The Overstory of American Politics
plus, The Prisoner
U.S. voters are fed up. They voted for two candidates, who they thought were anti-establishment, and then discovered they had been misled. Barack Obama, the candidate, was much more of a leftist and populist than President Obama. He actually had friends who had been in the Weather Underground, and a fiery radical pastor.
That night in Chicago when the votes came in was like a celebration of a revolution. The candidate, and his savvy political wife, would lead us to The Promised Land that Martin Luther King had talked about.
A few days later, he appointed Wall Street’s Tim Geitner as Secretary of the Treasury. Many of us understood then that it had all been a sham, responding to the population’s deep desire for change for the better. Obama, and his Vice President, Joe Biden, did not deliver.
That’s why Trump was elected. People were distrustful of the Democrats (for good reason) to the extent they would gamble on a talk show host who seemed to have a hatred for the establishment. What they got was a loud-mouth braggart who knuckled under when the military or Wall Street wanted something.
Because of the double double-cross, voters became wary of going with a real anti-establishment candidate, Bernie Sanders. He was played like a fiddle by the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Remember the Iowa primary vote, and the mysterious app that said Bernie didn’t win, when in fact, he did. By the time that became clear, the media had moved on to New Hampshire.
The final coup de grâce was administered by Obama who told all the other candidates to go home. They meekly dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden (the furthest thing from their minds the day before). As a result, the race for the nomination was over, depriving Sanders of competing and winning in the big states, like California and New York. (All this might cause you to ask, who is this Barack Obama? But that is the subject of another article).
Since 1963, it’s been Southern Dems and Republicans one after the other
The last whiff of New Deal politics came from John F. Kennedy, who opted not to start WW3, wanted detente with the Soviet Union, was in secret talks with Fidel Castro, issued an executive order to pull advisors out of Viet Nam, and made Big Steel back down.
MacBird
Texan Lyndon Johnson, who may have been one of the plotters and was called MacBird by many progressives, reversed Kennedy on Viet Nam and drafted and sent half a million troops.
Tricky Dick
Republican Richard Nixon outdid Johnson by bombing Laos and Cambodia, and nearly started WW3 just before he left office. On the other hand, he proposed a form of universal basic income, called the Family Assistance Program, but bipartisan opposition in Congress killed it. The CIA secretly manipulated events to get him tossed out of office. Watergate was a set-up. CIA agents included James McCord, Howard Hunt, and likely John Dean and others. Bob Woodward was Naval Intelligence.
Ford and Rockefeller
Nixon’s replacement, Republican Gerald Ford didn’t have enough time in the office to do much damage, although he did pardon Nixon and appointed Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president.
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer from Georgia issued a secret executive order to give the mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan more than a billion dollars (matching funds for Saudi Arabia) to harass the Soviets who were in the country. The rest is history.
Ronald Raygun
Republican Ronald Reagan (also known as Ronald Raygun for his crazy Star Wars Initiative) cranked up the right wing hysteria. He called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” and invaded little Grenada to put in a new pro-American government.
Iran-Contra
The Iran-Contra Scandal took place in the latter part of his second term. Although Reagan knew of the deal and endorsed it in 1985, by then he was growing more senile and left many affairs of state to his vice president, and former CIA Director George HW Bush.
The plan was to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government by selling weapons to Iran and using the money to fund the contras. It was one of the most hair-brained schemes the government has engaged in since its founding. The U.S. was not permitted to fund the Contras for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government because of the Edward Boland Amendment which Reagan had signed in 1982. It was the first successful effort to stop regime change by the U.S. government.
In the end, the Iran-Contra scheme was exposed. Indictments of government offficials included Ollie North, National Security Council; Admiral John Poindexter, National Security Advisor; Robert McFarlane, National Security Adviser; Caspar Weinberger, Defense Secretary; Elliott Abrams, Asst. Secretary of State; Fawn Hall, Ollie North’s Secretary; Duane Clarridge, ex-CIA senior official; Richard Secord, former Air Force major general; Albert Hakim, “businessman;” Thomas Clines, CIA.
Such a rogue’s gallery of war mongers, top government officials and corrupt hacks from State, Defense, National Security, the CIA and top Brass from the Pentagon had never been exposed before in U.S. history. Two names are glaringly missing: Ronald Reagan and the mastermind VP George HW Bush.
The original leak of Iran-Contra was made by a top Pentagon official, a four-star Admiral, Arthur Stanley Moreau Jr., who was serving as the assistant to the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Moreau suddenly died of a heart attack at age 55 about a month after the scandal became public.
George Herbert Walker Bush
George H.W. Bush emerged unscathed from Iran-Contra, at least, it was never possible to pin responsibility on him. Bush was the first president to have been Director of the CIA. In addition, he was suspected as being a CIA operative as long ago as President Kennedy’s assassination. H.W.’s father, Prescott Bush was a Senator and a 1 percenter. Before and during World War II, he was closely connected with Nazi financial circles. His company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. He was also accused of being part of the 1934 Business Plot which plotted a coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In George H.W. Bush’s case, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Author Russ Baker, in Family of Secrets alleges that Bush was deeply involved in the Kennedy assassination, along with his father, Prescott, VP Lyndon Johnson, CIA Director Allen Dulles, who had been fired by Kennedy, and others. Baker’s book was condemned by several reviewers, making many of us give it more credibility. His book is not the only source alleging Bush’s involvement.
