dissident, and he posted a gruesome photo of the said dissident. Users commented on it in droves. In the coming months, the author and others used social media to plan peaceful protests to bring down the Mubarak government.

The author helped spark a movement that experienced growing-pains typical for such a movement. For a while, it became a victim of its own success: when a movement grows significantly in a short time– due to the increasing number of people in it– members begin to form factions and disagree, and go off and do their own thing. So some disgruntled members sabotage the original group’s goals.

Also, the political enemies of the movement see it growing, so they send infiltrators to divide and conquer it. That is why progress has been so slow for so many seemingly large political movements, such as civil rights and feminism.

In autumn 2010, the author was starting to get emotionally burnt out. He mistakenly used his personal account that revealed his true identity. Up to then, he had been super-careful to use false identities in his social media accounts, so as to avoid being arrested, jailed, interrogated, tortured and possibly murdered.

Egyptians were encouraged by Tunisia’s street protests, which were going on around the same time. But Egypt’s problems were worse. The author took the plunge to call Egypt’s movement “Revolution Against Torture, Poverty, Corruption and Unemployment.” He helped shape the protest messaging that convinced the public to peacefully take to the streets on Egyptian Police Day, January 25, 2011. He explained that he opposed only human rights abuses committed by law enforcement officials, not the respectful maintenance of order.

The author learned that: his contacts and access to communications were more important than plans, because best-laid plans always go awry– conditions on the ground change rapidly, and “People’s attachment to ideas is much stronger than their attachment to individuals, who can be doubted and defamed.”

Read the book to learn the details of the backstory, and what happened next.

Panama, The Whole Story

The Book of the Week is “Panama, The Whole Story” by Kevin Buckley, published in 1991.

“Weapons cost money, and selling, or helping in the sale of, cocaine produced the enormous revenues that produced the weapons.”

As is well known, democracy is not usually a “thing” in countries that have extensive black markets in weapons and drugs. So by the mid-1980’s, Panama had become a military dictatorship.

Over the course of two decades, Manuel Noriega, a general in the Panamanian army, became the king of trade in illicit weapons and cocaine. He was cozy with president Ronald Reagan, vice president George H.W. Bush, CIA head William Casey, secretary of state George Shultz, colonel Oliver North and a few other top American officials, plus the Drug Enforcement Agency and Fidel Castro.

Noriega controlled Panama’s ports, customs and railroads. The U.S. State Department was well aware of his drug trafficking, money laundering and human rights abuses. President Reagan loved him because he provided training facilities for the Contras– the militia who were fighting supposed Communists in Nicaragua. A major goal of the Reagan administration was to provide funding, weapons and military assistance for the Contras so that Central American countries wouldn’t fall to the Communists like dominoes. Assistance by any means necessary. Even via adolescent-boy spy, secret, treasonous means.

Anyway, through the 1980’s, Noriega engaged in various actions that angered common Panamanians– including ordering a hit on one of his Panamanian political enemies. He had one major American political enemy– Senator Jesse Helms. When the senator’s assistant visited Panama on a fact-finding mission, the American press (was told to) spread smears and lies about her. In June 1986, New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh finally outed Noriega as the detestable creature that he was, revealing details of his wickedness. But the U.S. was still not ready to oust Noriega.

In June 1987, patience among ordinary Panamanians was running short. Panama’s true fearless leader Noriega had crashed the economy (never the mind the figurehead Panamanian “president”) with his dictatorial shenanigans in collaboration with the United States. A minority of Americans were also fed up. They helped form the National Civic Crusade at Panama’s Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. Their goal was to oust Noriega and bring ethical behavior back to Panama’s government.

The U.S. Senate even voted to suspend Noriega’s leadership while it investigated charges that he fixed his country’s “presidential” election in 1984. February 1988 saw Noriega indicted in absentia on drug charges in Miami– which indicated that Americans finally viewed drug trafficking as more anathema than Communism(!).

In spring 1988, as per usual for a non-democratic country, government troops fired at civilian protesters in Panama City streets, killing tens or thousands (no source was able to verify its own estimate). However, a U.S. Army memo admitted that the U.S. Defense Department wanted to deny compensation to the deserving victims’ families who asserted that the U.S. was legally liable for the harm done, as there might be too huge a number of such claims.

