I agree with your sentiment. I remember as a child and youth walking by the war memorial for WW I German veterans. Fortunately, I didn’t see any names of any relatives. Actually, I didn’t need to as a reminder of the horrors of war. I had in my grandfather and father two living victims of that catastrophe. Both were very seldom talking about what they experienced. My grandfather was hospitalized for a few months because of sever PTSD. We were raised as war resisters. My dad was a proud German, but utterly opposed to any war. This reminds me of a quote I read in FREMDBESTIMMT - 120 Jahre Lügen und Täuschung (FOREIGNDETERMINED - 120 years of lies and deception). I had an acquaintance in Germany buy it and sent it since it seems to be banned in the “free” USA. Amazon GermanY told me it could not be shipped to my address in the U.S. There is a revealing quote on page 102 attributed to Woodrow Wilson: “My dear citizens. Why is it that no man, no woman - I also want say child knows that the origin of the war in the modern world is rooted in economic and industrial competition? … This war (WW I) was from the beginning a trade and industry war. It was not a political war.” Wilson said these words in St. Louis on 5 September 1919. It was Smedley who basically confirmed Wilson’s observation with WAR IS A RACKET in 1935. The sad fact is that all these hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers were sacrificed for the enrichment of a small group of people while they were told they were defending American ideals of freedom, liberty and democracy. Lastly, it is always the working class of the society that suffers the most. (The quote I had to translate from the German book version; the original is in the Wilson papers at Princeton.)
Karl, you wrote of "a small group of rich people" which is another phrase for the 1%, pulling away from the 99% steadily and yet the presidential contenders will neither one do anything but keep this going. Big donors rule our political system and the last line of defense, the Supreme Court, gave it the green light with Citizens United.
The best thing we can do for those we have lost in war, to properly remember them, is to take back our country from the rule of wealth which benefits so much from the kind of wars we are involved in right now - lots of stuff sold with few American deaths resulting...at least for now.
The challenge is - how do we do that when big donations are involved in all but some local elections. Congress is bought, lobbies rule. The only hope I see is with those who are now quite openly denouncing lobby money in the light of all that is revealed about AIPAC manipulating our corrupt system to get the crazy amount of funding going to a country that openly repudiates liberty and justice for all. Those that have eyes, let them see and demand change.
Unfortunately, most people are uninformed. Many of them are manipulated by political and religious bigots. Like it or not, the fact is that Memorial Day celebrations were and are a form of manipulation. It is a rather dismal situation when people cannot or will not do the hard work of informing themselves. I am not optimistic about any meaningful change in the near future. I am too old to expect a distant future. Maybe, that is just as well. But I am worried about the future of my children and grandchildren.
Back in the 19th century, life for most Americans was hard work with little time for much else yet they were avid followers of events and newspaper readers, regularly going to public presentations. Today, the work is not nearly so hard or time consuming, but entertainment is there to fill every moment of free time and the interest in being informed, in seeking out the details on what is happening has collapsed. Why bother? Americans more than any other people in the world, have the luxury (so far) of being ignorant.
One consequence is that those who make it their business, literally, to know what is happening in detail can easily run things for their own benefit. I see in my old friends a lack of interest in actually doing anything to change things, simply because for them, personally, life goes on one day much like the last. The murder of a neighbor would get them upset, but add distance and thousands can die without giving rise to even an email to a member of Congress. Our wealth has spoiled us. Our motto of E Pluribus Unum should be replaced with: it's not hard to get along with somebody else's problems. And there is often money in it.
But the ONLY reason there can be Wars on behalf of and for the enrichment of those industrial, economic, and financial Overlords is because the institution of Government exists which has the legal power, administrative authority, and particularly, the spending capability and capacity to force ~ by actual or threatened violence ~ the Citizens those Governments rule over to pay for all those Wars, in both Blood and Treasure. And thus advance the interests and agendas of those very same Overlords.
And one of the primary and most effective means of ensuring that all those hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed American Soldiers ~ who killed and maimed other "enemy" Soldiers [and increasingly, NonCombatant Civilians] ~ believed they were "defending" those American "ideals" was, is, and will ever be America's Government-run and controlled Education system.
Your second paragraph is quite apropos. Education, contrary to its original meaning, has been perverted into indoctrination. I spent 34 years dealing with this problem as a college history professor.
Your first paragraph is confirmed by Wilson’s statement from 1913. He said: “The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.” (Nomi Prins, ALL THE PRESIDENTS’ BANKERS - The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power, 2014, p. 57.)
I too was a college history professor (34 years) and battling the indoctrination was my biggest challenge. I finally learned that if they only read the primary sources we could make progress. I ditched the textbooks.
I taught at the University of Pittsburgh which is “state related “ since it receives around 1/3 of its annual operating budget from the state to keep its undergraduate tuition lower.
Go PANTHERS!!! i spent the first ten years of my life in East Liverpool, Ohio, about 40 miles west and the Panthers, Pirates, and Steelers were my very first favorite Sports teams.
In any event, i'm curious, Mary. Was the "indoctrination" You spoke of "battling" the indoctrination of Your students from what they were taught in high school and/or in earlier college courses?
