education and deconstruction.com – Page 2

No Better Time

[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 “No Better Time– The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet” by Molly Knight Raskin, published in 2013. This short, slightly sloppily edited volume whose title exaggerates, described the brief life of a dot-com startup genius.

Danny Lewin was born in May 1970 in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. His family moved to Israel when he was fourteen. He enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces, and then he moved back to the United States to attend school at MIT.

While in school, with a friend, Lewin helped develop a technological innovation within the big-picture innovation of the whole Internet. Initially, his dot-com business, named Akamai Technologies, provided the service of preventing of the crashing of the browser when: a video went viral or a website got overwhelmed with traffic, or a denial-of-service attack was launched against a website. Through algorithms, obviously, eventually, computer scientists discovered the required optimal number of servers communicating among themselves to maximize computing power to minimize latency and downtime.

In the second half of the 1990’s, worldwide usage of the Internet, a decentralized network of potentially infinite networks, was in its infancy. This meant, for ordinary users, downloading of data was extremely slow. Impatience was growing in leaps and bounds as time-saving devices (like office software) were, too; resulting in “irrational exuberance” over securities sold to the public that funded dot-com startups. The likely reason Akamai still exists today while so many other tech startups failed, is that there was an actual, valuable service behind it!

By spring 2000, after receiving ginormous funding from its IPO, Akamai’s customers’ servers collectively numbered more than 2,750 in more than one hundred fifty networks in forty-five nations. At the book’s writing, Akamai controlled between fifteen and thirty percent of the world’s Internet traffic.

Read the book to learn much more about Lewin, the people who helped him, and his startup.

The Taft Story

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.

Puttin’ on the Blitz – BONUS POST

Here’s a little ditty about the current political situation in the United States.

PUTTIN’ ON THE BLITZ

sung to the tune of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” (the short version played on the radio in the 1980’s) with apologies to Estate of Irving Berlin, Estate of Fred Astaire, Taco, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

States of BLUE, Trump’ll, unmercifully-mow down.

His goal is to go, where vengeance sits.

Puttin’ on the Blitz.

Diff’rent agencies to oppress each-day. Loots, ravages, snoops or cuts away, giving victims fits.

Puttin’ on the Blitz.

Rule by fear and force. Be a shaker and mover.

Trying hard to act like J. Edgar Hoover. [super-Hoover]

Trump will nix all democracy by 2026, with this oppressive mix.

Puttin’ on the Blitz.

He’s the SLAVE of the well-to-do, on Pennsylvania Avenue.

He’s an A-mer-i-CAN nightmare.

Scent-of Mao’s China is in the air.

The media revels, IN the hollers. Democrats are losing dollars.

Trump’s looking at every dime, and having a wonderful time.

States of BLUE, Trump’ll, unmercifully-mow down.

His goal is to go, where vengeance sits.

Puttin’ on the Blitz.

Diff’rent agencies to oppress each-day. Loots, ravages, snoops or cuts away, giving victims fits.

Puttin’ on the Blitz.

Rule by fear and force. Be a shaker and mover.

Trying hard to act like J. Edgar Hoover. [super-Hoover]

Trump will nix all democracy by 2026, with this oppressive mix.

Puttin’ on the Blitz.

Rule by fear and force. Be a shaker and mover.

Trying hard to act like J. Edgar Hoover. [super-Hoover]

States of BLUE, Trump’ll, unmercifully-mow down.

His goal is to go, where vengeance sits.

Puttin’ on the Blitz.

Where is Vance? Where is Vance?

Puttin’ on the Blitz.

My Father’s Paradise

The Book of the Week is “My Father’s Paradise, A Son’s Search For His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq” by Ariel Sabar, published in 2008. In this sloppily edited volume, the author recounts the experiences of his father (named Yona) in Kurdistan, Israel and the United States, and his own generation– in America.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Ashkenazi Jews considered themselves superior to Sephardic Jews living in Palestine, and Kurdistan, a northern region of Iraq. The Ashkenazis had their own “old-boy” network, who subjected the Sephardics to institutional racism.

An oppressed group such as the Kurds are more likely than a dominant group to have impostor syndrome; as a society constantly smears a scapegoated group through social contagion, the victims begin to lose confidence in themselves and question their own competence. Ever since the Holocaust, the Jews, after centuries of passive acceptance of victimhood, decided enough was enough, and have fought back, releasing centuries of pent-up rage. Over the course of eighty years, they have gone from one extreme to the other. They have become ideologically stubborn and militarily aggressive.