Read the book to learn of wrenches in the works that kept Noriega in power way longer than otherwise (hint: the Panama Canal Treaties, the 1988 U.S. presidential election, Elliott Abrams’ misleading pronouncements, etc., etc., etc.) and the events that finally forced matters to come to a head (hint: 23 Americans died in the fighting.)

Precarious

PRECARIOUS

sung to the tune of “Aquarius” with apologies to the Fifth Dimension.

When the boss was in the White House
and his cult confronted cops
then violence guided their protest
and hate did steer his props.

This is the dawning of the age of Precarious.
The age of Precarious.
Precarious! Precarious!

Scare-tactics and grandstanding,
hypocrisy, mistrust abounding.
Only falsehoods and derisions.
Hyper-hostile party divisions.
Economic devastation
and government’s deliberation.
Precarious! Precarious!

When the boss was in the White House
and his cult confronted cops
then violence guided their protest
and hate did steer his props.

This is the dawning of the age of Precarious.
The age of Precarious.
Precarious! Precarious!

As the votes got counted through the night,
can’t wait to inaugurate
to be the bearers of the new world order.
Only time will tell our fate.

We’re in the clutches of the age of Precarious.
The age of Precarious.
Precarious! Precarious!

Scare-tactics and grandstanding,
hypocrisy, mistrust abounding.
Evil, evil machinations,
germs-and-bullets consternation,
wrong-headed in policy courses
guided by historical forces.
Oh dear, us. Precarious.

Message in A Black Hole – BONUS POST

Message in A Black Hole
sung to the tune of “Message in A Bottle” with apologies to The Police.
A song Trump is singing now.

Just a castaway, but I don’t want to concede, oh.
With more votes, I’ll get back in the lead, oh.
More lawyers than anyone could bear.
I haven’t any shame so I don’t care, oh.
I’ll send an SOS to the world.
I’ll send an SOS to the world.
I hope electors get my
I hope electors get my
I hope electors get my message in a black hole, yeah.
Message in a black hole, yeah.
Years have passed since I’ve won the globe
but I resist liberals’ every probe.
I hope my supporters can keep me in power.
I can win again and
I can break those Dems.
I’ll send an SOS to the world.
I’ll send an SOS to the world.
I hope electors get my
I hope electors get my
I hope electors get my message in a black hole.
Message in a black hole.
Oh, message in a black hole, yeah.
Oh, message in a black hole, yeah.
Rallied this morning.
You know what I saw.
Lots and lots of ballots in states that I adore.
Seems I’m in love with being loved.
Lots and lots of lawyers.
I can’t stand being snubbed.
I’ll send an SOS to the world.
I’ll send an SOS to the world.
I hope electors get my
I hope electors get my
I hope electors get my message in a black hole, yeah.
Message in a black hole, yeah.
Oh, message in a black hole, oh.
Oh, message in a black hole.
Sending out an SOS.
Sending out an SOS.
Sending out an SOS…

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz

The Book of the Week is “In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo” by Michaela Wong, published in 2001.

Various dictators have looted the Belgian colony alternately known as “Zaire” and “Congo” in recent centuries. The late 1800’s saw light-skinned people enslaving the dark-skinned to try to enrich themselves by poaching, harvesting, mining or drilling for the colony’s ivory, rubber, timber, cocoa, diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, uranium and oil on behalf of King Leopold II of Belgium. However, many died of malaria, typhoid or sleeping sickness.

Belgium was still greedy even after Congo, still racked by unrest, declared its independence in 1960. The Soviets wanted a piece of the action, sending troops in to pretend to quell the violence. The United Nations troops entered, throwing soldiers with good intentions, after bad. For the next thirty years, what did change was that the United States and other countries wasted an inconceivably large amount of money supporting the lavish lifestyles of the Congolese dictator and his family and friends, until the CIA discreetly decided it was time for the dictator to go.

In late September 1960, Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (Mobutu, for short) came to power. That translates to “the all powerful warrior who goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.” He ran the nation’s one political party, called “Movement for the Revolution.” He had the charisma, and lack of academic-smarts but plethora of street-smarts of the late American president Ronald Reagan.

