Special to the Cape Charles Mirror by Paul Plante.
In a post in here on March 13, 2017, Chas Cornweller, a respected contributor to the Cape Charles Mirror made this following statement which is the genesis of this thread:
Mr. Plante, your biggest life experience, I gather-correct me if I am wrong- is Vietnam.
end quote
Now, people, how can that question possibly be answered rationally?
And that answer is, it can’t.
It is like a question posed to me by a psychologist trying to probe the minds of Viet Nam combat veterans to see what might be in there:
“If you didn’t go to Viet Nam, who do you think you would have been?”
HUH?
You see what I am saying here?
How does one know what the “biggest life experience” of one’s life really is?
How do you define it?
And what life experiences do you have to exclude to get to that final answer?
There is the real question.
For me, Viet Nam was Viet Nam, simply that.
To somebody who wasn’t there, it is beyond my ability with words to describe, in all honesty.
What I can say, and truthfully so, is that Viet Nam was not America, and you know what, people,. having had their own history going back to at least 1100 A.D., long before there was a United States of America, the Vietnamese people did not want America jammed down their throats, as if they were too stupid and incompetent to fend for themselves.
That is just one of the many things about life and the people of Viet Nam that I learned as an American citizen over there while a private soldier with the United States Army over there.
So yes, for me, it was a big life experience, especially when a Viet Cong RPG gunner in March of 1969, right around this same time of the month, actually, took careful aim with his RPG at the flat backside of the flame coming from the barrel of the M-60 machinegun I was manning and almost succeeded in taking off my head.
But perhaps an even bigger life experience for me personally, in all truth, was returning to this country with a serious head wound and likely, in today’s jargon, a TBI, to find myself unceremoniously dumped by the side of the road like a bag of trash to fend for myself by a supposedly grateful nation that had neither the money nor the desire to take care of the wounded and maimed veterans returning to this country from an unpopular war in Southeast Asia.
And to get to the point of this essay, Viet Nam was not only a life experience for me, it was for every other American at that time, as well, whether they knew it or not, and it was as well for the generation born right after or during Viet Nam, say, circa 1970.
To connect then to now, Hillary Clinton, an almost-president twice now, which has her vying for the impressive record set by Harold Stassen, best known for being a perennial candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States, seeking it nine times between 1944 and 1992, is in reality a product of what I call the VEET NAM times in America, times that are largely forgotten, on purpose because no one wants to remember them, or because so many people from then are dead.
Had there not been a VEET NAM war for Hillary to protest against, it is possible that Hillary might never had made her meteoric rise to national stardom as she did, becoming on May 31, 1969, as we are told in the Washington Post story “Hillary Clinton’s breakout moment at Wellesley College” by Frances Stead Sellers and Marilyn W. Thompson on August 14, 2016, a national symbol of student activism and provocative voice speaking for her angry generation:
Students carried signs demanding fair housing, black economic power and a common theme: “Get Out of Vietnam NOW.â€
Back at Clinton’s dorm, Stone-Davis, the war had particular resonance.
Down the hall from Clinton’s spacious suite, a fellow student was corresponding with a brother fighting in Vietnam.
Clinton and a group of friends who have remained close ever since rallied around the dorm mate, and Clinton joined expeditions to New Hampshire to support Democrat Eugene McCarthy’s antiwar campaign.
end quotes
With respect to Democrat Eugene McCarthy’s antiwar campaign that Hillary was a supporter of, and so much that has happened since, right up to now with the burning question of what America’s values and traditions really are, in 1968, McCarthy campaigned in St. Louis, where he continued his anti-war rhetoric, describing the Vietnam War as against “American tradition†and declaring that “no nation has a right†to “destroy a nation†with the rationale of “nation building,” that said as today, we are doing a real good job of destroying several nations, all in the name of nation-building.
In the Preface to the excellent American history “Dereliction of Duty – Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the lies that led to Viet Nam” by H.R. McMaster, copyright 1997, he states as follows with respect to this thread:
Despite scores of books on the subject, the WHY and HOW of direct U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War remains unclear.
The war continues to capture the public interest in part because, looking back, its cost seems exorbitant – and would seem so even if the United States had “won”.
The war took the lives of fifty-eight thousand Americans and well over one million Vietnamese.
It left Vietnam in ruins and consumed billions of American dollars, nearly wrecking the American economy.
end quotes
How is that for stupid is as stupid does, people?
Getting back to McMaster:
Vietnam divided American society and inflicted upon the United States one of the greatest political traumas since the Civil War.
end quotes
One of my premises in here is that divide McMaster talks about then was the beginning of the severe festering divide that exists today in the United States of America, to our detriment as a nation.
And back to McMaster:
Indeed, the war’s legacies proved to be as profound as the war was traumatic.
It led Americans to question the integrity of their government as never before.
end quote
For a few minutes, would be my addition to that last sentence, and then that became boring and we became distracted by something else, and then something else beyond that something else, to where we now are today, in a highly divided nation at war with itself.
As McMaster says:
Thirty years later, after the end of the Cold War, the shadow of the American experience in Vietnam still hangs heavy over American foreign and military policy, and over American society.
end quotes
Except American society has forgotten that experience, and that history, so as a nation, being as stupid as we are, and ill-in formed, we are simply repeating that experience once again without question, and this time Hillary Clinton is not against all those wars, like she was against Viet Nam, because Hillary helped to start those wars as Secretary of State.
And getting to the meat of this discussion, in his Preface, McMaster gave us this:
Any interpretation of direct American intervention in the Vietnam war must address the question of responsibility for one of the greatest American foreign policy disasters of the Twentieth century.
Much more important is to determine how and why key decisions were made, decisions that involved the United States in a war that it could not win at a politically acceptable level of commitment.
end quotes
But you know what, people?
We never bothered to do that; to the contrary, we shut it out, and then tried to move on, but to where?
As McMaster puts it:
It would be impossible for an Army lieutenant, obtaining his commission in 1984, not to be concerned with the experience of the Vietnam war.
I thought that to better prepare myself to lead soldiers in combat it was important to learn from the experiences of others, and the most recent U.S. war seemed as good a starting place as any.
I read personal accounts written by junior officers, but found to my surprise that the Army I entered barely spoke of Vietnam.
The emotions connected with sacrifices made in a lost war ran too deep to permit the veterans of that conflict to dwell on their experiences.
Those who remained in uniform seemed eager to forget and had turned their energies and talents towards building an organization capable of fighting and winning the next war.
end quotes
Think on that last sentence, people, the one about “Those who remained in uniform seemed eager to forget and had turned their energies and talents towards building an organization capable of fighting and winning the next war,” as you ponder just how long we now have been mired in the war in Afghanistnam, now America’s longest war where yet more American troops are needed, which war makes Viet Nam look well run by comparison, as well as Iraqinam, where we are mired down, and Syria, where we have boots on the ground and are mired down, and Somalia, where the United States military is currently engaged in a clandestine war in the African nation of Somalia which has American special operations forces working with government forces from Somalia, Kenya, and other African nations to fight the militant group al-Shabaab, which has ties to al-Qaeda.
As to Somalia, the US military hasn’t had this many troops in the war-torn country since the “Black Hawk Down” tragedy of 1993, and yes, people, that is the same Somalia that is a part of Donald Trump’s much maligned and hated travel ban which Camille Mackler, director of legal initiatives at the New York Immigration Coalition, called a “backdoor Muslim ban.”
So, to conclude for now, was Viet Nam a life experience in the political life of this nation?
Should we have learned something from it?
Or should we have done just what we did do as a nation, which was to forget it and move on, as if the only way to get to the good times is to forget that there ever were bad times?
So many questions, so few answers.
Stay tuned, more to come.
andy zahn says
I don’t know what in the world the respected contributator to the MIRROR was driving at with his question to Paul Plante?
It is an extremely personal thing and like many other life experiences, you simply never ask such questions.
Paul Plante says
Good afternoon, andy zahn, and to a degree, yes, it would be a personal question which I could have chosen to disregard, and had it been a purely personal experience, it would not be something worth taking up valuable space in the Cape Charles Mirror.
But the VEET NAM period in this nation’s political life, whether you were here or these, while a personal experience for each one alive back then, Chas Cornweller, myself, yourself, Hillary Clinton, John “JACK” Kerry, etc, , included, and ultimately, that would have to extend to everyone alive back then in the world itself, since in many ways, Viet Nam was a global political struggle resulting from the colonial period of world history, was not purely personal for me, and hence, I considered that a fair question begging a thought-out answer in here, as did the Cape Charles Mirror, so I am thankful that Chas Cornweller did ask it to get this very discussion going in here.
Let me ask you this, andy zahn, should we as a nation and as a people learned anything at all from the VEET NAM experience?
I have here before me a small book published circa 1968 that I believe was intended for high school students alive back then, so, young adults here in America, and it starts out in the 1st chapter entitled “Lesson of Viet Nam” with a story about a 5th grader in Washington, D.C. who came home to tell his father about a fist fight that had broken out that morning among the boys on his school bus.
“Who started the fight,” his father asked?
“Well, as a matter of fact, I did,” the boy replied reluctantly.
“But why,” the perplexed parent wanted to know.
“Because I didn’t realize what a big fight it was going to be!”
That intro was followed up by this question – What does this incident have to do with the war in Viet Nam?
You were in the military, andy zahn.
You were under orders and acted with discipline in fulfilling them.
And you were a parent.
And a teacher.
Is that the type of question a high school student should have to be confronted with, the question of why is there a war going in your life time?
Should high school students in America have to think about such things?
Or should they be protected from questions like that, do you think?
The book answers the question this way: it helps to explain how the conflict got started, why it stirred up so much confusion and uncertainty in our country over what America’s Viet Nam policy should be – and how the war gradually grew to the point where it affected the lives and future of all of us.
end quote
You were alive back then, andy zahn, do you think that is a true statement made there, that by 1968, the Viet Nam war had grown to the point where it affected the lives and future of all of us at that time, high school students included?
Or was it hype?
As to the book, it is entitled, “Two Viet Nams In War and Peace,” and it was published by an organization calling itself Civic Education Service, 1733 K. Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.
At the end of the book, which has twelve chapters, including one entitled “We Can’t Police World,” there are a series of questions to be asked of these young adults alive in the United States of America back then, including these:
* What are some of the chief obstacles blocking the creation of a democratic system of government in S. Viet Nam?
* Why do you think it is important for young Americans to be informed on the issues involved in the Viet Nam war and other related problems?
end quotes
As I said, andy zahn, you were both a parent and educator – do you think those are unfair questions to put to high school students?
Should they be expected to have to know such things as the nation is at war, and why?
And by the way, in 1968, I was in the Army on my own way to Viet Nam, so in truth, I do not know if those questions ever got asked of any high school students in America, so I have a lot of curiosity about that.
If not, why not?
Robert says
Yes, it is a personal question, but I for one, learn much from others and their personal experiences – even their biases. It and they are a part of the fabric of (our) society, in which we all participate or choose not to. We retain that personal will power,
Paul Plante says
Good afternoon, Robert, thanks for sharing your thoughts, and you are so very right when you say “It and they are a part of the fabric of (our) society, in which we all participate or choose not to.”
How true that is, and was, and always will be, whether we like it or not, or are even cognizant of it.
The fabric of our society – the threads of its warp and weft bind the ever-changing present to the past and future, again whether anyone likes that or accepts that, or not.
That fabric of our society, and it is ours collectively, given that we are all in some way affected by it, good or bad, includes, for example, this news item from Thursday, August 19, 2004 entitled “Many in VFW have no desire to salute Kerry” by Peter Bronson, which shows how far those threads can stretch:
VFW members were a lot nicer to John Kerry than he was to them in 1971, when he accused Vietnam veterans of war crimes “on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”
end quotes
Those charges by Kerry in 1971, which were totally ignored by the nation at large and its federal government at that time and after, surfaced again thirty-three (33) years later and helped to cost Kerry the 2004 presidential election.
Kerry questioned the Viet Nam war in 1971, and it cost him a presidential election in 2004 as a result.
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, protested the war at that same period of time, and afterwards, she was never ever questioned about why that was, which itself is a part of the fabric of our society.
Why the double standard, one must wonder?
Getting back to the fabric of our society as it was expressed in that article, we have:
But when he (Kerry) said, “For 35 years I have fought and kept the faith with our veterans,” it was more than some could take.
About 50 to 100 veterans walked out before Kerry spoke, said Vietnam veteran and Bush supporter Gene Watts of Columbus, a former Ohio state senator.
And in the Massachusetts delegation – Kerry’s home state – two Vietnam vets stood and turned their backs on Kerry for his entire speech.
end quotes
That is only twelve years ago, people, that is how long memories can last.
Yes, indeed, the fabric of our society exposed before our eyes.
So what picture of ourselves does that fabric present us with then?
Stay tuned, people, more, as always, is yet to come.
Paul Plante says
And my goodness, people, what a picture Wayne Creed picked to accompany this thread.
That is a “chumming” operation on land going on right there, with helicopters being used instead of fishing boats.
So what is the chum, you ask?
Look in the picture, people, and you will see the chum in there – they are the ones on the ground wearing helmets and carrying rifles.
I know, because I used to be one coming off those helicopters as in the picture, what was known as an “eagle flight,” or combat assault, where “eagle flights” are defined in The Sixties Project website under Glossary of Military Terms & Slang from the Vietnam War as a “large air assault of helicopters.”
Why were we chum?
Because we were akin to the trash fish that are cut up on fishing boats to be thrown in the water to draw in the big fish and game fish.
Back then, we were a dime a dozen, afterall, which is why some 58,000 of us died over there.
And that, people, is the way it goes!
Paul Plante says
Here in the United States people were equally unprepared for the conflict that was soon to involve our nation so deeply.
To most Americans, South Viet Nam was just a faraway Asian country; a quaint and exotic land tucked away in a remote corner of the globe.
Names such as Cam Ranh Bay, Pleiku, Nha Trang, Qui Nhon, Vung Tau and Haiphong were as strange to most Americans as if they were from another planet.
Even as the battle between government troops and the Red Viet Cong forces heated up during the next 2 years, few people in this country became alarmed.
Most Americans quickly scanned the news, then turned with relief to the comics or sports pages and never gave the matter a second thought.
end quotes
Those are words taken from the first pages of Chapter 1 of the book “Two Viet Nams In War and Peace,” a book for high school students in America in 1967 and 1968, when the Viet Nam war was really starting to heat up, both over there and over here, as well, published by an organization calling itself Civic Education Service, 1733 K. Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., and having lived through those times, I would say that that was a true assessment of what I experienced of those times.
As H.R. McMaster told us at p.37 of his excellent history “Dereliction of Duty – Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that led to Viet Nam”:
Although U.S. advisors were fighting with South Vietnamese units and U.S. pilots were flying combat missions in South Vietnam, Kennedy denied that Americans were involved in combat, and Vietnam attracted little public or congressional attention.