Especially after WWII with the 1947 UN vote to partition Palestine, the Iraqi government stepped up its anti-Semitism. But in the first quarter of 1950, the Iraqi government allowed Jews to relinquish their citizenship, and move to another country with just the clothes on their backs, never to return. About four thousand Jews did so.

One consequence was that Iraq experienced brain drain. Israel continued to take in skilled and talented people (and other refugees in the previous decade) who considered themselves Zionists (For a description of the different aspects of Zionism, type “Zionism” in the search bar on the upper right side of this blog; the term “Zionism” like “feminism” and “global warming” was hijacked for emotionally-charged propaganda purposes.).

A January 1951 terrorist attack against Jews in a Baghdad synagogue that left three dead, prompted Israel to accept thousands more Iraqi Jews by 1952. Yona’s family left Kurdistan for Israel in April 1951.

Yona learned the languages of Hebrew and English, foreign to him. For, he was one of the dwindling native speakers of Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus Christ. With that language, he built a career researching its history, and creating a dictionary to preserve it. The author rebelled against his father, but their relationship began to thaw as the son matured. He wrote, “The idea that workers in China could make a Passover plate with Hebrew letters that you could buy in Los Angeles for a grandson in Maine: This, for my father, was America.”

Read the book to learn much more about Yona’s life and times, and the author’s quest to find his long-lost aunt.

Swimming to Freedom

The Book of the Week is “Swimming to Freedom, My Escape From China and the Cultural Revolution” by Kent Wong, published in 2021. Wong was born in 1948 in a coastal town in China. Mao became the official leader of China in October 1949. So that Wong’s father could keep his job at the customs agency, the family moved to Hong Kong. However, they returned to Guangzhou because the father missed his homeland.

Mao brainwashed people into believing that the Americans and their puppet, Chiang Kai-Shek were evil imperialists. The people in northern China were mostly peasant-farmers, while the people in southern China worked in factories and were better educated. More northerners starved to death, as local Communist leaders stole their harvests of grain. So after the food sources of chickens, pigs and horses were exhausted, the people resorted to cannibalism.

From the mid-1960’s, onward, Mao recovered his all-powerful position and cult of personality in the Chinese government. The Chinese times, they were changing in many ways, including:

Anyone who joined the Communist Party enjoyed a significantly better lifestyle than not.
Beginning in the early 1960’s China was gradually becoming less friendly with Russia, claiming via Mao’s drama-queen performance that Khrushchev had criticized their Communist idol, Stalin, and that their ideologies differed (actually, China didn’t want to pay Russia the humungous financial debt it owed).
Contrary to a decade earlier, the schools began to teach the English language instead of the Russian language.
High school kids were sent to the countryside to be “reeducated” (do hard manual labor) with the peasants.
Mao brainwashed the teenagers into becoming child-soldiers called Red Guards.

Across the country, the Red Guards got uniforms, marched in parades, and once they got weapons, they acquired the power to behave like Nazis. And did. They harassed people on the streets, looted stores of cigarettes and cold drinks. They incited terror by whipping people with a belt, in the public square.

In 1966, there arose two different gangs of Red Guards, who were enemies of each other. The main target of the Red Guards, though, was any “Black” family (see the paragraph below) or individual who showed capitalist leanings (thoughts, actions, writings of any kind) or association with bourgeois rich people. Every man, woman and child in China had what amounted to an FBI file on them from the time they were born, as they were legally required to register with the government.

A family was labeled Black if, prior to Mao’s reign, it had been in any kind of business or had been affiliated with Chiang Kai-Shek. One family member could shame the entire family, and cause it to be labeled Black. Wong’s family was labeled Black because they had lived in the Chiang-affiliated, British colony of Hong Kong, and his father had criticized workplace conditions.

Red Guards ransacked the family’s house for any evil materials, but found none. A Red family consisted of loyal Communist peasants. After a while, people of all ages whose families were Black were sent to the countryside. Only loyal Party hacks and rich people dodged the recruitment process.

The internet has greatly automated the kinds of surveillance, censorship and propaganda practiced by China (and the United States!) since Wong’s generation. Political retaliation has never been so easy.

On the other hand, the unbloodied elites (i.e., Donald Trump, Zelensky, etc.) don’t need to actually go into physical combat the way their countries’ militaries (or their cult-of-personality members) do. They simply sit in a TV studio to boost media ratings during a slow-news period, and have a screaming match like the clowns on the “Jerry Springer Show” used to do.