Or were You speaking of the indoctrination to be found in all those textbooks You discarded, and turned to original sources instead?
We see education in action right now in Israel. In public school there the kids get indoctrinated with "they want to kill us", the holocaust supposedly being proof. They also get "the entire land is ours" complete with maps that do not show the occupied territories as that, but as an integral part of Israel.
This goes a long way to explaining why a fully modern army with the best equipment that the US can provide can rampage through an obviously impoverished place, leveling everything and killing without hesitation. When we hear Netanyahu repeat that this army is the most moral army in the world, it seems impossible that he should say it but he really believes it being the son of a rabid Zionist himself.
A tragedy of humanity, from what should be a glory, is that the young can so easily be indoctrinated to reproduce the same ideas that were previously implanted in their parents in the same way. The mind is wonderfully pliable in youth, open and eager for everything and the goal of honest education is laudable, but the first schooling occurs in the home and it is there that children get the strongest influence which is too often from the set in stone ideas of the parents who too easily take pride in seeing those thoughts reproduced, thinking it a success.
It's been a long time since i read Ms Prins' book; and need to read it again.
But first, i want to dig into her two most recent books:
PERMANENT DISTORTION: HOW THE FINANCIAL MARKETS ABANDONED THE REAL ECONOMY; and COLLU$ION: HOW CENTRAL BANKERS RIGGED THE WORLD.
And now the Indoctrination of America's Government-run Education System extends to more than just "History." It involves things like "Wokeness," Sexual Identity, Cancel Culture, and so on and so forth. And no doubt some folks are working on getting "Intelligent Design" locked into the curriculum, as well.
In any event, i'm curious, Karl: Did You teach at publicly-financed institutions or privately-endowed?
That is a very difficult question. My graduate training was mostly focused a late antiquity with a second area of emphasis on modern European history. I had no professional training in American history. Because of my German background I did have to confront American history quite early after my arrival in the U.S. in 1966. I was immediately confronted by a wall of ignorance in historical matters which drove me to familiarize myself with U.S. history. So, I cannot claim expertise, but I am an informed reader. With these preliminary remarks out of the way, I will tell you of certain books that I would highly recommend.
1. Howard Zinn, PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
2. Nancy MacLean, DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS - the deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America
3. David Talbot, THE DEVIL’S CHESSBOARD - ALLEN DULLES, THE CIA AND THE RISE OF AMERICA’S SECRET GOVERNMENT
4. Adam Hochschild, AMERICAN MIDNIGHT - The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis
5. Danielle Ganser, USA - The Ruthless Empire
6. Danielle Ganser, NATO’S SECRET ARMIES - Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe
Ganser is a Swiss historian.
This is a tiny list ( ore than you asked for) of scholarly histories in my very extensive library.
P.S. You might also consider Vincent Bevins, THE JAKARTA METHOD - Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that shaped our World
Too bad they got the last one wrong in the cartoon. The right illustration would be either a hand reaching into the collection cup removing money or better yet the homeless persons tent and belongings "swept up"(stolen) with the police tasering him for fun. That's the reality in America today.
And today we are to honor our veterans for keeping us a free safe democracy for fighting in the past wars. All of which we have lost since WW2. None of which have made us safer or freer. I have no animosity towards the soldiers who had to fight in useless wars but I certainly do towards the government who perpetuate them.
Memorial day should be one of remembrance of the freedom and democracy that was lost.
I have started to personalize Memorial Day. Rather than broadly reflect on the 'war dead', I remember at least two individuals who died in America's wars. Some I knew; some I knew of; and some were only names in a history book. But when I remember those I knew or knew of, the grief at their losses lasted a lifetime for those who loved them.
This year, I remember, as I do every year, an uncle who was killed in April, 1945 on Okinawa - years before I was born; the other is the older brother - someone I knew- of an elementary school classmate, who was killed in Vietnam in April, 1969.
Those bombs that incinerated that "Safe Zone" Tent Camp were either built in and/or paid for by the United States.
And that makes this Nation ~ its Government and its People ~ as responsible for that Fire Bombing as is the Government of Israel and its People.
Just as overwhelmingly most of Israel's entire Genocide in Gaza has been armed, equipped, supplied, and/or paid for by the United States.
If any current Israeli leaders are ever brought to trial for the War Crimes and Genocide they and their nation have perpetrated and are perpetuating in Gaza, a bunch of American leaders need also to be brought to trial as willing, able, and accomplished accomplices, accessories, and aides-de-camp.
This is the Eulogy i delivered at a military funeral for a helicopter pilot named Larry in Van Nuys, California, on January 3, 1970, four months and a day before four more young Americans were to be killed in a place called Kent, Ohio. i had flown as Larry’s door gunner down in the Mekong Delta back in 1967-68, including TET.
EULOGY
It is difficult, my friends. Very difficult.
I know none of you, yet I call you my friends. Thank you for being here, for sharing this, for enabling me to bear it.
After two years of this War, I have finally lost someone I love. Buddies? There's been plenty. Never, until now, someone I love.
