GASOLINE FIRED RESOLUTION

Every day, I drive somewhere even though I'm retired and seldom "need" to be anywhere. So, I'm trying to resolve to stay home at least one day every 5 weekdays and, thus, cut my gasoline consumption by 20% each five day period. Weekends are a different matter, but on weekends, my wife and I usually drive together in one car and, thus, use less gasoline too. Add to that the fact that my wife and I both drive 4 cylinder autos and have always driven 4 cylinder (sometimes 3 cylinder) autos, and anyone can see that we've been doing our patriotic best to free America from foreign oil for a long time. For me, the elder of we two, I've been gasoline conscious since 1964 when I bought my first VW or People's Wagon, as I used to call it. I know... I know... I've mentioned this early on VW purchase I don't know how many times on this blog. OK! So slap me silly!

THE NEOCON FUNDAMENTALIST CHICKENHAWK CHRISTIAN REPUBLICAN PARTY: AT IT AGAIN

Dahlia Lithwick's recent article in Newsweek (June 2, 2008/Page 45) is the second article I've come across recently that shows how the Republican Christian Fundamentalist Neocon Chickenhawk Party is trying to disenfranchise American voters. These Christian Fundamentalist Neocon Chickenhawks used to be in the Democratic Party but have long since been driven out of that Party by liberal patriots and true Americans and have adopted the newly reorganized Republican Christian Fundamentalist Neocon Chickenhawk Party. . . .

Okay, so I'm just having fun, exaggerating the situation the Republican Party has created for itself, but one must admit that whereas it was the Democrat Party in the South which once upon a time found ways (poll taxes, threats and impossible quizzes) to disenfranchise Black voters, it is now the Republican Party that is spearheading voter disenfranchisement of the poor all over America by instituting new sorts of restrictions on the Constitutionally-protected right to vote. And it is Bushite Supreme Court appointees who support the disenfranchisement. (See Supreme's decision to support voter IDs in Indiana.) Can a reasonable man (or woman) assume that it is the shift of Bible Belt Southerners from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party that has caused this tactic of disenfranchisement to also move from the Democrat to the Republican Party?

Lithwick points out that the firings of U.S. attorneys by the Bushites were politically motivated by their frustration with attorneys who failed to find widespread voter fraud. But instead of letting their fruitless attempts lapse, the Republican Party is using the fear label, "voter fraud", as a way of disenfranchising America's poor. They are attempting to disenfranchise poorer voters by requiring them to purchase voter IDs (a new kind of poll tax) if they do not happen to have purchased driver's licenses or passports for foreign travel. How many poor people travel to Europe for summer vacations? How many rich people are without passports or, at the least, driver's licenses? You see how skewed this requirement is? As Lithwick writes: ". . . the circle is complete, and the crusade to end imaginary vote fraud will result in real vote suppression."

Of course if all voter IDs are furnished free of charge and sent through the mail, then, they cannot be interpreted as a new poll tax. Getting voter IDs does impose an extra burden not imposed on others if the handicapped and the non-driver (elderly and poor) and those who don't travel abroad are required to travel to county court houses to get them.

WHY THE SUPPRESSION OF LESS WELL OFF VOTERS IS DAMAGING

I'm going to admit a prejudice I caught myself harboring in the dusty closet of my brain. For most of my life, I thought that poorer and, thus, uneducated and therefore "ignorant" Americans supported the Vietnam War while we college-educated folk did not. Part of my prejudice was probably because my earliest attempts at higher education in the '60s occurred in the midst of a growing campus-oriented Vietnam protest. I was surrounded by protesters and joined in myself. Also, I recall clearly the New York construction workers who leaped into a protest march and beat the crap out of the marchers.

Lo and behold, I'm the ignorant one! In Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen on pages 297-299 (1995 edition) are some charts which slap me in the puss with the truth. According to a 1971 poll, only 60 percent of the college-educated wanted our troops brought home from Vietnam while 80 percent of the grade school-educated wanted them brought home.

But what's really revealing about this chapter in Loewen's book is that in another survey, the college-, high school- and grade school-educated all thought that the college-elite were more likely to oppose the war, whereas college-educated, specially doctors and lawyers, were more likely to support it. Granted, by 1971 things were changing rapidly in the nation and the surveys that Loewen cites might have come out differently in an earlier time. By 1971, the nation had pretty well been brought around to a different point of view. Also, the media's heated coverage of campus protests certainly gave the impression that all the anti-war sentiment was being generated on campuses around the country. Still, the view by poorer off, grade school-educated Americans that college people were more likely to be more able to sift through information, evaluate evidence and to know the score and, thus, oppose the war sure gives me an insight into how America's less well off tend to dismiss their own opinions and to look to others to lead them.

I've mentioned Loewen's book before, and I still recommend it. Try to get the most recent edition, if you can. The pages I reference in this blog entry might be different.

