AMERICAN MIDNIGHT: THE GREAT WAR, A VIOLENT PEACE AND DEMOCRACIES FORGOTTEN CRISIS by Adam Hochschild

Pres. Woodrow Wilson at his desk, Washington, D.C.

(President Woodrow Wilson)

The four years that followed America’s entrance into World War I was a grim period in American history that seems painfully relevant today. It was a time of racism, white nationalism, anti-foreign, anti-immigrant feelings, and of course plague.. On top of that American society suffered from a misogynistic view of women, and an appalling level of political partisanship. By 1920 the culmination of World War I and the Versailles Treaty were almost in place. The treaty itself was punitive and over the next decade it would be used by opponents of the Weimar Republic in Germany as a cudgel to destroy any hope in achieving democracy and greatly facilitated the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler. Fast forward to the turn of the 20^th century, we find Russia beginning to reject the promise of democracy following the collapse of the Cold War leading to the reemergence of Pan Slavism and the rise of Vladimir Putin. The similarities may be divergent, but it is clear that the economic misery in Germany in the 1920s and Russia in the 1990s is more than a coincidence in bringing authoritarianism to power in both countries.

The second decade in the 20^th and 21^st centuries tend to mirror each other. The fighting in the trenches on the western front during World War I matches the trench warfare that has existed in eastern Ukraine since 2014 and seems to be growing worse each day. The Russian Revolution helped produce the authoritarianism of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, in much the same way that the end of communism brought to power, first Boris Yeltsin, and his handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin. The end of World War I brought about the failure of Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations, and recently Donald Trump tried to unravel NATO and while Putin is trying to destroy NATO by invading Ukraine, the former president’s acolytes have continued to try and undermine the Biden administration’s effort to assist the Kyiv government.

(Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer)

In 1917, Lenin bragged that the Soviet Union would lead an ecumenical revolution in the name of Karl Marx. Today, Putin wants to recreate the former Soviet Empire and “Russify” its “near abroad” regions. During the 1920s Russia was an economic pariah, today economic sanctions imposed by the west are seen as one of the main weapons imposed in order to block Putin’s expansionism.

The difference today is that a number of countries which suffered under western colonialism; India, China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia find themselves benefitting from Russian cheap energy and trade as they pursue their own reasons for their supposed neutrality in dealing with the war in Ukraine. There were many errors made in the diplomatic realm in 1919 that we see resurfacing today – one can call it the revenge of former western victims of imperialism.

(General Leonard Wood)

Across the Atlantic we also witness the similarities between the two time periods. Domestically the United states has found itself in the midst of violent anarchist movements on the right. Groups like the Proud Boys and their ilk and the MAGA crowd engage in political violence in much the same way as leftist anarchists did in the post-World War One era. Politically, the lack of bipartisanship today is a daily occurrence where “owning the libs” by the MAGA crowd is more important than passing legislation for the benefit of the American people. In 1919, the leader of the Republican opposition was Senator Henry Cabot Lodge who despised Wilson and resented democratic control of the presidency and congress over the previous eight years. He led the opposition to the ratification of the League of Nations in the Senate and was successful in part because of Wilson’s own political errors and a belief that he was infallible. In the same way NATO was threatened by extinction under the presidency of Donald Trump, another president whose belief in their own judgement was beyond reproach, and the likes of Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy who seems like he will do anything to satisfy the right wing fringe of the Republican caucus and stop American aid to Ukraine. A further similarity between the two periods is that of dealing with disease or pandemics. In 1918-1919 it was influenza which the government downplayed resulting in over 675,000 death which Wilson paid little attention too, and of course COVID-19 the last few years resulting in over 1,000,000 deaths, conspiracy theories, and a president who saw the disease as a plot to hinder his reelection as opposed to properly protecting the American people. Lastly, immigration issues have dominated both periods. The 1920s witnessed an increasing war against labor, communism, and immigration in general as it seemed the “Bolsheviki” were mostly Jews from Eastern Europe, not the good “white stock” of Northern and Western Europe. The period is known as the first Red Scare, but today we have similar issues. The lack of bipartisanship prevents immigration reform and politicians are quick to point to the southern border as a national security threat. Trump’s commentary on immigrants is well known as well as those dealing with “shit hole” nations.

The mindsets of Wilson and Trump are also similar, and that mindset led to numerous errors for the American people. Wilson proved to be a sanctimonious character who believed his way was always correct and if you didn’t support him you were no longer an accepted part of his administration. Trump has a similar mindset, but there is a difference. Wilson held strong beliefs in his Fourteen Points which he hoped would bring an end to all wars. Trump, believes in nothing apart from his use of the presidency for his and his families self-aggrandizement, and perhaps keeping him out of prison and an orangejump suit.

(Emma Goldman)

The lack of bipartisanship in Congress was clear concerning the League of Nations, the increasing belief in eugenics and anti-migrant and racist tropes led to violence against minorities be it the Tulsa or Omaha massacres or other events throughout the south. This resulted in the 1924 Johnson Act that created quotas to bar certain groups from the United States. Though women finally got the vote after the war, impediments for them and blacks remained to keep them from exercising their rights of citizenship.

Fast forward to today we have disagreements over aid to Ukraine and the US role in NATO. Further, we have election deniers who still have not given up overturning the 2020 election no matter what the courts have ruled. The crisis at the southern border, the bombing of synagogues, the shootings of young black men and schools, and of course the events of 1/6. These occurrences can be laid at the doorstep of MAGA conspiracy theorists, FOX news and Donald Trump and reflect how little the US has grown as a united nation over the last 100 years. Philosopher George Santayana was correct in 1905 when he stated, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I guess the lesson no longer applies as a large segment of our population has cut history and government courses from educational curriculum on many levels as is highlighted currently by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ attempts to rewrite his states curriculum stressing only the “good parts dealing with whites,” and leaving out anything negative like slavery and genocide of Native-Americans out.

The first two decades of the 20^th and 21^st centuries are uncanny in their similarities and it makes it important to consult Adam Hochschild’s latest book, AMERICAN MIDNIGHT: THE GREAT WAR, A VIOLENT PEACE AND DEMOCRACIES FORGOTTEN CRISIS to understand the evolution of events surrounding World War I and its culmination, its impact on societal movements throughout the world including the United States, and how many of these issues remain with us today reflecting on the idea that we have not come as far as we think in the last century.

(Presidential candidate and Socialist Eugene V. Debs)

As the case in many of his books like KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST, TO END ALL WARS, SPAIN IN OUR

HEARTS, and BURY THE CHAINS Hochschild exhibits a mastery of the historical material and sources including astute analysis that is important for the reader to digest. He possesses an easy writing style that makes it easier to absorb material that can be very disconcerting. In his current work Hochschild has created a narrative that is more of a socio-political history than a recounting of World War I and the treaty that followed. The book is separated into two distinct parts. First the reader is presented with an America that is in the grip of a patriotic fervor that had never been seen before. Anti-German feeling fostered by submarine warfare raised levels of hostility that remained throughout the war. The result was the loss of civil rights for a large component of American society particularly labor and anyone who questioned the Wilson administration. President Woodrow Wilson was seen as a progressive, but the policies implemented under his watch caused tremendous repression and violations of constitutional protections of free speech. The repression resulted in vigilantism, violence, and an unequal implementation of justice. Legislation and later Supreme Court decisions codified these the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, or the actions of the Postmaster General and other propaganda organs. Big Business saw this as an opportunity to go after labor unions like the IWW and the Socialist Party. Racists saw this as an opportunity to repress blacks in the south as well as the north as many southern blacks migrated north to escape adverse treatment and hopes for employment. In addition, the government deputized private groups to assist in this repression and violence. A number of personalities dominate this section including President Wilson, radicals like Emma Goldman, Postmaster general Albert Burleson, and many others.

In the second half of the book, Hochschild’s analysis zeroes in on the continuing repression after the war and the rise of the Red Scare. The constant round up of immigrants for deportation, legislation to block immigration, violence against blacks, even those who fought in World war I, the continued imprisonment of people jailed for opposing the war, a domestic war against the new enemy communism which seemed to be spreading in Europe were dominant themes. Throughout President Wilson did not oppose these extreme measures as his focus was on gaining passage of his precious League of Nations which ultimately failed. After suffering a debilitating stroke trying to sell his League, Wilson was effectively a non-executive for the last eight months of his presidency as his wife Edith seemed to have been a co-president. Two of the dominant personalities of the period were Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer, and General Leonard Wood. Both sought their respective party nominations for president in 1920 and ran on a platform of anti-immigration and deportation. In Palmer’s case his actions relate to an anarchist bombing of his home in 1919 which changed a progressive into a right wing fanatic employing the likes of the young J. Edgar Hoover.

Portrait of white woman in dark clothing

(Kate Richard O’Hare)

A number of important movements and personalities are explored, many of which lead to current comparisons. The first, Woodrow Wilson who oversaw the war on dissent resulting in violence and jailings. Wilson was a southerner who held strong racist ideas despite his progressive reputation and showed little interest in protecting civil rights after the American entrance into the war. Wilson’s problem throughout was that he believed that bargaining was beneath him and his autocratic tendencies eventually would dominate his approach to politics. Apart from Wilson, the author focuses on personalities who normally do not receive the coverage of a President, Secretary of State or other high officials. The reader is exposed to William J. “Big Bill” Flynn, the former Chief of the Secret Service and New York City Police Detectives who would head up the Bureau of Investigation, the precursor of the FBI, a man who would hire the young J. Edgar Hoover who would copy the Library of Congresses card catalogue system to track what he deemed to be enemies of the people. Women who spoke out against the war and were jailed receive a great deal of coverage. Emma Goldman, Dr. Marie Equi, and Kate Richard O’Hare are front and center. The role of Postmaster General and his weeding out all opposition to the war effort through the mails; the jailing of Eugene Debs; Grace Hammer, a Sherman Detective Agency employee imbedded within the IWW as “an underground cheerleader” for the war to root out dissidents; Leo Wendell, a Justice Department spy, Lt. Colonel Ralph Van Deman, the domestic military intelligence chief, Louis F. Post, the only member of the Labor Department who fought against deportations, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis who had no difficulty with objectivity dealing with dissidents, Congressman Albert Johnson who led the fight for immigration quotas that blocked immigrants from anywhere apart from northern and western Europeans (sounds like Trump!) are just a few whose impact on American history and their actions should serve as a lesson for all to study.