However, Mobutu used divide and conquer in his palace politics– telling naive individuals that others were slandering them behind their backs. They believed him. He also assigned the same tasks to subordinates who hated each other without telling the others of the duplicated project-teams. When they learned that the boss had favorites other than them, petty jealousies arose. The hostilities between Mobutu’s underlings kept them busy fighting among themselves, and kept him in power.

Mobutu held rallies all the time. He created jobs galore for his people, in the rubber and cocoa industries. Foreigners who had previously been running operations that exploited Congo’s resources, fled the country. The new native Congolese who were given businesses to run, had no clue how to run them. When the economy crashed, Mobutu, his family, his cronies and his private army had no worries, because their real estate in Brussels, Paris and South Africa, and their Swiss bank accounts remained safe.

In the mid 1980’s, the journalists and diplomats in Kinshasa could spot the Congolese elites by their SUVs and mobile phones from Telecel. Congolese peasants, in order to eat, were forced to grow vegetable gardens throughout the city.

In the 1990’s, desirous of a better life, native Congolese were able to obtain student visas that allowed them to secretly become low-level restaurant or construction workers, or drivers in Brussels. They fled their native country rather than collectively revolt in order to fight for it, having adopted the pessimistic attitude of every man for himself. They had seen with their own eyes that “… politics is a game played by conmen and hypocrites.”

Congo’s cycle of dictatorship had yet to be broken due to the education system, which didn’t teach Congolese history. The younger generation knew nothing of how their recent leaders had come to power. “Knowing nothing about the past of course, frees a population from any sense of blame for the present. How convenient was all this forgetting…”

May 1997 was crunch time similar to that in 1986 in the Philippines and Haiti. In Kinshasa, Tutsi youths were shot in the streets, Japanese journalists sought photo opportunities, journalists of other nationalities and Belgian tourists sought haven in the Hotel InterContinental.

Read the book to learn much more about the history of Congo and its one nuclear reactor, Mobutu, the Congolese people in the 1990’s– rich and famous, poor and unknown, their black markets, their Mutual Benefit Society, their religions, corruption at their airport and with the IMF and World Bank, and about the lingering colonialist nostalgia of Belgium and France.

Second Chance

The Book of the Week is “Second Chance, Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower” by Zbigniew Brzezinski, published in 2007.

“American policy has divided its friends while uniting its foes, fear has been exploited to mobilize public support for policy, and strategic impatience and self-ostracism have narrowed United States diplomatic options.”

The author wrote the above about the George W. Bush administration. Yes, really. The author critiqued the presidencies of George H.W. Bush (Bush 41), Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (Bush 43) in terms of the natures of their administrations, and how they could have mitigated or even warded off the worsening political turmoil in America.

Bush 41 failed to follow through on American-foreign-policy vision and plans to foster international cooperation among Russia, China and other developing nations after he chased Iraq out of Kuwait in early 1991. He didn’t get to do so in a second term because he neglected problems at home.

During the Clinton administration, the media declared that America was trying to cultivate new enemies (maybe it was), one after another– Libya, Iraq, Iran, China, etc., while Clinton appeared to negotiate agreements such as the ones between Israel and the PLO, that actually turned out to be worthless pieces of paper. Unsurprisingly.

Other treaties that have been violated time and again, are those regarding nuclear non-proliferation. Various countries have continued to test nuclear weapons through the years, including France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. This has resulted in:

contaminating the earth, sea and air, and harming people;

teasing the other treaty-signers into giving the violators financial aid;

imposing ineffective financial punishment; and/or

pushing them to ally with their neighbors.

The Clinton years saw a two-faced policy with Russia. The president gave Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin generous financial and economic aid, but contrarily, by 1998, American Ivy-League economist Jeffrey Sachs had bankrupted Russia by persuading Yeltsin to execute his “shock-capitalism” tactics. Compounding of the corruption ensued with the intervention of the International Monetary Fund, which extended “loans” to Russia to bail it out. Capital flight from investors in the United States ensued. Unsurprisingly.