AMERICAN NAIVETÉ AND AMERICAN TERRORISM
by James Loewen (Photo credit to Sally McCay)

The deeper I get into this textbook, Lies My Teacher Told Me, the more agog I am. I have certainly been naïve when it comes to American history, and I am certainly guilty of having had, in my past, a too unrealistic view of American foreign policy and the domestic aims of its leaders. Chapter after chapter this book thrills me. I have the 1995 edition. There is now a revised 2007 edition. Can the following be true, that the neocons are following George Kennan’s view of the world? What kind of ideal America do they represent to the rest of the world in our name?

[SNIPPET]

… the realpolitik view. George Kennan, who for almost half a century has been an architect of and commentator on U.S. foreign policy, provided a succinct statement of this approach in 1948, As head of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, Kennan wrote in a now famous memorandum:

• We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population, In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real test in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction—unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization.

Under this view, the historian or political scientist proceeds by identifying American national interests as articulated by policymakers in the past as well as by historians today. Then s/he analyzes our acts and policies to assess the degree to which they furthered these interests.

High school American history textbooks do not, of course, adopt or even hint at the American colossus view.... they omit the realpolitik approach. (p.210)

[PASTE IT]

Looking at Kennan’s statement above, we can now see why we have been doing what we’ve been doing in the world. The next passage shows how this policy might have been applied to Iraq. In fact, Loewen’s comments about the Nixon past are so prescient about the Bush Jr. fiasco, I can hardly believe it.

[SNIP]

Richard Rubenstein has pointed out, "the problem will not go away with the departure of Richard Nixon," because it is structural, stemming from the vastly increased power of the federal executive bureaucracy. Indeed, in some ways the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan-Bush administrations, a web of secret legal and illegal acts involving the president, vice-president, cabinet members, special operatives such as Oliver North, and government officials in Israel, Iran, Brunei, and elsewhere, shows an executive branch more out of control than Nixon's. Textbooks' failure to put Watergate into this perspective is part of their authors' apparent program to whitewash the federal government so that schoolchildren will respect it. Since the structural problem in the government has not gone away, it is likely that students will again, in their adult lives, face an out-of-control federal executive pursuing criminal foreign and domestic policies. To the extent that their understanding of the government comes from their American history courses, students will be shocked by these events and unprepared to think about them.

"Our country may she always be in the right," toasted Stephen Decatur in 1816, "but our country, right or wrong!" Educators and textbook authors seem to want to inculcate the next generation into blind allegiance to our country. Going a step beyond Decatur, textbook analyses fail to assess our actions abroad according to either a standard of right and wrong or realpolitik. Instead, textbooks merely assume that the government tried to do the right thing. Citizens who embrace the textbook view would presumably support any intervention, armed or otherwise, and any policy, protective of our legitimate national interests or not, because they would be persuaded that all our policies and interventions are on behalf of humanitarian aims. They could never credit our enemies with equal humanity. (p.223)

[PASTE]

And going further, Marine Corp General S.D. Butler shows that this has been America’s aim, to dominate the world for the exclusive benefit of our national corporations, since at least 1900.

[SNIP]

[Here’s] … a shot of the realism supplied by former Marine Corps Gen. Smedley D. Butler, whose 1931 statement has become famous:

• I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras ‘right’ for American fruit companies in 1903. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. (p.214)

[PASTE]

Finally, with following list of specific American wrong doings in the world community, an honest American can at least understand why the Reverend Jeremiah Wright could claim that American neocons' acts of terrorism in the world might be coming home to roost for average, more decent Americas. In short, the attack on America’s twin towers are the direct result of George Kennan’s policy, acted on through and by American neocons, though they were not always called by that name. We must not blame the average American for the neocon atrocities, but we can blame ourselves for our ignorance and naiveté. Perhaps we can even blame our textbooks for misleading us in so many areas. Remember, these are acts of terror as defined by our own government as to what constitutes a terrorist government.

[SNIP]

1. our assistance to the shah's faction in Iran in deposing Prime Minister Mussadegh and returning the shah to the throne in 1953;
2. our role in bringing down the elected government of Guatemala in 1954;
3. our rigging of the 1957 election in Lebanon, which entrenched the Christians on top and led to the Muslim revolt and civil war the next year; [why do they hate us?]
4. our involvement in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of Zaire in 1961;
5. our repeated attempts to murder Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba and bring down his government by terror and sabotage; and
6. our role in bringing down the elected government of Chile in 1973. [Also killing a young American.] (p.215)

[PASTE]

FALLING OUT OF BLOGLOVE

Again, time has passed. George Bush seems well defeated, I’m adjusting to Vancouver and making friends and acquaintances at last. I’m not so urgently driven to communicate in this blog. My marriage continues to be wonderful. I’m drawing again, writing some poetry, working algebra problems, reading and drinking lattes at some interesting coffee shops around Vancouver. I drive over to Portland almost every Sunday morning to join my fellow humanists for interesting lectures, then go to lunch with another small bunch of humanists. I feel pretty good, and I’m much pepped up by the knowledge that my potential heart disease turned into a clean bill of health by angiogram. I’m meeting some people in the apartment complex too. Currently I’m reading poetry by Marvin Bell, Loewen’s book and also Gore Vidal’s memoir, Palimpsest. I really like Gore Vidal, I do. Sense a kindred spirit there, even though I’m heterosexual as all get out, but sometimes Gore’s writing makes me love him. Life is pretty damn great.