Vietnam was far from front-page news and Americans still believed that their government told them the truth.
end quotes
Now, that is a powerful statement right there, people – Americans still believed that their government told them the truth.
And you know what?
Yes, I was one of them.
Getting back to the little book:
‘Why worry about a little Asian war thousands of miles away?”
“How can this possibly affect the richest and most powerful nation on earth?”
These were the thoughts of most Americans – when they bothered to think at all about the trouble in Viet Nam.
end quotes
WHOA!
What the heck, people?
Is that really the kind of things adults in America should have been telling high school students in America back then, or even now?
Won’t that kind of talk somehow damage their psyches?
Getting back to the little book:
Not even in late 1961, when the government of South Viet Nam was fighting for its life – and the U.S. sent in its first 2,000 servicemen – were there more than a few ripples of anxiety in this country.
“It will all end soon, and our soldiers will be back home before long,” most people told themselves.
end quotes
Except like Afghanistnam, which came after and has managed to displace Viet Nam as this nation’s longest un-won war, it wasn’t, as H.R. McMaster told us in the Preface to the excellent American history “Dereliction of Duty – Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the lies that led to Viet Nam,” copyright 1997, to wit:
The war took the lives of fifty-eight thousand Americans and well over one million Vietnamese.
It left Vietnam in ruins and consumed billions of American dollars, nearly wrecking the American economy.
end quotes
Younger Americans today wondering what happened to their economic future really a ought to take some time and really reflect on those words in that last sentence – nearly wrecking the American economy.
And for what?
With respect to that important existential question of who it was that squandered the economic future of the young people alive in the United States today, consider this following from p.354 of “A BETTER WAR, The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam” by Lewis Sorley, to wit:
B-52s carried ordnance loads typically consisting of 108 500-pound and 750-pound bombs.
With the force on Guam peaking at 155 aircraft, it took five miles of ramp space just to park them all.
At a peak rate of sixty-six sorties a day, the operation was consuming two million gallons of JP-4 jet fuel a day.
end quotes
That is referring to our campaign to bomb the Vietnamese back to the stone age to make them finally say uncle.
Two million gallons of JP-4 a day!
For what?
And that answer was to destroy.
And destroy they did.
I was on the Cambodian border in Hau Nghia province in Viet Nam in 1969 when the B-52’s were dumping their loads just about fifteen miles away, and the ground would shake and tine roofs on the Vietnamese houses would flutter like Aspen leaves in a stiff breeze and the whole horizon would turn brown with flashes of fire inside the brown clouds which was the earth itself being tossed to the heavens, never to come back down in the same place where it began.
Is that the stuff of hubris, people?
Something to think about anyway, and please stay tuned for more to come and thank you for your interest.
andy zahn says
Yes, Paul Plante, we SHOULD learn from the sorry experience in South East Asia, BUT… Think back to 1950 & a place called Korea. We had a new branch of service called the U S Air Force & after Hiroshima & Nagasaki (sp?) they believed the “Dog Faced Soldiers” were obsolete and that all wars would be won by using B-47’s, B-52’s & Sabre Jets. So, it came to pass that HST believed what the AF Chief told him; a bomb drop & N Korea would back off.
Well, as in Viet Nam later on, we lost over 38,000 good American kids, spent billions, perhaps trillions, had many kids lives destroyed & fought a horrible war in a horrible place which most Americans had no knowledge of.
Viet Nam would be a matter of us sending military advisors. The French Foreign Legion, a great fighting force, got their butts kicked & gave us good advice: Stay Out of Viet Nam.
For those who don’t learn history it always repeats, and the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing expecting different results each time.
In Viet Nam Westmoreland, LBJ & McNamera kept saying “we’re winning”, just anothe billion dollars, just one more Air-Cav Division; only 50 GI’s killed against 200 V C.
And now we are in the middle east. Back to the beginning I argued with my congressman about liberating Kwait & of course I lost the argument. American troops fighting for Kwait while their young men hung out in Egyptian night clubs. The whole mess escallated & Stormin’ Norman, a Jersey boy, used Psy Warfare to wreck the morale of the great Republician Guard & that pre-view ended quickly. Then W, the rash son who didn’t listen to his father destroyed the rotten government of Iraq & anarchy & civil war ensued.
As a former Infantryman I also argued against women in combat arms (the Military Police & I once was one, is a combat arm) and against women in actual combat. My wife was a member of the U S Air Force. Again I lost the argument.
Yes, Paul Plante, school kids have every right to ask & wonder & worry about the direction we are headed in because with modern war it may affect their home town & at any rate they will be the next generation of grunts. Some of my 8th graders went off to Viet Nam. Some were killed, some badly wounded, all with scars .As a kid, pre WW II, I heard on the radio about the war in Europe & then we were in it. At school air raid drills & at home sirens & black outs. In the 50’s great worry about atomic war with drills, movies & some people building bomb shelters.
Now we have a terrible dilema with N Korea and our only option may be another Korean “Police Action”, or maybe they will call it a war this time. THAT WE ALLOWED IT TO GO THIS FAR, THAT WE ALLOWED N KOREA TO GET NUKES & NOW IBM’s AND DITTO IRAN SHORTLY WE ARE NOW, SURPRISE, THE VICTIMS OF NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL,
Seoul could be wiped out & it may be impossible to prevent. A horrible thought. Two good friends of mine, former Military Police Lieutenants in the ROK Army and I worry about their fate.
Paul Plante says
Although young when that was happening, andy zahn, I remember Korea quite well for several reasons.
The husband of my cousin was over there, and they had a television, so when we would go visit, being as there was only the one channel, if the news came on showing footage of the war, she would start crying and have to run off to her room, which was behavior I did not understand at the time, being young and not knowing the connection, since such things involving the personal lives of adults were not shared with us children back then.
But it was obvious from what the TV was showing that there was indeed some shooting going on.
Of course, on TV, you never feel the wind, so in too many ways, it doesn’t seem real, just as the news of the fighting in Viet Nam did not seem real.
Having the bamboo erupt with fire in real time in front of your face is a bit different from watching people on TV running around in bamboo.
And I was aware of Korea from the maimed people in the community around me who got that way from Korea.
In a small town, they were hard to miss.
And the march down from the Chosin Reservoir, andy zahn.
Can that be forgotten?
Oh, but of course it was, how silly of me to think otherwise.
As to the Koreans, they are a people with a long history, far longer than ours, if anyone is capable of believing that in America today, exceptional as only we are.
According to history, Buyeo was an ancient kingdom located from today’s Manchuria to northern North Korea, from around the 2nd century BC to 494, and its remnants were absorbed by the neighboring and brotherhood kingdom of Goguryeo in 494, and both Goguryeo and Baekje, two of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, considered themselves its successor nation.
According to writings dating back to circa 296 BC, both Korean and Chinese legends state that a disgruntled Shang prince named Jizi, who had refused to cede power to the Zhou, left China with a small army, and according to these legends, he founded a state known as Gija Joseon in northwest Korea during the Gojoseon period of ancient Korean history.
Sometimes, people who have had their own nation as a people for quite some time get a little twitchy about things when some far younger nation comes along to tell them how to act.
As to history and Korea, which does not mind a fight one bit, at least historically, there were Mongol invasions of Korea between 1231–1259 which comprised a series of campaigns between 1231 and 1270 by the Mongol Empire against the Kingdom of Goryeo, the proto-state of modern-day Korea.
There were seven major campaigns at tremendous cost to civilian lives throughout the Korean peninsula, ultimately resulting in Korea becoming a vassal state of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty for approximately 80 years.
In the 1350s, the Yuan Dynasty in China was beginning to crumble, suffering from massive rebellions in China, so taking advantage of the opportunity, the Goryeo king Gongmin managed to regain some northern territories in Korea.
We would not even be colonized for almost 300 more years.
And relating that to this thread on Viet Nam, it was a Viet Nam combat survivor and West Point graduate of the class of 64 who was a victim of the Axe murder incident in the DMZ in Korea in 1976.
For you people unfamiliar with it, and that would be most people today I would suspect, the axe murder incident was the killing of two United States Army officers, Arthur Bonifas and Mark Barrett, by North Korean soldiers on August 18, 1976, in the Joint Security Area (JSA) located in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
The U.S. Army officers had been part of a work party cutting down a poplar tree in the JSA that partially blocked the view of United Nations (U.N.) observers, when they were assaulted by the North Koreans and killed when North Korean soldiers beat them to death with axe handles.
I think it is not unfair to say they have a different value system over there than we do over here.
And so it goes, andy zahn, with no need for assistance from any of us, the march of folly goes on and on and on.
Paul Plante says
“We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq and Syria.”
“That’s what groups like ISIL want.”
“They know they can’t defeat us on the battlefield… but they also know that if we occupy foreign lands, they can maintain insurgencies for years, killing thousands of our troops and draining our resources, and using our presence to draw new recruits.”
end quotes
While we are on the subject of getting mired down in quagmires in here, and in the course of doing so, squandering with no thought or cares whatsoever the future of the young people in this country, as well as young people in those countries we are mired down in, just as we were mired down in the quagmire of VEET NAM, with the only light at the end of any tunnels I ever saw being the muzzle flashes of the AK-47’s of Mr. Victor Charley, who was it that said those words above here about that if we occupy foreign lands, ISIS can maintain insurgencies for years, killing thousands of our troops and draining our resources, and using our presence to draw new recruits?
Who was it that gave us that warning. for warning it certainly sounds like to me?
Was it Bernie Sanders, perhaps?
Or what about Hillary Clinton?
Or could it have been Trump?
But no, not Trump, because I don’t think that dude has the sense to come in from the rain, and with his background of being able to fire people and they not be able to do a thing about it, I don’t think Trump can understand that there are people in the world who don’t think he is even worth doodly-squat, or a bucket of warm spit.
Who said those words was none other than now ex-United States president Barack Hussein Obama in an AFP article reprinted in the Jordan Times entitled “Obama tells fearful America Daesh will be defeated” dated at Dec. 8, 2015, wherein was stated:
President Barack Obama vowed Sunday that America would destroy the Daesh terror group and hunt down its followers at home or abroad, in a rare address from the Oval Office to a jittery nation.
Facing questions about his leadership and strategy, Obama harnessed the highest trappings of US power to calm a country rattled by a rampage in California that killed 14 people.
“After so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure,” Obama said in a solemn speech, adding that the San Bernardino massacre was evidence of an “evolving” and increasingly homegrown threat.
end quotes
I don’t know about anyone else, but as for me, after so much DAMN STUPID war started by jackasses, donkeys and fools in this country like Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, I am damn sick and tired of hearing nothing but war, war and more war, Afghanistnam, where we need more troops, Iraqinam, where we just sent more troops, Syria, where we now have troops, and I am wondering if we will ever have the sense to stop them.
In that AFP article, which reminds me so much of the same crap we were hearing about Viet Nam back then, it went on as follows with regard to Obama’s soothing and calming address to a weary nation:
“Here’s what I want you to know,” he said.
“The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it.”
“We will destroy Daesh and any other organisation that tries to harm us,” he said.
“Our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary.”
end quotes
What an ignorant and uninformed fool Obama sounds like there with that bit about the “threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it.”
Ah, yes, Barack, but in what century will that be, pray tell?
And of course, the threat of terrorism is as real today as it has ever been, given that one of the reasons I went to Viet Nam in 1969 as an infantryman was to fight COMMIE terrorism, and as to terrorism as a political tool, which it most certainly is, and has been for a long time now.
Anyone with a smattering of history, and that does not include Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton for that matter, knows that terrorism was rampant in Europe before WWI and anyone with a memory of world events cannot forget the King David Hotel bombing, which was a terrorist attack carried out on Monday July 22, 1946 by the militant Zionist underground organization Irgun on the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, which was housed in the southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
In that act of terrorism, 91 people of various nationalities were killed and 46 were injured.
The hotel was the site of the central offices of the British Mandatory authorities of Palestine, principally the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine and the Headquarters of the British Armed Forces in Palestine and Transjordan.
According to history, that terrorist attack initially had the approval of the Haganah (the principal Jewish paramilitary group in Palestine) and it was conceived as a response to Operation Agatha (a series of widespread raids, including one on the Jewish Agency, conducted by the British authorities) and was the deadliest directed at the British during the Mandate era (1920–1948).
Disguised as Arabs, the Irgun planted a bomb in the basement of the main building of the hotel, whose southern wing housed the Mandate Secretariat and a few offices of the British military headquarters.
The explosion caused the collapse of the western half of the southern wing of the hotel.
Some of the inflicted deaths and injuries occurred in the road outside the hotel and in adjacent buildings.
As we with working memories that bombing inflamed public opinion in Britain, and editorials in British newspapers argued that the bombing deflated statements by the government that it had been winning against the Jewish paramilitaries, with the Manchester Guardian arguing that “British firmness” inside Palestine had brought about more terrorism and worsened the situation in the country, the opposite effect that the government had intended.
So how about that, people?
As to Communist terrorism, that term describes terrorism carried out in the advancement of, or by groups who adhere to, communism or related ideologies, such as Leninism, Maoism, or Marxism-Leninism.
With respect to just how long terrorism has been around as a political concept, in the 1930s, the term “communist terrorism” was used by the Nazi Party in Germany as part of a propaganda campaign to spread fear of communism with the Nazis blaming communist terrorism for the Reichstag fire, which they used as an excuse to push through legislation removing personal freedom from German citizens.
Then in the 1940s and 1950s, various Southeast Asian countries, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, witnessed the rise of communist groups engaging in terrorism, which was to get us involved in the quagmire of the Viet Nam war.
Staying with history here, in the 1960s, the Sino–Soviet split (between two communist states) led to a marked increase in terrorist activity in the region and of relevance and importance to this discussion, that decade also saw various terrorist groups commencing operations in Europe, Japan, and the Americas, with Yonah Alexander, an author and lecturer who specializes in terrorism who received his PhD from Columbia University, an MA from the University of Chicago (MA), and his BA from Roosevelt University of Chicago, deeming these groups Fighting Communist Organizations (FCOs), and telling us they rose out of the student union movement protesting against the Vietnam War.
Hello, Hillary Clinton!
The founders of these FCOs argued that violence was necessary to achieve their goals, and that peaceful protest was both ineffective and insufficient to attain them.
With respect to Communist terrorism, which is what got us mired down in VEET NAM, Lenin of Communist Russia supported terror as a tool, and considered mass terror to be a strategic and efficient method for advancing revolutionary goals.
According to Trotsky, Lenin emphasized the absolute necessity of terror and as early as 1904, Lenin said, “The dictatorship of the proletariat is an absolutely meaningless expression without Jacobin coercion.”
Author Joan Witte contends that Stalin opposed the use of terrorism as a mindless act but endorsed its use in order to advance the communist revolution, while Chaliand and Blin contend that Lenin advocated mass terror but objected to disorderly, unorganized, or petty acts of terrorism.