It is said that tragedy is the fire that tempers the soul. I can only hope that my soul, and my heart, and my mind, and my life is tempered and forged from this nightmare into a design of dedication NOT to the forces and elements that killed him: rage, hate, lust for violent revenge, a mindless, headlong flight into, through, and finally submerged by insanity.
Not to that, but to the ideals and principles that should have been the forces and elements at work that could have kept him, you, me, us all nowhere near Vietnam, or Biafra, or Suez, or Korea, or Normandy, or Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, and on and on back thru the ages and the battlefields, back to the beginnings of time, the beginnings of man, the beginnings of War.
The ideals, principles, forces, and elements of understanding, concern, love, peace, and the knowledge of our status as but "the family of Man, fellow-passengers on the Spaceship Earth… ."
And how meaningless, empty, and vapid these words sound and are tonite. But, a man's words are really nothing more than indicators, the elements of the metaphor that his living is, as it seeks to explain to him, and to us, his life.
Perhaps these moments of futility, emptiness, and tragedy are the price we must pay for having had the privilege of his company, the strength of his presence, the happiness of his warmth and joy, the security of his being.
We have all lost something. A friend, a husband, a son. But there is a greater loser, a more tragic victim from all this than we, his wife, his parents, his family, and his friends. And that victim, my friends, is the world.
It is this world ~ this world that murdered him ~ that is the big loser.
The terms I think it might understand are that he is no longer at its disposal; that he is free and no longer subject to the prices that the world and mankind demand from its children as they attempt to struggle as individual human beings, with individual lives and loves, and concerns and cares, and projects, plans, and goals, and wins, losses, and rainouts.
The world requires that You be more than a man or a woman~ which, until death, is impossible.
It requires that citizens of nations become us all. Citizens of nations, and pawns to realities revolving around such grandiose, eloquent, pompous terms, tenets, and ideas as ideology and geopolitics, alliances and balances of power, negotiations, diplomacy, and treaties, and on and on ad nauseam: the vocabulary of government.
And much more real, final, and meaningless terms as enemy and body-counts, and hot LZ's and .SO-caliber machine gun positions, and frozen rotor blades at 300 feet, and notification of next-of-kin: the vocabulary of the logical conclusion of the rhetoric of Government: the vocabulary of War.
The world required this of him, and he agreed to pay his portion of the price. Tonite, however, the world's account is overdrawn. Tonite, there is the matter of revenge. No. No, not revenge. Avenge. Avengeance. aVengeance: Revenge without Vengeance; Revenge without Violence.
Is it to be directed against those people and places and principles that killed him? Against other young ~ and old ~ women and men from other nations who, too, are but playing their part and paying their price as their world ~ this world, our world ~ demands? They are but pawns as we. And as long as we pawns keep fighting ~ and paying for ~ all these Wars, there will be War.
What, then of the kings and queens and bishops and rooks and generals and knights and such? They, too, are but pawns. Their bloodshed is not their own; rather, it is of those that they like to call "their Peoples'." These, too, however, are paying a price: the price of being those most directly associated with the true killers ~ the ideas, and terms, and tenets, and vocabularies. And, having to live with them, by them, and for them, they thus become the emptiness, the insanity, the impotence, the wretchedness that these words are.
No. It is neither the pawns nor the princes ~ the presidents, premiers, and propagandists ~ that are to be sought out and made to give retribution for Larry. It's not the people who are directly, and thus apparently responsible for his having been there, and thus being no more.
Rather, it is those who are truly, though indirectly responsible. It is those that could have stopped it, could have prevented this specter from becoming the spectacle that it is.
It is, indeed, those who permit the world to make them pawns and slaves, and legions to, of, by, and for these ideas and words. Those who permit themselves to go and become but the bit-players in this passion play, the finale of which is the death of their brothers and their sisters, their sons and daughters, their fathers and their mothers, their selves.
A death as meaningless, as senseless, and as empty as their lives. Lives spent under the tyranny of ideas, killing and thus dying under their effect. Lives lived under the anarchy of this self-imposed despotism, rather than in and through the fulfillment that is to be found in the truth, the beauty, the reality of the mind's products ~ ideas~ as they are used instead to eliminate the trials, tragedies, and traumas of man. Rather than, as today, propagating, perpetrating, and perpetuating them.
HUMANITY is the object. HUMANITY and LIFE. All of LIFE. Ideas are but vehicles. The price for avenging Larry shall have been extracted when that simple statement becomes a world-truth.
We live now in the insanity of Human Beings being the vehicle, and terms, tenets, vocabularies, ideologies, and ideas being the object. The object that Humans have permitted to become, at not only Its expense and thus Life's, but at the World's, as well.
The guilty, my friends, is You and me and him and her and everyone. Each and every one of us all. Including Larry. And we begin, now, to pay the price for this. We have lost someone for whom Humanity and Life was the object.
Larry, as the rest of us, the Young, was at but the beginning of this realization, at the beginning of this work. Because those of us that could have helped, long ago, to prevent what has happened did not, we are now paying the price.
Again: HUMANITY is the object. HUMANITY and LIFE. Ideas are but vehicles. The price for avenging Larry shall have been extracted when that simple statement becomes a world-truth.
The question, again, is "How?"