The infamous Palmer Raids, mass arrests by the Justice department on the Union of Russian Workers and other organizations receive extensive coverage. In particular was the radical Division within the Justice Department fostered by J. Edgar Hoover who was put in charge of these raids and implemented the surveillance, arrests, police raids, internment camps, legal chicanery, all strategies employed for decades to come. Hoover saw the resulting deportations as a “feather in his cap.” Wilson is just as culpable as he remarked in 1919, “any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this republic.”

Hochschild also stresses how the Wilson administration drew upon America’s experience in the Philippines, employing torture techniques like water boarding and counter insurgency in the United States to ferret out dissidents. General Leonard Wood was the master of implementing these techniques.

(US Postmaster Albert Burleson)

In summary I turn to Thomas Meany’s review in the October 9, 2022, that appeared in the New York Times; “Hochschild’s sharp portraits and vignettes make for poignant reading, but at times skirt fuller historical understanding. We hear about newspapers and magazines being shut down, but little about what was being argued in them. Powerful thinkers about the political moment, such as Randolph Bourne, are absent from “American Midnight,” while John Dos Passos features more as a backup bard than a literary chronicler with historical insight. Hochschild attributes much of the failure of American socialists to expand their ranks to the racism and xenophobia that bedeviled the white working class. But there were also significant problems of organization in the American labor movement, which struggled to unite unskilled immigrant workers with workers in established unions. Trotsky had expected America to make as great a contribution to world socialism as it had to capitalism; he was appalled by the lack of party discipline, later damning Debs with faint praise, as a “romantic and a preacher, and not at all a politician or a leader.” The Catholic Church inoculated large segments of immigrant workers from radicalization, while canny capitalists like Henry Ford devised ways to divide workers into a caste system with different gradations of privilege. For all of the success of the strike waves of 1919, almost none of them left any permanent new union organization in place, nor did socialists make much headway in electoral politics.

In the closing portions of this tale, Hochschild shows that, by contrast, a generation of American liberals learned what not to do from Wilson. As his international crusade sputtered into catastrophe, with Wilson signing off on the Versailles Treaty, which laid the kindling for World War II, younger members of his staff were already preparing to become different kinds of liberals. Felix Frankfurter, who, as a young judge advocate general, gallantly tried to counteract some of Wilson’s domestic terror, and Frankfurter’s friend Walter Lippmann, who worked on Wilson’s foreign policy team, were determined to cast off the administration’s excesses. Both envisioned a state that would protect civil rights instead of violating them, and oversee a more efficient and fair economy. In the early 1930s, even as they drifted apart, Lippmann and Frankfurter would help impart a crucial lesson to the Roosevelt administration: If it wanted to snuff out American socialism, it was better to absorb some of its ideals than to banish them.”

(President Woodrow Wilson)

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVITUDE: DONALD TRUMP’S WASHINGTON AND THE PRICE OF SUBMISSION by Mark Leibovitch

July 20, 2022July 20, 2022szfreiberger American Political History, American Social History Leave a comment

The Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C.

To date there have been countless books written about Donald Trump’s machinations. They seem to cover all aspects of his presidency, personality, and private life. They range from psychological profiles, the women he has been involved with, his career in business, his election in 2016, his presidency, and finally his defeat in 2020 and its ramifications for the American people. The books are written mostly by reporters who have covered Trump, acolytes, family members, and people that Trump has used. Most are well written and are supported by author’s research in addition to the facts and reality of living with the MAGA world. No matter how important each book may be in their own right, none can compare with Mark Leibovich’s new book, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVITUDE: DONALD’S TRUMP’S WASHINGTON AND THE PRICE OF SUBMISSION. What sets Leibovich’s work apart from others is his writing style, which is humorous, sarcastic, caustic, and in its own way analytical. Leibovich’s narrative encompasses much of the same material as others, but it is in his presentation that makes another rehash of the Trump years palatable.

As he has done in his bestseller, THIS TOWN which dissected the current political culture in Washington, his latest focuses and confronts the leadership of the Republican Party and their minions and appley describes the type of power hungry individuals who have ridden roughshod over the former principles of the GOP and latched onto Donald Trump to maintain their own self-interest and political office. In his entertaining account Leibovich zeroes in on Senators Marco Rubio, Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, along with other characters like Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, Reince Priebus, among others who seem to dominate Trump’s circle, despite the fact that most previously chronicled their distaste for Trump. What all of these personages have in common is that they sold their souls to the devil, in the name of the “Donald.”

Leibovich’s profile has a locus that seems to be the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. After reading Leibovich’s account it is hard to distinguish between the importance of the Hotel and the White House. It is clear that the hotel is the center of power where acolytes, notable members of society, Trump supporters, and administration colleagues gather to make policy and plan what is best for Donald Trump and America in general.

Unlike many of the new books on Trump, personal memoirs by individuals who have seen the light and analyze how the MAGA world has altered American politics, Leibovich zeroes in on the creation of a dangerous culture of submission within the GOP and the nihilism and cynicism that has resulted. At times Leibovich’s humor and sarcasm dominates the narrative, but in reality his narrative is based on factual information, and it is a serious analysis of what Trump and his MAGA converts have done to America.

Leibovich’s purpose in authoring the book is not to rehash events and personalities that have dominated the news for the last seven years but to tell the story of the ordeal Trump has put this country through – “the supplicant fanboys who permitted Donald Trump’s depravity to be infected on the rest of us.”

Leibovich is correct that the key to Trump’s support in 2016 and 2020 was that his followers saw him as a truth teller, despite the fact he was a habitual liar. Further, Trump’s appeal in the MAGA world is clear – “Trump’s spool of personal grievances had become their own. In effect, his narcissism did, too.” From the outset Trump presented an alternative reality that was supported by the likes of Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, Vice President Pence. Mark Meadows, Reince Priebus and a host of many other enablers. Leibovitch takes the reader through each of these individuals and their role in dealing with Trump, be it the size of the 2016 inauguration crowd, the cabinet meeting when Trump’s appointee kowtowed to their leader, to the clearing of Lafayette Park by the military in order for Trump to have a photo op in front of a church holding a bible. Leibovich’s commentary is priceless as he describes Hicks – “She has the distinct superpower in her ability to manage Trump, not unlike how a care provider might have a special knack for managing a particular toddler.”

Leibovich has the ability to put on paper exactly what mature people were thinking in response to Trump’s latest scheming. Mitch McConnell comes under Leibovich’s lens as the political operator and power hungry person that he exhibits each day. It is a fundamental problem, but Leibovich makes it acceptable as he describes McConnell’s “zombie walk – stony faced, owlish, and keep walking” approach to responding to the most egregious actions taken by Trump. McConnell is not the only person to be skewered by Leibovich. Lindsay Graham is a special target particularly his relationship with Senator John McCain, supposedly his friend and accomplice in the senate. But his true nature is front and center when McCain passes away and Graham “sucks up” to Trump as he knew how to stroke the president’s erogenous zones, i.e., undoing Obama’s accomplishments and restoring America to greatness. In a sense McCain’s death was liberating for Graham as he could now be out in the open about what type of person he really is.

Washington, D.C., January 4 2019: President Donald Trump enters the Rose Garden at the White House after meeting with Democratic leadership to discuss the ongoing partial government shutdown. — (President Trump and Congressman Kevin McCarthy)

Trump converted many lemmings such as Ron DeSantis and Devin Nunes who experienced non-descript careers before attaching themselves to Trump. Trump had a gift in knowing how to draw in disaffected characters. Leibovich is correct that in a sense that Trumpism was like “group therapy for conservatives who feel alienated from, and hostile toward, the progressive consensus…Trumpism is, at heart, not a philosophy, but an enemies list.” Republicans had the remarkable ability to “suspend belief” when it came to impeachment and other issues and illegalities. They had to or else the Trump smear brigade of Fox News and co, plus supporters would have made their lives miserable.

Leibovich tries hard to find heroes in the Republican Party. He praises Mitt Romney for voting for impeachment and other comments, but in the end Romney can not overcome his past, just look at his actions in dealing with the “Big Dig” in Boston when he was Massachusetts governor. Perhaps the topic that is most disturbing which even Leibovich’s sarcasm and humor cannot overcome is the rehashing of January 6, 2021. It is here that the author describes the “land the plane” strategy pursued by the GOP leadership to get the country to January 20^th and Joe Biden’s inauguration. Along the way Leibovitch drills down into the duplicitous and hypocritic Speaker of the House hopeful, Kevin McCarthy. There is no need to trace his anger at Trump for January 6^th to his visit to Mar-a-Lago a few weeks later when he realized he could not be Speaker without Trump. So off he went to kiss the ring and kowtow once again. What is most disturbing is that January 6^th underscores how extreme Trump’s one way loyalty really is and the contempt he has for those most devoted to him.

If there is a pseudo hero in Leibovitch’s account it is Liz Cheney who despite her conservative credentials and voting record (93% with Trump) is being drummed out of the GOP because of her stand for constitutional principles and democracy. Be that as it may, we as Americans are stuck. Even if Donald Trump passed from the scene, Trumpism is embedded in the GOP and almost half the country. It will be interesting if Attorney General Merrick Garland decides to prosecute Trump, Trump declares for the GOP nomination for 2024, or any matter of things that could rip our country further apart. One thing is clear in that the Trump acolytes will continue to serve his interests because they correspond with their own need for power and recognition.

NIGHTMARE SCENARIO: INSIDE THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S RESPONSE TO THE PANDEMIC THAT CHANGED HISTORY by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta

July 8, 2021szfreiberger American Political History, American Social History Leave a comment

For those of us who live in a world defined by facts and not an alternative universe it is clear that over thirty-three million people have contracted Covid-19 and over 600,000 have died from the disease in the United States. From the time of the first case to our current drive to vaccinate all Americans there have been a number of predictions made by the Trump administration as to how to deal with the disease. At one point President Trump said it would be gone once the weather warmed up, then it would be done by Easter, then all we needed to take was the drug hydroxychloroquine or inject ourselves with bleach. These absurdities would be comical if not for the fact that people took Trump’s words seriously as how they should proceed, but what was even more ludicrous was the Trump administration’s overall strategy to cope with the disease. In Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, both Washington Post reporters’ new book, NIGHTMARE SCENARIO: INSIDE THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S RESPONSE TO THE PANDEMIC THAT CHANGED HISTORY the authors accurately convey the inner workings of the Trump presidency and how they produced a strategy that exacerbated the effect of the pandemic on American citizens and still impacts the government’s response under President Biden.