According to author Richard Drake, Lenin had abandoned any reluctance to use terrorist tactics by 1917, believing that all resistance to communist revolution should be met with maximum force.
Getting to Viet Nam, during World War II the communist Viet Minh fought a guerilla campaign led by Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese occupation forces and, following Japan’s surrender, against the French colonial forces with that insurgency continuing until 1954 as the Vietminh evolved into the Vietcong (VC), which fought against both the South Vietnamese government and American forces.
According to history, these campaigns involved terrorism resulting in the deaths of thousands, and although an armistice was signed between the Viet Minh and the French forces in 1954, terrorist actions continued.
Author Carol Winkler has written that in the 1950s, Viet Cong terrorism was rife in South Vietnam, with political leaders, provincial chiefs, teachers, nurses, doctors, and members of the military being targeted, and between 1965 and 1972, Vietcong terrorists had killed over 33,000 people and abducted a further 57,000.
Terrorist actions in Saigon were described by Nghia M. Vo as “long and murderous.”
In these campaigns, South Vietnamese prime minister Trần Văn Hương was the target of an assassination attempt; in 1964 alone, the Vietcong carried out 19,000 attacks on civilian targets.
In May 1967, Dr. Tran Van-Luy reported to the World Health Organization “that over the previous 10 years Communist terrorists had destroyed 174 dispensaries, maternity homes and hospitals,” and author Ami Pedahzur has written that “the overall volume and lethality of Vietcong terrorism rivals or exceeds all but a handful (e.g. Algeria, Sri Lanka) of terrorist campaigns waged over the last third of the twentieth century,” and that the VC used suicide terrorism as a form of propaganda of the deed.
So think about it, people?
Where are we going?
And where have we been?
And is there any connection between the two?
Think it over well, because there are a lot of young people in this country who would like to know.
andy zahn says
But…Do we EVER learn??? Paul Plante, you mentioned the Chosin event & here again our troops didn’t even have the clothing, insullated boots & good mittens that such unreal cold weather requires. Ollie North, a great American patriot & hero had a show about our paratroopers & got into the Korean “Police Action” with the weather in Korea at the reservoir that day being some 115 below zero. At Ft Benning I was miserable cold with my issue leather gloves, fatigues & combat boots and it was about 30 above zero with 3″ of snow. In Alaska we suffered no frostbite at 65 below & maybe even colder during “Operation Moosehorn” for 10 days at Ft Greely. At times my feet felt very cold but that’s a good sign, they are NOT frozen & I found the straps on my ski poles cut off blood to my hands so I quit carrying the poles. All winter long we were out on skis most every day with several over-nighters. I see some Marines are now in Norway learning to fight in an arctic environment & I don’t know why Ft Wainright or Ft Greely isn’t good enough!
I got to attend the Arctic Indoctrination summer & winter courses & the comandant was Lt Col Nielson who was 10th Mountain in WW II. Clearly, we were training with mountain climbing & skiing in the tradition of the 10th Inf Div. He later became my battalion commander, I was his S-3, a great officer & a good friend.
All of the frostbite & amputations at Chosin were so unnecessary. We SHOULD have learned from WW II when we sent trops to the Aleutions to fight the invading Japanese in the wrong clothing & naturally got the same terrible results.
Back around 1957 most police departments and the Military Police got rid of their motorcycles becaus a large number of police were getting killed or badly hurt in accidents. At Ft Lewis the 296th MP Company, the base MP’s, had some beautiful bikes. I was MP duty officer & got a call that two of our bikes were wrecked out at Yakima, Wa. They had been at the Fort but were sold & it was not my problem.
After all the bad experience with motorcycles I see them appearing again in many places. An MP friend in civilian life was a motorcycle cop in Atlanta & they are a great bunch of guys with real pride in their appearance & skill but a Harley against a 4 x 4 is no match.
On Dec 7, 1941 we were caught with a tiny peace-time Army & Navy and here we go AGAIN! We just never learn! I don’t recall the numbers but I heard something like this: “At one time we had 300 ships & 50 admirals & now we have 50 ships & 300 admirals.” The numbers are not correct but the general way of things is. The “old” Army was triangular meaning 3 squads made a platoon, 3 platoons a company, 3 companies a batalion, etc. Actually it was more like 4 with 3 rifle platoons & one weapons platoon; 3 rifle companies & a weapons company plus a Headquarters Company at the battalion level & then up to regiment, division, corps & army. Around 1957 they went to the “pentomic” concept with 5 as the new number. Now we had “battle groups” & brigade, more or less instead of regiments & divisions. A lot of brigades & each commanded by a one star general; a brigadeer general. Lots of generals. Lots of chiefs.
With regiments & divisions we had TRADITION. Great histories & in many cases outstanding leaders; quite a few who became presidents. The 69th Inf Regt, the Fighting 69th of the NY National Guard. The 3rd Inf Regt at the Tomb of the Unknown & at Arlington Nat Cemetary, at Washington, DC. My old regt, the 4th Inf. My dad’s division, the Blue & Grey’ the 29th, made up of northern & southern guard units in WW I. My two divisions; the Red Circle Div; the 71st from N & S Dakota guard units & the 4th Inf Div, the Ivy Div using a four leaf ivy for it’s shoulder patch.
Tradition. The Army had great uniforms during & after WW II & then for whatever reason it wasn’t good enough. In 1958 my uniforms, which I paid for out of pocket, became obsolete & I would need to buy everyrhing new. This was a part of why I resigned & left the Army. The Navy & Marine Corps have beautiful uniforms which have basically stayed the same over many long years which shows good sense on their parts. This new beret is the pits! Have they forgotten why hats have bills? It’s to keep the sun out of your eyes, stupid. Besides, we are not French! The overseas cap, the piss cutter, was nice because you could fold it & put it under your belt & as a paratrooper it was nice to brag with a glider on the hat. The same with the green beret for Special Forces.
andy zahn says
For those of us who had the honor to serve our country; it’s like we earned a Master’s Degree in a subject called perhaps “Real Life” or maybe “Paying for what we have been GIVEN”.
For those who simply got out of school, one way or another, thre’s a whole lot they don’t know, never were taught and never will no.
There is a whole lot of training by great instructors, a whole lot of discipline & a whole lot of very serious responsibility on very young shoulders.
You are not only expected to perform all assigned tasks in a highly professional & exceptional manner; it is demanded you do so.
All of what you did, the people you worked with, good & bad, the wepons you learned about, fired & qualified with, the ammunitio & explosives you handled, the strange jobs you were given & how you came up with a solution, the places you were sent where you were very unhappy & bored, the weather extremes, snakes & mosquitoes, snow, rain & mud.
Just like all of your experiences, your time in service is a laarge part of your memory bank, maybe more than most, because it involved life or death.
Paul Plante says
But do we EVER learn?
Perhaps some do, andy zahn.
But what really is there to learn?
For most people, including those who have fought in them, war is an abstraction, where abstraction is defined as the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events.
If you have never been in a war, then you really have no way of dealing with the events, so it remains nothing more than an idea, and if you have been in a war, the only events you can really deal with are miniscule in comparison to the totality of war, itself.
Take Viet Nam, for example.
I have a map of the United States with Viet Nam superimposed on it, and Viet Nam stretches from the Great Lakes up around Michigan down to the Gulf of Mexico around Louisiana.
I was north and west from Saigon, out near the Cambodian border.
I have talked to Marines who were up near the DMZ, far to the north of where I was, and other than common things like the mud and the heat, you would think we had been in two totally different countries, which in essence we were, just as south Arkansas is not Kansas, and California is neither.
As to a fire fight, I don’t know about anyone else, but I have found them to be highly personal events where despite the fact that there might be others around you, you are very much in your own personal space, experiencing only what you are experiencing.
So how does one learn from that?
And how does that serve to teach any lessons?
Some 2500 years ago, in China, a nation with a lot of history of war, a man I have come to consider as wise said “The fruits of war is a harvest of thorns,” but for whom?
Without direct experience of a battleground after the battle, how do you gain an appreciation of what a “harvest of thorns” really is?
As to learning from war, which I don’t see happening any time soon, as we slip further and further into the quagmire in the Middle East created by the witless and inept Barack Hussein Obama and his Cleopatra, Hillary Rodham Clinton in their effort to oust Bashar Assad from power in Syria using an army of mercenaries who are now well-armed terrorists run out of control, perhaps we should pause to reflect on how people on the “other side” perceived it, and here I am referring to a piece of purplish-colored paper that I have had in my possession since about March or so of 1969, a piece of paper that I actually picked up in South Viet Nam from a bamboo stake in the ground alongside a road we were patrolling in 1969, and this is what it says:
“WHY AND FOR WHOM ARE YOU TEN THOUSAND MILES FROM HOME?”
“G.I.’S!”
“No one of you could be so easy as to believe that for the sake of America’s security, the U.S. Government has had to send more than half a million of expeditionary troops to occupy South Viet Nam, ten thousand miles away and with the surface equal to 1/50 of that of the U.S.!”
“Nobody could believe that the USA , such a big and strong and prosperous country, is defending JUSTICE and FREEDOM with the use of toxic chemicals, B.52’s to devastate villages and land, to massacre the peace loving people of Viet Nam!”
“Why has the U.S. ruling circle sent you over here?”
“Because they want much dollar profit from the Viet Nam war.”
“They least care the hardship and danger overburdening you day after day in Viet Nam battlefield.”
“They least care about the longing and worry of your loved parents, wives and children and sweethearts across the Pacific.”
“G.I.’S!”
“Don’t let the selfish, war-like ruling group waste your lives and make you tools of benefit.”
“Demand an immediate end to the war, the restoration of peace and your home-coming for family reunion.”
end quotes
That is one side.
On the other was as follows:
“THE WAY TO AN HONORABLE SETTLEMENT FOR THE US”
“Both Johnson and Nixxon deem it necessary to “Des-Americanize” the Viet Nam war and to seek an honorable settlement for the U.S.”
“But in reality, they continue to blacken the image of America, to drive you out to kill and to be killed needlessly.”
“The Vietnamese people deeply love and desire peace, but peace in genuine Independence and Freedom.”
“So long as Viet Nam is still faced with aggression, the Vietnamese people are determined to fight against it.”
“For the U.S., the way to an honorable settlement is to withdraw all American and satellite troops out of Viet Nam, to let the Vietnamese people settle their own affairs themselves.”
“G.I.’S!”
“Stand up positively to preserve the interests and honor of American people.”
“Resolutely oppose all operations!”
“Demand that the US government end this war at once; restore peace and repatriate the US expeditionary troops immediately.”
end quotes
March, 1969!
A NOBLE WAR, andy zahn!
Except the Vietnamese did not see it quite that way, and so, we killed them!
And somehow, at least according to Washington, D.C., this killing made them better people!
Or maybe, this killing made Viet Nam a better place, without any people in it!
Hhhhhmmm!
Maybe, after all these years, I’ve finally got it!
If everybody in the world but the Washingtonians are dead, it will be a better place!
Ahhh, epiphany!
So, it is possible to learn from war, afterall, isn’t it.
Paul Plante says
And getting back to Chas Cornweller on March 13, 2017 at 2:12 pm in connection with this thread, as his words on that date at that time were really the impetus for this stream of consciousness in this thread on VEET NAM as an experience in the lives of what are known among the Poly Sci dudes and dudettes as the “political or sovereign people” of this nation, if it in fact is one, and whether we as a people are capable of learning anything at all from our prior actions as a nation, assuming that we ever have been one, versus a collection of people with nothing in common who can’t get along with each other, this is part of what Chas Cornweller said on that date to trigger this train of thought:
I was a paperboy in nineteen seventy.
end quotes
Yes, people, just that!
That is what started this train of thought in here, such a simple thought as that – in 1970, a young American named Chas Cornweller was free to be a paper boy in this country, with all that means, at the same time I was coming back to a very hostile place full of real ugly faces of people spitting at me because I went to war to preserve a peaceful future for Chas Cornweller, or on the other hand, screaming at me to “love it or leave it,” if I at all dared to question their glorious and noble war in VEET NAM.
Which takes us back to the question which is never asked: why were people like me so stupid as to take ourselves down to the recruiting station in 1967, when the **** in VEET NAM was really into the fan blades pretty good with the meatgrinder over there going pretty near full tilt, to enlist in a combat arm that was sure to be a direct pipeline right into the maw of that same meatgrinder?
As I am asked periodically, whatever possessed you, and that answer in its most basic form would boil down to, “so Chas Cornweller would have the chance for a happy childhood and the liberty to be a paper boy in his own community.”
How about that for lofty goals, eh?
I didn’t go to war in VEET NAM to defeat terrorism, precisely because it is war in the first place which breeds terrorism.
Fighting a war to defeat terrorism is just like fornicating to preserve chastity.
You have to be a mindless moron to think or believe that you can fight a war against terrorism.
But that is so us, isn’t it?
And I didn’t go to VEET NAM to fight world communism, either, because communism is an idea, people, and you can’t make war on ideas.
And besides, while I was in VEET NAM, fighting to preserve my own continued existence before anything else, as selfish as that might sound, the principles of world communist domination were being taught right here in the United States of America by a man named Saul David Alinsky, January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972, who was an American community organizer and writer generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, who is often noted for his 1971 book “Rules for Radicals.”
According to our own American history, Alinsky’s ideas were adapted in the 1960s by some U.S. college students and other young counterculture-era organizers, including then just plain Hillary Rodham, later to be Hillary Clinton, who used them as part of their strategies for organizing on campus and beyond.
In 1970, the year I returned to here, or more properly, got to here, Time magazine wrote that “It is not too much to argue that American democracy is being altered by Alinsky’s ideas.”
In 1969, the year I was in VEET NAM, supposedly fighting off the RED COMMIE hordes over there, Hillary Clinton, while a political science major at elite Wellesley College, chose to write her senior thesis on Alinsky’s work, calling him therein the “exemplary conflict advocate” who dismissed consensus theorists:
“One thing we instill in all our organizers is that old Spanish Civil War slogan: ‘Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.'”
“Social scientists don’t like to think in those terms.”
“They would rather talk about politics being a matter of accommodation, consensus – and not this conflict business.”
“This is academic drivel.”
“How do you have consensus before you have conflict?”
“There has got to be a rearrangement of power and then you get consensus.”
end quotes
There has got to be a rearrangement of power!
Think on that a moment, people, for that is exactly what was going on in VEET NAM – that philosophy was being acted on by the Vietnamese people in real time, with real guns, since in that model, as Chairman Mao well knew, power comes from the muzzle of a gun and nowhere else, which ironically and incidentally, is the model employed by the founding fathers of this nation when they divorced themselves from their former king.
“Let it be remembered that there are no large plains for the two armies to meet in and decide the conquest….”
“The circumstances of our country put it in our power to evade a pitched battle.}
“It will be better policy to harass and exhaust the soldiery by frequent skirmishes and incursions than to take the open field with them, by which means they would have the full benefit of their superior regularity skills.”