Bush 43 wrongly imposed “might makes right” on Iraq and Afghanistan, thinking democracy would magically assert itself in those war-torn countries. But– the author wrote– democracy requires the following laborious steps:

A government must respect the political and economic human rights of its citizens;

A government must impose rule of law to achieve and maintain a state of civility among its people, more or less;

The structures of power must write and abide by legal and Constitutional rules on which they must agree, more or less; and

There must be free and fair elections, which leads to a system whose leaders see the value of compromise and accommodation– rather than a winner-take-all stubbornness.

In his first term, Bush 43 and his sidekick Dick Cheney exploited the world for the purpose of acquiring raw power, and fun and profit at the expense of his own countrymen and America’s good relationships with its allies. In his second term, the president showed a “… basic lack of interest in peacekeeping, global poverty or ecology.” Middle Eastern countries destabilized by the Iraq War were driven into the arms of China as a financial partner, because– although China’s people are oppressed, China’s government isn’t embattled– it’s stable.

Read the book to learn of the author’s recommendations on the steps America should take to mend fences in the world, and of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that have arisen via the natures of the administrations of the aforementioned three presidents.

Hugo Black

The Book of the Week is “Hugo Black, A Biography” by Roger K. Newman, published in 1994. It is ironic that the Caucasian subject’s name was Black, as he was involved in many civil-rights controversies.

Born in 1886 in Clay County, Alabama, Black grew up in a small, poor, agricultural community. When he himself was fourteen, his father died of complications from alcoholism. He completed two years of medical school and passed his exams in becoming a doctor like his older brother, but lacked passion. He was more suited to lawyering, so he also graduated with honors in two years from the University of Alabama.

Black’s legal career started to flourish only after he moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where the culture allowed him to meet important people including a mentor, and get experience in labor law. In the single-digit 1900’s, the segregated-by-skin-color city was still an Old South aristocracy that offered hard manual work for blacks (which comprised nearly half the population) in coal, iron, railroads and steel. There were also: numerous taverns, brothels and churches, and a growing temperance movement.

Black joined as many social and civic organizations as he could because he knew they could further his careers in law (representing labor unions) and politics. In 1910, his mentor pressured him into becoming a low-level criminal-court judge for a year to give him more experience from a different perspective. By 1914, Black was elected Jefferson County solicitor (equivalent to district attorney) as a Democrat. He quit in 1917 to join the U.S. Army.

As a litigator, Black was a master of courtroom histrionics. He was not below furthering his career to take on a morally repugnant case, such as defending a friend who had committed murder. In 1923, Black joined the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan stood for unions and of course, white supremacy; spewed hatred against corporations and immigration, and committed physical violence against Catholics, Jews, blacks, etc. Into the 1930’s in the state of Alabama, the group’s political power was so dominant that one was required to be a member in order to win any election in Alabama.

When asked about his membership later by anti-New Dealers, Black rationalized and minimized and lied and said everybody joined in those days, and then changed the subject. Alabama senator Oscar Underwood’s career ended in May 1925 when he spoke out against the K.K.K. Not only that– Underwood was forced to move to Virginia. Ironically, there were poor whites who voted for Black (for Alabama senator) only because the K.K.K. paid their $1.50 poll tax in 1927.

Black was a voracious reader, attacking the Senate library, absorbing biographies and writings of ancient Greek and Roman bigwigs. He was anti-immigration and also anti-trust. In 1933, he led an investigation in the latter area involving “Destroyed records, competitive bidding shunned, questionably large salaries and profits– the picture that emerged was depressingly familiar.” By the end of the 1930’s, other anti-trust cases that grabbed newspaper headlines made the dueling ideologies of the New Deal and Wall Street, cliches.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. military ordered Japanese people on the West Coast to be confined to concentration camps. Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson considered such action to be racism, and arguably a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as it was violating the Japanese’s due-process rights, treating them as though they were already guilty of a crime. Justice Black thought that wartime made such action permissible, because no one could know who was loyal and who was disloyal to the United States.