One could argue that it has all been said before. The lies, misinformation, and the stupidity just to secure reelection. We all lived through it and despite Fox News and other obscure outlets of right wing media, most news organizations have explained what has occurred as have a number of important books. However, none have gone into the detail and sourcing that Abutaleb and Paletta have put together and therefore if we want to become upset once again because of the crassness of the Trump administration and its dear leader there is a formidable volume that is hard to question, though the likes of Tucker Carlson and his minions certainly will.

(Dr. Anthony Fauci)

The authors have taken a deep dive into the events, decisions, personalities and results of decision making that have led to the catastrophic response to Covid-19 by the United States. They hold no punches, and they dig up information beyond what has been reported in the media for the last year and a half. Trump did not act alone in this process as he was enabled by advisers, cabinet members, friends, and family who shared his view about the virus and in a number of cases exhibited even greater disdain for the government’s scientific and public health experts than the president himself. Decisions revolved around unforced errors, petty rivalries, and a perverted attitude toward the virus that devastated the government – the key being the assault on science by Trump and his minions.

From the outset the United States was at a disadvantage in dealing with the virus as China, despite Trump’s praise of President Xi was not forthcoming with valuable information that might have assisted in containing the disease. One of the key figures was Matt Pottinger, Deputy National Security Head who had witnessed the Chinese response in dealing with SARS in 2003 as a member of the Bush administration and as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who called for a travel ban with China and was ignored. Trump had just made a trade deal with China and was up for reelection and did not want to rock the boat. As the disease proliferated in January 2020, 1300 flights from China entered the United States carrying 381,000 passengers. The situation was exacerbated by the lack of cursory coordination by the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, other agencies, and the inability of the heads of those agencies to come to agreement and leave their egos at the door.

The authors present many examples of Trump’s modus operandi of pitting aides against each other and believed that the virus would magically disappear if he willed it so. Aides and advisors were completely unprepared for what was coming and focused more on their own survival as opposed to what was best for the country. Once the concept of asymptomatic spread emerged the dysfunction and disagreements mirrored what would later occur over the importance of masks, testing, ventilators, and the overall messages from the Trump administration cascaded throughout the media along with the negativity put forth by the likes of Fox News.

The authors have written a carefully crafted narrative of the steps or lack of steps taken by the Trump administration from the outset of the crisis until January 2021. It relies on numerous interviews of government officials, culling of emails and other internal documents, along with speaking with people off the record. The result is that the authors follow the progression of the virus as each chapter heading contains the date, number of cases and deaths that resulted from the lack of the government’s response. They followed up the figures by discussing the decision making process in confronting the virus for that period of time. The chapters that deal with cruise ships which Trump wanted kept at sea or possibly sending people to Guantanamo to keep virus numbers down, the lack of PPE and other supplies to fight the virus, the misinformation put out by the Trump administration, the need by aides and health officials to assuage Trump’s ego as he did not want to deal with the virus as he focused on his reelection, and Trump’s personal comments concerning those who did not kow tow to his viewpoints all reflect the disaster that was the US response to the virus.

All the important personalities are present. Robert Redfield, the head of the CDC was unprepared to deal with Trump’s “team of vipers.” Jared Kushner, the second most powerful decision maker next to Trump would bring in inexperienced people to deal with the lack of PPE and ventilators then when he became bored would move on to the Middle East or other issues. Deborah Birx, the White House Covid-19 Coordinator who did her best behind the scenes to move Trump in the right direction. Dr. Anthony Fauci, served as the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, became a foil for Trump who resented his popularity. Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist who mirrored Trump’s views concerning opening the country and its economic impact was brought into the West Wing. Stephen Hahn, FDA head tried to cope with the pressure in approving certain “cures” for the disease. Scott Azar, the head of HHS whose main goal after warning about the virus was to keep his job. Peter Navarro, the bombastic assistant to the president for trade and manufacturing whose commentary was always over the top. Mark Meadows, Trump’s Chief of Staff whose views were a detriment to the health of the American people. Vice President Pence who privately seemed to agree with public health officials, but publicly fawned over Trump throughout. The authors integrate others into the narrative as the US fell deeper and deeper into the viral abyss.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield holds up his mask as he speaks at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on a — (Dr. Robert Redfield)

For Trump everything seemed to be about messaging. Trump and his minions saw the pandemic more as a matter of public relations than of public health. Reelection was his mantra and any information that was not helpful for that process was discarded. As Trump lost interest in the virus by June 2020, he turned nastier toward those who disagreed with him, his rhetoric particularly after the death of George Floyd became more racist. He would resort to threats of violence and prodded his supporters to go after Black Lives Matter protestors and used federal troops and police to create a photo op at Lafayette Square. Further, Trump’s desire to open the country up economically and politically would lead to super spreader events like his rally in Tulsa, OK and other areas. For Trump it was all about the economy and his reelection as his fear about appearing weak. The end result is that the disease spiked from Memorial Day, 2020 throughout the summer, and the violence that Trump encouraged spread throughout the country. Trump weaponized the virus as a tool that exacerbated existing divisions in our country as a means of retaining power for himself.

One of the most important discussions the authors raise was the link between the virus, the death of George Floyd, and the racial impact of what was occurring throughout the pandemic. It is clear that the virus impacted brown and black citizens more than whites. Due to the socio-economic makeup of the country, i.e., more minorities worked in jobs like meatpacking that spiked the disease, 33% of cases involved Hispanics, 22% of cases involved blacks resulting in half the victims were brown and black when they only made up 30% of the population. In the end brown and black people were three times as likely as whites to contract the virus!

(Dr. Scott Atlas)

The authors cover every aspect of the Covid crisis. Trump’s obsession with hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, the use of bleach, magical fantasy, pressure to approve vaccines as the election approached, and conspiracy theories are all present. In addition, the authors weave the threats against public health officials, the bifurcation of the country over mask use as a political statement for and against Trump, the personal price paid by those who did their best to stem the disease, the errors made by public health officials and their attempts to overcome those mistakes, and many other aspects of the crisis are on full display. The authors have written the most comprehensive study of what transpired from the outbreak of the disease through the beginning of 2021 and all Americans should consider what they have to say because another “nightmare scenario” is certainly something we will have to cope with in the future.

(The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta. An official said new guidance on coronavirus transmission had been posted “prematurely” and was still under review. Credit…Audra Melton for The New York Times)

THE LAST AMERICAN ARISTOCRAT: THE BRILLIANT LIFE AND IMPROBABLE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by David S. Brown

April 11, 2021April 11, 2021szfreiberger American cultural history, American Political History, American Social History, Biography Leave a comment

What impact does one’s lineage have on the course of one’s life? If you were born into a family where you are the great-grandson of a Founding Father, the grandson of a president, and the son of a Congressman and Minister to England one would assume you would have a great deal to live up to. In the case of Henry Adams, an important contributor to the “Adams Dynasty” politics was not a passion as it was for those who preceded him, and he chose the path of journalism, historian, and author. Adams lived a fascinating life based on his writing, travels, and the historical personage he was close to or came in contact with. Adam’s journey is recounted in David S. Brown’s latest biography, THE LAST AMERICAN ARISTOCRAT: THE BRILLIANT LIFE AND IMPROBABLE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS.

Adams excelled in a number of areas. His reputation has been formulated in large part by his autobiography, THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS where he warned Americans about unlimited immeasurable power that would be unleashed in the 20^th century which won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in biography. Adams’ other major work was his masterful HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES DURING THE ADMIMISTRATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON AND JAMES MADISON, a nine volume compilation that historian Gary Wills calls “the non-fiction prose masterpiece of the 19^th century in America.” Brown’s biography captures the fullness of Adams’ remarkable life that encompassed many highs, as a political reformer, novelist, world and traveler. It also encompassed a number of devastating lows which include a pressure packed family familiar that was familiar with depression, alcoholism, and suicide along with presenting an important window into 19^th century American history.

Brown emphasizes Adams’ role as a transitional figure between colonial and modern America. More specifically American history was moving toward “an imperial, industrial identity, one both increasingly beholden to technology and concerned with the fate of the white race. This is the context that the author believes Adams must be viewed in order to understand him.

The book itself is divided into two parts. The first takes his life to 1885 and the suicide of his wife, Marian Hooper, called Clover. In this section the reader is exposed to Adams’ impressions, Harvard and European education, and influences and pressure brought forth by his family resulting in the last of his generation of relations to achieve national recognition. During this period his rural Quincy, MA background which he believed was superior to other parts of America, his bitter reaction to partisan politics, his attraction to a cosmopolitan Europe, and the development of his elitist outlook on life are all explored. Following Clover’s death, Brown deftly examines a person who seemed to be set adrift resorting to constant travel, darkening meditations on capitalism’s quick expansion, and a propensity toward different personas, i.e., “Henry the 12^th century Norman, the Tahitian prince, and the progress defying and denying conservative Christian anarchist.” All of the masks that Adams’ personality presents point toward some quiet defiance of modernity, as all were primitive and skeptical of the coming age.

According to Brown, this component of his personality defined his outlook and “at times threatened to distort his work, leading to caricature, doomsaying, and the uncritical elevation of those civilizations and peoples he often patronizingly regarded as anti-modern.” This aspect of his thought process opened to him an exceptionally wide range of ideas and yielded a complicated and insightful individual as any American thinker for his time period and beyond. As Adams wrote in his autobiography, “by the unknowable, uncontrollable dynamo of industrial development; it is a world we have inherited, a cultural spirit we have yet to shake.”

(Marian (Clover) Hooper Adams on horseback, 1869)

Brown has a strong handle on the course of American history during Adams’ lifetime. He effectively integrates important events and characters into the narrative and how they impacted Adams’ opinions, thought processes and actions. An area that Brown spends a great deal of time is dealing with race and slavery in particular. Brown makes the important connection between the “Lords of the Leash” and the “Lords of the Loom” as he describes the economically incestuous relationship between northern manufacturers and southern planters. In Brown’s view Adams saw slaves/blacks as inferior to whites and held many of the same racial views of his time including men like Abraham Lincoln and William Seward. The difference is that Adams’ views concerning ending slavery did not evolve as Lincoln and Seward’s did. Henry held the seemingly New England Puritan view that opposed anything compromised, wicked, or wrong. This is evident in his efforts during the Gilded Age to combat various forms of political, financial, and corporate corruption on the part of “Robber Barons” and their political cohorts.