Dictatorial leaders in recent history whose names are still known, of course, have varied in their evilness and attention whoredom. However, only two (Hitler and Stalin) dominated lands (not including Churchill– whose empire was in decline) that potentially had the resources (not including nuclear weapons) to take over the entire earth. They might have, if events had happened a bit differently.

Mutual Assured Destruction has thus far kept world leaders from obliterating one another. There are other factors at work that provide a smidgen of hope for the continued survival of global humanity:

Because nations of the world are so economically interdependent or incestuous of late, no matter how much their leaders rant, rave, brag and deny– their governments are liars regarding trade negotiations.
It has become routine for leaders to incite a hue and cry from their citizens via instantaneous communications methods. This means fewer people are paying attention to the propaganda that is filtered through the narrow lens of a small number of media outlets (which are monster-sized, but not as influential as they used to be).
At least in the United States, more and more families of different ethnicities and religions are converging or assimilating, so hypocrisy among xenophobes is on the increase. The voices of the xenophobes will be eclipsed eventually when the U.S. leadership becomes more diverse. It might take a while, but it has to happen.
Nowadays, violent places of the world are confined mostly to ones that have a reputation for centuries of tribal or religious warfare, as practically all the resources have been looted from once-colonized territories.

The above are reasons why world conquest is too difficult to achieve for any current aspirant. Even so, here’s a little ditty on Trump’s latest speechifying to Congress.

JUST AN OLD FASCIST LOVE SONG

sung to the tune of “Just an Old Fasioned Love Song” with apologies to Three Dog Night, their estates, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Just an old fascist love song, emanating from the idiot-box,
and wrapped around the words, is the bragfest of a power-hog who’ll never go.

In-history you’ve heard it before. Hypocrisy rolls on.
Money, power, political-hacks. They’re never really gone.

Just an old fascist love song.
One I’m sure they wrote for GOP.
Just an old fascist love song.
Coming forth from backroom bargaining.

Boosting ratings but failing to question,
because their intellect’s low.
To emphasize Trump’s love affair
with phoniness and meanness, that we’ve come to know.

In-history you’ve heard it before. Hypocrisy rolls on and on.
Money, power, political-hacks. They’re never really gone.

Just an old fascist love song.
Coming forth from backroom bargaining.
Just an old fascist love song.
One I’m sure they wrote for GOP.

Boosting ratings but failing to question the song.
Just, an old song, coming forth.
Just (just) an old song.
One I’m sure they wrote for GOP.

Just an old fascist love song.
Coming forth from backroom bargaining.
Just an old fascist love song.
One I’m sure they wrote for GOP.

Anyway, read the book to learn of the author’s adventures (which included serious hardships, although he avoided getting shot, drowned, bitten by a shark, or killed by a typhoon) during his quest for a better life.

Slow Noodles

The Book of the Week is “Slow Noodles, A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss and Family Recipes” by Chantha Nguon, published in 2024. Born around 1961, the author endured the hunger, hard manual labor, bullying from the authorities and other aspects of her decades-long survival struggles through fantasizing about the food her mother cooked for her. Cooking became a life-saving skill later in her life.

In March 1970, Cambodia underwent a regime change. Lon Nol replaced Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and got a lot of financial aid from the U.S. for claiming he was anti-Communist. The new dictator also got military help in the form of American B-52s’ indiscriminately killing people in the countryside. The goal was to rid Cambodia of Vietnamese and non-Buddhist people. The author’s mother was Vietnamese, so the author was considered genetically Vietnamese, too. They were eventually forced to flee to Saigon.

All through the 1970’s, the region of Southeast Asia was particularly hard-hit by genocide, atrocities and torturous practices perpetrated by war criminals who obeyed their respective dictators. As an adolescent, Nguon was subjected to personal hardships, including the deaths of her older sister (who served as her surrogate mother until her mother arrived in Saigon) and her mother.

Nguon, like countless, anonymous hundreds of thousands of other refugees, could have died of disease, starvation, bombings, guerrillas’ bullets, pirates, or land mines, or a combination thereof. On rebuilding Cambodia after Pol Pot’s reign, she wrote, “The big foreign aid groups did their best, but they had no idea how to reshape a civilization from nothing. Who does? Donors, NGOs, and politicians want speedy tangible progress. The natural bias is ‘Hurry up and heal. We have other emergencies to attend to.’ “

Read the book to learn about the kinds of assistance the author provided to her fellow Cambodians, and much more about her food, life and times.