In addition to civil-rights cases in the 1940’s, the Supreme Court handled a voting-redistricting case. The majority opinion was that it was up to state legislatures to “…apportion properly or to invoke the ample powers of Congress.” But, as with (now) countless cases, “How the people could obtain a remedy from the body that perpetuated the abuse was never explained: it is to admit there is no remedy.” Additional cases on redistricting were adjudicated in the early 1960’s. Meanwhile, as is well known, a series of hotly debated civil-rights cases came down the pike.

In 1963, Black’s take on sit-ins and protests was influenced by his childhood experiences. His father owned a store. He developed the firm belief that the store was his family’s private property, and his father could bar anyone from it, for trespassing. Entering private property was not a Constitutional right, even if people sitting at a lunch counter were perfectly willing to pay for food that the owner refused to serve them.

A sit-in in Black’s mind was an issue of private property, not free speech. He also felt that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s peaceful protests should have been prohibited because there was the potential for crowds to become violent. That was also not a matter of free speech, but of action– also not protected by the Constitution. Unsurprisingly for the times, in Birmingham in spring 1963, “Television showed police dogs attacking peaceful marchers and fire hoses thrashing at them… ” which were actions ordered by Alabama governor George C. Wallace.

Read the book to learn every last detail of how Black became a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, plus much more about Black’s life, times and Supreme Court cases.

Liar’s Circus – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Liar’s Circus, A Strange and Terrifying Journey Into the Upside-Down World of Trump’s MAGA Rallies” by Carl Hoffman, published in 2020.

Beginning in October 2019, the author attended several rallies held by president Donald Trump. Anyone can reserve online tickets, which are unlimited, regardless of venue size. The author started with Minneapolis–the president’s four hundredth rally since June 2015.

The author spent hours or days driving around the Midwest, South, Deep South, and the Northeast to the different venues. When he finally arrived, he stood in a queue for hours and hours, and at later rallies, two days (but got off the queue at intervals) before he was allowed, hours early, into the stands, or the front-row railing (which was more of a participatory location). At St. Louis, Trump bragged about the size of the crowd. However, in October 2008, then-presidential candidate Obama attracted about one hundred thousand people, “…more than have ever attended a Trump rally, it’s worth noting.”

The author spent a significant chunk of time talking with attendees at these extravaganzas. He found out who they were. Most were the kind of people who would automatically believe some tabloid garbage on the idiot box about, for instance, a book with which the Republicans were less than thrilled. They would then parrot what they’d heard, without having read a word of the book. Most have never read a book in their lives. Some were star-struck social climbers.

One specific kind of Trump supporter was a man who was seeking a savior who would make it socially acceptable for him to blame all his troubles on his political enemies. Another kind was a total Goldwater Republican (once and always a Republican) who would vote for anyone who let his greed go hog-wild through deregulation.

Yet a third kind was neither an aggrieved victim nor greedy but was doing fine economically– wasn’t selling anything; who simply wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and had nothing better to do than meet some people. And of course, who wanted to meet the president.

The author got friendly with this third kind. For, they were familiar faces at consecutive rallies. Like the premise of the TV show Cheers people want to go “… where everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came.”

There were a handful of non-Caucasian people, and Jews at every rally. They were shown prominently on-camera– to deceive viewers into thinking there were lots of them– though there were tens of thousands of white people surrounding them. Every rally had the same agenda, which included (but were not limited to) songs from the Village People– a 1970’s music group with a reputation for diversity. Ironically.

Every rally’s atmosphere was reminiscent of an American church, “… but instead of the peril of losing our souls to Satan, the peril was the Democrats, and the demons were the news media, immigrants and Muslims.”

At every rally, the author heard Trump trot out the same false statements. One was, that he would keep Medicare forever but the “Social Democrats” wanted to completely eliminate it. Further, while his administration was litigating to get rid of the provision under which preexisting conditions are covered by national health insurance, he claimed he would keep that provision forever, and grabbed credit for coming up with it. But it was actually a provision in the original Affordable Care Act. Just like the late president Reagan, Trump was saying one thing and doing another.

Read the book to learn much more about the personal experiences of the author on his quest to understand Trump supporters. And along these lines, here’s a parody of what Trump supporters would say about themselves:

RALLY TOWN

sung to the tune of “Allentown” with apologies to Billy Joel.

Well, we’re living here in Rallytown.