Adams’ intellectual development was greatly influenced by the trends and political movements he observed before the Civil War. As he evolved as a “thinker” he was exposed to events leading up to and including the ramifications of the Mexican War that led to the Compromise of 1850 and the slow progression toward war. For Adams, the difference between north and south presented a dichotomy he found difficult. The north represented education, free labor, piety, and industry, but he was also attracted to the south’s lack of institutional oversight, of church, state, and school, that pinched him at home in Quincy. Despite this view of the south and a close friendship with Robert E. Lee’s son, Adams could not shake the divergent views when it came to slavery. Throughout the pre and post-Civil War period Adams suffered from a failure to grasp the ethical struggle over slavery. Many of his views were rather fanciful, i.e., the idea that the south would be defeated quickly, he saw Lincoln as a clumsy, rustic and too western etc. The strength of Brown’s biography emerges as he discusses of Adams’ intellectual evolution as he went from a poor prognosticator to an eminent historian.

Adams’ education was a cacophony of differences. Harvard for him was not a success as unfortunately he attended the Cambridge institution at a time when it was at the tail end of its older scholastic tradition. When he graduated in 1858 Harvard was on the cusp of major curriculum changes and approaches to teaching science, economics, and politics. Adams would travel to Germany to further his education outside the study of law that seemed to be his family’s traditional avocation. He rejected the stringency of German university education but enjoyed traveling throughout Bismarck’s realm. While in Europe he wrote a column for a Boston paper reflecting his love of travel particularly Italy where he was taken by the Italian movement toward unity and meeting Giuseppe Garibaldi and learning about Cavour. While traveling Adams read Edward Gibbons’ THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE and decided the Adams family needed a historian.

(Charles Francis Adams)

During the Civil War his father, Charles Francis Adams gave up his congressional seat to become the US Minister to England, Henry served as his secretary. Their role was to make sure England did not afford the south diplomatic recognition and political and economic support. After a slow start integrating into English society, Henry was able to adapt in large part because his own snobbish approach to people fit in with the English upper class. Henry’s elitism plays a major role in Brown’s analysis of his subjects’ behavior and the evolution of his beliefs. Upon returning to the US after the war it appeared the Adams’s were becoming more and more irrelevant which pushed Henry to leave Quincy for Washington and position himself as a political critic. Obviously, the key issues of the day surrounded the plight of former slaves.

Brown’s insights into Adams views of race are insightful as he stresses Adams’ refusal to accept slavery’s corrosive and all pervading impact on America. Brown is accurate when he argues that Adams narrow outlook reduced slavery to a “repercussion-less fact, a wicked act now mercifully ended.” In addition, he had an inability to see congressional reconstruction as a moral struggle rather than a political blunder reflecting his indifference to race. He opposed the 15^th amendment and feared Congress was overstepping its bounds, and he totally misjudged the south’s ferocity to reclaim what they saw was stolen from them. Adams suffered from the delusion that a virtuous people was unfairly subjugated by a combination of Yankee carpetbaggers, black congressmen, and unscrupulous scalawags. He had gone to Washington to free Congress from corrupt corporations and lobbyists but failed to appreciate America’s racial problems as” he lacked urgency, insight, or empathy.”

Adams was content to be a political outsider. He viewed himself as a reformer despite the fact he clung to a patrician system that was on its way out. He did recognize his personal aristocratic expectation of achieving political power was not going to pan out and resented the new social order that deprived him of this type of success from the monied men at the top to the immigrants at the bottom. His anti-Semitism was ever present as he tended to blame Jews for the monied interests that appeared to dominate the American economy as it developed capitalist wealth which negatively impacted the American people. Reflecting his elitism, Adams was the type of person who believed that few men or women were his equal, however his friends loved him, but he definitely was an acquired taste.

Brown does an exceptional job detailing Adams’ career as a writer and an intellectual. He argues that Adams’ approach is diverse. He can be considered one of the first “muckrakers” as coined by Theodore Roosevelt as he published a series of articles dealing with corruption during the Grant administration. His “The New York Gold Conspiracy” zeroes in on Jay Gould and James Fiske’s attempt to corner the gold market. In this and other articles he warns that a “rising plutocracy threatened to upend the republic. Brown focuses on Adams’ more literary projects along with the personal drama surrounding the publication of each. Novels like ESTHER and DEMOCRACY reflect his talent as a satirist along with many personal details particularly his spouse Clover. His greatest triumph came as a historian as his nine volume history of the Jefferson and Madison administrations reflected not only American history from 1800 to 1817 but also it places events in the United States in the context of European politics. Brown points to the major criticism of the work in that Adams downplayed the impact of slavery and ignored its strong presence in the northern economy and society. Further, women are hidden in the narrative with but a few mentions like Dolly Madison and Aaron Burr’s daughter Theodosia. Adams’ focus is a dismissal of elitism and praises the contributions of non-elites for American society. Following this history Adams continued his literary career with MONT-SAINT MICHEL AND CHARTRES, a meditative reflection on medieval culture.

Much of Brown’s approach as a biographer is his ability to analyze Adams’ personal writings and delving into a plethora of primary documents. Further Brown’s portraits of Adams’ friends, allies, and enemies over his lifetime creates a coherent intellectual and political history of half of the 19^th century. Brown has created a land bridge through Henry Adams’ eyes that effectively connects the 19^th and 20^th centuries that his readers will benefit from. But one must remember as Brown points out that Adams suffered a number of personal tragedies from the death of his sister Louise, the suicide of his wife that is reflected in his distinctive fatalism built upon an already “defensive and satirical exterior to stiffen.”

Henry Adams’ life is a historical duality in that he thought of himself as an 18^th century man and argued for decades against corruption and searched for an antidote for Anglo-Saxon materialism. However, despite his firm belief that capitalism could ruin the United States in the coming 20^th century, he did little on a personal level to disavow his own wealth which allowed him to travel the world, purchase art works and other cultural artifacts, and benefit from the fruits of his societal position.

To sum up Brown has offered a credible account of America’s transformation during one man’s lifetime, from a Republic where the Adams name was extremely consequential, to an industrialized monolith that had left the family behind. As historian Amy Greenberg writes “it’s a tribute to Brown’s talent as a biographer that he enables the reader to feel empathy for a man who expressed so little for anyone else.”

The Education of Henry Adams by [Henry Adams]

ROBERT E. LEE AND ME: A SOUTHERNER’S RECKONING WITH THE MYTH OF A LOST CAUSE by Ty Seidule

February 4, 2021February 4, 2021szfreiberger American Civil War, American Social History Leave a comment

On January 6, 2021, the US Capitol was marred by an invasion of a mixture of Trumpists, military militias, white supremacists, and a collection of other conspiracy toting insurrectionists. What was very disconcerting for me apart from the violence is how these individuals wrapped themselves in a flag – the Confederate flag. During the Civil War, the Confederate flag never reached the Capitol, now 150 years later it was proudly carried by numerous thugs and treasonous persons who threatened to hang the Vice President and kill the Speaker of the House. These events resonated with me further as I read retired Brigadier General Ty Seidule’s new book, ROBERT E. LEE AND ME: A SOUTHERNOR’S RECKONING WITH THE MYTH OF A LOST CAUSE as he grapples with his personal history from growing up in the south and being acculturated with false premises that the Civil War was fought over states’ rights, tariffs, economics, Lincoln’s racism, or government overreach. Seidule takes the reader on his own journey of discovery as he passed through college, a thirty year career in the military, and finally as head of the History Department at West Point. During that sojourn he came to realize that he was raised as a southern gentleman whose education and socialization was built around certain myths and outright lies concerning the causes of the Civil War.

Seidule’s voyage raises a number of disconcerting issues that are currently bedeviling the American body politic and society – the negation of facts. Seidule gave a lecture that went viral in which he argued that the war between the states that resulted in more deaths than any war the United States has ever fought, but the Civil War saw Americans killing Americans. The author argued that the war was fought over slavery. The result was a nasty response through emails, letters, and personal comments, some of which were quite threatening. Seidule was incredulous and proceeded to reexamine his life’s passage to try and examine how his historical research forced him to confront his past and explain how he has undergone his own reeducation.

Faculty at Washington and Lee University voted on Monday to remove Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s name from the school. — (Washington and Lee University)

Throughout the narrative Seidule is obsessed with facts and truth as he tries to understand how he was duped for so many years. To understand the author’s past, it is important to delve into his hero worship of Robert E. Lee as a boy and later as a young man. He saw Lee as a brilliant general even in defeat as he possessed a “noble aura” about him. Even in defeat at Gettysburg Seidule saw “an opportunity to showcase Lee’s true character and his standing as a gentleman.” Seidule later realized that the reason he idolized Lee and the Confederacy was because the culture in which he grew up worshipped Lee and as they proclaimed their racism. Lee was seen as the most dignified man in history, but Seidule would come to realize that “the United States fought against a rebel force that would not accept the results of a democratic election and chose armed rebellion.”

After carefully reviewing the most impactful books he read as a young man Seidule focuses on Margaret Mitchell’s GONE WITH THE WIND in trying to understand his own brainwashing. Mitchell’s novel and David Selznick’s film of the same name created the lens that millions of people saw the Civil War and helped perpetuate the “Lost Cause myth.” Despite their defeat Confederate leaders remained unrepentant. Soon they would create a new narrative to justify racial control and white supremacy. Seidule argues that “The Lost Cause became a movement, an ideology, a myth, even a civil religion that would unite first the white south and eventually the nation around the meaning of the Civil War.” The Lost Cause produced a flawed memory; a lie that formed the ideological foundation for white supremacy, Jim Crow laws, which employed violence and terror to maintain a drastically unequal and segregated society. The Lost Cause myth argued that white southerners fought for many reasons – protective tariffs, states’ rights, freedom, the agrarian dream, defense, etc. etc., but none of those who espoused the myth mentioned slavery. The problem is that the facts all point to the Confederate states seceding to protect and expand their peculiar institution.

The Lost Cause brings about secondary myths to support the overall argument. First, the “obedient servant or happy slave myth,” living on a plantation they loved and that took care of them. The reality was that the plantation was nothing more than a slave labor farm. The second myth was that the southern cause was doomed from the outset because the Yankees had more money, material, and manpower – might over right. A third myth is that Reconstruction was a failure as African Americans weren’t ready for freedom, the vote, or holding high office. Seidule examines all aspects of the Lost Cause myth and debunks them all by presenting actual historical events and movements. The Lost Cause would serve as the ideological underpinnings for a violently racist society.

