Afflict The Comfortable (The Mind of Bob Buzzanco)

“I can take about an hour on the tower of power/’Long as I gets a little golden shower”

Frank Zappa, “Bobby Brown,” Sheik Yerbouti

——

Today’s NYT website headline:  “How a Sensational, Unverified Dossier Became a Crisis for Donald Trump”

The Crisis?  Apparently, Russian spies and contract spooks were keeping surveillance on Donald Trump to gain personal information to use against him for purposes of blackmail.  The most scandalous revelation, from a pilfered report that may or may not be real  (like all the “evidence” so far presented about the Russians and their bold attempt to subvert the United States by making sure the Democratic Oligarch lost the election to the GOP Oligarch) was “According to Source D… Trump’s perverted conduct included… defiling the bed where they [the Obamas] had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him.” 

Donald Trump has mocked a disabled reporter, had lurid conversations with Howard Stern about his sexual preferences and openly talked about “grabbing pussy,” encouraged the mob at his political rallies to beat people up, gotten into a Twitter war with a beauty pageant queen he called “fat,” castigated a judge as corrupt because he was born in Mexico (he wasn’t; he was born in Indian, home state of Veep Mike Pence), gotten into a fracas with Gold Star parents, seemed to encourage “second amendment solutions” against political enemies, and maybe best of all said “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

The report concluded that, “Trump’s unorthodox behaviour in Russia over the years had provided the authorities there with enough embarrassing material on the now-Republican presidential candidate to be able to blackmail him if they so wished”.

Crisis?  Blackmail?  Really?

Given what Trump’s done and gotten away with, prostitutes and golden showers are going to be his undoing?  The man has disproved all the accepted truths about American politics already–insulting minorities, the disabled, gays, women, you name it.  And this is going to be his Waterloo?  LBJ famously said that you could do anything but be “caught in bed with a dead woman or live boy.”  Trump could do both while getting his own golden shower from a transgendered Muslim Communist and there would be no fallout.

Yet liberals are in a constant state of apoplexy about this stuff.  Why not talk about, maybe stuff like Social Security, Medicare, the Supreme Court, Wall Street, trade pacts, jobs, etc.   Oh, that’s right, because the Democratic Party isn’t really very different from the GOP on that stuff.

So instead there’s this focus on Trump as Aberration, a vile and disgusting man (which is true) who is SO different from anyone in American political life that he is a danger to our future, a Hitler-in-waiting in fact.

Trump is in fact your normal Republican, but very open and vulgar about it.  Hell, a GOP senator from Louisiana paid hookers to make him wear diapers.; a GOP rep from Florida was caught soliciting teenaged boys for sex; an Idaho senator was arrested for lewd conduct in an airport restroom . . . so on sexual matters, Trump’s hardly abnormal by Republican (or American) standards.   So can we stop with the Helen Lovejoy “Won’t somebody think of the children” shrieks and get on to more serious things?

Trump and his party, with some Democratic complicity and some Democratic apathy, are acting simply in the interests of the ruling class.  They’re continuing to redistribute wealth and power from the 99 percent to the Oligarchy.  Instead of all these absurd sideshows about sex, how about some resistance on issues that actually matter to the people of Flint, Philly, El Paso, Chicago and everywhere else.  Indeed, Dem dreamboy Cory Booker and others in the party who got big money from Big Pharma just joined with GOP senators to kill a bill to explore, not invoke but just explore, importing cheaper drugs from Canada (see list below). Mostly crickets on that story while the Trump cascade continues. (As a friend said, “unlike Trump’s hookers, Cory Booker pissed on the whole  country”).

Gold, as in power, not Gold as in showers, has to be the issue here, and liberals, like a dog chasing a car, prefer to go after the salacious and lurid rather than the tangible and material problems that affect the lives of the non-rich.

Now, to be sure, the issue of a GOP candidate-cum-president working with the Russians is a real one, and potentially explosive, like Manchurian Candidate stuff in the worst-case scenario.  But none of that has been shown here.  The reports have been unverified (see James Bamford, the authority, on this, and this too), and the recent disclosure (bogus or not) concedes that “Trump has declined various sweetener real estate business deals offered him in Russia in order to further the Kremlin’s cultivation of him.”  The Russians also offered him sweetheart deals relating to the 2018 World Cup and, again, “for reasons unknown, Trump has not taken up any of these.”

Now any foreign “cultivation” of an American president is really not a good thing (though we’d all have been better off if JFK and LBJ had been buddies with Fidel and Ho back in the day), but there’s no evidence of that yet.  What we have are lurid stories about an openly lurid man, not pleasant or indicative of good character to be sure, but pretty far down on the list of the dangers he poses.  Trump may be a pervert but if that were disqualifying, there would be no Congress (or any other institutions frankly), but he’s mostly just your normal Republican and normal politician.  Time to focus on gold, not gold showers.

Besides, as Granddad Freeman said . . .

 

 

-30-

Happy Birthday Kid Blast. I miss you more each year.