Who said those words, people?
If you answer Alexander Hamilton in a scathing 84-page essay published in 1775 in response to “A Full Vindication to the Measures of the Congress,” an essay written by Samuel Seabury, a bishop in the Episcopal Church and American loyalist who opposed the liberty movement in the American Colonies, and Ho Chi Minh, who learned about American history while baking Parker House rolls at the famous Parker House Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts in 1912-1913, or Võ Nguyên Giáp, a general in the Vietnam People’s Army and a politician considered one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century who first grew to prominence during World War II, where he served as the military leader of the Viet Minh resistance against the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, you would be dead on the money.
As noted author and military scholar H.R. McMaster tells us at pp.33,34 of “Dereliction of Duty – Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, AND THE LIES THAT LED TO VIET NAM”:
Ho (Chi Minh) seemed to personify Vietnam’s experience with French colonialism.
His time in the west had left a deep impression on him, yet he retained his native identity and pleasant appearance.
He had studied and appropriated the ideas that had sparked revolutions in America and France in the eighteenth century as well as in Russia in 1917.
end quotes
As to Alinsky in this country, the “exemplary conflict advocate” who dismissed consensus theorists, he told people in this country like Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama in his 1971 book “Rules for Radicals” at p. 10 as follows:
“A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists.”
“From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage — the political paradise of communism.”
end quotes
Ah, yes, people, the political paradise of communism is coming to an American city near you real soon, just as soon as the capitalists can be defeated, of course, to put an end to capitalism in order to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at the head of it.
And that, people, is precisely what we were at war against over there in VEET NAM at the very same time that philosophy was being preached over here by one of us.
How is that for technicolor absurdity for you?
Ideas, people, can you fight ideas with bombs and napalm?
Now, again according to history, years later when Hillary Clinton became First Lady, based upon a White House request, the school did not make the thesis publicly available, but since I just quoted out of it above here, Hillary didn’t do a very good job of totally suppressing it and it can be found online right here: https://nukegingrich.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/hillaryclintonthesis.pdf
But my goodness, enough of Hillary Clinton.
Getting back to authentic reality in here, yes, people, I must confess: I enlisted in the U.S. Army and went to Viet Nam simply so a young person here in America named Chas Cornweller could be a paper boy in his home town, and so he could have an opportunity, just like I had an opportunity, despite being born in a state of relative poverty, to be all he could possibly make himself into being.
And that takes us to the rest of what Chas Cornweller said on March 13, 2017 at 2:12 pm, to wit:
I did not experience the heat, the smells, the damp or the culture of that country.
I only read about it.
I only saw the nightly news and heard the adults lamenting over whose child was being sent up next.
First, thank you for your service.
Secondly, I believe that war was wrong.
I am sorry, but you were used.
You could have died.
And for what?
end quotes
For what, Chas Cornweller?
How about so that you would have a chance to grow up in a state of peace to be the person you are today?
Is that a good enough reason, does anyone think?
I did, anyway.
If I was wrong, could someone please show me how that was?
Paul Plante says
“It is as if history is being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light.”
end quotes
Yes, people, if you have the right vantage point, for in life, proper positioning is always essential for continued existence, or at least it was in the bamboo when the **** was hitting the fan over there in VEET NAM, where we had carried our religious crusade to install democracy in the country, whether those people wanted it or not, you can see how exactly true that statement actually is, as well as being scientifically feasible and possible.
And how could it be false, people?
I mean, look who it was that said it, and to do that, we simply go to that quote being attributed to Laurence Henry “Larry” Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University who also works with the firm Massey & Gail LLP on a variety of matters, a liberal scholar of constitutional law and cofounder of American Constitution Society, who is the author of American Constitutional Law (1978), a major treatise in that field, and who has argued before the United States Supreme Court 36 times, in the Guardian newspaper where he is seen telling MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show “It is as if history is being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light.”
And you know what, people?
It is, which is why we are all in here at the same time inside the domain of the Cape Charles Mirror, a discrete and distinct electron cloud in CYBERSPACE that we are all a part of, talking about VEET NAM, and the COMMIES, and dominoes falling, and people who call themselves liberals spitting at returning Viet Nam veterans and IMMIGRATION POLICY and the nation, or at least the Trump administration, and everyone who voted for it, being under the control of the Russians, who absolutely hate the guts of Hillary Clinton, who stole Ukraine away from them, and so the Russians fixed this latest presidential election by manipulating public opinion over here through their lackey James Comey of our FBI , who made us think that Hillary Clinton was crooked and a liar, which then cost her the election, notwithstanding she got more popular votes than Trump did, which means if the Russians really did rig the election, they did it by tampering with the electoral college.
Anyway, enough about Hillary Clinton losing the election.
In my opinion, not being a subject or lackey of the Russians, having been taught in the U.S. Army before going to VEET NAM about torture and COMMIE brain-washing techniques that were used so very effectively on American Korean War POWs captured by North Korea or China after it entered the war, Hillary lost that election all by herself. so suck it up, Hillary, and endeavor to persevere.
Getting back to “It is as if history is being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light” in connection with this thread on VEET NAM as a national experience that affected the lives of a multitude of people, not just me, and Russian influence in our presidential politics today, as a result of us losing the fight against global COMMIE-nism in VEET NAM, in the Soldier’s Handbook I was issued by the United States Army in 1968, on page 4, there was this strong message to us soldiers as to why it was we were serving in uniform in a time of war back then:
Today, communism is the major threat to our nation.
end quotes
That was given to me in January of 1968 by the United States Army in Tiger Land at Ft. Polk in Louisiana, and in training, we had classes on COMMIE-nism, given as how we were supposedly on our way to VEET NAM to stop its global expansion before it could get to here.
And just as Chas Cornweller says above here, we got used and yes, America, did we ever get used, and at the same time, America got rid of some excess population and some people made a whole lot of money off that war, and generals got stars they wouldn’t have gotten in peacetime, so for some, us being used worked out well for them, and that, people, in a capitalist society like ours, that is the way it is supposed to be.
For there to be progress, some have to be hurt,
Getting back to the Soldier’s Handbook in 1968:
This threat is the primary reason for the Army to constantly train men as part of the U.S. fighting force.
Your training and eventual performance of duty with a unit is a vital part of this Nation’s defense.
end quote
With respect to us being used, and big time, with this blather in 1968 about “Today, communism is the major threat to our nation,” and irony dangling off reality like so many clusters of ripe grapes in here to cement for all of us reading these words the fact that the joke in fact had been on us, those who thought they were dying to defend this nation against an invasion of COMMIE hordes, and their ally, Panama Red, in 1971, just three years after the U.S. Army told me and many others that COMMIE-nism was a major threat to this nation, a man right here in this nation, the United States of America, an “exemplary conflict advocate” who dismissed consensus theorists in the words of then just plain Hillary Rodham in her 1969 thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree under the Special Honors Program, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts and entitled “THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT – An Analysis of the Alinsky Model,” was telling people in this country like Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama in his 1971 book “Rules for Radicals” at p. 10 as follows:
“A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists.”
“From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage — the political paradise of communism.”
end quotes
Let a hundred flowers bloom, people, let a hundred schools contend.
While we were crawling around in the mud over there in VEET NAM and getting the **** shot out of us as infantrymen in a vain and futile effort to stomp out COSVN to end the spread of the IRON CURTAIN and global COMMIE-nism, which was threatening to take away the birthdays of all the American people and turn them into God-hating atheists, over here, COMMIE-nism’s supposedly pernicious message about the “political paradise of communism” had gone mainstream in Middle Class America as can be seen in an October 25, 1968 letter to then just plain Hillary Rodham, before she and Bill became the power duo they are today, from Saul D. Alinsky, the author of “Rules For Radicals,” wherein he wrote to our very own Hillary as follows:
Dear Miss Rodham:
The Industrial Areas Foundation has announced the establishment of the Training Institute to be based in Chicago, Illinois.
The reason for the Institute is the appalling dearth of persons who know how to organize in and for a free and open society.
Lacking these trained competent political literates the entire field of citizen organization is one-tenth fact and nine-tenths wishful thinking.
Keeping in mind that three-fourths of America is middle class, a new and long overdue emphasis of the Institute will be placed on the development of organizers for middle class society.
end quotes
According to the fact sheet he sent to our very own Hillary, who is loved by everybody in the world but for the Russians, the training institute was for the development of mass power based organizations here in the USA with a training period of fifteen months with the tuition (1968) for the fifteen month period being $15,000 and living expenses being another $5,000 to $6,500, which was serious money back in 1968.
As to the requirements, one needed approval after screening by Institute representatives in terms of personality criteria essential to the development of an organizer, which approval would be for admission for the first ninety days after which students would be advised whether or not they could become professional organizers, and their experience indicated that the odds may be as high as 50% washout.
end quotes
That at the same time that Country Joe and the Fish were singing:
Well, come on generals, let’s move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Now you can go out and get those reds
‘Cause the only good commie is the one that’s dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we’ve blown ’em all to kingdom come.
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
YAHOO, people, and so it was to be – the road not taken, I wonder where it would have gone, but alas, oh well, I didn’t take it, so I’ll never know.
Which fast-forwards us to today, and the fact that Washington, D.C. is now overrun with Russians, who are now in control of the White House without having had to fire a shot to get there, and a poignant, touching immigration story from our times today entitled “Former KGB agent turned American dishes on Russian spies” by Larry Rulison in the Albany, New York Times Union on March 24, 2017, wherein was stated:
Jack Barsky, the former KGB agent who was living in Rensselaer County in 2015 when he outed himself on ’60 Minutes,’ is back in the region promoting his new memoir and has some interesting things to say about Russia and the KGB.
Barsky, who now lives with his wife and daughter in Georgia, spoke to the Times Union Friday morning about living as a spy in the United States and later working with the FBI, which apprehended him in 1997 but never sought to charge him.
end quotes
This KGB dude lived fairly close to me up here in New York state, actually, and that was around the time that Hillary was U.S. senator from New York.
So there is nothing at all new about Russian and KGB influence here in the USA.
Getting back to the TU article:
Barsky also talked about allegations that the Russian government and its leader Vladimir Putin tried to influence the U.S. election and how press leaks and the very public investigation impacts the intelligence services in the U.S.
Barsky was originally recruited by the KGB when he was living in East Germany and was sent to the United States in the 1970s to infiltrate the U.S. political and business sectors.
He ended up being deactivated by the Soviets in the 1980s but refused to come home as he was ordered.
He is now an American citizen.
end quote
Now, look at that, people, as living proof that here in the United States of America, we have a very liberal, progressive immigration policy in place when we can embrace a KGB agent and make him one of us to share with him the paradise of capitalism that we are blessed with as exceptional people.
Getting back to the TU:
Barsky was asked if he still has to report to the FBI, and he said that was no longer the case — although he added that the FBI wants to know if he travels abroad.
The reason may surprise you and shows that after decades of having left the KGB, Barsky still lives under a shadow of uncertainty.
“They want to make sure I’m being protected,” Barsky said.
end quote
My goodness, people, how that touches my heart, that our FBI wants to make sure this Russian KGB agent is being protected by our U.S. government, and it makes me think with the welcome he got that I would have been better off coming here as a KGB agent as opposed to a Viet Nam veteran.
As the TU tells it:
Barsky said about three weeks ago he met a former KGB counter-intelligence chief who is now living in the United States, and that conversation sheds some light on why the FBI would worry about Barsky’s travels.
“He’s a very powerful man (the former KGB chief he met with), and he’s been in the U.S. now because he had a run-in with Putin.”
“He’s under a 15-year jail sentence in Russia if he ever goes back.”
“So I met this guy, and I don’t go there, but I’m pretty sure he probably signed some death sentences in his time to take care of defectors.”
“He categorically stated that, at least in his time, they never harmed anybody while they were still on U.S. territory.”
“They tried to get them out, lure them either back to Russia or maybe just to Mexico.”
“They didn’t want to get the U.S. even more annoyed and angry than they already were.”
end quote
What he is saying, people, is that the FBI is not surprised that the Russians are here, because they have always known.
So what is all this hoopla we are getting from Congress and the media today, then, about Russian interference, which the FBI has been aware of for years?
And why were sent to VEET NAM to fight COMMIE-nism when it was here all along?
If anyone can riddle me that, please do.
Paul Plante says
And getting back to “it is as if history is being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light,” because in all truth, we cannot escape it, being now caught up in its gravitational pull as we are, some type of rent in the fabric of the space-time continuum, which, incidentally is curvi-linear, which does allow time to loop around and come back on itself without violating any laws of nature, and so, we might as well go with its flow to see where it might be taking us, since I don’t think we are all going to the same place when something like that is happening, but who really does know, in one of those cosmic confluences of events that seem to happen in here with some degree of frequency, likely due to its location on a north-south running piece of land with water on both sides, which again would violate no laws of science that I am aware of, MARKETWATCH recently had an article entitled “Baby boomers ruined America, according to this Generation X author” by Jillian Berman, published: April 3, 2017, wherein was stated:
Millennials have a reputation for being entitled, self-absorbed and lazy, but a new book argues that their parents are actually a bigger danger to society.
end quotes
Now, I am not sure exactly who that dude happens to be talking about, but in many ways, it seems to resemble people like me who are called Boomers, those of us born at the close of WWII and thus caused a baby boom in the USA, and hence the name Boomer, and since it does, I thought it relevant to this discussion because just a little bit ago, in another thread in here, a young, well-intentioned and well-spoken gentleman named Mike made a very similar claim, which was then in essence backed up by Chas Cornweller who was a paperboy here in America when I returned here, or more properly, arrived here from Viet Nam many years ago in 1970, and who has since made himself a respected member of the community here in the USA, which truthfully makes going to Viet Nam to protect his right to do that worth doing.
Getting back to MARKETWATCH:
In “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Boomers Betrayed America,” Bruce Cannon Gibney traces many of our nation’s most pressing issues, including climate change and the rising cost of education, back to baby boomers’ idiosyncrasies and enormous political power.
end quotes
Enormous political power?
HUH?
Where is this dude coming up with that myth?
What political power did we have, ever?
I certainly have none, which is a point that none other than Obama-Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, now a Supreme Court justice, made to my face back in 2005 when she was a justice of the federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City in a matter involving a violation of what I mistakenly thought would be my civil rights, if only I had been a part of the right minority here in America.
And getting back to MARKETWATCH:
Raised in an era of seemingly unending economic prosperity with relatively permissive parents, and the first generation to grow up with a television, baby boomers developed an appetite for consumption and a lack of empathy for future generations that has resulted in unfortunate policy decisions, argues Gibney, who is in his early 40s.
(That makes him Generation X.)
end quotes
For the record, this Gibney dude is about thirty (30) years younger than I am, and you know what – it shows, because the dude does not have a clue as to what he is talking about, as can plainly be seen in this following statement of his:.