If, in fact, a man is ready to die when he knows himself completely, I am at last ready.
With this experience, with these words, i have come now to know and to understand the meaninglessness of the meaning I have permitted the world to attach to my, to your, to Larry's, to everyone's existence, life, and being. And knowing this, I swear... No more.
aVengeance will be mine. I pray, my friends, Yours as well. The question, at last, is HOW?
Good point, MCL. In fact, a sovereign's monopoly on the printing of currency is the ONLY way any War can be paid for and undertaken. That, and a sovereign's authority to threaten or use violence against anyone who doesn't go along with The Game.
Waking up this morning to the news that Israel had killed at least 45 Palestinians in an inferno caused by an air attack on a so-called “Safe Area” full of Refugees ~ LIVING IN TENTS ~ reminded me of Robert Duvall’s Colonel Kilgore in APOCALYPSE NOW proclaiming:
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning... . It smells like “Victory.”
*** The best way that America can honor its War Dead and Maimed is to ensure that there are no more American War Dead and Maimed. And the only way to ensure that is for this Nation to stop creating more and more NON-American War Dead and Maimed all over the Planet. ***
"It was the Eleventh Minute of the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month... ,"
And this Year, 2024, at that moment, it will be One Hundred and Six Years to the minute since that "End" of "The War to End All War," World War I.
As a retired Centurion of The Empire ~ beginning, in this lifetime at least, Once Upon A Time, long, long, so Very Long ago in a place called Vietnam ~ i spent my entire professional life [some 28 years total, 22 on active duty] studying and waging war, or preparing myself and others to wage war. And during that lifetime, War has not changed. At all.
Only the Battlefields have changed. And the Weapons. And the Enemies. And, above All, The Victims...:
"…the Names of the Places, and the Faces of the Wives and the Sons, and the Daughters;
of the Pain, and the Horror; and the cost-plus dis-efficiencies and externalities of the Slaughters…"
But the Perpetrators of War have not changed. Nor have the Perpetuators. And certainly not the Justifiers.
But beyond all Them, what [and thus who] really hasn't really changed in any way at all are The Beneficiaries of War: The Chosen Ones; those who, by War, expropriate Wealth and Power, so as to extract and consume and generate even more Power and more Wealth, so as to extract, consume, and generate even more. And More. And ever and even MORE, and MORE... . These Ones have most definitively, definitely, and decidedly NOT Changed. At all.
Since long, long, so Very Long before that eleventh minute of that eleventh hour of that eleventh day of that eleventh month, the Perpetrators, Perpetuators, Justifiers, and Beneficiaries~ especially The Beneficiaries~ of War have not changed.
So, one might be moved to ask: So What? Now What?
So. imagine~ if you Can and Dare~ if even for but a moment, that there are no Beneficiaries. That the answer to the simply elegant and ultimately eloquent Question of "War: CUI BONO?" is, quite simply elegantly and ultimately eloquently, "NoBody."
One step in that direction would be a “No War-For-Profit” Amendment to the Constitution of The United States:
1. Any and all organizations or individuals doing business with the Military Industrial Congressional Complex [MICC] and/or the Secrecy Security Surveillance Censorship Propaganda proto-Police State Panopticon [S3CP4] will and thus must be publicly-held NON-PROFIT enterprises.
2. No individual, bank. and/ or any other financial or other institution [including foreign nations and their money-lenders] doing business with the MICC and the S3CP4 may earn any interest or other profit from loans, bonds, or any other fiduciary instruments used by the Government of The United States to finance or otherwise "pay for" this nation's Wars-by-Credit Card of the 21st century.
3. No print, electronic, and/or internet-based news or otherwise infotainment media organization may be owned and/or operated by any organization or individual doing business with the MICC and/or the S3CP4.
So What? Now What? Any Suggestions? And another Question is: When will You weary of all the BullShit?
Have a Great Memorial Day 2024, and see you at 11:11:11 on l1.11. 24.
I agree with your sentiment. I remember as a child and youth walking by the war memorial for WW I German veterans. Fortunately, I didn’t see any names of any relatives. Actually, I didn’t need to as a reminder of the horrors of war. I had in my grandfather and father two living victims of that catastrophe. Both were very seldom talking about what they experienced. My grandfather was hospitalized for a few months because of sever PTSD. We were raised as war resisters. My dad was a proud German, but utterly opposed to any war. This reminds me of a quote I read in FREMDBESTIMMT - 120 Jahre Lügen und Täuschung (FOREIGNDETERMINED - 120 years of lies and deception). I had an acquaintance in Germany buy it and sent it since it seems to be banned in the “free” USA. Amazon GermanY told me it could not be shipped to my address in the U.S. There is a revealing quote on page 102 attributed to Woodrow Wilson: “My dear citizens. Why is it that no man, no woman - I also want say child knows that the origin of the war in the modern world is rooted in economic and industrial competition? … This war (WW I) was from the beginning a trade and industry war. It was not a political war.” Wilson said these words in St. Louis on 5 September 1919. It was Smedley who basically confirmed Wilson’s observation with WAR IS A RACKET in 1935. The sad fact is that all these hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers were sacrificed for the enrichment of a small group of people while they were told they were defending American ideals of freedom, liberty and democracy. Lastly, it is always the working class of the society that suffers the most. (The quote I had to translate from the German book version; the original is in the Wilson papers at Princeton.)