As Donald Trump readies himself to become Commander-in-Chief, he has already signalled that he wants to start another arms race, to expand and outmatch America’s nuclear rivals–presumably China and Russia principally.  The media and liberals are justifiably in arms, but again using this as evidence of Trump’s unique extremism.  That’s the problem.  By refusing to look at Trump and his words and ideas as in any way “normal” the opposition creates a political monster that becomes difficult to slay.  Throughout the primaries, enemies bombarded him daily with insults comparing him to Nazis and Fascists, and he was elected president.  He’s surely despicable on so many levels, but calling him a Nazi is just lazy and doesn’t mean anything, and obviously failed as a political tactic.  Trump was/is a very right-wing Republican–not unlike his immediate GOP predecessors the Bushes and Reagan, or even his rivals this year like Kasich, Rubio, or Cruz.  He’s just more vulgar and outlandish but if you look at what they actually believe, most of them (with Hillary Clinton in the same area code) believe in mostly the same things.

A good example of this is in the excerpt below.  In 1972 Richard Nixon shocked the world with his “Christmas Bombings,” a vicious series of air attacks against northern Vietnam just as it seemed the war was ending.  Nixon sabotaged his own peace plan and unleashed a massive campaign from the air against the enemy.  Taking it forward, it’s not much different than the Hillary-Clinton -inspired destruction of Libya.    Trump is dangerous and reprehensible and poses a threat to stability, absolutely, but in that way he’s following the tradition of every U.S. president in the Cold War era, a rogue’s gallery of war criminals who should have been on the docket in the Hague.

This section on Nixon and the Christmas Bombings comes from my Vietnam and the Transformation of American Life.

In July 1972, then, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho resumed their private talks in Paris. TheUnited States was willing to back off its insistence that northern troops be withdrawn from the south–after all, if the U.S. military could not dislodge them, then they were not going to leave on their own. For its part, the DRVN backed down from its demand that that United State suspend support for the Thieu regime and replace it with a coalition that would include the PRG. On 8 October, Le Duc Tho offered Kissinger a nine-point proposal to end the war. In it, he rescinded calls for Thieu’s removal and the establishment of a coalition government; was willing to accept a cease-fire prior to a political settlement; called for the removal of all “foreign” troops; and wanted to limit all military aid to the replacement of used supplies. Politically, Tho was willing to recognize two “administrative entities” in the south–the Thieu government and the PRG.Kissinger, eager for an agreement before the 7 November presidential elections, assented to the proposal, declaring to the world that “peace is at hand.” If only Nixon and Thieu had agreed!

Continue reading →

There’s just god when he’s drunk.

11^th of the month so the reminder is always sharper, stings more. It’s snowing out and Kelsey used to love the snow because he saw it infrequently. The snow cooled him off, tamped down the heat that ran through his veins and soul, through his brain, through his nerves and synapses and chemistry. Now it’s cold out but Kelsey ran hot. December was his month and it’s hurt every year since he took the Big Sleep. Dogs and kids and snow and whiskey all remind me of you, kid. I wonder what went on in your head—what you wanted to be, what you wanted me to be, whether you wanted to be. You were so alone and miserable that last time, in the house I just left, left the last place I ever saw you and Ginsberg and the other one who meant so much. Now it’s just me, you little bastard. You always cursed me to live to 95 and then you bailed out. It’s winter now, it’s dark and it’s snowing. I like it. I’m in my winter. Why feign happiness and hope? Maybe you figured it all out? There’s just god when he’s drunk. You always slept too much overslept, but this is ridiculous. Your birthday is coming up soon—what do you want? We went to Vincent’s for your 21^st, remember? Robert Horry sat behind you. You ordered wine and it was our last birthday. I think you knew people would turn on you, smile in your face and tell you how beautiful it was going to be and then shred you like a rabid Rottweiler and then casually walk away because they could. You got it and got out. And now it’s dark and snowing and I’m wondering why you left, why you had to get out so soon, why you couldn’t have just stayed for one more drink, maybe you’d learn to like whiskey, to see the dogs’ last years, to help me when I was in the shit, but you had to get out. You went out like you came in—full of fury and fire, moving, angry, hot . . . I get it. I know anger, have felt anger and hatred worse than yours. Hot. It hurts. People leave you and you never know why. I never thought that about you. You had somewhere to be. You didn’t bullshit me. Now it’s snowing and dark and I’m living the past you never really got to know. There’s just god when he’s drunk. You knew that promises were just words, just words, just words and there were warning signs on the road ahead.   Grandpa Nick always had my back. I tried to do that for you but, Christ kid, you were tough. You had too much Medigan and not enough Siciliano, I think. But you kept it real—you never changed, didn’t lie and deceive, you just didn’t give a shit. And I respect that. Rispetto porta rispetto as Grandpa Nick and Tony S. would say. It’s dark and snowing out and I’m thinking of you, think of you every day but even more lately. Winter the season of loss and escape. Lots of losses and looking for the magic. When you reach the part where the heartaches come, the hero would be me.   Ginsberg and Fidel left too. Now it’s just me, no one is left from the deck, everyone bailed, some politely, some cruelly, all gone, no more fires and beers, no more stories and songs, just anger and subterfuge. That’s today’s world. Maybe that’s why you got out. I found your cars and Grinch mask and gave it to the babies. They remind me of you. So honest, but not in your pazzo way. Now it’s Cutty Sark and a Cohiba, and no one to enjoy it with. One day you’re in, next day you’re morto and you don’t know why and it was too easy. Amputated and flushed–that’s the world.  You knew that. Too easy. You never said goodbye, never told me anything. It’s what people do apparently, they leave you without a word, and just let the pain hang in the air.Don’t worry, I was never mad at you and there’s nothing to forgive, it’s just a lot less quiet and creative in the world without you.   Anyway, you know how to get hold of me, and I won’t bug you. May your journey in the cosmic dust take you to the place you need to be.   There’s just god when he’s drunk.