Seidule admits that it took him decades to come to the realization that his entire educational, socialization, and cultural upbringing was based on a lie. Seidule emerged from his “intellectual bubble” with the burden of guilt that he needed to undo. The narrative is a searing account of Seidule’s upbringing and education corrected by historical facts. He transports the reader to Alexandria, Va., Walton County, Ga, and Lexington, Va. describing his own education juxtaposed against the places where he grew up and became a “southern gentleman.” Seidule zeroes in Alexandria, Va. and Walton, Ga. as his hometowns resorted to beatings, lynching’s, outright murder, the closing of public schools to avoid integration, and denying African Americans the right to vote even in cities and towns where they were the majority all designed to maintain the white supremacist south. But the author never knew about the history of these places and in a number of instances things that transpired during his lifetime.

West Point Military Academy on the Hudson River in New York State Stock Photo

(West Point, NY)

However, as Seidule attended college at Washington and Lee University and was exposed to research and goes through a period of self-condemnation as to how he could have been so ignorant. He unearths numerous racist actions and events following the Civil War and Reconstruction well into the 20^th century. After examining the history of Alexandria and Walton County he could reach only one conclusion – both homes were part of the southern racial police state which was an integral part of creating and maintaining a white supremacist culture in the south. Seidule integrates numerous historical examples of the violence perpetrated against African Americans and how little the white power structure responded despite Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Ka., the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Truman’s Civil Rights Commission, etc.

Seidule blends his own ignorance of racism and violence with historical facts throughout his life’s journey. The most fascinating recounting deals with Robert E. Lee’s role at Washington and Lee University and how he was elevated to deity status in the universities chapel and mausoleum all designed to focus on the education of a Christian gentlemen for students and viewing Lee as the godlike embodiment of what student strove to become. All aspects of the university through the 1980s were endemic to the belief in the myths surrounding the Civil War. Once Seidule came to realize the truth he engaged in a self-imposed guilt by trying to cleanse his own past and educate others as to how the Lost Cause myth came about and how to rectify it.

Seidule’s frustrations are many as he recounts how ten US Army forts are named after southern officers who fought and committed treason against their country, fostered supremacist racial beliefs, owned slaves and worked to deny African Americans the rights guaranteed in the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th amendments to the constitution after the Civil War. Names like Braxton Bragg, John Brown Gordon, A.P. Hill, George Pickett, Leonides Polk, Henry L. Benning, John Bell Hood, Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard, and of course Robert E. Lee, all men who fought and committed treason to preserve slavery as they killed American soldiers, but their names remain on the signage as you enter these posts, despite the current legislation to try and remove them from military installations. Even as Seidule experienced his own military career he was confronted with the Confederate myths in the US Army. Once he began to teach military history at West Point, he did his best to set the historical record straight, particularly how and why portraits and monuments to Lee proliferated at West Point in the 20^th century. He passionately believes the only way to correct the past was to try and make sure the Lost Cause myth did not infect his grandchildren – the tool that needed to be relied upon is historical knowledge. The past does not have to control us, especially if we understand it.

COL-SEIDULE-Picture-400x600 Colonel Ty Seidule To Give Constitution Day Lecture September 17 — (The Author)

Once must commend the author’s journey of discovery and attempts to rectify his past. My only criticism is that at times the narrative is somewhat repetitive, but his overall argument that Lee is guilty of treason in support of a racist regime is dead on. His story is a microcosm of a larger portrait that has imbued the south for over 150 years. If by some “miracle” instead of reducing the study of history and government at educational institutions, we would fund and increase opportunities for more classes the divide that infects America today might be lessened. But, with terms like “fake news,” conspiracy theories involving 9/11, arguing that wildfires are caused by Jewish laser beams, Sandy Hook and Parkland murders did not occur, and QAnon members in the House of Representatives who refuse to give up their weapons on the House floor – as a result I am not encouraged.

One final thought. Seidule states that the Confederacy was formed in reaction to the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. They would go on to fight a war because they felt the election would destroy slavery. From this war sprang the Lost Cause myth, a form of “fake news.” Today we have a segment of the population that believes that the election of Joe Biden was stolen from them and it resulted in conspiracy theories that led to the attack on the capitol. What did the opponents of the 1860 and 2020 election results have in common – White Supremacy.

The Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va., was at the center of a violent rally this past weekend. — (Statue of Robert E. Lee, Charlotesville, Va.)

A PROMISED LAND by Barack Obama

December 8, 2020szfreiberger American cultural history, American Political History, American Social History, Biography, Memoir Leave a comment

(President Barack Obama waves at the conclusion of his news conference in the briefing room of the White House, Dec. 16, 2016, in Washington, D.C.)

After listening to a 46 minute incoherent rant last night by Donald Trump about how the election was stolen from him and other conspiracy theories I was pleased to sit down in a quiet corner of my study and engage Barack Obama’s new memoir, A PROMISED LAND. The comparison between Trump and Obama is alarming as one man uses (ed) the presidency as if were a vehicle for wealth accumulation and as a means of destroying anyone who disagreed with him, while the other, whether you agreed with him or not was sincere about carrying out his constitutional duties as chief executive in a reasonable manner.

Obama has written an engaging memoir that encompasses his early years to his life in Chicago, his early political career, and the first three years of his presidency through the killing of Osama Bin-Ladin. It is clearly written and reflects a great deal of thought, a remarkable knowledge of history, and personal detail which is missing from most presidential memoirs. Over the years I have read all the existing presidential memoirs since Harry Truman’s two volume contribution and would argue for breadth of detail, insightful analysis, candor, and substance, Obama’s memoir should be on the top of the list as he avoids much of the trenchant narrative that his predecessors engaged in.

Obama’s narrative has three major components. First, the personal. Obama is incredibly open about the effect of his political career on his marriage and children. Further, he has no compunction about hiding his feelings about the likes Mitch McConnell, Stanley McCrystal, Hillary Clinton, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Ted Kennedy, David Axelrod and countless others. Second, reflecting his broad historical knowledge he provides introductions, in addition to lessons for each issue he is confronted with be it the 2008 financial crisis, Iran’s nuclear program, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, trying to deal with Vladimir Putin, pandemics, among the many problems he faced on a daily basis. Lastly, the core of any presidential memoir is his political career, relations with other politicians, and trying to gain passage of important legislation, i.e.; the Affordable Care Act, immigration reform, and regulating financial institutions.

(Michelle and Barack Obama)

In all areas he explains his decision-making process as he attempted to solve the problems America faced on a daily basis. A case in point was his approach to troop levels in Afghanistan when he assumed the presidency. The Pentagon favored the “McCrystal Plan” that called for a 40,000 troop increase that would bring troop levels to over 100,000 and would probably keep America in Afghanistan long after an Obama presidency ended, even if he served two terms. Obama as he does in most cases breaks down how he worked with Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to reach a compromise of 17,000 men but setting a controversial withdrawal date for American forces. But no matter what issue Obama discusses be it the inherited economic crisis, rethinking the U.S.’s place in the world, racist resentment lurks below, and its stench rises into sharper focus seemingly in each chapter.

Obama’s writing and approach is not perfect and he like others tends to get bogged down in details, but he has the ability to integrate personal observations on a host of issues and personalities that most readers should find on one level, charming, but also quite interesting. Obama conveys his views very carefully and succinctly as he opens a window to his private life and presidency. At the forefront is his relationship with his wife Michelle. He is very honest about the role she played in his career and sacrificing a great deal personally as she took over direction of their two daughters. She was against his pursuit of a political career, though she provided her full support. But it is clear from her own memoir that she despised politics. It is also clear throughout the narrative that Obama agonized over how his political career and the presidency in particular affected his family, but it did not derail his belief that he could change America for the better and bridge the partisan divide, a belief that reflects his naivete in dealing with Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Hillary Clinton and President Obama are seen in this 2012 photo.

(Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama)

Of the many important subjects that Obama addresses a number stand out which remain problematical to this day. It seems that at every turn the Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell and John Boehner that their goal was to make sure he was a one term president. These feelings on the part of Republicans in general were based on the need to maintain power, but in Obama’s case it had racial overtones. The Professor Louis Gates affair that resulted in the infamous “beer summit” at the White House is very reflective of the racial issue. Obama tried to downplay the arrest of Gates, a Harvard professor who was placed in handcuffs as he tried to enter his own home. But when Obama supported his friend the criticism of the president by the conservative right was heightened. What is crystal clear was that as a Republican you were not supposed to cooperate with Obama and if you did it would negatively affect your political career. Obama would comment on conservatives’ reactions to him in many cases as “have they lost their minds.”

The 2008 financial crisis, that produced the TARP legislation at the end of the Bush administration, the Recovery Act, and the auto industry bailout are dealt with in detail. Dealing with the crisis before he assumed office and immediately after his inauguration it reflects Obama’s deference to the quality of his cabinet and advisers. He weighed all recommendations and relied heavily on the likes of Tim Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury and others. He clearly explains the machinations of bankers, hedge fund managers, and others that brought the United States and many of its citizens to financial disaster and in many cases, particularly among minorities and other segments of society who to this day have not totally recovered. Obama takes the reader inside the George W. Bush administration cabinet room as well as his own as attempts at legislating an end to the crisis – very eye opening.

Obama’s commentary on foreign policy issues is a blend of hard nose realism and baseless hope. Dealing with Russia easily comes to mind. When Vladimir Putin stepped aside and allowed Dimitry Medvedev to assume power in Russia, Obama felt he might have a partner in his “Russian reset.” Though fully aware that Putin was pulling the strings from behind he clung to the idea that progress could be made. His description of his first summit with Putin who in a rather forceful manner harangued the American delegation about American slights toward Russia and the damage the NATO expansion, the financial crisis, and constant human rights complaints which the Russian leader believed humiliated his country. This should have opened Obama’s eyes as he experienced the “real Putin” and developed a firmer response toward the Russian autocrat.

President Obama leads a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet room

(The Obama Cabinet)

Relations with Iran attract a great deal of attention, as does his approach toward the Shi’ite government in Iraq under Nuri al-Maliki, the corrupt regime of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, the disingenuous Pakistani government, and relations with Angela Merkel of Germany, Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and English Prime Minister David Cameron. Obama’s remarks are priceless as he provides details dealing with all of these issues and relationships. Clearly, he was taken aback in a number of situations, particularly the awarding of the Nobel Prize which he himself knew he really had done nothing to earn other than not being George Bush and becoming the first black American president. His comment is revealing; “for what?”