“These things conditioned the boomers into some pretty unhelpful behaviors and the behaviors as a whole seem sociopathic,” he said.
end quotes
Now maybe somebody in America back then had permissive parents and you would have to suspect just as a matter of chance there would be some, or at least could be some, but that was not the case in my house, where incidentally, we did not have a TV until some years later and then, it only got snow and ghosts most of the time on the one channel offered, so I never really watched the thing.
As to who this poor misguided dude really is, or perhaps deluded, Bruce Gibney is listed in WIKIPEDIA as an American writer and venture capitalist, which means people, that here is a dude in the know and on the go, whereas I am just an old person in America who is sadly consigned to being a member of a reviled generation raised in an era of seemingly unending economic prosperity with relatively permissive parents, and being a member of the first generation to grow up with a television, I am also a member of a reviled generation which developed an appetite for consumption and a lack of empathy for future generations like Mike’s and this Gibney dude’s, because as he says, and being a venture capitalist, he must know, that has resulted in unfortunate policy decisions because these things conditioned my generation into some pretty unhelpful behaviors and the behaviors as a whole seem sociopathic.
WOW, people, how is that for being psychoanalyzed in five minutes or less!
Except, people, if you read authentic American history, as opposed to the inauthentic reality this Gibney dude is creating in his book about my generation, you know that Americans have had an appetite for consumption going right back to this nation’s first days as a nation, and it was an appetite for consumption which was a factor in the Great Depression, as is made clear in an essay entitled “Causes of the Great Depression” by Sarah Carroll, wherein we are informed as follows:
Throughout the 1920’s, new industries and new methods of production led to prosperity in America.
America was able to use its great supply of raw materials to produce steel, chemicals, glass, and machinery that became the foundation of an enormous boom in consumer goods (Samuelson, 2).
end quotes
How about that, people, way back in 1929, long before my generation was even born, there was an enormous boom in consumer goods, because you know what, people – those times were called the Roaring Twenties because those people alive back then were born in an era of seemingly unending economic prosperity with relatively permissive parents, and as a result, those people developed an appetite for consumption and a lack of empathy for future generations like mine which resulted in unfortunate policy decisions because these things conditioned their generation into some pretty unhelpful behaviors and the behaviors as a whole seem sociopathic, as can be seen in this following from that same essay:
Many US citizens invested on the stock market, speculating to make a quick profit.
This great prosperity ended in October 1929.
People began to fear that the boom was going to end, the stock market crashed, the economy collapsed and the United States entered a long depression.
end quotes
How is that for sociopathic behavior, people?
Getting back to the essay:
The Great Depression of the thirties remains the most important economic event in American history.
It caused enormous hardship for tens of millions of people and the failure of a large fraction of the nation’s banks, businesses, and farms.
end quotes
I am frankly curious what my generation did that could rival that.
Getting back to the essay:
The 1920’s may have been prosperous for some Americans, but the growing prosperity was actually weakening the economy.
Many US citizens were never participating in the boom from the start.
There were some wealthy individuals, but 60% of people were living below the poverty line.
The coal mining industry had expanded greatly, creating many jobs, but with the introduction of oil and gas, the production of coal was decreased along with the amount of jobs.
end quotes
Hey, is she talking about then?
Or is it now?
Or isn’t there really any difference at all?
Getting back to the essay, which should be required reading for everyone in this country before they get out of HS, we have:
On average, people’s wages stayed the same even as prices for these goods soared.
The factories and farms still continued to produce at the same rate, but demand for their products was decreasing.
As a result, more and more workers became unemployed, until 25% of the population was out of work.
All of these groups, being poorer than the rest of the country, could not afford to participate in the boom of the 1920’s.
There was a major unequal distribution of income that led to the richest 1% of Americans owning approximately 40% of the country’s wealth (Matthews, 2).
end quotes
Again, how much that sounds like today.
With respect to where we are right now today, the essay continues as follows:
The country entered the 1920’s with Warren G. Harding as president.
Harding was a Republican as well as a laissez-faire capitalist who advocated policies which reduced taxes and regulation, allowed monopolies to form, and allowed the inequality of wealth and income to reach record levels (Tanner, 3).
end quotes
For those who remember such things, it was that same Warren G. Harding that H. L. Mencken, the iconic iconoclast of the early 20th century, was referring to in a 1920 column, where Mencken asserted: “It seems to be quite impossible for any wholly literate man to pump up any genuine enthusiasm for either of them (Republican Warren G. Harding and Democrat James M. Cox).”
“… No one but an idiot would argue seriously that either candidate is a first-rate man, or even a creditable specimen of second-rate man.”
end quote
This is the same H.L. Mencken’ who wrote a column 96 years ago predicting that, “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Again, for those with memories, the 1920 election occurred against a backdrop of events similar in some ways to the American condition of the past several years, including racial strife, fear of terrorism and a growing trend toward isolationism following World War I.
In another column, Mencken denounced Harding’s 1921 inaugural speech, calling it “the worst English I have ever encountered.”
“It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean-soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights.”
“It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.”
“It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh.”
“It is rumble and bumble.”
“It is flap and doodle.”
“It is balder and dash.”
Mencken then declared that Harding’s comments were directed at “a great horde of stoneheads gathered around a stand … the sort of audience that the speaker has been used to all of his life, to wit, an audience of small town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly unable to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters.”
end quotes
And here, people, with that, I have to confess that I am laughing too hard to continue this, so here I will stop for the nonce, but please, stay tuned, don’t touch that dial, because with this story, there is much more to come, and as that more to come does come, we will see just how wrong this Gibney dude really is, although to be frank, I somehow doubt he will really care, as the book is selling like hotcakes, and for him, the royalties are rolling in, which in the self-absorbed America is what it really is all about, and people that is the way it is.
Paul Plante says
And in one of those quirky ironies that seem to abound in here since the ascension of reality TV star Donald Trump to the highest office in this land in January of this year, some 96 years or so after H.L. Mencken wrote a column predicting that, “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron,” in a Reuters story entitled “Islamic State says U.S. ‘being run by an idiot'” dated 4 April 2017, we were just informed of the possible fulfillment of that prophesy as follows:
Islamic State said on Tuesday the United States was drowning and “being run by an idiot”.
In the first official remarks by the group referring to President Donald Trump since he took office, spokesman Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer said:
“America you have drowned and there is no saviour, and you have become prey for the soldiers of the caliphate in every part of the earth, you are bankrupt and the signs of your demise are evident to every eye.”
“… There is no more evidence than the fact that you are being run by an idiot who does not know what Syria or Iraq or Islam is,” he said in a recording released on Tuesday on messaging network Telegram.
“Die of spite America, die of spite, a nation where both young and old are racing to die in the name of God will not be defeated,” al-Muhajer said.
end quote
Now, how about that for a vivid example of history being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light?
That seems to epitomize it to a tee, does it not?
And that is not the only irony here, for in that same 1920 presidential election where Republican Warren G. Harding and Democrat James M. Cox were running, of whom H.L Mencken said, “No one but an idiot would argue seriously that either candidate is a first-rate man, or even a creditable specimen of second-rate man,” there also was a third candidate in the presidential race, that being none other than Eugene Debs, who was running for the fifth time as a Socialist from a federal prison cell where he was serving a 10-year sentence for violation of the Sedition Act of 1918 in his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I.
Of interest is the fact that Debs garnered 3.41 percent of the popular vote that year, despite being in federal prison, which is similar to the 3.3 percent Libertarian Gary Johnson got this time around.
That is of interest, the fact that Debs ran for president while in federal prison, as we hear all this blather today about who is best qualified to be an American president, which according to a recent New York Post article entitled “Joe Biden: ‘Do I regret not being president? Yes’” by Daniel Halper published March 31, 2017 4:46 p.m. ET, was Joe Biden this last time around:
Biden said last week he thinks he had a good shot at becoming the Democrats’ presidential candidate.
“I had a lot of data and I was fairly confident that if I were the Democratic Party’s nominee, I had a better-than-even chance of being president,” he added.
“But do I regret not being president?”
“Yes.”
“I was the best qualified.”
end quotes
What makes the Debs connection interesting, other than the fact that he proved that you can be qualified to run for U.S. president even if you are occupying a federal prison cell, is that in a post in another thread of mine on March 12, 2017 at 7:34 pm, Scott Wade, a highly respected professor of history down here in the Tidewater said:
What about the Espionage Act of 1918?
This was designed to stifle anti-war and labor activists, such as Eugene V. Debs, who went to prison under it.
end quotes
Keeping with our central theme in here of history being collapsed into a black hole and everything happening faster than the speed of light and an attempt by this Bruce Cannon Gibney in his book “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Boomers Betrayed America,” which is one of the greatest denunciations and blanket condemnations of a population segment since the National Socialists were coming into power in Germany in the 1930’s, to use “inauthentic reality” in an attempt to “invent American history on the fly” to satisfy his political needs of the moment, that is the very same Eugene Debs who told us as follows about ourselves as a people way back in 1907, long before my generation was ever even conceived of, in “Roosevelt and His Regime, to wit:
“The American people are more idolatrous than any ‘heathen’ nation on earth.”
“They worship their popular ‘heroes,’ while they last, with passionate frenzy, and with equal madness do they hunt down the sane ‘fools’ who vainly try to teach them sense.”
end quotes
When you read that, and consider Debs was speaking one hundred ten (110) years ago, you get the quite distinct impression that this Bruce Cannon Gibney dude, who is about thirty (30) years younger than I am, is lost in space when he lays blame for all of the problems in the world on my generation, telling us in the Marketwatch article quoted above that people like myself have been conditioned by a life of luxury and ease and permissiveness into some pretty unhelpful behaviors, which behaviors as a whole seem sociopathic.
As to encouraging consumption, it was long before my reviled generation was born, during the presidential campaign of 1928, that a circular published by the Republican Party claimed that if Herbert Hoover won, there would be “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”
And in “A Foreign Spectator X” by Nicholas Collin for the Independent Gazetteer way back on August 24, 1787, it was stated as follows with respect to love of luxury in this country, right at its very beginning:
In Europe, an established order of civil society prevents a general infection by luxury—the middle gentry does not emulate the first nobility; and is not rivaled by the yeomanry: such vanity would be ridiculous.
In America the maid too often vies with her mistress, and a common laborer can with propriety dress like a governor.
The question is not, whether other countries do not surpass America in avarice, luxury, and vanity; it is a poor consolation to a sick man, that his neighbour is worse.
The symptoms of corruption so feelingly described by many good and wise Americans are not trifling, and they are founded on open well-known facts.
end quotes
So yes, people, talk about “inauthentic reality” or an attempt to “invent American history on the fly to satisfy their political needs of the moment,” in this book “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Boomers Betrayed America” by American writer and venture capitalist Bruce Cannon Gibney, we have a full load of it, which somehow is not surprising at all, since we live in such a time of untruthfulness in this country today, where we have to suck down lies and falsehoods by the dozens to be considered a Good American today.
And when you look at the dude’s resume, you would think he would know better than to try and sail that malarkey of his past us old folks in here in his effort to convince us we are sociopaths because he says we are, which is horse crap.
As to encouraging a life of self-absorption and conspicuous consumption himself, according to Wikipedia, this Gibney dude started investing when his Stanford University roommate Ken Howery co-founded PayPal, the electronic payments company, and offered Gibney the chance to buy “friends and family” shares.
After investing in PayPal, Gibney worked as a litigator but was soon hired by Peter Thiel after Thiel sold PayPal to eBay in 2002.
Gibney worked at Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium, until 2008, making occasional private investments including in Palantir Technologies in 2005 and later in DeepMind, which was acquired by Google for around $450 million in 2014.
He then moved to Founders Fund, a venture capital fund started by Thiel.
Thiel and Founders Fund were the earliest outside investors in Facebook, SpaceX, Palantir, and made other investments including in AirBnB, Lyft, Spotify, and Stemcentrx, which AbbVie acquired for $10 billion a few years after Founders Fund’s investment.
The Gibney dude then began writing full-time in 2015, and his first book, the one under discussion in here, “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America,” made an attempt to link American stagnation to the baby boomers, characterizing my generation as being unusually prone to anti-social personality disorder, which Gibney believes unraveled the pro-social, pro-growth policies of mid-20th century America.
In his review in The Washington Post, Dana Milbank wrote that although Gibney overstated his case concerning the Boomers, “The core of Gibney’s argument, that the boomers are guilty of ‘generational plunder,’ is spot-on.”
“He accuses them of ‘the mass, democratically-sanctioned transfer of wealth away from the young and toward the Boomers,’ and he’s right.”
end quotes
But is he really, people?
If that is really so, then how come it is that disabled Viet Nam combat veterans like myself live in a relative state of poverty compared to the obviously well-to-do like venture capitalist Bruce Cannon Gibney?
Did we get on the wrong bus when we got back to here from Viet Nam?
Or what?
Paul Plante says
And getting back to that MARKETWATCH article entitled “Baby boomers ruined America, according to this Generation X author” by Jillian Berman, published: April 3, 2017, it is with this following sentence from that article that his house of cards collapses and the wheels come off venture capitalist Bruce Cannon Gibney’s specious premise that my generation was raised in an era of seemingly unending economic prosperity with relatively permissive parents, making it the first generation to grow up with a television, so that we developed an appetite for consumption and a lack of empathy for future generations that has resulted in unfortunate policy decisions, to wit:
Before the baby boomers came around, the so-called Greatest Generation came of age in a time of war and depression and learned firsthand the benefits of social solidarity and so they continued to invest in society throughout their lives, Gibney said.
end quotes
Do tell, Bruce Cannon Gibney, keeping in mind, people, that this Gibney dude is in his early forties, which makes him a child of the VEET NAM era, whether he is even cognizant of that, or not, as well as the child, most likely, of the same Boomers he condemns and denounces in his book “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America,” wherein he made an attempt to link American stagnation to the generation called the baby boomers, characterizing them, and myself, by extension, and his own parents most likely, as being unusually prone to anti-social personality disorder, which Gibney believes unraveled the pro-social, pro-growth policies of mid-20th century America.
Doing some real basic math here, people, we can readily see that this the so-called “Greatest Generation,” who the Gibney dude says came of age in a time of war and depression and learned firsthand the benefits of social solidarity, so that they supposedly continued to invest in society throughout their lives, were the parents of the baby boomers, the generation denounced by the Gibney dude as a “danger to society.”
So, okay, people, uh, how did that happen?
How did this so-called “Greatest Generation” who came of age in a time of war and depression and who learned firsthand the benefits of social solidarity, so that they supposedly continued to invest in society throughout their lives, end up raising a worthless bunch of sociopaths with a sense of entitlement that comes from growing up in a time of economic prosperity?
Why did this so-called “Greatest Generation,” which included my parents, and my teachers and all the WWII veterans I looked up to as a child, raise a generation that grew up with a television and accordingly, developed an appetite for consumption and a lack of empathy for future generations that has resulted in unfortunate policy decisions?