Good friend and longtime comrade Woody Woodruff posted an article today on FB about a group of protestors who were planning to confront an Alt-Right/White Supremacy meeting.  The numbers expected for the demo were small, but that’s not a problem.  The election is barely a week old and the inauguration is still over two months off . . . and there have already been myriad acts of resistance and more planned. 

This is good. Immediate resistance not only complicates Trump’s life, but puts pressure on the “opposition” (I’m not sure who that is really) to do some serious self-reflection, and best of all, unlike a quadrennial quixotic presidential campaign, could lead to real organizing. I study the history of protest–a lot. I’ve written about and taught classes on it. Today’s GOP and right-wing movement has various venues where it can organize and mobilize people: gun clubs, churches, certain media, county fairs, etc.

The other side, I dare not call it the Left, used to rely on labor, but that meant unions, and today about 11 percent of workers are unionized and about 7 percent in private sector jobs. They have no natural outlet for organizing outset of the Greenbelt, Maryland Labor Day Festival, the organic farmer’s market, and openings at the local art gallery (where the wine and cheese, not political solidarity, is the draw).

Liberals are gonna actually have to get their hands dirty and start talking to the deplorables, find out why they blamed the Dems for their woes (maybe because the Clintons/DLC shift actually did cause their woes initially), and figure out how to break the long-term marriage (since the days of Thomas , Woodrow Wilson) between the Dems and Finance Capital, and actually, shocking as it is, practice a real politics of class.

I can’t remember the specifics but someone surveyed the use of certain keywords in the campaign–Clinton spoke of the “middle class” almost exclusively while Trump made frequent reference to the “working class” and “the poor.” The Dems current water carriers, Schumer and Pelosi, are the Ken and Barbie of the Wall Street set. At some point, if liberals or whatever they call themselves these days want to actually create a sustainable society, they’re gonna have to try to talk to the people of Youngstown and places like that and explain to them that they didn’t lose their jobs because of the Chinese or Mexicans or Blacks or Gays.   (A good article expressing some of these ideas in detail by Christian Parenti should be read.  I think some of it is off, but overall it’s as good as any of the many dozens of post-mortems I’ve read so far).

Trump’s Lizard King and White Supremacist, Steve Bannon, actually understood and explained this as well as anyone, with an analysis that wasn’t entirely accurate, but surely resonated with large segments of workers

“The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If (the Trump White House delivers), we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years. That’s what the Democrats missed. They were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.” (My emphasis).

Along those lines, Clinton received about $50 million campaign money from hedge funds, and Trump, a month before the election, had gotten about $19 thousand from those groups . . .

The American working class lost  jobs because the corporations and banks which have subsidized the Democratic Party for a century could make more money and find cheaper labor in Dixie and then across the border.  Indeed, a huge consideration in the discussion of job losses that’s mostly ignored is the shift in manufacturing jobs from northern to southern U.S. states.  When deindustrialization hit northern areas like a hurricane in the post-Vietnam/Oil Shocks era, China was still putting the Gang of Four on trial, Mexico was not an economic rival in the least, the WTO didn’t exist, and no one had conceived of NAFTA or the FTAAP.  Continue reading →

Donald Trump was opposed, vigorously, by Wall Street, by the media, by the ruling class, by other mega-billionaires like Mark Cuban, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates.

And he won.

In a very fucked-up and dysfunctional way, it means democracy won out. The people beat the oligarchy.

I teach courses in U.S. history at the university level, have for a couple decades-plus now. By coincidence, my syllabus for election week told my students we’d be talking about the 1960s. On Tuesday, election day, as I assured my students that the stock market and gambling books made Clinton chalk and Trump was going to lose big, I finished class with a brief conversation about the origins of the New Left. I talked about C. Wright Mills, one of the biggest influences on me, for his incredible insight into power as much as his motorcycle (though I went for a Moto Guzzi instead of a BMW) and described his vision of the “power elite,” the non-democratic forces that governed our political and social lives. Then I segued to SDS and finished class by putting the Port Huron Statement on the overhead, with the first line highlighted.

“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”

Thursday, I went into that same class and the entire vibe of the room was different—they seemed more interested in what I was about to say than getting a kick out of whatever Silvio Dante-type suit I had on. I looked at them and read the first line of Port Huron and then asked them what they thought . . . crickets. I told them they should “teach” class that day . . . more silence.  They weren’t going to let me off the hook.

SDS and the New Left believed American “democracy” was sclerotic and abused—the “power elite” Mills described had control of the economy, politics, labor, education and every other vital sector of American life, and a “participatory democracy” was the solution.   People–typical Americans who worked, paid taxes, had to deal with bureaucracies, were told what to think by oligarchs who controlled the media and educational systems, had inadequate input in their unions controlled by labor bosses, had to toil, albeit often with handsome rewards, in a Military Keynesian economy, and got to vote every couple years for candidates whom were put on a ballot without popular input—should have a real voice, a real role, in determining the decisions which would guide their lives.

In the 1960s, millions of Americans were motivated by the Civil Rights Movement, Anti-Vietnam War campaigns, counterculture, and groups like SDS, and went into the streets to create a new American democracy, a participatory democracy.   It’s easy to look at the U.S. in the 21^st Century and say they failed.