Karl, you wrote of "a small group of rich people" which is another phrase for the 1%, pulling away from the 99% steadily and yet the presidential contenders will neither one do anything but keep this going. Big donors rule our political system and the last line of defense, the Supreme Court, gave it the green light with Citizens United.
The best thing we can do for those we have lost in war, to properly remember them, is to take back our country from the rule of wealth which benefits so much from the kind of wars we are involved in right now - lots of stuff sold with few American deaths resulting...at least for now.
The challenge is - how do we do that when big donations are involved in all but some local elections. Congress is bought, lobbies rule. The only hope I see is with those who are now quite openly denouncing lobby money in the light of all that is revealed about AIPAC manipulating our corrupt system to get the crazy amount of funding going to a country that openly repudiates liberty and justice for all. Those that have eyes, let them see and demand change.
Unfortunately, most people are uninformed. Many of them are manipulated by political and religious bigots. Like it or not, the fact is that Memorial Day celebrations were and are a form of manipulation. It is a rather dismal situation when people cannot or will not do the hard work of informing themselves. I am not optimistic about any meaningful change in the near future. I am too old to expect a distant future. Maybe, that is just as well. But I am worried about the future of my children and grandchildren.
Amen.
Back in the 19th century, life for most Americans was hard work with little time for much else yet they were avid followers of events and newspaper readers, regularly going to public presentations. Today, the work is not nearly so hard or time consuming, but entertainment is there to fill every moment of free time and the interest in being informed, in seeking out the details on what is happening has collapsed. Why bother? Americans more than any other people in the world, have the luxury (so far) of being ignorant.
One consequence is that those who make it their business, literally, to know what is happening in detail can easily run things for their own benefit. I see in my old friends a lack of interest in actually doing anything to change things, simply because for them, personally, life goes on one day much like the last. The murder of a neighbor would get them upset, but add distance and thousands can die without giving rise to even an email to a member of Congress. Our wealth has spoiled us. Our motto of E Pluribus Unum should be replaced with: it's not hard to get along with somebody else's problems. And there is often money in it.
Thank You for sharing that, Karl.
But the ONLY reason there can be Wars on behalf of and for the enrichment of those industrial, economic, and financial Overlords is because the institution of Government exists which has the legal power, administrative authority, and particularly, the spending capability and capacity to force ~ by actual or threatened violence ~ the Citizens those Governments rule over to pay for all those Wars, in both Blood and Treasure. And thus advance the interests and agendas of those very same Overlords.
And one of the primary and most effective means of ensuring that all those hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed American Soldiers ~ who killed and maimed other "enemy" Soldiers [and increasingly, NonCombatant Civilians] ~ believed they were "defending" those American "ideals" was, is, and will ever be America's Government-run and controlled Education system.
Your second paragraph is quite apropos. Education, contrary to its original meaning, has been perverted into indoctrination. I spent 34 years dealing with this problem as a college history professor.
Your first paragraph is confirmed by Wilson’s statement from 1913. He said: “The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.” (Nomi Prins, ALL THE PRESIDENTS’ BANKERS - The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power, 2014, p. 57.)
I too was a college history professor (34 years) and battling the indoctrination was my biggest challenge. I finally learned that if they only read the primary sources we could make progress. I ditched the textbooks.
Hi Mary Ann: May i ask You the same question i just asked Karl?
Did You teach at publicly-financed institutions or privately-endowed?
I taught at the University of Pittsburgh which is “state related “ since it receives around 1/3 of its annual operating budget from the state to keep its undergraduate tuition lower.
Go PANTHERS!!! i spent the first ten years of my life in East Liverpool, Ohio, about 40 miles west and the Panthers, Pirates, and Steelers were my very first favorite Sports teams.
In any event, i'm curious, Mary. Was the "indoctrination" You spoke of "battling" the indoctrination of Your students from what they were taught in high school and/or in earlier college courses?
Or were You speaking of the indoctrination to be found in all those textbooks You discarded, and turned to original sources instead?
Or were You speaking of both?
We see education in action right now in Israel. In public school there the kids get indoctrinated with "they want to kill us", the holocaust supposedly being proof. They also get "the entire land is ours" complete with maps that do not show the occupied territories as that, but as an integral part of Israel.
This goes a long way to explaining why a fully modern army with the best equipment that the US can provide can rampage through an obviously impoverished place, leveling everything and killing without hesitation. When we hear Netanyahu repeat that this army is the most moral army in the world, it seems impossible that he should say it but he really believes it being the son of a rabid Zionist himself.
A tragedy of humanity, from what should be a glory, is that the young can so easily be indoctrinated to reproduce the same ideas that were previously implanted in their parents in the same way. The mind is wonderfully pliable in youth, open and eager for everything and the goal of honest education is laudable, but the first schooling occurs in the home and it is there that children get the strongest influence which is too often from the set in stone ideas of the parents who too easily take pride in seeing those thoughts reproduced, thinking it a success.