On the domestic front Obama expresses a vibe of disbelief as he tried to develop legislation on a number of important topics. In dealing with the financial crisis Wall Street and banking reform was called for which in the end would result in Dodd-Frank, which for many did not go far enough. Environmental problems festered and getting republicans to accept climate change was a big ask which of course negated any comprehensive legislation to regulate corporations and lobbyists. However, as some progress was made, the Deep Water Horizon Spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico changed everyone’s focus. In what some have called “Obama’s Katrina” the president takes the reader inside the government and BP’s attempts at ameliorating the situation. As Obama states, each day seemed to bring a new crisis, many of which his administration was not prepared for.

situation room obama biden clinton osama raid — US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on Operation Neptune’s Spear, a mission against Osama bin Laden, in one of the conference rooms of the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011.

Aside from a narrative focused on policy and personalities, Obama makes an interesting point in discussing his own upbringing in Indonesia, Hawaii, and frequent visits to Kenya, and how it affected his later approach to problem solving. His background was one of diversity and his approach to foreign policy and domestic decisions dealing with minorities and poverty bear this out. Perhaps Obama’s background helps explains his appearance of being aloof and “cool,” traits that seemed to alienate anyone who disagreed with him be it on the left or right of the political spectrum.

Overall, Obama’s massive memoir, which has another volume which will be released at some point in the future is an exercise in choosing topics that he felt comfortable examining leaving out certain aspects of his presidency that may not cast a favorable light. For example, there was a 700% increase in drone strikes in Pakistan which receives little mention. Obama’s approach to the Arab spring and his chaotic policy toward Libya merits greater discussion. Under Obama administration policies deportation of immigrants rose markedly as did the prosecution of government whistle blowers. These issues are important, but in comparison to the coverage that Obama provides they do not detract from my view of the importance of this memoir and for many setting the political record straight. For Obama it appears that if he laid out his thinking in sufficient detail, along with the constellation of obstacles and constraints he faced, any reasonable American will understand why he governed as he did. No matter how much he may internalize this belief our current political environment reflects that his premise is wrong.

(An excerpt of former President Barack Obama’s upcoming memoir “A Promised Land” was released Monday by the New Yorker.)

HOAX: DONALD TRUMP, FOX NEWS, AND THE DANGEROUS DISTORTION OF TRUTH by Brian Stelter

September 29, 2020September 29, 2020szfreiberger American cultural history, American Political History, American Social History Leave a comment

Never in the history of American politics has a national news organization been an extension of a political party or president. This may seem to be a harsh observation but when one examines President Donald Trump’s twitter feed, public statements, or speeches it appears at times to reflect what is presented on Fox News. If one were to listen to the commentary of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, or the hosts of Fox and Friends among many others one can only imagine if the president is parroting them, or they are parroting him. Amidst a pandemic that has killed over 206,000 Americans President Trump spends a good part of his day watching Fox News. Since we live in such precarious times it would be interesting to know how this situation evolved, whether it is in fact true, and what are the implications for American democracy. Thankfully, CNN’s Reliable Sources anchor, Brian Stelter’s new book, HOAX: DONALD TRUMP, FOX NEWS, AND THE DANGEROUS DISTORTION OF TRUTH has taken on this task.

The title of Stelter’s book, HOAX is very apropos. It’s Donald Trump’s new favorite word. He fears Covid-19 makes him look weak, something his ego cannot accept. Instead of fulfilling his constitutional duty to protect the American people he categorizes the pandemic as a hoax, with Sean Hannity as his chief enabler, some referring to him as Trump‘s “shadow chief of staff.” Stelter aptly describes how is early 2020, Trump and Hannity engaged in their usual feedback loop which had life and death consequences as they downplayed the coronavirus to the detriment of the American public. Hannity “fed misinformation to Trump and Trump fed misinformation right back to Hannity.” The two men brought out the worst in each other as it appeared that Trump programmed Hannity’s show with his constant call-ins during prime time and it often appeared that Hannity produced Trump’s presidency. Hannity would become apart from granting sycophantic interviews and concocted conspiracies but a daily sounding board for the president.

The concept of a feedback loop is one of Stelter’s primary themes as he displays examples of it throughout the book that reinforce his arguments. Whether dealing with Fox and Friends’ hosts, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham the loop seems fully functional. A few examples. When Congressman Elijah Cummings’ House committee was investigating how the Trump administration was treating migrants, all of a sudden Fox programming was reinforcing and supporting Trumps’ tweets – “The Battle for Baltimore,” as Trump referred to Cummings’ district as “a disgusting rat infested mess that no human being would want to live there.” Fox opinion hosts employed constant repetition as they did with trying to clean up Trump’s mess after his courting of white supremacists during and after the Charlottesville debacle, or how Fox went after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she was elected to Congress in 2018, or the caravans that were invading America through Mexico before the 2018 Congressional elections, or Trump’s defense during the impeachment process or the Mueller investigation; or Trump’s belief that the crowd at his inauguration was much larger than Obama’s; or how a debunked conspiracy theory that a Democratic National Committee staffer was murdered for leaking campaign emails; or the false claim that Ukraine, not Russia, was interfering in the 2016 election; and of course the current coronavirus highlighted by hydroxychloroquine– the list goes on and on.

Fox’s approach raises the question are they really a news station or just entertainment and “brain washing” for the extreme right in America. Rupert Murdoch has created an exceptionally profitable business model that thrives on deceit, lies, personal attacks, while reinforcing an alternative reality as opposed to fact and truth. Stelter describes numerous personality issues at Fox, but more importantly he presents the schism that exist(ed) as the more traditional news types like Brett Baier, Chris Wallace and Shep Smith had to deal with the outrageous commentary of the Fox and Friends hosts, Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt; Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Finally, in October 2019, Smith had enough and resigned because of disagreements with Carlson over Fox coverage of the impeachment process. The reality for Trump is that unlike President Bill Clinton who created a “war room” to deal with impeachment, Trump did not have to as Fox became his “war room.”

Stelter reviews the history of the Fox news channel delving into turning points in their approach to news. In 1996 Rupert Murdoch provided Roger Ailes with a “boat load of cash” to develop a strong news channel to attract conservatives, sort of a “Limbaugh” approach for cable television is one example. The election of Barack Obama became the radicalizing force is next, and finally in 2011, Ailes gave Trump a weekly phone-in slot on Fox and Friends. Hannity would become a nightly attack ad for people who distrusted the nightly news. Guests on Hannity and other programs went outside the accepted norms of journalism. In fact, Fox and Friends with their constant call-ins from Trump may be more important to Trump’s presidential launch than “The Apprentice.” If one examines the “incestuous” relationship between Trump and Fox hosts one can see that once in office that Trump’s daily briefings seemed prepared by Fox as their commentary usually wound up in Trump’s tweets and then he would act upon them.

Stelter explores numerous dramas that have taken place internally at Fox. The Meghan Kelly/Trump feud; the sexual harassment lawsuits against Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly; the machinations between Hannity and O’Reilly; the problem that Tucker Carlson presented as he was losing ad revenue; attempts to keep Shep Smith which failed; the reasons why so many journalists remained at Fox and only a few walked out; issues within the Murdoch family as the two sons had diametrically different visions for the channel. In terms of drama Carlson and Ingraham pursued it each evening with their message of cultural displacement of whites by immigrants and the loss of status of white Christian America. Fox and Friends would supplant Trump’s morning intelligence briefing and it became the A.M. edition of Hannity. But as disgraceful as it appeared it made sense as most Fox hosts were geared to an audience of one – Donald Trump.

If there are criticisms that need to be made regarding Stelter’s work is at times he becomes too emotional and his language regresses to match the Fox hosts he decries. Further, he should have tried to approach Fox viewers and see what is so attractive to them about the information that they are being exposed to. It is obvious that Fox is enticing to millions, but why? Do viewers understand that they are being manipulated or in their heart of hearts believe and accept all the misinformation they digest? Stelter glosses over answers to these questions. Perhaps he could have examined this phenomena a bit more.

(CNN’s Brian Stelter)

After reading HOAX I emerged with a massive headache – a malady brought upon by Stelter’s description of the manipulation of fact and news by a media giant to the detriment of our democracy. For Fox ratings and profits were the mantra and they would say and do anything that would reinforce that goal. As the Trump presidency evolved Fox became more and more state run television, something that has never happened since television became a mainstay in American households. Now that I have completed the book, I know what it is like to spend time in the Fox pro-Trump universe of misinformation. As the election approaches, I would recommend that most Americans should read Stelter’s work and apply what they learn to their choice of candidate.

sean hannity trump vaping fox book — (Sean Hannity)

HIS TRUTH IS MARCHING ON: JOHN LEWIS AND THE POWER OF HOPE by Jon Meacham

September 4, 2020September 4, 2020szfreiberger American Social History, Biography Leave a comment

Martin Luther King Jr. with John Lewis at Mass Meeting in Nashville

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., center right, is escorted into a mass meeting at Fisk University along with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee chair John Lewis, left, and Lester Mckinnie, center, in Nashville, Tenn., in 1964.Bettmann Archive/Getty ImagesJuly 21,

When John R. Lewis died recently, part of America’s conscience passed with him. With all the turbulence, chaos, lies, and antipathy toward race that is endemic to the Trump administration it makes every day difficult. A case in point was yesterday in Kenosha, WI when Trump refused to acknowledge the shooting of Jacob Blake by police and his subsequent paralysis or his support for Kyle Rittenhouse, the seventeen year old AR-15 carrying killer of two men. For me this has led to despair as I do not see a way out of America’s current condition with a “serial igniter” when it comes to race. Trump and his acolytes blame everyone but their own policies and rhetoric for where we are as a country, and one can only imagine what will become of our racial divide should he be reelected.

Watching and listening to the outpouring of respect for Lewis by the American people because of his message of non-violence and hope for the next generation was always reassuring, but now he is gone. However, the texture of his life’s work is on full display in Jon Meacham’s latest work, HIS TRUTH IS MARCHING ON: JOHN LEWIS AND THE POWER OF HOPE. Mecham’s latest is not a full scale biography like his previous subjects, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, and George H.W. Bush, but a more nuanced rendering of the development of Lewis’ personal theology and his contribution to the American Civil Rights Movement dating to the 1950s. Mecham’s new book is somewhat a sequel to his wonderful book THE SOUL OF AMERICA: THE BATTLE FOR A BETTER ANGELS where he expresses an optimism for America’s future that I believe has been shattered by events in Portland, Kenosha, and the rise of the alt-right white supremacist movement in this country. We are bombarded each day by bifurcated politics and have lost the leadership of a great man.

martin luther king jr — Martin Luther King, Jr.

