Category: Politics – Identity

Whistlestop

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “Whistlestop, My Favorite Stories From Presidential Campaign History” by John Dickerson, published in 2016. Some of the stories in this slightly sloppily-edited volume got tabloidy, but all of them just reminded the reader that there is nothing new under the sun, or showed how times have changed, in connection with presidential politics in America.

In 1948, Democratic incumbent Truman speechified about the usual politico-economic nature of the Republicans:

  • trickle-down economics;
  • heartless;
  • greedy toward American consumers;
  • betraying American farmers.

Currently, many people would agree with the above description of the Republicans. Truman urged voters to elect a Congress which would help ordinary Americans rather than act in “the interests of the men who have all the money.” Truman wasn’t a hypocrite in this, as he inherited neither a business nor a boatload of wealth from his daddy.

In 1992, presidential hopeful Bob Kerrey “suggested using the military to fight the War on Drugs, an idea that could get a candidate arrested in Democratic politics…” Not anymore. Just ask Nicolas Maduros of Venezuela– a rerun of George H.W. Bush’s episode with Manuel Noriega of Panama.

In 2004, presidential candidate Howard Dean went on the TV show Meet the Press with Tim Russert. Critics said his delivery was awful, as he made rambling generalizations and got impatient and impertinent with the questioner.

Apparently, by 2016, some viewers tolerated an inarticulate presidential candidate (Trump) who attacked the media outright! Those viewers wish they could accumulate (over the course of decades) the kind of power that allowed Trump to get away with that.

One last interesting factoid: In the last sixty years, three vice presidents ran for president and never became president, all three of whom were Democrats, and two of whom were from Minnesota: Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and Al Gore.


Read the book to learn about various other episodes involving presidential hopefuls who won or lost, from all different centuries.

ENDNOTE:

According to media headlines, Trump PLANNED in February 2025 to (in no particular order):

  • use military sites across the country to detain undocumented immigrants
  • take over the Postal Service
  • inspect Fort Knox gold
  • impose tariffs on foreign automakers, chips and pharmaceuticals
  • create a sovereign wealth fund
  • lower consumer energy costs
  • name himself chair of the Kennedy Center and fire board members
  • create a tourist mecca in a strip of land in Gaza
  • reduce access to abortion
  • lower the corporate tax rate to 15%
  • eliminate income taxing and payroll taxing of tips
  • eliminate taxing of Social Security benefits
  • trample on the rights of LGBTQ+ people
  • eliminate the Department of Education
  • replace the Affordable Care Act
  • give a tax credit for family caregivers of older and disabled adults between $5,000 and $6,000 per year
  • support more oil and gas drilling
  • take over Greenland and
  • take over Canada.

It has been a year. The above can be used as a checklist of what the president has accomplished, made progress on, or NOT.
The simplest, most direct way for ethical leaders to turn the country around, would be to TAX THE RICH.

The Playbook

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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