The elder Bush’s presidency began a series of wars around the world. No longer restrained by the Soviet Union, the U.S. was free to rampage at will, without fear of damaging its standing in the competition with the Soviets.
First off was Panama, where a rogue U.S. intelligence operative, Manuel Noriega, had become leader and president. In 1990, Noriega was accused of the usual regime change mantra of suppressing democracy, dealing drugs and deserved to be unseated by a foreign country, the U.S.
Next was the first war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who in a dispute with the family-owned oil fields known as Kuwait, had sent troops into the region. Bush followed the letter of the law by securing authorization for the military invasion from both the U.N. and the U.S. Congress. A total of 697,000 U.S. and coalition troops participated in the rout of Iraqi forces.
H.W. Bush conceived and pushed through Congress the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) treaty, but it remained for President Bill Clinton, a former Governor of Arkansas, to have it ratified. The Treaty, with its U.S. job loss, proved to be extremely unpopular. Billionaire Ross Perot, who ran for President in 1992 as an Independent, told voters to listen to the “giant sucking sound” of American jobs moving to Mexico if NAFTA was ratified.
William Jefferson Clinton
Clinton was part of the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC), an organization formed in 1985 that urged the Democratic Party to turn away from the left. The DLC supported “market-based” solutions, workfare, not welfare. It endorsed and pushed for “moderate” candidates, also called New Democrats, including Bill Clinton, a former chair of the DLC, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. It dissolved itself in 2011.
After the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush signed the Patriot Act, which is seen by many as a severe setback for people’s rights, but which is routinely approved every year by Republicans and Democrats alike, including many “Progressives.”
In foreign affairs, Clinton brought the war home to Europe by getting involved in conflicts between various parts of the former Yugoslavia. American intervention didn’t seem to make any difference to the proliferation of alleged war crimes. Intervention in Somalia didn’t go quite as well either, as 18 American soldiers were killed and their bodies were dragged through the streets. Later, U.S. troops made a missile attack on an aspirin factory in Sudan, which it was falsely claimed was a chemical warfare laboratory. While Clinton didn’t invade Iraq, he did continue a bombing campaign in southern Iraq and sanctions, all of which some said led to a million Iraqi victims, mostly babies.
Son of a Bush
Clinton was succeeded by George W. Bush in the first disputed election since 1876. Bush set some records in foreign adventures, including the still active Afghanistan war and the Iraqi war. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol on the environment which would have set mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This was a missed chance to reverse global climate change. In 2006, the oil man and president said, “America is addicted to oil.”
Like Herbert Hoover, Bush ended his second term with a major economic depression, the second worst in 100 years. His efforts to stop it are now seen as too little, too late.
Barack Hussein Obama
Next, was the most popular presidential candidate ever, Barack Obama. He seemed different from the others that had gone before him, and from his nemesis, Hillary Clinton. Obama seemed like he was tough enough, and smart enough, not to fall for the pablum we had been fed the last 50 years. What went wrong? For me, the thrill was gone when Obama announced he would appoint Wall Street Banker, Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury. This announcement told me that it was going to be business as usual in the Obama administration. Many of the other cabinet nominations were DLC activists, also known as “moderates.”
The Obama regime was a warmongering adventure, with armed expeditions into a number of independent countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya (destroyed), Syria, and the Africa Command.
Obama’s Playing Cards
Every Tuesday in the Oval Office, Obama would pick up his new playing cards provided by the Pentagon, complete with photos and short descriptions of suspected (not proven) terrorists. Then he plays God and decides who will die. A drone is made ready and flies out to take the life.
Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki was one of those men. An American citizen from Las Cruces, New Mexico, al-Awlaki was a lecturer and writer, who has been called charismatic and eloquent. He was not known to have committed a terrorist act, yet his anti-American and pro-Islamic words were enough to get him assassinated. He condemned the September 11 attacks and dared government officials to find one word of terrorism on his social media. As an American citizen he was entitled to a trial and due process according to the Constitution. But this is not that country any longer. So it was that the 40-year-old scholar was killed in a drone attack in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011.
If there was little excuse for Al-Awlaki’s extra-judicial execution, there is none at all for the murder by drone of his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, also an American citizen. It wasn’t just Obama’s blood lust. On Jan. 29, 2017, Al-Awlaki’s 8-year-old daughter died of a gunshot would in a SEAL attack in Yemen ordered by President Donald Trump.
The Maverick on the Right
If a maverick candidate on the Left (Obama) didn’t pan out, let’s try a maverick on the Right. That’s how Donald J. Trump was perceived prior to his election. He turnout out to be a maverick, until he was confronted by any military or Wall Street official. Then he became Republican mainstream. Fortunately for the American public he was inept at nearly everything he tried to do. Even so, because of the enormous power of the presidency, he did quite a bit of damage, mostly through executive orders written by his staff.