Why did they buy those televisions in the first place is a question this Gibney dude should be answering for us here?
Another question he should be answering, since we are on the subject of sociopathic behavior here, is how come, if this so-called “Greatest Generation” who came of age in a time of war and depression actually learned firsthand the benefits of social solidarity, so that they supposedly continued to invest in society throughout their lives, did they give my generation, their offspring, the VEET NAM war to go die in, for nothing but a pack of bright, shining lies?
The VEET NAM war is not an example of sociopathic behavior?
Give me a break, people.
When Country Joe and the Fish were singing these lines in “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag (Take 1),” back in the VEET NAM times which spawned this venture capitalist Gibney dude, they weren’t talking about sociopathic behavior by the Boomers, they were talking about members of the so-called “Greatest Generation”:
Yeah, come on Wall Street, don’t be slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go
There’s plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade,
Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.
And these were members of the so-called “Greatest Generation,” as well:
Well, come on generals, let’s move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Now you can go out and get those reds
‘Cause the only good commie is the one that’s dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we’ve blown ’em all to kingdom come.
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.
And these:
Come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, and don’t hesitate
To send your sons off before it’s too late.
You can be the first ones in your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
And it’s one, two, three
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.
end quotes
Except it wasn’t really all of us who were going to die.
Just some of us – the baby boomers, the offspring of the so-called so-called “Greatest Generation” who came of age in a time of war and depression and who learned firsthand the benefits of social solidarity, so that they supposedly continued to invest in society throughout their lives.
I wonder if this Gibney dude is aware of any of that, but you know what, people – he doesn’t need to be to write a book about things he doesn’t have a clue about.
Why?
Because nobody, outside of a handful of old-and-in-the-way dudes like myself, will know he is full of crap, nor will they likely care.
Because he is successful in the terms of how young people today see success, he is a venture capitalist, afterall, they will simply take him at his word and condemn an entire generation based on nothing more than that.
It relieves them, you see, of having to then take responsibility for themselves, since everything wrong today in America is our fault, not theirs, so they can do nothing about it, but cast blame for their troubles elsewhere, and in the meantime, the Gibney dude is laughing all the way to the bank.
Ah, yes, people, God bless America, ain’t it – land of the brave, home of the free, and the Statue of Liberty, as well.
And such it is in America today, people, such it is and so it goes.
Paul Plante says
And tying Eugene Debs, who in 1907, in the essay “Roosevelt and His Regime,” said “The American people are more idolatrous than any ‘heathen’ nation on earth, they worship their popular ‘heroes,’ while they last, with passionate frenzy, and with equal madness do they hunt down the sane ‘fools’ who vainly try to teach them sense,” into this thread on VEET NAM as an experience in the lives of the American people, even including this puffed-up venture capitalist Bruce Cannon Gibney who attempts in his book “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America” to link American stagnation to the generation called the baby boomers by characterizing them as being unusually prone to anti-social personality disorder, which Gibney believes unraveled the pro-social, pro-growth policies of mid-20th century America, consider that when Eugene Debs ran for U.S. president in 1920, he was serving a 10-year sentence for violation of the Sedition Act of 1918 in his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I.
Forty-nine (49) years later, in 1969, at the height of the Viet Nam war, for doing essentially the same thing as Eugene Debs, but this time opposing the Viet Nam war, instead of being imprisoned like Debs for sedition, our very own exceptional and special Hillary Clinton was to become a national symbol of her angry generation, and here, I am surprised that Debs advocate and esteemed Tidewater history professor Scott Wade has not come storming in here to protest an obvious double standard here.
Why was it okay, even admirable, for Hillary Clinton to oppose the Viet Nam war when it cost Debs ten years of his life when he opposed WWI?
According to WIKIPEDIA, Debs’ speeches against the Wilson administration and the war earned the enmity of President Woodrow Wilson, who later called Debs a “traitor to his country.”
On June 16, 1918, Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio, urging resistance to the military draft of World War I and subsequently, he was arrested on June 30 and charged with ten counts of sedition.
So why wasn’t Hillary Clinton charged with sedition in 1969?
And silly me for asking that question – it was because she was Hillary, who is special, for what other answer could there possibly be?
Getting back to Eugene Debs, at his trial, the defense called no witnesses, asking that Debs be allowed to address the court in his defense, which request was granted.
Debs spoke for two hours to no avail and he was found guilty on September 12.
At his sentencing hearing on September 14, Debs again addressed the court, and like Hillary’s famous 1969 Wellesley College commencement speech where Hillary famously told the nation and candid world that the “hollow men of anger and bitterness” and the “bountiful ladies of righteous degradation” all must be left to a bygone age, referring therein to the members of the so-called “greatest generation” which had gifted Hillary’s generation with the burden of the Viet Nam war, and “the purpose of history is to provide a receptacle for all those myths and oddments which oddly we have acquired and from which we would become unburdened to create a newer world,” and “to translate the future into the past we have no need of false revolutions,” and “in a world where categories tend to tyrannize our minds and hang our wills up on narrow pegs it is well at every given moment to seek the limits in our lives and once those limits are understood to understand that limitations no longer exist,” and “earth could be fair and you and I must be free not to save the world in a glorious crusade, not to kill ourselves with a nameless gnawing pain, but to practice with all the skill of our being the art of making possible,” Debs speech also became a classic.
According to WIKIPEDIA, Heywood Broun, a liberal journalist and not a Debs partisan, said it was “one of the most beautiful and moving passages in the English language.”
“He was for that one afternoon touched with inspiration.”
“If anyone told me that tongues of fire danced upon his shoulders as he spoke, I would believe it.”
Debs said in part:
“Your honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means….I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and factories; I am thinking of the women who, for a paltry wage, are compelled to work out their lives; of the little children who, in this system, are robbed of their childhood, and in their early, tender years, are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon, and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the machines while they themselves are being starved body and soul….”
“Your honor, I ask no mercy, I plead for no immunity.”
“I realize that finally the right must prevail.”
“I never more fully comprehended than now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom.”
“I can see the dawn of a better day of humanity.”
“The people are awakening.”
“In due course of time they will come into their own.”
“When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the Southern Cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean.”
“As the midnight approaches the Southern Cross begins to bend, and the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of Time upon the dial of the universe; and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the look-out knows that the midnight is passing – that relief and rest are close at hand.”
“Let the people take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.
end quotes
Ask yourselves, people – how different is that from what Hillary proclaimed to the candid world at Wellesley College in 1969 when she said:
We are, all of us, exploring a world that none of us even understands and attempting to create within that uncertainty.
But there are some things we feel, feelings that our prevailing, acquisitive, and competitive corporate life, including tragically the universities, is not the way of life for us.
We’re searching for more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating modes of living.
And so our questions, our questions about our institutions, about our colleges, about our churches, about our government continue.
The questions about those institutions are familiar to all of us.
We have seen them heralded across the newspapers.
Senator Brooke has suggested some of them this morning.
But along with using these words—integrity, trust, and respect—in regard to institutions and leaders, we’re perhaps harshest with them in regard to ourselves.
Every protest, every dissent, whether it’s an individual academic paper or Founder’s parking lot demonstration, is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age.
That attempt at forging for many of us over the past four years has meant coming to terms with our humanness.
Within the context of a society that we perceive—now we can talk about reality, and I would like to talk about reality sometime, authentic reality, inauthentic reality, and what we have to accept of what we see—but our perception of it is that it hovers often between the possibility of disaster and the potentiality for imaginatively responding to men’s needs.
There’s a very strange conservative strain that goes through a lot of New Left, collegiate protests that I find very intriguing because it harkens back to a lot of the old virtues, to the fulfillment of original ideas.
And it’s also a very unique American experience.
end quote
Here, in fact, is where I believe that Hillary was actually channeling Eugene Debs when she talked about a lot of the old virtues, to the fulfillment of original ideas.
As Hillary said in channeling Eugene Debs, who went to federal prison for thinking the same way:
If the experiment in human living doesn’t work in this country, in this age, it’s not going to work anywhere.
But we also know that to be educated, the goal of it must be human liberation.
A liberation enabling each of us to fulfill our capacity so as to be free to create within and around ourselves.
To be educated to freedom must be evidenced in action, and here again is where we ask ourselves, as we have asked our parents and our teachers, questions about integrity, trust, and respect.
end quotes
Why wasn’t that sedition when Hillary said it, but sedition when Debs said it?
Why the double standard here?
In her famous 1969 commencement speech uttered to the candid world while I was actually in Viet Nam, Hillary said, “If the only tool we have ultimately to use is our lives, so we use it in the way we can by choosing a way to live that will demonstrate the way we feel and the way we know.”
But, people, isn’t that exactly what Eugene Debs did?
In 1969, while the Viet Nam war was raging and young Americans were dying for a bright, shining lie, Hillary continued as follows:
Trust.
This is one word that when I asked the class at our rehearsal what it was they wanted me to say for them, everyone came up to me and said “Talk about trust, talk about the lack of trust both for us and the way we feel about others.”
“Talk about the trust bust.”
What can you say about it?
What can you say about a feeling that permeates a generation and that perhaps is not even understood by those who are distrusted?
end quotes
Now, people, there is an existential question this venture capitalist Bruce Cannon Gibney who attempts in his book “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America” to link American stagnation to the generation called the baby boomers by characterizing them as being unusually prone to anti-social personality disorder, which Gibney believes unraveled the pro-social, pro-growth policies of mid-20th century America, should be asking himself before condemning an entire generation he obviously does not have even a slight understanding of.
And he should be considering these words uttered by Hillary right around the time he was being born into this world which he thinks has cheated his generation of so much, for the spiritual guidance they could give him and his troubled generation, if only he and they could learn to take responsibility for their own actions:
All we can do is keep trying again and again and again.
There’s that wonderful line in “East Coker” by Eliot about there’s only the trying, again and again and again; to win again what we’ve lost before.
end quotes
Do you hear that, Bruce Cannon Gibney?
Do you understand what she is saying there?
And then there is this, Bruce Cannon Gibney:
And then respect.
There’s that mutuality of respect between people where you don’t see people as percentage points.
Where you don’t manipulate people.
Where you’re not interested in social engineering for people.
The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences.
And the word consequences of course catapults us into the future.
end quotes
Consider those words well, Bruce Cannon Gibney, for there, I think Hillary was speaking across the gulf of time directly to you and your troubled generation.
Getting back to Debs so we can come to a close here, he was sentenced on November 18, 1918, to ten years in prison and he was also disenfranchised for life.
At his sentencing hearing, Debs presented what has been called his best-remembered statement, to wit:
“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth.”
“I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
In a decision which has a lot of similarity to the decision of the federal courts today with respect to Trump’s travel ban, when Debs appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, in its ruling on Debs v. United States, the court examined several statements Debs had made regarding World War I and socialism.
While Debs had carefully worded his speeches in an attempt to comply with the Espionage Act, the Court found he had the intention and effect of obstructing the draft and military recruitment.
Among other things, the Court cited Debs’ praise for those imprisoned for obstructing the draft.
How, people, is that any different from Hillary Clinton protesting the Viet Nam war?
Paul Plante says
It is an interesting commentary on those times, the times of the Viet Nam war back in the 1960s, that the two people to emerge as “heros” or more properly heroins of the Viet Nam war to the American people were not war veterans at all.
Quite to the contrary, in a complete reversal from the times after WWII, the heroins of the Viet Nam war that everyone remembers to this day were war protesters Jane Fonda and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who became a national symbol of an angry generation in May of 1969 by insulting a black U.S. Senator, Edward William Brooke III, who in 1966, became the first African American popularly elected to the United States Senate. and who had enlisted in the United States Army immediately after the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, where he was commissioned as an officer, serving five years in the Army, and seeing combat in Italy during World War II as a member of the segregated 366th Infantry Regiment, where he earned a Bronze Star Medal.
Thank you for your service, Senator Brooke!
But not from Hillary Clinton, no sir; from her, all Senator Brooke got was insults and the sharp side of her flailing tongue, which is a real commentary on these times we find ourselves in today.
Back when the Purple Heart stamp was introduced, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, of which I am a life member, had some kind of ceremony with regard to the stamp down in Newburgh, New York, a historical Revolutionary War site, to which I was invited, and at which then U.S. senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton was to be the key speaker.
Did Hillary thank those of us there who had been awarded the Purple Heart for wounds suffered in combat?
Are you kidding me?
What Hillary did do was to tell us Purple Heart veterans just how lucky we were that there even was a Purple Heart stamp, and then she proceeded to give thanks to all these politicians without whose efforts there would not have been a Purple Heart stamp issued.
After the ceremony concluded, which apparently was held for the purpose of heaping praise on a bunch of politicians for coming up with a stamp, I thought that perhaps Hillary would have the Purple Heart veterans file past her so she could shake their hands and thank them for their service, and how absolutely silly I was to think that.
Hillary stayed far behind the rope line with her secret service guards keeping the Purple Heart veterans in attendance from being able to get anywhere close to Hillary to pollute her specialness with their presence.
We were there to be a captive audience, only.
Getting back to Viet Nam war heroes, of which there seem to be none that anyone knows of, a Viet Nam veteran who might have been considered a hero of some kind after WWII was John “JACK” Kerry, who had somehow managed to get awarded the Silver Star, this nation ‘s third highest combat decoration, which is awarded by the president of the United States of America.
Except John Kerry ended up being reviled, instead, when he ran for president against Bush in 2004, and his Silver Star with him, which his Navy commander in the swift boats in Viet Nam implied was a bogus award because of Kerry’s political connections.
So the Silver Star, which is supposed to be awarded for gallantry in action, not as a political gift, got trod in the mud along with Kerry and was rendered as a result largely worthless.
As to how Hillary Clinton treated Viet Nam veterans when she was U.S. senator from New York, we need to go back in time to a letter I wrote to John Kerry in his capacity as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts in 2004, before the Democrat national convention was held that year.
In that letter, I informed then-senator Kerry, as follows:
I am an honorably-discharged, twice-wounded, fully disabled Viet Nam war veteran who is a life member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the D.A.V., the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Tri-County Viet Nam Veterans in the Albany, New York area.
In that capacity, as an honorably-discharged, fully disabled Viet Nam combat veteran, I am asking you personally on behalf of all other disabled veterans in this area of the State of New York who must rely upon the integrity of the medical health and public health fields in the State of New York to not allow New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer an opportunity to speak at the podium of the Democratic National Convention on the grounds that he is pandering to partisan political interests in the State of New York by countencing blatant acts of discrimination against a disabled veteran in the State of New York who has been working to expose corruption in county government in the capital district area of State of New York.
Presently, Mr. Kerry, as this appeal is being written to you, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is actively engaged in defending in Federal District Court for the Northern District of New York what can only be termed blatant acts of discrimination and retaliation against this disabled Viet Nam veteran in New York State by Republicans in the State of New York who wish to permanently suppress this individual and his testimony to the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning Hobbs Act corruption involving Republicans in the Capital District area of the State of New York.