It's been a long time since i read Ms Prins' book; and need to read it again.
But first, i want to dig into her two most recent books:
PERMANENT DISTORTION: HOW THE FINANCIAL MARKETS ABANDONED THE REAL ECONOMY; and COLLU$ION: HOW CENTRAL BANKERS RIGGED THE WORLD.
And now the Indoctrination of America's Government-run Education System extends to more than just "History." It involves things like "Wokeness," Sexual Identity, Cancel Culture, and so on and so forth. And no doubt some folks are working on getting "Intelligent Design" locked into the curriculum, as well.
In any event, i'm curious, Karl: Did You teach at publicly-financed institutions or privately-endowed?
I taught, irony of irony, at a church financed college. It was a difficult 34 years for various reasons.
Ahhh. i can easily imagine why teaching History at a Church-financed college could and would be difficult; and a challenge.
Let me ask another question, if i may: Which books are on Your List of the three Best books on and about understanding American History?
That is a very difficult question. My graduate training was mostly focused a late antiquity with a second area of emphasis on modern European history. I had no professional training in American history. Because of my German background I did have to confront American history quite early after my arrival in the U.S. in 1966. I was immediately confronted by a wall of ignorance in historical matters which drove me to familiarize myself with U.S. history. So, I cannot claim expertise, but I am an informed reader. With these preliminary remarks out of the way, I will tell you of certain books that I would highly recommend.
1. Howard Zinn, PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
2. Nancy MacLean, DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS - the deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America
3. David Talbot, THE DEVIL’S CHESSBOARD - ALLEN DULLES, THE CIA AND THE RISE OF AMERICA’S SECRET GOVERNMENT
4. Adam Hochschild, AMERICAN MIDNIGHT - The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis
5. Danielle Ganser, USA - The Ruthless Empire
6. Danielle Ganser, NATO’S SECRET ARMIES - Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe
Ganser is a Swiss historian.
This is a tiny list ( ore than you asked for) of scholarly histories in my very extensive library.
P.S. You might also consider Vincent Bevins, THE JAKARTA METHOD - Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that shaped our World
(How ironic we both taught for 34 years!)
Indeed. I retired in 2010.
And I in 2020.
Too bad they got the last one wrong in the cartoon. The right illustration would be either a hand reaching into the collection cup removing money or better yet the homeless persons tent and belongings "swept up"(stolen) with the police tasering him for fun. That's the reality in America today.
And today we are to honor our veterans for keeping us a free safe democracy for fighting in the past wars. All of which we have lost since WW2. None of which have made us safer or freer. I have no animosity towards the soldiers who had to fight in useless wars but I certainly do towards the government who perpetuate them.
Memorial day should be one of remembrance of the freedom and democracy that was lost.
Thank you, Bill.
I have started to personalize Memorial Day. Rather than broadly reflect on the 'war dead', I remember at least two individuals who died in America's wars. Some I knew; some I knew of; and some were only names in a history book. But when I remember those I knew or knew of, the grief at their losses lasted a lifetime for those who loved them.
This year, I remember, as I do every year, an uncle who was killed in April, 1945 on Okinawa - years before I was born; the other is the older brother - someone I knew- of an elementary school classmate, who was killed in Vietnam in April, 1969.
Those bombs that incinerated that "Safe Zone" Tent Camp were either built in and/or paid for by the United States.
And that makes this Nation ~ its Government and its People ~ as responsible for that Fire Bombing as is the Government of Israel and its People.
Just as overwhelmingly most of Israel's entire Genocide in Gaza has been armed, equipped, supplied, and/or paid for by the United States.
If any current Israeli leaders are ever brought to trial for the War Crimes and Genocide they and their nation have perpetrated and are perpetuating in Gaza, a bunch of American leaders need also to be brought to trial as willing, able, and accomplished accomplices, accessories, and aides-de-camp.
This is the Eulogy i delivered at a military funeral for a helicopter pilot named Larry in Van Nuys, California, on January 3, 1970, four months and a day before four more young Americans were to be killed in a place called Kent, Ohio. i had flown as Larry’s door gunner down in the Mekong Delta back in 1967-68, including TET.
EULOGY
It is difficult, my friends. Very difficult.
I know none of you, yet I call you my friends. Thank you for being here, for sharing this, for enabling me to bear it.
After two years of this War, I have finally lost someone I love. Buddies? There's been plenty. Never, until now, someone I love.
It is said that tragedy is the fire that tempers the soul. I can only hope that my soul, and my heart, and my mind, and my life is tempered and forged from this nightmare into a design of dedication NOT to the forces and elements that killed him: rage, hate, lust for violent revenge, a mindless, headlong flight into, through, and finally submerged by insanity.
Not to that, but to the ideals and principles that should have been the forces and elements at work that could have kept him, you, me, us all nowhere near Vietnam, or Biafra, or Suez, or Korea, or Normandy, or Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, and on and on back thru the ages and the battlefields, back to the beginnings of time, the beginnings of man, the beginnings of War.
The ideals, principles, forces, and elements of understanding, concern, love, peace, and the knowledge of our status as but "the family of Man, fellow-passengers on the Spaceship Earth… ."