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OUTLINES FOR 1302 LECTURES

Aftermath of the Civil War  

3 Key Issues

1. Reconstruction
   Slavery, Freedom, and Civil Rights
   KKK, Lynchings, Sharecropping      14th Amendment   
2. Western Movement and Indian Genocide,  Tribal “Sovereignty”
   Wounded Knee
3. Triumph of Capitalism  (North v. South), Means of Production, Government Intervention to Develop Capitalism, Industrialization and Incorporation, the South as Colony
   

Terms:
Freedmen’s Bureau
Sharecropping
Dawes Act

U.S. Coal Production
1870–20K tons/yr
1900–212K
1910–417K

Rolled Steel Production
1870–14K tons/yr
1900–303K
1910–544K

Industrial Machinery
1870–$117 millions
1910–$512 billions

Capitalist America and its Challenges

Class Formation and Work Culture  “Saint Monday”  and lyrics
Skilled and Unskilled Work
Image–Pyramid of Capitalist System

“Long-Haired Preacher”       

Labor Struggles and Class Violence   (Pages 34-47, and 64-75)
Gilded Age
“Great Uprising,” Haymarket, Homestead  (Video) , Pullman

Agrarian Uprisings
From Family to Commercial Farming
Producers’ Image
The Grange
Populists (Banks, Railroads, Monopolies, Trusts)  (Platform)
Silver Solution 

Image–1877 strike
Image–Haymarket
Image–Haymarket 
Image–Pullman strike
Image–Pullman strike

Image–Bryan and anti-imperialism
Image–Anti-Imperialim and Anti-Trust
Cross of Gold Speech, text
Cross of Gold Speech, audio
William Jennings Bryan
The Wizard of Oz

Terms:
“Saint Monday”
Knights of Labor/cooperatives
Mark Twain
Henry Clay Frick
Eugene Victor Debs
Overproduction
Bimetallism
William Jennings Bryan
“Cross of Gold”

THE CRISIS OF THE 90s

Production, Overproduction, and Markets
Missionaries and Imperialists
Hawai’i
Cuba/The Philippines

The New Empire/The Open Door (Liberalism, Capitalism, Globalization)

Critics  (“To The Person Sitting in Darkness”)   

Terms:
SURPLUS CAPITAL
     Frederick Jackson Turner, Josiah Strong, John Fiske, Brooks Adams, A.T. Mahan, Charles Conant
“Social Darwinism”
Queen Liliuokalani
Spanish-American War
Philippines
Emilio Aguinaldo
Mark Twain  

U.S. Cotton Production and Prices
1870–4.3 million bales           1871–18¢/lb
1882–6.9 m                             1880–10¢/lb
1891–9.0 m                             1891–7¢/lb

Wheat
1873–368 m bushels/40 m exported       1866–$1.52/bu
1882–555 m bushels/150 m exported     1878–77¢
                                                                   1881–$1.19
                                                                   1887–68¢ 
1893–54¢

Image–Spanish fleet at Manila Bay

Image–Killed Filipino Soldiers
Image–Atrocities in Philippines

 THE PROGRESSIVE ERA(S)

The Response to Industrialization and the Call for Reform

Social Justice and Muckraking  (The Jungle, Child Labor, Sweatshops)
Social Equality: Ideas and Laws
Women’s Suffrage
—-
The “Other” Progressives, (Pages 81-6),   conservatives and reform        
 “Corporate Liberalism”
Corporations and “cooperation”
 Banking, Insurance, and Meat Packing
———–

Child Labor Images
Image–Child Labor
Image–Child Labor 
Image–Child Labor protest 
Image–Sweatshop
Image–Sweatshop
  (Website on Triangle Fire)
Woody Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre”   (Lyrics)
“Bread and Roses”   (Lyrics)
Woody Guthrie’s “Jesus Christ”   (Lyrics)

Terms:
Lincoln Steffens
Ida Tarbell
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle 
Pure Food and Drug Act/Meat Inspection Act
Social Gospel
Alice Paul/Carrie Chapman Catt
Margaret Sanger
Pragmatism, “Brandeis Brief”

EMPIRE AND THE GREAT WAR
European Background (Map c. 1900)
     Lenin’s Critique of Capitalism 
The Race for Empire
     Britain, France, Germany
Entangling Alliances
Balkans Powderkeg  (map)
——-
U.S. Response
Wilson’s so-called Neutrality  (Wilson Image)
Financial Support
International Law–submarines (Image)   (Image)     (War in the Trenches)

Terms:
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
entente cordiale
Open Door
Robert Lansing
Colonel Edward House
William Jennings Bryan
The Lusitania (Image)
House-Grey Memorandum
The Sussex 
“Making the World Safe for Democracy”

U.S. Exports
 To Allies                            To Germany
1914        $754m                     $345m
1915        $1.28b                     $29m
1916        $2.75b                     $2m

 THE GREAT WAR AND AFTERMATH

Preparations and the American Contribution
“Democracy” at Home  (Eugene Debs) 
 Repression (German-Americans) 
 African-Americans (Camp Logan Interview)

Wartime Propaganda Images
1
2
3

_______
Terms:
Trench Warfare
Armistice/11 November 1918
Espionage Act
W.E.B. DuBois

The Continuing Crisis in Europe: The Versailles Conference
     Bolshevism

     Germany: Reparations or Reintegration-Setting the Stage for
                                                                            World War II
 The Fight for the League of Nations, Abroad and at Home
 

DISILLUSIONMENT AND THE RED SCARE

Questions and Lamentations  [Wilfred Owen]
Reds and Anarchists  (Sacco and Vanzetti)  
Containing Labor–Seattle General Strike and the Battle for Blair Mountain

Which Side Are You On?