Ugly Farce – BONUS POST

According to recent media headlines, Trump PLANS 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.

A year from now (February 2026) — 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. Here’s a little ditty about that.

UGLY FARCE

sung to the tune of “Hungry Heart” with apologies to Bruce Springsteen and to whomever else the rights may concern.

If your life is in the United States,
you’ve been taken-for-a-ride,
you have a dismal fate.

Among the wealthy, money keeps flowin’.
Leaders-TOOK a wrong turn and they just kept goin’.

Now democracy’s an ugly farce.
Now democracy’s an ugly farce.
Little-people’s-voices PLAY no part.
Now democracy’s an ugly, ugly farce. uh-oh

The sleazy types have maximum power.
Canned-videos of Trump are the LAtest trend.
The-rich took what we had and they ripped it apart.
Now here we are with lies-smears, and lawsuits again.

Now democracy’s an ugly farce.
Now democracy’s an ugly farce.
Little-people’s-voices PLAY no part.
Now democracy’s an ugly, ugly farce. uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh

Everybody is SICK of this mess.
Not everybody HAS a home.
It matters most what the money says.
We’ll see in-a-year whether the deficit’s grown.

Now democracy’s an ugly farce.
Now democracy’s an ugly farce.
Little-people’s-voices PLAY no part.
Now democracy’s an ugly, ugly farce.

(Now democracy’s an ugly farce.)
(Little-people’s-voices PLAY no, no part.) uh-oh
Now democracy’s an ugly farce. oh yeah
(Little-people’s-voices PLAY no part.) uh-oh
Now democracy’s an ugly farce.

ah ah ah, oh yeah…

Speaking Out

The Book of the Week is “Speaking Out, Inside the Reagan White House” by Larry Speakes with Robert Pack, published in 1988.

Born in September 1939, the author grew up in a small town in Mississippi. He suffered from impostor syndrome when he began working in the Reagan White House as deputy press secretary in early 1981. However, he gained confidence as he witnessed the gaffes committed by self-important alpha-males amid their power struggles in his rarefied workplace. There were the usual inter-agency rivalry and scapegoating when things went wrong. “State blamed the White House, the White House blamed Defense, and the CIA blamed everybody.”

As is well known, in March 1981, Reagan was shot in the chest, but survived. Immediately after the president had become incapacitated, Alexander Haig, then-secretary of state, made a major misstatement to the press, saying HE was in charge of the administration, and could act on the president’s behalf. Haig was a publicity hound, stopping for a photo opportunity whenever he could.

Speakes, pursuant to the U.S. Constitution, clarified the succession of power of the president: vice president; speaker of the House; and then president pro tempore of the senate; after that, secretary of state.

Pat Buchanan was another troublesome coworker. In March 1986, he wrote an inflammatory Op-Ed piece–unvetted by Speakes’ department– that was published in the Washington Post. That piece said if Congressional Democrats voted against the bill giving financial aid to the Contras, they were as evil as the Commies supporting Daniel Ortega, leader of Nicaragua. Additionally, Buchanan praised Oliver North after the Iran Contra scandal broke.

Reagan finally made a speech equivalent to Nixon’s “Checkers speech” when his people were forced to admit that Israel helped the United States sell weapons to Iran; a secret operation orchestrated primarily by Oliver North, John Poindexter and Robert McFarlane. The president declined to pardon them, because pardoning them would indicate they had committed a crime! He maintained they were innocent.

Another interesting factoid: During president Reagan’s eight years, approximately seventeen hundred people were provided with press passes to report on the administration.

Read the book to learn of Speakes’ experiences managing the optics of the administration, given the tenor of the times and the difficult personalities involved.

American Shield

The Book of the Week is “American Shield, The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy” by Aquilino Gonell and Susan Shapiro, published in 2023.

Born around 1980, Gonell spent his early childhood in the Dominican Republic. When he was twelve, he moved to Brooklyn in New York State. In the late 1990’s, the author’s “green card” allowed him to join the U.S. Army Reserve while also attending college at Long Island University. He had a choice to join the military full-time. But part-time, he could eventually afford a higher education.

That just shows how desperate the U.S government is to get people to join its military, absent a draft. It is taking non-citizens! People who are so grateful to be living in America are more willing to risk their lives, and are willing to work harder and longer than people born here. And, in the event of war, American leadership wouldn’t be as aggrieved at losing fighters whom they don’t actually consider their own, anyway.