His defense of, and/or indifference, to racism and racist groups made him the most hated president in years. On the other hand, he didn’t start any new wars, and actually tried to make peace with North Korea. He may have stopped an all-out war with Iran by calling back a missile attack. However, the way to make peace is not by killing a top Iranian official, Qasem Soleimani, who was reportedly on a peace mission of his own.
Into the Mystic
What sort of President will Joe Biden make? The odds are that he will be much like Carter, Clinton and Obama. He will have an aggressive foreign policy, austerity at home, which includes no big projects but a focus on a balanced budget. He should be better than Trump on global climate change and race relations.
Then again, Trump might pull another upset. The public already know what four more years of disasters in a Trump regime would be like, which is why he probably won’t pull off an upset.
The Impact of the Presidents Number 36 (L.B. Johnson) through Number 45 (D.J. Trump)
The 1960s saw the development of a massive anti-Viet Nam War sentiment that drove one president (Lyndon Johnson) from office, and created a chaotic tenure for his successor (Richard Nixon). The economy grew more robust during this time, while unemployment declined. The population, especially the youth, became more skeptical as assassinations included John F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Macolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy and Fred Hampton, among others.
In addition, the sons and daughters of the World War II generation increased their educational attainment in colleges and universities, as affluence allowed more years of higher education and later entry into the workforce, than ever before.
Happy Days ended in the 1970s
Workers in the early to mid 1970s enjoyed continued affluence in union-affiliated factories and in a growing social service sector. However, by 1977 more and more factories and large enterprises were sold by individual industrial capitalists to finance capitalists who instituted neo-liberal policies including union busting, lower wages, workforce reductions and removal of the workplaces to lower wage locations in the South and in foreign countries.
The 1980s continued the downward spiral of worsening conditions for the working class. Inflation increased as many workers found themselves jobless. The situation was especially bad for Black and Latino workers due to endemic racism. Many workers turned to dealing drugs for survival. The CIA seeded South Central Los Angeles and many other cities with Crack Cocaine, which was obtained from the Contras, a right-wing movement in Nicaragua which was seeking to overthrow the progressive Sandinista government. The Contras, in turn, bought tons of cocaine from drug cartels in Peru and Columbia. The scheme was exposed by the late journalist Gary Webb in his newspaper articles and his book, Dark Alliance.
Webb wrote: “Thousands of young black men are serving long prison sentences for selling cocaine — a drug that was virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods before members of the CIA’s army started bringing it into South-Central in the 1980s at bargain-basement prices.”
The 1990s promised more of the same as the income gap between rich and poor widened. The War on Drugs became the War on people of color. Incarceration expanded as the entire Prison-Industrial Complex set off a boom in building new maximum security facilities populated by Blacks and Latinos, along with many white supremacists
Terrorism and Redemption
In the 21st Century, the War on Drugs was joined by the War against Terrorism which eroded many Bill of Rights protections including Free Speech and Assembly as well as habeas corpus. American citizens and foreign nationals were tried in secret “star chamber” proceedings and locked up in Guantanamo or in Supermax prisons, often without anyone knowing where they were being held. Police forces received military equipment and weapons to suppress legal protests against government actions.
Working people struck back with the Occupy Wall Street movement which spread across the country, and in 2014, with the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Police killings of unarmed Blacks and Latinos continued, and resulted in massive demonstrations protesting the filmed murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.
Protests against the George Floyd murder took place in at least 550 locations. During the month-long protests, millions must have gotten involved in the anti-racist and anti-police demonstrations. The protests saw the entry of extremists on both ends of the spectrum. On the left antifa (anti-fascist) anarchists joined the marches. On the right, fascist or neo-nazis joined the frey. Predictably, the two groups clashed with each other from Charlottesville to Portland.
How will the mass protests fare under a Biden administration? That depends on how willing his government is to meet the demands of the people. These demands include taking anti-racist measures, curbing the strong-arm tactics of the police, adopting medicare-for-all, raising the minimum wage, and in general, acting like a modern social democratic country. President #46 has his work cut out for him.
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The Prisoner
They took him prisoner
when the celebration was over.
The limos arrived at his house
bringing famous men
and twitchy bodyguards.
"Congratulations Mr. President,"
said the man with the TV face.
"Here's how it will be:
Your speeches will be cleared with us
Any questions, just ask
Rahm or Tim or Hillary,
they know the drill."
When he protested,
they complimented his pretty wife,
and his beautiful children.
Then they talked about Kennedy.
He had so much potential.
What a pity he defied them.
And wasn't it a shame
about Bobby and John, Jr.
"You see, Mr. President,
the business of America is business.
Your role is to speak on our behalf,
nothing more."
That's why the CIA, the NSA,
the military and Wall Street
have taken the place of Congress
and the Office of the President.
It's just more efficient."
We're so excited that you won.
It will be great working with you!