Podcast on Seattle

Terms:
All Quiet on the Western Front
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Palmer Raids

THE 1920s: CULTURE, CAPITALISM, AND CRASH!

The New Corporate State
Herbert Hoover and Trade Associations   [some trade associations]
Consumer Culture /Loans and Advertising   [Bernays, Propaganda]    [Image] [Image]  [Image]   [Image]  [Contemporary Ad] 
Buying Fun and Economic Growth

CRASH!!!!

Images of the Depression:
1
2
And More 
And Many, Many More

Causes:  Pages 146-55

Surplus Capital, Foreign Economic Crises, Stock Market, Poverty,
Lack of Economic Diversity, Credit Crunch

Hoover’s Responses:  Balanced Budget, Tariffs, Government Spending
______
Terms:
productionism
Dawes Plan

The International Debt Triangle:

Germany pays reparations to France, England
France, England pay off Loans to U.S.
U.S. sends aid, such as Dawes Plan, to Germany

Trade drops, from $3b in 1929, to $900m in 1933 and currencies are devalued 
US Share of Global Trade

FDR AND THE NEW DEAL
Roosevelt and the Politics of Illusion and Hope
The 3 Rs (Relief, Recovery, Reform)
First New Deal: Conservative, pro-Business Reform
    NIRA (NRA) , AAA [Hogs ], [Milk]   2020 milk dumping    SEC
   New Deal Programs
Second New Deal: “Thunder on the Left” —Woody Guthrie  [Video]     [Image]   [Image]  [Grapes of Wrath]    Will Rogers  [Image]
    FDR’s Critics: Sinclair [Image] , Townshend, Lewis, Long  [Video]    [Every Man a King]
    Social Security, WPA (Works Progress Administration) [Image],   [Video]       Wagner Act
Recovery in ’37?  The Curse of the Balanced Budget
Military Keynesianism to the Rescue!
______
Terms:
“Bank Holiday”
National Planning
PWA  (Public Works Administration)
FERA
EPIC
“Share Our Wealth”
 Flint  (Article and Audio) 
John Maynard Keynes
APPEASEMENT, ISOLATIONISM, AND THE OUTBREAK OF WAR

Europe (Map of German Expansion)
    Mussolini and Hitler and Corporatism
    British and French [Non]-response
        Rhineland Reoccupation–1936   [Map]
        Spanish Civil War (Poster)
        Anschluss  (connection, union), 1938  [Map][Image]

Munich, 1938  (Image)
        Sudetenland/Czechoslovakia–1938   (Map)
        Poland blitzkrieg, 1 September 1939 [Image]   (Map)
Asia
    America, Tokyo and the “Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” [Map]
        Manchukuo
        The Invasion of China

The U.S.
    Isolationism
    Undeclared War 
    Conflict in the Pacific  [Reuben James]
    “The Arsenal of Democracy”
_____
Terms:
Nazis
Fascists

Franco
Neville Chamberlain
Mukden Incident
Pearl Harbor
Neutrality Acts
“Phony War”
The Battle of Britain 
“Cash and Carry”
Destroyers for Bases
Lend-Lease
THE WORLD AT WAR
(War in Europe maps) 

Soviet Invasion  (Map)  

The Grand Alliance: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin
The Politics of War: The Second Front
D-Day and Victory: Seeds of Cold War (Allied Offensives)
The Pacific War (Map)
The BOMB!  Why?

______
Terms:

Nazi-Soviet Pact
Yalta
Potsdam
Manhattan Project
Atomic Diplomacy:

Podcast on Atomic Bomb:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tdLz16ljiM&t=1013s
   

Feb. 1945: Soviet agrees to war v. Japan
    Spring 1945: U.S. planners expect Japanese surrender
    Spring/Summer 1945: Japanese overtures to Soviet; American
        planning for invasion (1 November 45, 1 January 46), casualty estimates 25-50K
    VE Day: Soviet to enter war in Asia on 8 August
    July 1945: Stalling Potsdam
    16 July: Potsdam Conference and Almogordo
    6 August: Hiroshima
    9 August: Nagasaki

Nuclear War

The Alperovitz Debate
Critics of the Bomb

THE END OF WW II AND THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR  (Cold War Rivalries map)

Wartime Factors  (Second Front, A-Bomb, Italy)
 Epic Battle b/w Good and Evil?  

    Reconstructing Postwar Europe,  pages 300-305
        Yalta and the Question of Eastern Europe
            Poland   (map)
            Germany   (4 Zones and Reparations (map))

   American and Soviet Designs : Churchill, Stalin, and Truman
Open Door, Empire, Defense

Strategies for Hegemony: Economic and Political

Bretton Woods    (article from Fed)  pages, 296-99
IMF [Currency Stabilization]
World Bank [“reconstruction and development”]
The dollar and convertibility

United Nations
Security Council and Veto
Inclusion and Power

    Containment: Economic, Military and Political  [Kennan],[pages, 305-11]

“…..to maintain this position of disparity”
        Bretton Woods, Loans and the Marshall Plan
        The “Iron Curtain”
        The Truman Doctrine  (Greece)
        Berlin Blockade
        NATO

Creating the National Security State

National Security Act–Liberty vs. Security, the “garrison state,” imperialism

    Cold War/Hot War in the “Third World”

 