And how meaningless, empty, and vapid these words sound and are tonite. But, a man's words are really nothing more than indicators, the elements of the metaphor that his living is, as it seeks to explain to him, and to us, his life.
Perhaps these moments of futility, emptiness, and tragedy are the price we must pay for having had the privilege of his company, the strength of his presence, the happiness of his warmth and joy, the security of his being.
We have all lost something. A friend, a husband, a son. But there is a greater loser, a more tragic victim from all this than we, his wife, his parents, his family, and his friends. And that victim, my friends, is the world.
It is this world ~ this world that murdered him ~ that is the big loser.
The terms I think it might understand are that he is no longer at its disposal; that he is free and no longer subject to the prices that the world and mankind demand from its children as they attempt to struggle as individual human beings, with individual lives and loves, and concerns and cares, and projects, plans, and goals, and wins, losses, and rainouts.
The world requires that You be more than a man or a woman~ which, until death, is impossible.
It requires that citizens of nations become us all. Citizens of nations, and pawns to realities revolving around such grandiose, eloquent, pompous terms, tenets, and ideas as ideology and geopolitics, alliances and balances of power, negotiations, diplomacy, and treaties, and on and on ad nauseam: the vocabulary of government.
And much more real, final, and meaningless terms as enemy and body-counts, and hot LZ's and .SO-caliber machine gun positions, and frozen rotor blades at 300 feet, and notification of next-of-kin: the vocabulary of the logical conclusion of the rhetoric of Government: the vocabulary of War.
The world required this of him, and he agreed to pay his portion of the price. Tonite, however, the world's account is overdrawn. Tonite, there is the matter of revenge. No. No, not revenge. Avenge. Avengeance. aVengeance: Revenge without Vengeance; Revenge without Violence.
But against Whom does one direct it? And How?
Is it to be directed against those people and places and principles that killed him? Against other young ~ and old ~ women and men from other nations who, too, are but playing their part and paying their price as their world ~ this world, our world ~ demands? They are but pawns as we. And as long as we pawns keep fighting ~ and paying for ~ all these Wars, there will be War.
What, then of the kings and queens and bishops and rooks and generals and knights and such? They, too, are but pawns. Their bloodshed is not their own; rather, it is of those that they like to call "their Peoples'." These, too, however, are paying a price: the price of being those most directly associated with the true killers ~ the ideas, and terms, and tenets, and vocabularies. And, having to live with them, by them, and for them, they thus become the emptiness, the insanity, the impotence, the wretchedness that these words are.
No. It is neither the pawns nor the princes ~ the presidents, premiers, and propagandists ~ that are to be sought out and made to give retribution for Larry. It's not the people who are directly, and thus apparently responsible for his having been there, and thus being no more.
Rather, it is those who are truly, though indirectly responsible. It is those that could have stopped it, could have prevented this specter from becoming the spectacle that it is.
It is, indeed, those who permit the world to make them pawns and slaves, and legions to, of, by, and for these ideas and words. Those who permit themselves to go and become but the bit-players in this passion play, the finale of which is the death of their brothers and their sisters, their sons and daughters, their fathers and their mothers, their selves.
A death as meaningless, as senseless, and as empty as their lives. Lives spent under the tyranny of ideas, killing and thus dying under their effect. Lives lived under the anarchy of this self-imposed despotism, rather than in and through the fulfillment that is to be found in the truth, the beauty, the reality of the mind's products ~ ideas~ as they are used instead to eliminate the trials, tragedies, and traumas of man. Rather than, as today, propagating, perpetrating, and perpetuating them.
HUMANITY is the object. HUMANITY and LIFE. All of LIFE. Ideas are but vehicles. The price for avenging Larry shall have been extracted when that simple statement becomes a world-truth.
We live now in the insanity of Human Beings being the vehicle, and terms, tenets, vocabularies, ideologies, and ideas being the object. The object that Humans have permitted to become, at not only Its expense and thus Life's, but at the World's, as well.
The guilty, my friends, is You and me and him and her and everyone. Each and every one of us all. Including Larry. And we begin, now, to pay the price for this. We have lost someone for whom Humanity and Life was the object.
Larry, as the rest of us, the Young, was at but the beginning of this realization, at the beginning of this work. Because those of us that could have helped, long ago, to prevent what has happened did not, we are now paying the price.
Again: HUMANITY is the object. HUMANITY and LIFE. Ideas are but vehicles. The price for avenging Larry shall have been extracted when that simple statement becomes a world-truth.
The question, again, is "How?"
If, in fact, a man is ready to die when he knows himself completely, I am at last ready.
With this experience, with these words, i have come now to know and to understand the meaninglessness of the meaning I have permitted the world to attach to my, to your, to Larry's, to everyone's existence, life, and being. And knowing this, I swear... No more.
aVengeance will be mine. I pray, my friends, Yours as well. The question, at last, is HOW?
This we will learn. With help...... .
A soverign’s monopoly on the printing of currency is the health of the state. War is often a consequence.
Good point, MCL. In fact, a sovereign's monopoly on the printing of currency is the ONLY way any War can be paid for and undertaken. That, and a sovereign's authority to threaten or use violence against anyone who doesn't go along with The Game.