EVEN JEFFERSON CORRUPTED BY SLAVERY

In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen studies 12 textbooks of American history to demonstrate just how distorted American textbooks are in order that they might portray America in a much too favorable a light. Even in my minor in history, I don’t recall the following information being presented to me.

[SLICE AND DICE]
… slavery and it concomitant ideas, which legitimated hierarchy and dominance sapped our Revolution idealism. Most textbooks never hint at this clash of ideas, let alone at its impact on our foreign policy.

After the Revolution, many Americans expected our example would inspire other peoples. It did. Our young nation got its first chance to help in the 1790s, when Haiti revolted against France. Whether a president owned slaves seems to have determined his policy toward the second independent nation in the hemisphere. George Washington did, so his administration loaned hundreds of thousands of dollars to the French planters in Haiti to help them suppress their slaves. John Adams did not, and his administration gave considerable support to the Haitians. Jefferson's presidency marked a general retreat from the idealism of the Revolution. Like other slave owners, Jefferson preferred a Napoleonic colony to a black republic in the Caribbean. In 1801 he reversed U.S. policy toward Haiti and secretly gave France the go-ahead to reconquer the island. In so doing, the United States not only betrayed its heritage, but also acted against its own self-interest. For if France had indeed been able to retake Haiti, Napoleon would have maintained his dream of an American empire. The United States would have been hemmed in by France to its west, Britain to its north, and Spain to its south. But planters in the United States were scared by the Haitian Revolution. They thought it might inspire slave revolts here (which it did). When Haiti won despite our flip-flop, the United States would not even extend it diplomatic recognition, lest its ambassador inflame our slaves "by exhibiting in his own person an example of successful revolt," in the words of a Georgia senator. Five of the twelve textbooks mention how Haitian resistance led France to sell us its claim to Louisiana, but none tells of our flip-flop. Indeed, no textbook ever makes any connection between slavery and U.S. foreign policy.

Racial slavery also affected our policy toward the next countries in the Americas to revolt, Spain's colonies. Haiti's example inspired them to seek independence, and the Haitian government gave Simon Bolivar direct aid. Our statesmen were ambivalent, eager to help boot a European power out of the hemisphere but worried by the racially mixed rebels doing the booting. Some planters wanted our government to replace Spain as the colonial power, especially in Cuba. Jefferson suggested annexing Cuba. Fifty years later, diplomats in the Franklin Pierce administration signed the Ostend Manifesto, which proposed that the United States buy or take the island from Spain. Slave owners, still obsessed with Haiti as a role model, thus hoped to prevent Cuba's becoming a second Haiti, with "flames [that might] extend to our own neighboring shores," in the words of the Manifesto. In short, slavery prompted the United States to have imperialist designs on Latin America rather than visions of democratic liberation for the region. (pp.142-143)
[RECONSTITUTE AND PASTE]

Photo a nice one along the Columbia River as one drives westbound on I-84.

GOD DID IT FOR US

The cold-blooded reality of fundamentalism in America is demonstrated time and again in American history. Cold-bloodedness began very early. It was Catholic as well as Protestant in the New World. Now it’s also and insanely Moslem. But here’s an early take on how the hyper-religious imagine that their imaginary god works in the interests of Christianity. It’s from the book Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen (p. 72).

[CLIP]
During the next fifteen years, additional epidemics, most of which we know to have been smallpox, struck repeatedly. European Americans also contracted smallpox and the other maladies, to be sure, but they usually recovered, including, in a later century, the "heavily pockmarked George Washington." 
Native Americans usually died. The impact of the epidemics on the two cultures was profound. The English Separatists, already seeing their lives as part of a divinely inspired morality play, found it easy to infer that God was on their side. 
John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, called the plague 
"miraculous." In 1634 he wrote to a friend in England: "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection ...." God 
the Original Real Estate Agent!

Many Indians likewise inferred that their god had abandoned them. Robert Cushman reported that "those that are left, have their courage much abated, and their countenance is dejected, and they seem as a people affrighted." After a smallpox epidemic the Cherokee "despaired so much that they lost confidence in their gods and the priests destroyed the sacred objects of the tribe." After all, neither Indians nor Pilgrims had access to the germ theory of disease.
Indian healers could supply no cure; their medicines and herbs offered no relief. Their religion provided no explanation. That of the whites did. Like the Europeans three centuries before them, many Indians surrendered to alcohol, converted to Christianity, or simply killed themselves!
[PASTE]

Less malevolently, but in exactly the same manner, golfer Gus Johnson’s claims his imagined god aids his golfing exploits.

WHIDBEY ISLAND SUNRISE

The photo is from a recent trip I took to Whidbey Island to visit old pal from Spokane, Doug. Looking from near Clinton toward Everett.