    ASIA,  pages, 311-314
        Chinese Civil War: Mao Zedong [CCP] vs. Jiang Jieshi [Guomindang]
        The “China Lobby”

        The Cold War Turns Hot:  Korea  (map) 
        NSC-68 and Military Keynesianism  pages, 315-317

    “Ducks” Everywhere  pages, 317-326
        Iran, 1953: The Fall of Mossadegh   (map)
        Guatemala, 1954: Ousting Arbenz    (Map)  
        Cuba, 1959-present: Contesting Castro   (Bay of Pigs)
        Chile, 1973: The Allende “Threat”

Bolivian Lithium 2019

   1945-Present: The Spectres of Nationalism and Neutralism
        Indonesia, Egypt, India  [Sukarno, Nasser, Suez Attack,  Nehru]

Containment–at Home

Daily Life in the National Security State

“Duck and Cover” in South Park   

Red Scare, Again

   McCarthyism 

Roy Cohn

   “Who Lost China?”
   Labor/Taft-Hartley
   The Rosenbergs
    “God Bless America”

 African Americans/Civil Rights
  Robeson, HUAC Testimony, Old Man River,  DuBois and Socialism, Haywood, King and Levinson 

McCarthyism and African American Activists 

 

Women

      Back to the Kitchen (home-ec-text-1950s)
      Baby Booming
      Women in the workplace?,     June and Ward

1950s Advertising

 Hollywood/Culture
      TV/Education/Comics, etc……   “Hollywood Ten”
      Blacklists
      Suburbanization

The End of McCarthyism

Margaret Chase Smith, “Declaration of Conscience”  

Roy Cohn   

Joseph Welch [“Sir, have you no sense of decency”] 

American Life in the 1950s

    Consumption and Culture
        Economic Growth [Military-Industrial Complex]
        Organization Men in Gray Flannel Suits
        Education and Conformity
      

    The “Other” ’50s

 “Little Boxes”     and  “Pleasantville“
        “Birth of the Cool”  So What     Coltrane    Charlie _Parker  
        Hep Cats, Jazz, and Dope  Jazz and Protest    
         Rebels without Causes and JDs   What are you rebelling against?    

       The Beat Life  [Ginsberg “America”] [  Howl video] [Howl]  [Kerouac]  [Burroughs]

Sexual Revolution: Kinsey and Hefner and the politics of the Playboy lifestyle

Youth Politics

     
        Mad Magazine   [Alfred E. Newman] 

 [Bill Gaines]

 

VIET NAM    [Map]   

Outside Conquests and Nationalism

French Colonization of Indochina, and Resistance and the rise of Ho Chi Minh  and the Viet Minh

Podcast on Ho Chi Minh  

World War II, Independence?, French Return, The First Indochina War, Dienbienphu 1 , Dienbienphu 2 , the Invention of South Vietnam

American Support of Ngo Dinh Diem

The DRVN vs. RVN

The Americans Go In: The Second Indochina War

Diem vs. Buddhists and American Intervention

Tonkin Gulf Incident and Resolution

American Troop Escalation and the Destruction of Vietnam

Guerrilla vs. Conventional War–“Kill anything that moves”

My Lai, William Calley, and Hugh Thompson

Thompson: What’s going on here, Lieutenant?

Calley: This is my business.

Thompson: What is this? Who are these people?

Calley: Just following orders.

Thompson: Orders? Whose orders?

Calley: Just following…

Thompson: But, these are human beings, unarmed civilians, sir.

Calley: Look Thompson, this is my show. I’m in charge here. It ain’t your concern.

Thompson: Yeah, great job.

Calley: You better get back in that chopper and mind your own business.

Thompson: You ain’t heard the last of this!

Tet

American phase down and withdrawal

Victory of the Revolution

Antiwar Movement at Home 

 

Martin Luther King, “A Time to Break the Silence”  

—————————————————————————-

The Modern Civil Rights Era

CRT/Books banned   VA book banning 

Racism, Law, Violence, the Economy–through Slavery and segregation to Black Lives Matter

Podcast on Sports and Black History and Protests    

    World War II and the Northern Migration   [Beginnings] 

Emmett Till 

Rosa Parks
    The Legal Challenge to Apartheid
         Brown v. Board       Montgomery and the Emergence of
            Martin Luther King    [1957-62]

Sit-Ins [SNCC]

Birmingham Boycott–“Bull Connor”

“I Have a Dream”

   Freedom Rides
    Freedom Summer
   
  

“Mississippi Goddam”    Lyrics

James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman

States’ Rights

Legislative Triumph: Civil and Voting Rights Acts

 Liberal Backlash, post 1965 

Urban Rebellions

    Northern Rage: Malcolm X
    Black Power/Black Panthers
    MLK Transitions

Cities Burning—Newark, Detroit, D.C…….

Podcast on Watts Uprising   

    Poor People’s Campaign
    The Assassination of King    

The Commodification of King
=======

The Cuban Missile Crisis explained and reconsidered . . .   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzalN1v8SfA&t=2263s

 

 

The 1960s: Commodification and Questioning Authority

Remembering Phil Ochs . . . 