To stifle that testimony and evidence, in August of 2001, in the weeks before 9-11, as the record shows, this disabled veteran was the victim of what has become known in the Albany, New York area of the State of New York, as a “psychiatric takedown”.
A “psychiatric takedown” is a defensive political maneuver by which the Republicans in the capital district area of New York State have a witness against them removed by the vehicle of having a “pet doctor” sign a psychiatric arrest warrant for the individual which directs the New York State Police to take the individual into custody and transport them to the secure mental health facility of a local hospital, for psychiatric “care and treatment”.
In this manner, the witness is removed, their crediblity is destroyed and their effectiveness as professional witnesses on behalf of the public health of the community is robbed forever.
In this case, the victim, in addition to being a disabled veteran, was also the local public health engineer, who had previously been commended in writing for his integrity by the New York State health Commissioner.
In March of 1989, based upon an investigation conducted by this local public health engineer, the State Health Commissioner, a well-respected medical doctor named David Axelrod, declared that the public health and environment in our county was threatened by an inordinate amount of sewage system failures which were the legacy of ten years worth of negligence in the Environmental Health Division of the State Health Department itself.
A March 1989 Federal Bureau of Investigation report confirmed these findings by Dr. Axelrod, and further noted that the Republicans in charge of the county had no intention of cleaning up the corruption, and that to cover matters over after the Axelrod Report, the Republicans had removed the public health engineer from his position on grounds that his Viet Nam combat service had rendered him a threat to society.
Thus, ten years of corruption in the environmental health programs of the state public health services in the Capital District area of the State of New York was covered over as if it had never existed, and thus, has flourished up until this time.
In August of 2001, to prevent this same individual from coming forth with videotape evidence demonstrating that these corrupt public health practices have flourished to this day in the capital district area of the State of New York, the Republicans attempted a “pshchiatric takedown”, and the result has been disastrous for this individual personally, and all fully disabled veterans who would rely upon this individual for his integrity and expertise in the public health field to boot.
Presently, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, by and through his New York State Department of Law, is defending the actions of a New York State Veterans’ Service officer who made alleged false statements to the Office of the United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York in connection with the false arrest of this honorably-discharged, decorated veteran on mental health grounds.
Because of those false statements, which are still being defended by Eliot Spitzer at this time in the State of New York, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary in his possession, including a graphic videotape portrayal of a violent physical assault on this individual intended to deter him from appearing in court in connection with the matter, this disabled veteran has been branded in the State of New York as a dangerous mental patient with no opportunity afforded him whatsoever at due process to either confront or combat this theft of this person’s real identity as an honorable professional person of good standing in the community.
In the face of all of this, which is known to the veterans’ community in capital district area of the State of New York, to then allow Eliot Spitzer to stand up at your side and speak at the Democratic National Convention would be an abomination, a travesty, as far as the protection of the rights of the disabled to equal protection of law goes, and well as the public health protection of the disabled veteran population of the State of New York.
For the disabled veterans population of this area, from a civil rights and equal protection of law for the disabled perspective, having Eliot Spitzer standing by your side at the Democratic National Convention would be just like having George W. Bush or George Pataki themselves standing there.
It would make a mockery of all of your promises to the disabled veterans of America to help us have dignity in our own communities, despite our combat-related disabilities, equal to that enjoyed by Max Cleland in his own community in the United States.
Help us prove to America that despite our disabilities, which are often disfiguring, or totally disabling as far as being effective in modern society, that disabled combat veterans are citizens of America too, and that despite our disabilities, we deserve the protection of law in America too.
Help us make this point by keeping Eliot Spitzer off the podium at the DNC.
Thank you on behalf of the disabled veterans of the Capital District area of the State of New York in the United States of America for considering this request.
I remain, sincerely and respectfully, a patriotic disabled American veteran.
end quote
For the record, I was the disabled veteran in question, and because of the contents of that letter, I actually got a telephone call at my home in New York State from John Kerry’s senatorial office in Massachusetts informing me that Senator Kerry was quite concerned with what had happened, but as a senator from Massachusetts, he could not directly involve himself in a New York matter without permission of the New York senators, one of whom was our very own precious and special and exceptional archetypal “strong woman” Hillary Clinton.
So I was informed by Senator Kerry’s office that they had taken the liberty of notifying Hillary Clinton of the matter personally, and that I should then follow up by e-mailing her at her senatorial office in Washington, D.C., which I did.
When I did that, I got back this very nasty and threatening response which informed me that I was unauthorized to use e-mail to contact Hillary, and if I persisted, I could be prosecuted for some type of aggravated harassment.
To be truthful, that made me feel like I just got kicked in the face!
And from that time to this time, Hillary Clinton has never given me the time of day, as if I do not even exist, which for her, I don’t.
Ah, the road not taken, and it has made all the difference.
If only I had been a war protester instead of a war veteran, but alas, foolish me!
Paul Plante says
If you are just coming in here, and are reading this above, and are thinking that what it says in as few words as possible is that by federal court decree in New York state, the State of New York is free to use coercion, intimidation and outright character assassination, malicious and intentional theft of valor, if you will, to destroy a witness against itself in matters pertaining to public health in the State of New York, where children in Hoosick Falls, New York were drinking water poisoned with PFOA though gross negligence and looking the other way by the state in a corrupt pay-to-play political environment where political protection from the law is a commodity on the market if you have the wherewithal to purchase it, my answer is yes, that it exactly what it is saying, so there is nothing faulty with your thinking, or reasoning, for that matter.
If you are interpreting that as saying that of all the classes of people in the United States of America today who have lately been awarded all kinds of newly-created rights and federal protections, by federal court decree, the one class in America without protection of law, and thus, no rights, is that comprised of Viet Nam combat veterans, by virtue of the fact of their being a combat veteran from the Viet Nam war, which the federal court by unilateral decree has ruled as prima facie evidence that the said veteran is a danger to himself and society and must therefore be incarcerated against his will in a secure mental facility for the good of society-at-large, yes, you are on the money, which point can easily be seen in sworn statements in federal court in paragraph #12 of a November 10, 2003 Affirmation in Support of Motion to Dismiss Complaint pursuant to FRCP 12(b)(6) by David E. Rook, Esq., an attorney and counselor at law with the law offices of Thuillez, Ford, Gold, Johnson & Butler, LLP, a high-powered and politically-connected white shoe law office in Albany, New York, the state capital, the attorneys representing the Defendants Northeast Health, Inc.; Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, where I was to be incarcerated as an alleged dangerous VEET NAM veteran based on a fraudulent psychiatric arrest order issued by Samaritan Hospital to Rensselaer County Executive Kathleen Jimino on her demand, had the New York State Police ever managed to hunt me down for capture, or perhaps worse; Adrian A. Morris; John C. Braaten, the doctor who made out the fraudulent arrest order falsely attesting that the doctor had examined me and found me to be in need of involuntary incarceration in a secure metal faility; Carol Fiorino and Bernadette R. Hallam, provided as follows:
12. Any actions alleged to have been taken by the Samaritan Defendants, were taken under the authority of NYS Mental Health Law and were taken for the benefit of the Plaintiff (myself) and society at large.
Furthermore, all of the actions taken by the Samaritan Defendants in connection with Plaintiff’s emergency admission are privileged by NYS Mental Health Law.
Any attempt to characterize Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint as supporting a claim for false imprisonment must fail due to this privilege.
end quote
Ah, yes, the good old catch-phrase, society-at-large, people.
Society-at-large has to be protected, that is a duty of government, so that makes it alright then for the state of New York and the County of Rensselaer in the state of New York to use outright fraud as a means to intimidate and retaliate against a witness against the state, or to use the law as a means of oppression, which is exactly what happened in this case, and which gained the approval of none other than Sonia Sotomayor when she was making her bones and proving her political reliability as a judge on the federal 2d circuit court of appeals in New York City.
As to characterizing Plaintiff’s as supporting a claim for false imprisonment, that claim was as follows in clear and concise labguage, so that Sotomayor would have know exactly what it was she was being asked to decide:
PLANTE CIVIL RIGHTS COMPLAINT 03-CV-0753 PURSUANT TO 42 USC 1983 FILED JUNE 18 2003
3. This is a civil action seeking relief and damages to defend and protect the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and the claim herein arises under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and 42 USC 1983, civil action for deprivation of rights, and 42 USC 1988, proceedings in vindication of civil rights; this Court has jurisdiction of this claim pursuant to 28 USC 1331, 1343(3) and (4) and 2201.
4. The unlawful and discriminatory practices alleged below were committed within the Northern District of the State of New York, those being a practice in the Town of Poestenkill and the County of Rensselaer in the State of New York known as “targeting” or the use of fear, intimidation, coercion and false arrest as tools of public policy in the Town of Poestenkill and the County of Rensselaer to “lock out” plaintiff (Paul R. Plante) from equal access to government and protection of law in the County of Rensselaer and the Town of Poestenkill as punishment for and because of plaintiff’s acts of investigating alleged acts of public corruption in the Town of Poestenkill and County of Rensselaer in the State of New York and giving evidence to the Federal Bureau of Investigation during a Hobbs Act investigation of public corruption in Rensselaer County, for no other purpose than to deter him from continuing said investigation and/or giving further evidence to the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning alleged public corruption in the County of Rensselaer and the Town of Poestenkill; and the unlawful vehicle of the “psychiatric takedown”, where plaintiff (Plante) was to be permanently removed or eliminated as a witness against the County of Rensselaer and the Town of Poestenkill under color of law by the public officials allegedly involved in the said continued acts of alleged public corruption, or others alleged to be acting in concert with or on behalf of the said public officials, by having a fraudulent New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.45 involuntary commitment order issued by defendant Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, acting as a “custom witness removal service” for Rensselaer County and Town of Poestenkill officials, the said fraudulent involuntary commitment order directing the New York State Police to capture and transport plaintiff to the secure mental health facility of the Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York for “mind-wiping” and other and further unspecificed acts of alleged mental torture for no other purpose than to prevent, intimidate and deter plaintiff from conducting any further citizen investigations into alleged acts of public corruption in the Town of Poestenkill and County of Rensselaer in the State of New York, the said fraudulent and unlawful involuntary commitment order causing plaintiff’s unlawful detention as an alleged “violent Viet Nam” war veteran in the Albany, New York VA Hospital on August 22, 2001 in violation of plaintiff’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights pursuant to the United States Constitution.
end quote
Yes, they can, said Sotomayor, yes, they can, and there is ****-all you can do about it, now get out of my court and don’t come back!
See how easy it is done, people?
Just like that, a person’s whole future can be destroyed, and that person declared outcast by society, which serves to put that person’s life in danger, but hey, so what says the State of New York and the federal court in New York state – they’re Viet Nam veterans, they’re not human like the rest of us, so they have no rights.
Paul Plante says
Should somebody just stopping by here read this above post, and think to themselves upon reading that post that, “my goodness, it looks like he is apportioning some of the responsibility for children in Hoosick Falls, New York drinking water contaminated with PFOA, a carcinogen, to Sonia Sotomayor, a justice of the United States Supreme Court,” you would be exactly right – that is exactly what I am doing there, giving credit right where credit is due.
And that brings me all the way back around again to the opening sentence in this thread, as follows:
“In a post in here on March 13, 2017, Chas Cornweller, a respected contributor to the Cape Charles Mirror made this following statement which is the genesis of this thread: ‘Mr. Plante, your biggest life experience, I gather – correct me if I am wrong- is Vietnam.'”
end quotes
Certainly, it cannot be denied that VEET NAM, as Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson called it, was an experience of note in my personal life, and that experience certainly enters in to how I face life today, all these years later, especially the part about being wounded in the head during a firefight in Viet Nam and then being left for dead out on the ground with no aid or assistance, which I certainly found to be a defining moment in my life, anyway, and then the part about not being dead when the sun came up, which made me what could be euphemistically called in the military mind a logistics problem as in “okay, now what do we do with him, oh, I know, there’s a courier helicopter coming in, let’s load him on that when it lands, and then he will be their problem!”
Field expedient methods, people, that is what they are called, and you know what, in that case, they worked!
So that was what could be called a big life experience for me, as it served to give real-time definition to what otherwise might just have been a bunch of philosophical questions.
And it was with respect to VEET NAM that I made my first appearance as a guest commentator in the Cape Charles Mirror on June 19, 2016 in an essay entitled “Paul Plante 1969: The Legacy of Violence is Ours” wherein I wrote as follows:
With respect to mass murder as a part of our foreign policy and this “spirit of ruthless brutality” which I too believe has now entered into the very fiber of our national life, for a time, I was an infantryman who served as a Nighthawk in Viet Nam in 1969.
As a Nighthawk, I went out each night on a helicopter armed with an M-14 rifle with a Starlight scope mounted on it so that I could see in the dark with the helicopter as my firing platform.
One night we were ordered to go to these certain grid coordinates and when we got to there, it was a small “ville” that was being barraged with CS-gas mortar rounds to drive the people out of their houses and into the open where they were clearly illuminated by parachute flares.
I can see them down there to this day.
Women and children.
I can still hear the “voice” coming into my head over the helicopter’s radio from the Battalion Operations Center back in the big base camp that was in “control” of what the mission was going to be that night.
“KILL THEM ALL!”
end quotes
Yes, people, that really did happen, and as we talk about children getting gassed in Syria, we should at the same time take cognizance of the fact that on that night in question in VEET NAM when we were sitting there, suspended in time and space, above that village with that command to kill them all coming into my ears through my headset, that we were using gas to drive those women and children out into the open so they could be slaughtered as a part of our foreign policy to defend our national interests, as Washington, D.C. would and does say.
And certainly it was in VEET NAM that I really came face-to-face in a very real and personal sense with what it would have felt like if I was one of General John Burgoyne’s Redcoat soldiers invading New York State from Canada in October 17, 1777 and facing the wrath of the ten or so thousand pissed-off Americans gathered there on their home soil to repel our invasion.
And that, people, was a very big moment in my life, especially when I had our own history fed to me in minute detail by an ARVN sergeant one day in front of his assembled troops, where I was called, like Jesus did to the Pharisees, a HYPOCRITE, over there doing to them what we would not tolerate being done to us in this country.
But still, that was not the biggest moment in my life, although it was up there.
No, I would say right now, on reflection, that one of the biggest moments of my life, one of the top contenders, would have to be that moment in 2005 when I came face-to-face with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor at a time when she was making her bones and proving her political reliability as a federal judge on the federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City.
What made it such a big and memorable moment to me was being told to my face by Sonia Sotomayor, now a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, God help the Republic, that in so many words, to her, I was nothing but a cheap piece of ****!
It was such a big moment that I was actually stunned, as if I had been kicked and punched at the same time, and it left me momentarily speechless, as I could not believe I had just been kissed off as worthless by a federal judge.
I actually lack the words to fully describe what it feels like to be informed by a federal appeals court judge that you are a piece of garbage to her and your life does not matter, but suffice to say, the feeling is quite unpleasant, and dehumanizing, to say the least.