And Trump has got his routine down.

At the stadium we’re having a time,

making new friends, standing in line.

Well, our fathers fought the Vietnam war.

They were patriotic to the core.

And our 401(k)s at an all-time high.

Under the Dems, we were just getting by.

And we’re living here in Rallytown.

It’s the liberals who put us down.

But Trump makes everything okay.

Well, we’re waiting here in Rallytown,

for we think that Trump deserves a crown.

All the promises he makes he keeps:

taxes, the Wall– take that, liberal creeps!

He’s actually going to build the Wall,

and create new jobs for us all.

His economic plans are really real!

Oil, factories, coal– Bleep Green New Deal!

And we’re waiting here in Rallytown.

Democrats bring our cities down.

And they’re taking all our guns away…

Every time Trump tweets another thing,

the media launch another “gotcha” or sting.

They’re sore losers from 2016.

They took away our American dream.

Well, we’re winning here in Rallytown.

And no one will ever keep Trump down.

I can’t wait to worship Trump today…

And Trump makes everything okay.

And we’re living here in Rallytown.

BONUS POST

“But, over time, I learned to hate as blindly and viciously as any of them.”

No, the above was not said by American viewers or listeners of political pundits in the last forty years. But it might as well have been.

At every opportunity, pundits bash their political enemies. Then they complain, “The nation is more divided than ever.”

It is the pundits who have made spewing hatred socially acceptable and perceived as even a good thing!

That is why hatred is still a “thing” in this country. Politicians too, pile on.

In addition, scapegoating is also all the childish rage these days. Pursuant to what they’ve heard, American viewers and listeners can feel free to blame any or all of the following for all of their troubles (in no particular order):

illegal immigrants, the Iranians, Robert Mueller, Hillary, James Comey, Obama, Lisa Page, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, red state governors, Democrats, police officers, Republicans, Donald J. Trump, Adam Schiff, Hunter Biden, the Chinese, conservatives, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Peter Strzok, the North Koreans, blue state governors, the Squad, liberals, the ladies on “The View,” Joe Biden, teachers, Antifa, Jerrold Nadler, the NRA, and numerous lesser attention whores.

Renewing threats is apparently in vogue, too. A Google search reveals who, of the most recent three presidents, has renewed the most threats.

The following is all Google search results (duplicates of headlines were deleted for the same date) of actual headlines of news or information outlets with the exact phrase, “Trump renews threat to” (Warning: this might get a little tedious):

Dec 9, 2015 Trump renews threat to run as an Independent GOP presidential…

Mar 3, 2016 Trump Renews Indie Threat

Aug 8, 2016 Trump renews threat to leave NAFTA in speech on economy

Nov 28, 2016 Trump renews threat to prosecute Clinton for joining recount

Aug 2, 2017 Trump renews threat to scrap NAFTA

Aug 27, 2017 Donald Trump Renews Threat To Scrap NAFTA Amid Negotiations …

Aug 28, 2017 Trump renews threat to scrap NAFTA going into next round of talks …

May 23, 2018 Trump Renews Threat to Scrap North Korea Summit

May 29, 2018 Trump Renews Threat To Impose Tariffs On High-Tech Chinese Goods

Apr 23, 2018 Trump renews threat to tie border crossings to new NAFTA deal

Jul 29, 2018 Trump renews threat to shut down government over border wall

Jul 30, 2018 Trump renews threat to shut down government over border wall

Aug 2, 2018 President Trump renews threat to shut down the …

Nov 22, 2018 Trump renews threat to close Mexico border over migrants

Nov 23, 2018 Trump renews threat to close US border with Mexico

Nov 29, 2018 Trump Renews Threat To Impose Tariffs On Imported Cars

Dec 28, 2018 Trump renews threat to close southern border

Dec 29, 2018 Trump renews threat to close US-Mexico border

Jan 6, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Declare National Emergency in Border Wall

Jan 7, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Declare Emergency Over Border …

Jan 10, 2019 President Trump Renews Threat To Declare Emergency To Get Funds …

Jan 25, 2019 Trump renews threat to declare national emergency over border …

Mar 28, 2019 Trump renews threat to close the southern border, blasts Mexico on …