Mississippi,   https://youtu.be/WU3o9Tl7zTk?si=bYD6owmZ9YJQj8Zg, 

Vietnam, https://youtu.be/yOpFy_n3-5M?si=yi8rPUFudnOv8f_w

Liberals, https://youtu.be/3cdqQ2BdgOA?si=5tv6dQigFYUR30-J

 

Reality  and   Legacy  and Now

Wrangler Ad   Lyrics  

Noam Chomsky on the 1960s  

    The New Left and  “participatory democracy”

   C. Wright Mills to the New Left 

Students for a Democratic Society and the Port Huron Statement

Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio    (4:20)

The Antiwar Movement

Vietnam: Working Class War

Draft Dodger Rag 

      

    “La Raza Unida”–The Chicano Movement

 Cesar Chavez–UFW
    Reies Tijerina [New Mexico] La Alianza Federal de Mercedes, “tierra o muerte”

    Brown Berets–Police, Farm Workers, Land Grants, Vietnam

 

  Women’s Liberation

Betty Friedan–The Feminine Mystique
    Miss America 1968

Countercultures:  (“Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll”)  Protest Music

Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones,   

Birth Control Pill to Roe v. Wade 

Stonewall and Gay Liberation   

LSD—Timothy Leary [“tune in, turn on, drop out”]  White Rabbit   

The Age of Aquarius   

When Hippies Go Bad  

Summer of Love 

San Francisco (Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)    

Woodstock    

Country Joe, “I Feel Like I’m a Fixin’ to Die Rag”

 

   
  

60s Backlash and The Age of Nixon  Law and Order  and  Fear

The New Right   Goldwater 1964 Campaign  

Rise of the (New?) South   Lynyrd Skynyrd

Foreign Policy and Detente/ SALT
      “Vietnamization” and Kent State 
      Ending the War
      Arms Sales

 At Home
     “Law and Order“ ?
      Evil Liberals
      Oil Crisis 
      Welfare and Environment
      Watergate  

“Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

 The Legacy
    The Imperial President
    The Last Liberal?

Post-Watergate/Aftermath of Detente/Committee on the Present Danger and “Team B”/Brzezinski in Charge/Carter’s Cold  War–Afghanistan and the Olympics (later)

The 1980s–the Backlash Continues: Reagan and the Triumphant Right

  

The Moral Majority, Phyllis Schlafly, and the ERA

Reagan and the Evil Empire  Transcript  

Reverse Robin Hood Economics and Deindustrialization 
      The Poor Get Poorer
Cutting the Safety Net

 
  

     
The New Cold War
“Star Wars” [SDI]  (ad)    and Military Keynesianism
Central America slaughters/ Iran-Contra 

Liberation Theology, El Salvador, Nicaragua

“I’d like to make an appeal in a special way to the men in the army. Brothers, each one of you is one of us. We are the same People.  The farmers and peasants that you kill are your own brothers and sisters.  When you hear the words of a man telling you to kill, think instead in the words of God, “Thou shalt not kill!” No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the Law of God. In His name and in the name of our tormented people who have suffered so much, and whose laments cry out to heaven: I implore you! I beg you! I ORDER you!! STOP THE REPRESSION!!!”     Archbishop Oscar Romero

Race and Culture, Punk and Hip Hop

The Clash, “Clampdown”    

(Lyrics) 

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, “The Message” 

Race and racial politics in the Reagan Years   Willie Horton Ad   

    Rodney King and the L.A. Uprising of ’92   April 29, 1992   (Sublime) 

Bill Clinton, the “New Democrats,” and Wall Street…….”Triangulation”

DLC “Centrism,” Deregulation, “Dot.Com Bubble”  (Repeal of Glass-Steagall)  Easy Money and Huge Debt…..The Triump of “Financialization”

Welfare Reform and Crime Bill  (“end welfare as we know it” and building the “carceral state”).    Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (GOP idea)

  Decline in monthly welfare payments

Right-Wing hardball–“Contract with America,” Impeachment, 2000 Election, Merrick Garland, Amy Coney Barrett

Globalization–WTO and NAFTA–and Democracy? 
Investor-to-State rights/Chapter 11  (acf186) 
Maquiladores
Job Losses  and debts

Globalization and its Discontents: IMF, World Bank, and SAPs

The return of mass protest
“The Battle of Seattle”
“Call It Democracy”  

George W. Bush and the “Curious” Election of 2000

Huge Tax Cuts

9/11 (later) and Another War at Home–Patriot Act and DHS

Katrina

Housing Bubble and the Great Recession

 Barack Obama, “post-racial” America, “hope and change” (“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”BHO to Wall Street CEOs)

TARP (Toxic Assets Relief Program) and HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program)

“Obamacare”–Public Mandate, not Public Insurance

Wealth Inequality, c. 2014

 

Right-Wing attacks–“Birtherism”

The Emergence of Black Lives Matter–Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner………..

Ferguson  

Donald Trump, from the Central Park Five to COVID–the politics of rage and division.  From “very fine people” to resurgent white supremacy.  Confederate flags.

George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, WNBA and NBA protests…… Athletes become activists   

More tax cuts and debts  

Chasing ghosts in Russia and Ukraine

Global Pandemic and Indifference

America in Tatters…..2020.   LL Cool J.