Nor did the role I used to play in society as a licensed professional engineer and qualified associate public health engineer in the State of New York matter to her, one whit.
Let those people in Rensselaer County who would rely on my integrity as an engineer to protect their groundwater eat cake, or ****, really.
And there is no way Sotomayor could claim she was not aware of any of this.
The Record she had before her in 2005 was six hundred-nine (609) pages long, and it was exhaustive, taking her back, in terms of endemic public corruption in Rensselaer County in New York State adversely affecting the public’s health in Rensselaer County, aided and abetted by the New York State Department of Health, all the way in an unbroken chain to 1977.
Pages 1-86 of that 609-page Record before Sotomayor in 2005 was a detailed sworn affidavit of mine sworn to on June 3, 2003 under penalty of perjury by myself, which sworn affidavit was never challenged or refuted by any of the defendants, to include the State of New York, which was represented by then-New York State Attorney General Eliot “Longshanks” Spitzer, who went on to gain fame as a New York State governor who had to leave office after being charged by the U.S. attorney in New York state of protecting a high-priced ring of hookers who services Spitzer was helping himself to as a perk of his office.
Nor could that affidavit been refuted or controverted, since it was based on an official New York State Report of Investigation of Public Corruption in the Rensselaer County Department of Health by then-state health commissioner Dr. David Axelrod dated March 15, 1989 which concluded that corrupt practices in the Rensselaer County Department of Health, the agency charged with protecting the health of those children in Hoosick Falls who were drinking the contaminated water, were inadequate to assure protection of public health and the environment in Rensselaer County, which corrupt programs were directly to blame for that PFOA getting in the Hoosick Falls water supply in recent times.
And beyond that, it was also based on investigation records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of corruption in the Rensselaer County Department of Health, which records were effectively buried by Sotomayor in 2005 as a part of the final cover-up in that sorry episode that then led to those children in Hoosick Falls drinking that contaminated water.
And in fact, it was all those unrefuted sworn statements of mine detailing public corruption in New York state in exacting detail, and all that evidence I was bringing forth in 2005 to demonstrate to Sotomayor that the endemic corruption began in 1977 was still flourishing in New York State as we were speaking that day which resulted in the animus Sotomayor exhibited towards me that day, as if she would spit a gob of venom at me and burn off my skin.
“What we have here is a failure to communicate!”
I just did not get it, so it fell to Sotomayor on that day to set me straight, and so she did.
She negated my existence as a human being by converting me over to being a dangerous Viet Nam veteran who needs to be incarcerated in a secure mental facility for the good of society!
Which takes us back in time to 1968, when I joined the United States Army as an enlistee, and was issued a copy of THE SOLDIER’S HANDBOOK, U.S. Army circa 1968, wherein was stated at p. 2 as follows:
Service in the Army is a duty and a privilege.
Each individual in this nation has the duty to contribute as much as he can TO THE WELL-BEING of the nation and its people.
Military service is one form of such a contribution.
end quotes
Belief systems, people, that is what we have there- a statement of a belief system which existed in this country when I was young, a belief system harkening back to this nation’s very roots – EACH individual in this nation has the DUTY to contribute as much as he can TO THE WELL-BEING of the nation and its people.
And that is exactly what I tried to tell Sotomayor on that fateful day I stood before her as a penitent in 2005, looking for justice: I was doing my duty pursuant to the Constitution and laws of the State of New York as a New York state licensed professional engineer, and for that, I was struck down.
“You’re damn right you were, ” replied Sotomayor, “and now, you are finally going to stay that way.”
And you know what, people, she was right!
Paul Plante says
Now, if you happen to be sitting there, reading the two posts above here, and you are noticing that in paragraph #12 of a November 10, 2003 Affirmation in Support of Motion to Dismiss Complaint pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) by David E. Rook, Esq., an attorney and counselor at law with the law offices of Thuillez, Ford, Gold, Johnson & Butler, LLP, a high-powered and politically-connected white shoe law office in Albany, New York, the state capital, which politically-connected law firm was acting in federal court before then-federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor, now a Supreme Court Justice, thanks in large part to this very case, where Sotomayor got the opportunity to put her political reliability on display for some very important people with a lot of clout in politics who she needed to cement her future, which is what you have to do to advance in politics as a judge, especially at the high federal level, which positions are all political appointees, and Sotomayor being a creature of U.S. Senator from New York Charley “CHUCK” Schumer, now top-dog Democrat in the U.S. Senate, God help the Republic, as the attorneys representing the Defendants Northeast Health, Inc., the corporation that runs Samaritan Hospital in Troy, New York; the Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, where I was to be incarcerated as an alleged dangerous VEET NAM veteran so my mind and professional reputation as a licensed engineer in the state of New York could be destroyed based on a fraudulent psychiatric arrest order issued by Samaritan Hospital to Rensselaer County Executive Kathleen Jimino on her demand, had the New York State Police ever managed to hunt me down for capture, or perhaps worse; Adrian A. Morris, who ran the secure psychiatric facility at Samaritan Hospital in Troy, York where I was to be incarcerated based on that fraudulent psychiatric arrest order Sotomayor put her seal of approval on in 2005; John C. Braaten, the doctor who made out the fraudulent arrest order approved by Sotomayor in 2005 wherein he falsely attested that he had examined me and found me to be in need of involuntary incarceration in the secure mental facility of the Samaritan Hospital ; Carol Fiorino, a nurse at Samaritan Hospital complicit in getting the fraudulent psychiatric arrest order for Rensselaer County Executive Kathleen Jimino; and Bernadette R. Hallam, another accomplice at Samaritan Hospital, where Rook the attorney stated that “Any actions alleged to have been taken by the Samaritan Defendants, were taken under the authority of NYS Mental Health Law and were taken for the benefit of the Plaintiff (myself) and society at large,” and you are then wondering to yourself who exactly “society-at-large” might be, the answer is that it is you, your parents, your children, your spouse, your neighbors, those children up in Hoosick Falls, New York who in 2016 were found to have elevated levels of PFOA, a carcinogen, in their bloodstreams, the children drinking lead-c0ntaminated water in Flint, Michigan, and ultimately, every single person living in the United States of America, EXCEPT for me, of course.
Think about that as we head into this Easter weekend, people.
For the good of all you people down here in Cape Charles, Virginia, as well as out there in America who comprise society-at-large in this country, it was necessary that my life and professional reputation as a licensed professional engineer in New York state further qualified by examination as an associate level public health engineer in New York state pursuant to 10 NYCRR 11.100 to apply “engineering principles for the detection, evaluation, control and management of those factors in the environment which influence the public’s health” be destroyed by a fraudulent psychiatric arrest order now on file with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the New York State Police, the New York State Attorney General and the Office of the Rensselaer County District Attorney falsely attesting therein that I am a dangerous head case who needs to be incarcerated in a secure mental facility for your good so that I can no longer give expert witness testimony in court on behalf of those children in Hoosick Falls, New York with the PFOA in their bloodstreams, and others similarly situated.
Why?
Because it is pay-to-play!
If you want to play the game of politics in New York, and when you are seeking a place to locate a polluting business, it is very much the game of politics that you are playing, then you have to pay to get into the game, and if you can pay enough, then you become a “protected person,” and once you are a protected person, you are an untouchable.
The law no longer applies to you.
Thank about that, people – how would you like to be exempt from the law and be able to do anything you wanted to do, including poisoning the water that others have to drink, without ever being held to account?
That is what this case involving Sotomayor is all about when you boil it all down, actually – once a person has become a “protected person” in New York state, how far does that protection extend?
And the answer Sotomayor gave us in this decision is all the way up to a federal appeals court judge, anyway.
That it is patently clear that the issue of the level of protection to be afforded to a “protected person” in New York state, which is to say, a person who has made disbursements to buy political protection in New York state all the way up to Sonia Sotomayor, was before Sonia Sotomayor in 2005 when she was dismissing me with contempt when I appealed to her for protection of law, all we need do it refer to the Statement of Facts in the March 31, 2005 decision of U.S. District Judge Gary L. Sharpe, who was endorsed as a federal judge by Hillary Clinton when she was U.S. senator from New York, which undisputed facts were before Sot0mayor in 2005 as follows:
On July 7 (2001), PLAINTIFF (myself as a N.Y.S. licensed engineer) conducted an investigation of defendants Aiken (engineer) and McGrath’s “deliberate falsification of inspection data and fraudulent submissions” resulting in the issuance of the Pelletier permit.
During PLAINTIFF’S investigation, Pelletier assaulted him.
On August 9 (2001), defendant Reiter (Rensselaer County Director of Veterans’ Services) warned PLAINTIFF (myself) to “back off” the Pelletier investigation because he (Pelletier) was a “protected person” in the county.
On August 17 (2001), defendant Jimino (Rensselaer County Executive) allegedly phoned PLAINTIFF (myself) threatening to harm him if he did not stop his investigation.
end quotes
And there we have it, people, plain and simple in black and white, no grey of any shade included.
Not only was Pelletier a “protected person” in Rensselaer County in the State of New York, he was a “protected person” in the federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals, as well, and because the federal appeals court was honoring his “protection” purchased in New York state, to protect society-at-large, which is all you people out there reading these words, it was necessary to destroy me.
See how that works, people?
That is what pay-to-play looks like in real life, and if you have the money, it is one hell of a deal, especially when it includes a federal appeals court in the bargain, as it did in this case.
Now, as to this “protection” which included the arm of Sonia Sotomayor as a federal appeals court judge being protectively wrapped around this “protected person” Pelletier in New York State, and the role Sotomayor as a federal judge should have been playing here, let’s go all the way back to 1849 for some guidance on that subject from Chief Justice Taney of the United States Supreme Court in Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. 1 (1849), a case coming out of the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island, where Justice Taney stated as follows:
A Circuit Court of the United States sitting in Rhode Island is presumed to know the constitution and law of the State.
And in order to make up its opinion upon that subject, it seeks information from any authentic and available source, without waiting for the formal introduction of testimony to prove it and without confining itself to the process which the parties may offer.
end quote
If in 1849, a federal judge in Rhode Island was presumed to know the constitution and law of that State, then in 2005, Sotomayor as a federal circuit judge would similarly be presumed to know the constitution and law of this State, so she has no excuse of ignorance of what she was doing here.
As to the law of this state Sotomayor was presumed to know when she willfully turned her back on it in 2005 to score political points for herself, that law was very clearly spelled out for here in Rubenstein v. Benedictine Hosp., 790 F. Supp. 396 (N.D.N.Y 1992), U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, in April 7, 1992, where federal judge Con Cholakis, a former Rensselaer County District Attorney, stated as follows in a case where this same Thuillez, Ford Law Firm, Albany, N.Y. (Michael J. Hutter, Jr., of counsel) was the attorney for defendant Benedictine Hospital in that matter:
Significantly, the New York statutory scheme also recognizes the person’s liberty interest:
“No individual who is or appears to be mentally disabled shall be detained, deprived of his liberty, or otherwise confined without lawful authority.”
N.Y. MENTAL HYG.LAW § 31.19 (emphasis added).
end quotes
Shall not be detained, deprived of his liberty, or otherwise confined without lawful authority?
Are you kidding me, there is a “protected person” involved here, so to hell with that was Sotomayor’s response – the law is what I say it will be, not what is written on some piece of paper.
Which takes us back to Chief Justice Taney of the United States Supreme Court in Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. 1 (1849), to wit:
It is the province of a court to expound the law, not to make it.
end quote
And to hell with that, as well, said Sotomayor in 2005, I AM THE LAW, IT IS WHAT I SAY IT IS, and I do what I please, especially when a “protected person” in New York State is involved.
Which again takes us back to Chief Justice Taney of the United States Supreme Court in Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. 1 (1849):
The question relates altogether to the constitution and laws of that State, and the well settled rule in this court is that the courts of the United States adopt and follow the decisions of the State courts in questions which concern merely the constitution and laws of the State.
end quote
And that went right out the window, as well, which is a clear demonstration of how buying yourself “protected person” status in New York State, a form of insurance policy, if you will, is well worth the money.
Which takes us to that concept of DUTY, and 28 U.S. Code, which states:
Each justice or judge of the United States shall take the following oath or affirmation before performing the duties of his office:
“I, XXX XXX, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as XXX under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”
end quotes
There is an unwritten codicil to that which states, at least in New York state, “except when a ‘protected person’ is involved, and then, you go with the power.”
So how did Sotomayor manage to get around all of that when she was nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice?
A good question, so let’s go back to 08.06.09, to a document entitled “On The Nomination Of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Full Statement, As Prepared” by U.S. Senator from Vermont Patrick Leahy, where we were informed as follows:
I thank the many Senators who took part yesterday in the historic debate on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
I hope today that we will conclude this debate and vote on her confirmation.
Senator Klobuchar, the senior Senator from Minnesota and an active member of the Judiciary Committee, led a group of five women Senators in a powerful opening hour of debate yesterday that included Senators Shaheen, Stabenow, Gillibrand and Murray.
Several Judiciary Committee Senators gave strong speeches of support for Judge Sotomayor’s nomination, including Senator Schumer, Senator Specter, and Senator Cardin.
Senator Franken, our newest member, gave his first Senate speech and I congratulate him.
We also heard from Senators Lautenberg, Dodd, Baucus, Merkley, Akaka, Lieberman, Casey, Wyden, and Burris.
The statements of support for Judge Sotomayor yesterday came from both sides of the aisle.
Senator Martinez, who has been a strong supporter of Judge Sotomayor, gave a particularly moving speech, and Senator Bond joined him in announcing his intent to vote for this well-qualified nominee.
Senators Collins and Snowe also spoke in support of Judge Sotomayor’s nomination.
I was troubled yesterday, however, to hear some Republican critics of Judge Sotomayor making unfounded insinuations about the integrity and character of this outstanding nominee.
That is wrong.
She is a judge of unimpeachable character and integrity.
These critics have also chosen to ignore her extensive record of judicial modesty and restraint from 17 years on the Federal bench and, instead, to focus on—and mischaracterize—her rulings in just a handful out of her more than 3,600 cases.
end quotes
There you have it right there, people – if you exclude, disregard and totally ignore what she did to me, and by extension, to all of you and those children drinking contaminated water in Hoosick Falls, New York, and those children in Flint, Michigan drinking contaminated water by putting her seal of approval on that fraudulent psychiatric arrest order which destroyed my ability to serve as an expert witness on behalf of those being harmed by pollution and endemic public corruption in New York state, then by all means, Sonia Sotomayor is not only a judge of unimpeachable character and integrity, she is almost, if not all the way there, a saint, and not a word to the contrary will be heard on the subject, by order of U.S. Senator from Vermont Patrick Leahy, in which case, you probably should not listen to a single word I have said in here, if you know what it good for you, anyway.
Don’t end up a “failure to communicate” like me, or it will be quite bad for your mental health!