In true Meacham fashion his newest narrative history relies on extensive research and the application of incisive analysis as the keystone to his examination of Lewis’ life work. Mecham points out his goal was to present an appreciative account of the major moments of Lewis’ life in the Civil Rights Movement, “of the theological understanding he brought to the struggle and the utility of that vision as America enters the third decade of the twenty-first century amid division and fear.” Mecham’s opening chapter entitled “Overture” returns the dying Lewis suffering from pancreatic cancer to Selma, AL last March to celebrate the events of fifty-five years ago at the Edmund Pettis Bridge where he was almost beaten to death by a white mob supported by police which frames the stage for his remarkable life’s work and accomplishments, but also his optimism and love in the face of hatred.

For Lewis growing up in the segregated world of Troy, AL the church become his comfort and restorative zone and from an incredibly young age he fashioned himself as a preacher. He possessed a great imagination and quickening faith from biblical themes of resurrection, of exile, and deliverance shaped and suffused Lewis’ life from its earliest days. Even as a boy he would preach to his “congregation of chickens” located in his “chicken coop”who he would minister to each day. He would experience the vividness of the Jim Crow order and its segregation realizing how evil it was from an early age. Once he was exposed to an integrated society at his Uncle’s home in Buffalo, he realized how difficult it was to reconcile the teachings of Jesus and segregation.

The watershed moment(s) of his life was his exposure and later meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King. For the first time King’s words introduced a vision of “non-violence, religiously inspired protest, to a way of seeing the world in terms of bringing the temporal in tune with the timeless.” Lewis was not concerned with the streets of heaven, but the streets of Montgomery and the way black and poor people were treated.

Stokely Carmichael speaking at Garfield High School, Seattle, 1967

There were a number of individuals who influenced Lewis’ intellectual development. Apart from Dr. King, the “social gospel” concepts of Walter Rauschenbusch, the strategy of non-violence of Reverend James M. Lawson, along with the murder of Emmett Till, and the work of Rosa Parks all impacted him greatly. Mecham does a workman like job weaving Lewis’ upbringing and later life within the context of American history. His intellectual and emotional development applied to upheavals in America are clearly explored and provides a roadmap into what Lewis thought and what type of man he would become.

Lewis saw integration as a key step forward toward bringing the world into a closer tune with the gospel. Meacham allows the reader to accompany Lewis on his life’s journey including experiencing the approach of peaceful protest met by violence, arrest and imprisonment in Nashville, TN, Oak Hill, SC, Jackson, MS, and Birmingham and Montgomery, AL. in the mid to late 1950s. Along the way we meet the Reverend Ralph Abernathy of Birmingham’s First Baptist church, James farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Medgar Evers, Field Secretary for the NAACP before his murder by Klansmen in Jackson, Diane Nash, a key organizer of sit-ins and Freedom Rides, and of course the likes of Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Conner, George Corley Wallace, and John Patterson. There were also those that did not go along with Lewis’ “Beloved Community.” Men like Stokely Carmichael who believed that systemic racism would not be defeated by non-violence – he favored radical action after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights bill that led to Lewis’ removal as Chair of the SNCC; and Malcom X who favored a more militant approach and denigrated some of Lewis’ ideas, though later on they came much closer to each other’s ideals.

Malcom X

Meacham presents a balanced approach integrating theology, socio-economics, and political components that Lewis brought to the Civil Rights Movement providing insights into what made Lewis tick and made him such a social and political force of nature. 1963 would be a watershed for Lewis’ development and the Civil Rights Movement. Meacham provides intricate details of events surrounding protests in Birmingham and Jackson culminating in the March on Washington on August 28th of that year where Lewis at age twenty-one was the youngest speaker. At the age of twenty-three after his participation in the Freedom Rides and a stint at Parchman Farm, the notorious Mississippi prison, Lewis was elected Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). SNCC led the growing militancy of the Civil Rights Movement provoking violent resistance against their cause that pushed a reluctant federal government to embrace the cause of Black rights. By 1965, the Johnson administration gained the passage of legislation prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations and voting destroying the legal foundations of Jim Crow. 1965 was also the year that Lewis suffered a fractured skull at the hands of the Alabama State Police at the Edmund Pettis Bridge as they marched for voting rights in Selma, AL, an event known as Bloody Sunday. SNCC leadership would pass from Lewis to Stokely Carmichael in 1966 whose Black Power slogan was the antithesis of Lewis’ vision of a nationwide integrated community. But the SNCC would flounder due to FBI harassment and internal disagreements and passed from the scene by the late 1960s. By 1968 Lewis would join Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign and after Kennedy’s assassination he would go on to be elected to Congress where he would serve for more than thirty years.

Much of Meacham’s work relies heavily on Lewis’ memoir, WALKING IN THE WIND and as the author points out he did not set out to write a full scale biography. Meacham reminds readers that if they wanted a full scale biography they must wait until Rutgers historian David Greenberg completes his own work. But in the interim, Meacham’s work should hold the fort for those with an interest in a remarkable man.

(John R. Lewis, booked for one of his many arrests)

THE HARD HAT RIOT: NIXON, NEW YORK CITY, AND THE DAWN OF THE WHITE WORKING CLASS REVOLUTION by David Paul Kuhn

July 31, 2020July 31, 2020szfreiberger American Social History, Vietnam Leave a comment

Construction workers and antiwar protesters scuffled near Broad and Wall Sts. in May, 1970. (John Rooney/AP)

For me, the first week of May 1970 was one of extreme personal conflict. On May 4^th, the nation witnessed the death of four Kent State student at the hands of the Ohio National Guard. On May 8^th New York City Mayor, John V. Lindsay ordered the lowering of the American flag to half staff at City Hall which provoked construction workers working on the World Trade Center and other sites in lower Manhattan to continue rioting that began on Wall and Broad Streets by attacking students, “hippies,” or anyone who looked like they disagreed with them. Pace College, at which I was a student became a target that continued the violence that construction workers had been perpetuating for what seemed like for hours. At Pace students were beaten, many to unconsciousness, chased into dorms, student centers and even the subways menaced by pipes, wrenches, and fists as the NYPD looked on in quiet amusement. Later that night I learned that my United States Army Reserve unit stationed at St. John’s University in Queens, NY had been activated to deal with anti-war demonstrators. The next day I found myself in riot gear, no longer a demonstrator, but a soldier ordered to defend our armory against students. These events have receded from my generation’s memory but have been rekindled by David Paul Kuhn’s superb new study, THE HARD HAT RIOT: NIXON, NEW YORK CITY, AND THE DAWN OF THE WHITE WORKING CLASS REVOLUTION.

(Pace University today, known as Pace College in May, 1970 when hard hats broke through these doors…..)

At a time when we have a president who raps himself in law and order as Richard Nixon did in the late 1960s and early 1970s basing his support on the white working class it is useful to turn the page and explore when this group which had been part of the Democratic Party coalition since the New Deal switched to the GOP. Nixon was able to move the Republican Party from the “blue bloods” to the “blue collar” manipulating opposition to the war in Vietnam creating a new play book that is still be employed today – a focus on race, class, and ethnic hatred. Kuhn correctly points out that 1968 was the “biggest year for students since 1848 – the year of student led revolutions in Europe.” Kuhn builds upon the occupation of Columbia University led by SDS militants to explain the radicalization of college students across America, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as well as the Moratorium movement against the war.

Kuhn effectively explains the rise of a counter movement to those who opposed the war and the corporations and politicians who supported it. He explores how blue-collar workers, many of whom fought in World War II and Korea, came to see college students as children of privilege, who had the socio-economic advantages that they did not have. The war itself was being fought in the majority by children of blue-collar workers who were patriotic and believed in fighting against the communist threat. Construction workers were the epitome of the blue-collar class as events unfolded in early May and they “saw privileged kids venting rage on working class guys trying to maintain order.” For Kuhn what transpired was a developing class war which he carefully argues.

(Richard Nixon with his hard hat!)

Kuhn does a good job explaining historical events including the various movements that were against the war. His analysis is important because it places the shootings at Kent State and events that followed in their historical context. One of the most important issues was the decline of manufacturing in northern cities like New York which under Mayor Lindsay, the darling of progressives accelerated with increased immigration from Puerto Rico, and migration of southern blacks. New York, like other cities would suffer from “white flight,” as education declined, crime and air pollution increased. The plight of urban areas became part of the deindustrialization of America. At this time, I was a high school student and experienced a subway strike, a garbage strike, and a teacher’s strike all within a 12-24 month period. I witnessed muggings, racial unrest, and increased crime in my Brooklyn neighborhood, all fodder for Nixon’s “law and order campaigns” in 1968 and 1972.

The decline of New York City is carefully explained, and Kuhn disagrees with the argument that it was due to “white flight” as he points out that blacks were trying to migrate to the suburbs in as much as whites. As a result, the city became a haven for white collar jobs, but its labor force was blue collar. Many historians argue that Nixon developed a “southern strategy,” but Kuhn argues that it was more of a “Middle America” strategy focusing on events and policies that hurt “the Silent Majority” in the middle of the country. The anti-war movement, poverty, urban unrest, all led to class conflict which Nixon was able to exploit. People saw upper class rich kids demonstrating while they suffered economically. The result Middle America represented by blue-collar workers found their voice in Richard Nixon as opposed to John Lindsay, who represented the elitist liberal establishment.

(New York Mayor John V. Lindsay in 1965)

In all, most soldiers who fought in Vietnam were whites with blue-collar or poorer backgrounds. This led to more affluent whites being less likely to serve and die in Vietnam. The military had traditionally offered a pathway to societal respect, Vietnam killed that. In examining the rise of John Lindsay in New York it is clear his appeal was based on social class in terms of poverty, racism, and the anti-war movement making him the darling of the New Left. The problem was that “high minded sympathy did not extend to the city’s [white] blue collar workers.” The result was the creation of a disaffected blue collar working class that would explode in early May.

Kuhn exhibits a firm grasp of labor and immigration history and how they affected the development of New York from the 1840s onward. In his discussion, Kuhn emphasizes socio-economic status, ethnicity, race, and religion. As the decades passed especially after World War II, blue collar workers categorized elites as looking down on them and “saw hypocrites telling them to bear burdens that others benefited from more and had not yet answered for, or would not, or could not afford to ever face, and yet still stood on soapboxes and morally judged them.”