---

The Road to 9/11, and Iraq: The US and the Middle East   [map]

Background: Oil, Israel, and Nationalism

Palestine: c. 1914, population, @600,000 Arabs, 25,000 Jews

The Great War, Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, Sykes-Picot   (European spheres of influence)

Mandates and Balfour  (Zionism)

“His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Emergence of Petroleum Politics/Red Line Agreement  *

World War II and Holocaust 

Hagana, Stern Gang and Irgun, Kind David Hotel, Nakba *

Israel and Palestine

“Resurging” Anti-Americanism 

Mossadegh, Nasser and pan-Arabism,  and Abd-al Karim Kasim:  Iran, Egypt, Iraq

Suez Crisis Suez

   

OPEC (1960) 

The PLO*

6 Day War and Yom Kippur/Ramadan War*    Oil Boycott

 

Resolution 242  and Resolution 338    

Camp David Accords *

Oslo Accords*

Intifada! and Settlements*

US support of Israel 

Islamic Revolution 1979 w/ Khomenei, Oil Shock,  hostages, and the Iran-Iraq War, (Map)

U.S. support of Iraq, and military advisors  

Afghanistan*, Soviet Intervention against Communist gov’t,  Mujahadeen (ZB), Taliban and al-Qaeda and “Blowback”

The First Gulf War*, 1990-91   (Looking for Enemies after Eastern European Communism Falls Apart) 

Glasbie meeting with Saddam 

Gulf War and Sanctions Regime*    

Terrorism in the 90s*

Bin Laden and al Qaeda  

 

9/11 and the PDB 6 August 2001  and the Momentum toward War    
Lies and Deceptions

Why do they hate us? Bases in Saudi, Sanctions against Iraq, Palestine 

Invasion of Iraq, Rise of ISIS*

Costs of Global War on Terror  US Budgetary Costs of Wars November 2019

Trump: Muslim Ban, Jerusalem, Attacking BDS,   Recognizing Settlements  

Pretty much everyone’s become engorged with rage over Donald Trump’s not-so-cryptic reference to his penis size in the GOP Prez Debate a few days ago.  But when it comes to presidential johnsons, he’s not in the same league as President Johnson, as in Lyndon Baines.  He reportedly referred to his penis as “Mr. Baldy” and often talked about it in the 3d-Person, as if it were a separate identity. You didn’t needa presidential pole, er poll, to know how he felt about it.

He made reference to it often.  During a meeting on Vietnam, as the various military and diplomatic officials reported on the problems U.S. troops faced there and the popularity of the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, he reportedly unzipped his pants, pulled out his penis and said “Does Ho Chi Minh have this?”  At another point, sensing that the war was improving, he boasted that he had Ho’s “pecker in my pocket.”  He wanted a new shower put in the White House with a nozzle aimed directly at Johnson’s Johnson.

Perhaps most famously, he discussed the need for extra size in his pants to accomodate Mr. Baldy in a phone discussion with the head of Haggar Slacks.  (Transcript below, with highlights in bold) until the conversation petered out.  So for those of you perturbed by Trump’s protuberance, he’s no more jacked up about his junk than LBJ was.

Operator: Go Ahead Sir.

LBJ: Mr. Haggar?

Joe Haggar: Yes this is Joe Haggar.

LBJ: Joe, is your father the one that makes clothes?

JH: Yes, we’re all together.

LBJ: Uh huh. You all made me some real lightweight slacks…that he just made up and sent up on his own and sent it to me 3 or 4 months ago. There’s a light brown and a light green, a rather soft green, a soft brown.

JH: Yes Sir.

LBJ: And they’re real lightweight now and I need about six pairs of summer wear.

JH: Yes sir.

LBJ: I want a couple, maybe three of the light brown, kind of almost powder color like a powder on a ladies face. Then there were some green and some light pair. If you had a blue in that or a black then I’d have one blue and one black. I need about six pairs to wear around in the evening when I come in from work.

JH: Yes Sir.

LBJ: I need…they’re about a half a inch too tight in the waist.

JH: Do you recall the exact size, I just want to make sure we get them right for you.

LBJ: No, I don’t know…you all just guessed at ’em I think, some, wouldn’t you (have) the measurement there?

JH: We can find it for you.

LBJ: Well I can send you a pair. I want them a half inch larger in the waist than they were before except I want two or three inches of stuff left back in there so I can take them up. I vary ten or 15 pounds a month.

JH: Alright sir.

LBJ: So leave me at least 2 1/2, three inches in the back where I can take them out or bring them up. And make these a half an inch bigger in the waist. And make the pockets at least an inch longer, my money, my knife, everything falls out…wait just a minute.

Operator: Would you hold on a minute please.

(The conversation is on hold for two minutes)

LBJ: Now the pockets, when you sit down, everything falls out, your money, your knife, everything. so I need at least another inch in the pockets. And another thing…the crotch, down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight, so when you make them up, please give me another inch I can let out there, uh, because they cut me. It’s just like riding a wire fence. These are almost, these are the best I’ve had anywhere in the United States.

JH: Fine.

LBJ: But when I gain a little weight, they cut me under there. So, leave me, you never do have much margin there. See if you can’t leave me an inch from where the zipper (BURPS) ends, round, under my back to bunghole, so I can let it out there if I need it.

JH: Right.

LBJ: Now be sure you have the best zippers in them. These are good that I have. If you get those to me I sure would be grateful.

JH: Fine. Now where would you like them sent please.

LBJ: White House.

 

JH: We’ll supply the material to match it.

LBJ: “OK, I’ll do that. Uh now, how do I–can you give this boy the address because I’m running to a funeral and give this boy the address to where we can send the trousers…don’t worry, you’ll get the measurements out of them and add a half an inch to the back and give us couple of an inch to the pockets and a inch underneath too we can let out.

JH: What you’d like is a little more stride in the crotch.

LBJ: Yeah that’s right. What I’d is to give me a half inch more, then leave me some more. OK here he is.

JH: Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed the others.