Mathew Hoh offers A MORALITY OF ANGER AND GUILT: Reflections on Memorial Day ~ his remarks from a Memorial Day observation held today in North Carolina ~ at https://matthewhoh.substack.com/p/a-morality-of-anger-and-guilt .
And is well worth the read and re-read.
THERE WAS A TIME by Caitlin Johnstone 27 May 24
It’s hard to believe there was a time when I didn’t know what a child’s insides look like.
That I didn’t know how limp babies’ limbs go when they are dead,
when they are missing parts of their body,
missing their head,
limbs dangling lifeless as parents hold them in front of the camera,
screaming, crying, pleading, desperate.
There was a time when I didn’t know how it feels to watch a man scream “Free Palestine” while burning alive,
until there was nothing left to scream with and he lost his voice forever,
but still by some power remained standing long after his voice was gone.
I didn’t used to know just how sadistic people can be,
how hateful they can be,
how apathetic they can be toward the suffering of human beings,
or how heroic others can be in times of great need.
I didn’t used to know. Now I do.
And now I sit here, head heavy like lead, tongue limp like a baby’s corpse,
hands feeling older than the stars,
and I don’t know what to do.
There is nothing I can say to make this okay.
There is nothing I can say to make any of this make sense.
This is the civilization we were born into.
This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,
as the airman said before he burned.
I lift my ancient hands to my sore heart
and say a prayer to the great Whatever
in a desperate plea
for a better world.
Source: https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/there-was-a-time .
Thanks for the words from Madison, Bill.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Well said. Thanks.
A very concise yet all-encompassing argument for the avoidance of war. An impressive lesson.
Thank you.
Waking up this morning to the news that Israel had killed at least 45 Palestinians in an inferno caused by an air attack on a so-called “Safe Area” full of Refugees ~ LIVING IN TENTS ~ reminded me of Robert Duvall’s Colonel Kilgore in APOCALYPSE NOW proclaiming:
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning... . It smells like “Victory.”
[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RHo_ZG-YGo ]
HOW TO END WAR
*** The best way that America can honor its War Dead and Maimed is to ensure that there are no more American War Dead and Maimed. And the only way to ensure that is for this Nation to stop creating more and more NON-American War Dead and Maimed all over the Planet. ***
"It was the Eleventh Minute of the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month... ,"
And this Year, 2024, at that moment, it will be One Hundred and Six Years to the minute since that "End" of "The War to End All War," World War I.
As a retired Centurion of The Empire ~ beginning, in this lifetime at least, Once Upon A Time, long, long, so Very Long ago in a place called Vietnam ~ i spent my entire professional life [some 28 years total, 22 on active duty] studying and waging war, or preparing myself and others to wage war. And during that lifetime, War has not changed. At all.
Only the Battlefields have changed. And the Weapons. And the Enemies. And, above All, The Victims...:
"…the Names of the Places, and the Faces of the Wives and the Sons, and the Daughters;
of the Pain, and the Horror; and the cost-plus dis-efficiencies and externalities of the Slaughters…"
But the Perpetrators of War have not changed. Nor have the Perpetuators. And certainly not the Justifiers.
But beyond all Them, what [and thus who] really hasn't really changed in any way at all are The Beneficiaries of War: The Chosen Ones; those who, by War, expropriate Wealth and Power, so as to extract and consume and generate even more Power and more Wealth, so as to extract, consume, and generate even more. And More. And ever and even MORE, and MORE... . These Ones have most definitively, definitely, and decidedly NOT Changed. At all.
Since long, long, so Very Long before that eleventh minute of that eleventh hour of that eleventh day of that eleventh month, the Perpetrators, Perpetuators, Justifiers, and Beneficiaries~ especially The Beneficiaries~ of War have not changed.
So, one might be moved to ask: So What? Now What?
So. imagine~ if you Can and Dare~ if even for but a moment, that there are no Beneficiaries. That the answer to the simply elegant and ultimately eloquent Question of "War: CUI BONO?" is, quite simply elegantly and ultimately eloquently, "NoBody."
One step in that direction would be a “No War-For-Profit” Amendment to the Constitution of The United States:
1. Any and all organizations or individuals doing business with the Military Industrial Congressional Complex [MICC] and/or the Secrecy Security Surveillance Censorship Propaganda proto-Police State Panopticon [S3CP4] will and thus must be publicly-held NON-PROFIT enterprises.
2. No individual, bank. and/ or any other financial or other institution [including foreign nations and their money-lenders] doing business with the MICC and the S3CP4 may earn any interest or other profit from loans, bonds, or any other fiduciary instruments used by the Government of The United States to finance or otherwise "pay for" this nation's Wars-by-Credit Card of the 21st century.
3. No print, electronic, and/or internet-based news or otherwise infotainment media organization may be owned and/or operated by any organization or individual doing business with the MICC and/or the S3CP4.
So What? Now What? Any Suggestions? And another Question is: When will You weary of all the BullShit?
Have a Great Memorial Day 2024, and see you at 11:11:11 on l1.11. 24.