Mar 29, 2019 Trump renews threat to shut down US-Mexico border

Mar 31, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Close Border, Cuts Aid to Central America

Apr 1, 2019 Trump renews threat to close southern border, calls on Congress to fix …

Apr 2, 2019 Trump renews threat to close border, possibly affecting commerce …

Apr 24, 2019 Trump renews threat to close Mexican border, send more troops …

Apr 25, 2019 Trump renews threat to close Mexico border

Apr 26, 2019 President Trump Renews Threat to Close U S Border with Mexico …

Jun 10, 2019 Trump renews threat to against French wine (sic)

Jun 11, 2019 US President Donald Trump renews threat to impose tariffs on Mexico

Jul 14, 2019 Trump renews threat to close Mexico border.

August 14, 2019 Trump renews threat to pull US out of WTO

Aug 21, 2019 Trump renews threat to end ‘ridiculous’ birthright citizenship

Sep 20, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Dump IS Fighters at Europe’s Border

Nov 3, 2019 Trump renews threat to cut wildfire aid to California

Jan 5, 2020 Trump renews threat to Iran after rockets land in Baghdad’s Green Zone

Jun 18, 2020 Trump renews threat to cut ties with Beijing, a day after high-level U.S.-China talks

Jun 18, 2020 Trump renews threat to cut ties with China.

Jun 23, 2020 Trump renews threat to cut ties with Beijing

0 0 0

The following is all Google search results (duplicates of headlines were deleted for the same date) of actual headlines of news or information outlets with the exact phrase, “Obama renews threat to”:

Jul 15, 2009 Obama Renews Threat to Veto Military Spending Bill Over F-22s

Jul 26, 2011 Obama Renews Threat to Veto Boehner Debt Plan

Jul 27, 2011 Obama Renews Threat to Veto Boehner Debt Plan

Jan 13, 2016 Obama Renews Threat to Suspend AGOA Benefits for South Africa

0 0 0

The following is all Google search results (duplicates of headlines were deleted for the same date) of actual headlines of news or information outlets with the exact phrase, “Bush renews threat to”:

Aug 24, 2001 Bush renews threat to boycott racism conference over Zionism

Dec 5, 2001 Bush renews threat to Iraq

Dec 6, 2001 Bush renews threat to veto defense bill

May 25, 2005 Bush renews threat to veto stem cell …

Mar 28, 2007 President Bush Renews Threat to Veto Bill on Iraq Troop Withdrawal

Apr 25, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto war funding bill from Congress

May 2, 2007 Bush vetoes war spending bill with Iraq …

Jul 19, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto health bill

Aug 24, 2001 Bush renews threat to boycott racism conference over Zionism

Sep 21, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto children’s health legislation

Sep 25, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto spending bills

Oct 3, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto children’s health legislation

0 0 0

It remains to be seen whether overpaid bashing, hating, scapegoating, threatening noisemakers and/or patronage pigs will triumph over:

the refinement of national healthcare (even the second draft of ANY extremely, extremely, extremely complex system such as this, is going to have numerous problems)

human teachers

the cleaning up of and future prevention of pollution in various places in the United States

freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, etc., and

reducing even a little– the usual corruption, incompetence and waste that is always present to some degree in even a democratic nation.

By the way, the Bonus Book of the Week is “Makes Me Wanna Holler, A Young Black Man in America” by Nathan McCall, published in 1994.

The line preceding the first line of this post is, “I wondered, ‘Where did those white people learn to hate so deeply at such a young age?‘ “

Born in 1955 in Portsmouth, Virginia, the author detailed how his life mirrored his ethnic group’s mentality (African American) in his generation. When he was an adolescent, the forces governing his behavior included: the need for a feeling of tribal unity, peer pressure, hating all white people, and vendetta against rival gangs. If those gangs had acquired the kinds of writing, speaking and debating skills valued by the ethnic group (Caucasian) politically dominant at the time, those gangs could have become pundits or politicians.

Instead, they wasted their time and talents on physical fighting against each other, sexual conquests, and committing street crime. Such activities were destructive to their own ethnic group. Read the book to learn how that worked out for the author.