Through centuries of wars in the world, other countries have practiced variations on military recruitment methods. They’ve hired mercenaries, but those soldiers are fighting for the money and ego satisfaction. It’s a challenge for them to survive. They feel no obligation to anyone. In past wars, Britain has conscripted soldiers from its colonies in Africa, and India– forget the compensation.

Anyway, the author served in Iraq, and was a Capitol police officer on January 6, 2021, by which time he was a U.S. citizen. He didn’t know he’d be risking his life during what should have been a peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next. Yet 140 officers sustained serious injuries to their heads, limbs, backs, internal organs (from bear and pepper spray)– as though they were wounded in a war.

Gonell described in detail: “…fellow officers brazenly beaten with pipes, sticks, and rocks by rioters chanting ‘Fight for Trump’ and ‘USA! USA!’ Trump banners outnumbered American flags, and for a second I froze in fear. I’d seen this kind of unbridled rage in Iraq when the base was under attack, and I knew this was bad.” Gonell himself sustained serious injuries that would plague him the rest of his life.

Americans like to think they don’t live under a dictatorship, but their thinking has changed. Before, during and after the insurrection, Fox News was spouting smears and lies, such as– Antifa plotted the agitation at the Capitol. Very few GOP leaders at that time had the courage to actually condemn the violence. There are still too many people who owe their jobs to the major influencer of the violence to kick him out of office, even though he’s now senile!

AND, theoretically, the American president, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, has ultimate authority to decide on military deployment. However, if the president has sole control over the military and it obeys only him, is loyal only to him, including in connection with all top-secret foreign policy matters– THE PRESIDENT IS A DICTATOR.

Be that as it may, Gonell bravely appeared on talk shows to reveal the truth about the Capitol riot, even though he and his family feared doxing and death threats. He felt that a firearm would help him defend his family in his private home, and “The paperwork and background check only took fifteen minutes, and I walked out with a new Glock in its black case.” He mentioned that he had PTSD while he was in Iraq, but apparently, in the United States, traumatized ex-military members can acquire firearms in no time, with no pertinent questions asked.

Read the book to learn much more about Gonell’s life and times. A major change in the American regime will be announced during a slow-news week, so that its messaging will have maximum impact, and the media can make maximum money. Meanwhile, here’s a ditty on the current state of affairs.

STUCK WITH AI

sung to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive” with apologies to the Bee Gees, their estates, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Well, it’s the same old DRECK on the idiot box.

Old clips and deepfakes fill airtime on Fox.

Smearing loud, inciting a storm,

Musk and Trump tooting his horn.

It’s far Right, it’s a sad day.

It’s his way or THE highway.

It’s hard for some to understand,

how the brainWASHing got out of hand.

Whether you’re innocent or guilty as sin,

we’re stuck with AI, stuck with AI.

See criminals walking and Big Tech stalking.

We’re stuck with AI, stuck with AI.

new-normal police-state, stuck with AI, stuck with AI.

new-normal police-state, stuck with A-I-I-I-I.

Oh, criminals walk…

Well, the GOP’s low, and on power they’re high,

and democracy’s crumbling before our eyes.

Job security at an all-time low.

A lying senile leader causing more woe.

It’s far Right. It’s their way.

Fourth Amendment is in shreds today.

It’s hard for some to understand,

how the brainWASHing got out of hand.

Whether you’re innocent or guilty as sin,

we’re stuck with AI, stuck with AI.

See criminals walking and Big Tech stalking.

We’re stuck with AI, stuck with AI.

new-normal police-state, stuck with AI, stuck with AI.

new-normal police-state, stuck with A-I-I-I-I.

Vance needs to step up. Somebody help him. Somebody help him, yeah.

Vance needs to step up. Somebody help him, yeah. Stuck with AI.

Well, it’ the same old DRECK on the idiot box.

Old clips and deepfakes fill airtime on Fox.

Smearing loud, inciting a storm,

Musk and Trump tooting his horn.

It’s far Right, it’s a sad day.

It’s his way or THE highway.

It’s hard for some to understand,

how the brainWASHing got out of hand.

Whether you’re innocent or guilty as sin,

we’re stuck with AI, stuck with AI.

See criminals walking and Big Tech stalking.

We’re stuck with AI, stuck with AI.

new-normal police-state, stuck with AI, stuck with AI.

new-normal police-state, stuck with A-I-I-I-I. Argh.

Vance needs to step up. Somebody help him. Somebody help him, yeah.

Vance needs to step up. Somebody help him, yeah. We’re stuck with AI…