Lindsay just exacerbated blue collar anger with his support for the anti-war movement and praising demonstrators in his speeches. Lindsay’s New York was part of the tense emotions that Kuhn captures that existed across America. With fire bombings on campuses, demonstrations, and riots in reaction to Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia producing incendiary rhetoric on the part of the President in a country that was a tinderbox.

When May 7, 1970 arrived with the funeral of Jeffrey Miller, one of the four students killed at Kent State it was clear trouble was afoot as protestors and construction workers skirmished on Wall Street and rumors persisted that these workers were planning to teach these “kids” a lesson. This would come to fruition the next day and forms the core of Kuhn’s narrative.

Kuhn relies on NYPD archives which include 324 interviews that were conducted after the events of May 8^th. What was clear is that the police tended to ignore the rioting and violence perpetuated by construction workers against students and anyone who appeared as if they supported them. He is able to piece together a coherent narrative of the mayhem that transpired on Wall Street, Broadway, culminating at City Hall Park and Pace College. The demonstrators believed in the false assumption that police were there to protect them. I myself witnessed repeated beatings while police turned away. If I were to compare my memory of events at City Hall and Pace, they dove tail completely with Kuhn’s description. Kuhn is to be commended for delving into the archives and recreating what can only be described as construction workers run amuck, beating people, many indiscriminately for hours while New York’s finest, even when people pleaded with them to intervene, did extraordinarily little.

An area of interest for me is the investigation that took place after the rioting and what emerged. It is clear from Kuhn’s presentation that the NYPD’s probe of its own department buried evidence of police malfeasance and minimized witness consensus. It contained numerous rationalizations for their lack of law enforcement. It blamed what transpired on “understaffing, the instigating students, the limited range of handheld radios, the unprecedented nature of the confrontation.” Further, the NYPD found no evidence that labor leaders planned the riot, and that it caught fire based on hard hats being antagonized by “hippies.” Kuhn concludes that the hard hat “tantrum” was essentially spontaneous and not, as some believed, part of some grand conspiracy.

The biggest winner from the events of May 8 – 20 was Richard M. Nixon. The hard hats would become part of his base, poached away from the Democrats. The GOP, the party of big business was now making inroads with labor. One of Kuhn’s most important themes deals with blue collar activism which buoyed Nixon by the end of the summer, 1970. Patrick Buchanan, then one of his advisors argued that Democratic swing voters were law and order believers, conservative on social issues like busing, crime, affirmative action, but progressive on domestic issues, i.e., Medicare, social security. Buchanan successfully argued that if the Republicans held the political center, they would win big in 1972, which turned out to be the case. Union heads like George Meany and Peter Brennan swung their support to Nixon as the hard hat riot created the initial bond between a Republican president and Democratic union members that continued under Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, and formed the base of support for Donald Trump.

Kuhn has written a masterful and riveting study. At times repetitive, particularly when describing the hard hat riot, but this should be overlooked when evaluating the overall depth and quality of Kuhn’s narrative. Kuhn has written the seminal work on the topic which should stand the test of time. If you are seeking an explanation for class conflict that evolved decades later into an issue exploited by Donald Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to win the White House, Kuhn’s research and ultimate outcome should open your eyes.

RUSH: REVOLUTION, MADNESS, AND THE VISIONARY DOCTOR WHO BECAME A FOUNDING FATHER by Stephen Fried

May 24, 2020szfreiberger American cultural history, American Political History, American Revolution, American Social History, Biography 1 Comment

Meet the Doctor Who Convinced America to Sober Up

Meet Benjamin Rush, father of the temperance movement, signer of the Declaration of Independence

When we think of the Founding Fathers and heroes of the American Revolution the names that are mentioned include George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John and Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison, among others. Rarely if ever does the name Benjamin Rush enter the conversation. However, in Stephen Fried’s new biography RUSH: REVOLUTION, MADNESS, AND THE VISIONARY DOCTOR WHO BECAME A FOUNDING FATHER, the author presents a truly Renaissance individual who impacted the era in which he lived on multiple levels including science, politics, sociology, psychology, and other aspects of intellectual life. The question must be asked why such a brilliant scientist and political thinker who influenced many of his contemporaries in countless ways has not been the subject of greater historical research.

Fried has filled that gap with an absorbing portrait and attempts to answer the question by arguing that Rush may have known too much about his fellow revolutionaries and physicians who made him privy to many of their deepest thoughts. After his death in 1813, Adams and Jefferson, along with his family members suppressed his writings resulting in the diminution of his legacy. According to Fried he would become the “footnote founder, a second-tier founder.”

Stephen Fried at the statue of Benjamin Rush at Dickinson College (Photo: Carl Socolow)

No matter where Rush falls in the pantheon of the Founding Fathers after reading Fried’s work it is clear he was an exceptional historical figure who impacted many aspects of American society and politics during his lifetime. From his education as a physician, his polemical writings, his role during the revolution, the people he developed relationships with, his impact after the revolution in dealing with mental illness, and raising the level of the health of Americans Rush’s life is worthy of exploration. Fried begins with his medical education stressing the methods available in the 1760s. The study of anatomy and the compounding of medicines created a baseline in which to compare what existed and the improvements that would develop as Rush’s career evolved. His mentors, Doctors John Morgan and Willian Shippen are important in that they provided Rush with knowledge of techniques and diagnostics which laid the ground work for what George Washington would complain, “those damn physicians” who later could not get along because of their egos causing a great deal of trouble during the revolution and after. From the outset Rush’s approach to medicine, i.e., dissection, obstetrics, and midwifery at the time were controversial and provoked a great deal of opposition. As Fried lays out the development of Rush’s belief system it was clear he was his own man and was not shy about putting his opinions in letters and pamphlets and rarely backed away from his approach to medicine or politics.

The strength of Fried’s approach rests on integrating Rush’s writings/opinions from his diaries, journals, letters, and common place books into the narrative. Fried uses this material providing intimate details of Rush’s most important relationships during a lifetime in which he developed with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and a host of medical contemporaries. Rush was a prolific writer and soon employed “the pamphlet” as his major tool in letting the public know his opinions, many of which rubbed people the wrong way. One of his first pamphlets reflects his dilettantish nature published in the early 1770s, “Sermons to Gentlemen on Temperance and Exercise,” in addition to publishing his views as a Philadelphian concerning the English tax on tea which would lead directly to the Boston Tea Party, and his influence and editing of Thomas Paine’s COMMON SENSE. Rush would dabble in all types of subjects, but his underlying coda was to improve society, but from his own perspective. Eventually he would be a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Admission ticket, Benjamin Rush's lectures on chemistry, 1769

Fried’s narrative recounts the course of the American Revolution in a clear and concise manner. There is nothing that is presented that previous historians have not mined. What sets Fried’s work apart is the role played by Rush in attending the medical needs of the colonists even crossing the Delaware with Washington. Rush witnessed the horrors of 18^th century warfare firsthand and he used what he experienced as a basis for a platform to improve medical care through diagnosis, technique, medicines, and the creation of military hospitals. Rush tended to rub people the wrong way with his writing and commentary, a flaw that got him into trouble with many people including his commentary about Washington’s leadership.

Rush had no compunction about criticizing his mentors particularly Dr. William Shippen leadership as Chief Physician and Inspector-General during the revolution. Historians have pointed out the lack of food, clothing, and pay that colonial soldiers had to cope with. Fried takes it further by exploring the weaknesses of medical care for soldiers. Rush would finally resign from Washington’s army in 1778, but many of his ideas about hospital care were implemented. Later Rush would testify at Shippen’s court-martial against Washington’s advice, but he would be acquitted by one vote.

Fried does not overlook Rush’s private life. He would not marry until the age of thirty because of the advice of his mother. He would marry Julia Stockton who was sixteen, but they had a long life together and were deeply in love. The marriage would produce thirteen pregnancies, but unfortunately only six children would live to adulthood. He was a good father and provider, but as with most men during the period he was away from home at least half the time until the 1781-1786 period were, he devoted himself to his family and medical practice.

Fried describes Rush’s political role in detail particularly after the American Revolution. He had been a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and later would be a delegate to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention which would ratify the Constitution in 1787. Rush also became involved in the issue of slavery. He would become an abolitionist; despite the fact he did own one slave who he would free in 1793 and he argued profusely concerning the inhumanity of the “peculiar institution.” Another of his pet peeves was the lack of a comprehensive educational system in Pennsylvania and after the new nation was ratified. He worked assiduously to include women, blacks and immigrants in his program and helped create what would become Dickinson College and Franklin and Marshall later on in addition to improving medical curricula at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.

But what Rush is most noted for was his attempts at improving care for his patients. He would serve in numerous capacities during his medical career and once gain rubbed many the wrong way. His work with the mentally ill is key as he found their treatment abhorrent and studied numerous cases to determine a better way of treatment. He published a number of pamphlets outlining his ideas that included how best to raise the level of mental health care and arguing that mental illness was a disease to be treated and that patient care was important and they should not be locked away in basements chained to the wall. He would be involved in creating the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and helped create the first American Medical society and would soon oversee the care of the mentally ill. Perhaps Fried’s most incisive chapter deals with Rush’s handling of the 1793 yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia which killed with “biblical proportions.” Employing Rush’s letters to his wife Julia the reader is exposed to the depth of the tragedy that unfolded. Rush favored a more extreme treatment of victims which provoked a great deal of controversy with his colleagues. It is interesting how a politically partisan approach to treatment took place. Doctors who had Federalist leanings tended to oppose Rush’s methods, while Democratic-Republicans tended to support Rush (sound familiar!). Fried delves into the effect of the disease on Rush’s family, friends, and cohorts and the reader is provided insights into the approach taken toward an epidemic in the early 1790s.

(President John Adams)

Fried spends a great deal of time examining Rush’s later years which were dominated by his correspondence with John Adams who he was able to convince to reconcile with Thomas Jefferson. Further his writing remained prolific particularly in relation to his work with the mentally ill working to improve their treatment and living conditions and continuing his lectures at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. Rush was always looking to improve the quality of life of his patients and with the deterioration of his son John’s mental health he redoubled his efforts in the areas of alcoholism and mental stability.

Fried has written a comprehensive and fascinating biography raising the historical profile of Benjamin Rush for a twenty first century audience. Rush was a flawed character whose comments and writings often got him in trouble, but as Fried points out repeatedly his motives were usually pure, and his goal was to raise the level of many aspects of society. Fried has created the most comprehensive work to date on Rush, but also has uncovered a treasure trove of documentary sources that can be mined by future historians.