THE PLOT TO SEIZE THE WHITE HOUSE

Jules Archer

Now that I’ve gone through The Plot To Seize The White House, I realize I’ve read about the greatest American named, Smedley. Before, if I had heard that name, I would have thought he was a cartoon character of days yore, or one dreamed up right now.

Of course, it does not surprise me that Smedley’s place in history is buried. He was an isolationist and a pacifist throughout the 1930s. Lindbergh took most of that oxygen; Smedley did not make it into World War Two. Finally, as Lindbergh realized it was unpopular to be against the Fascists as policies and attitudes changed within the United States.

For me the value of the book described American foreign policy for the forty years from 1890. Oddly enough, Theodore Roosevelt was all-in during the Spanish-American War, but within a decade he was ruing his decision to takeover the Philippines. One reason the Americans went in was to stop the competition taking over – the Japanese and the Germans, not allies at the time. Taft became governor of the colony, and took a horse-tour which drew the remark of Taft’s final report: “What happened to the horse?” Having been governor, Taft figured he knew how to fix things, just like Doug MacArthur believed his military prowess could defend those islands in 1941. They were both morons.

Descriptions of small military actions and involvements for 40 years from 1890 confirmed the poor diplomacy of the American State Department. We adopted French and British ways although those nations frequently took entire lands, to scattered benefits: Hong Kong did not exist before the British arrived in 1839, and Shanghai was a mid-sized sea-side outpost. Each is near the mouth of a large river. American involvement was late and tiny, but we played by the rules: I believe the American government paid the French for their concession to build the Panama Canal at the time Panama separated from Columbia.

What The Plot does not explain, sometimes countries did not have any government in place to deal with internal problems or make foreign investment possible. The face of American diplomacy became the Marines, the Navy or Army. Note before World War One Pershing was trying to track down Pancho Villa in Northern Mexico. The Mexican government did not have control over that area until 1919 or later. Villa was killed in 1923 which settled things. Yet, today the Mexican cartels have established themselves there. The cartels are the only government.

Times were different. The book spends no time giving those settings. Herbert Hoover mining engineer provided employment to many foreigners. Along with mines he built roads and railroads, and made sure products could be exported to the world. He made tens of millions of dollars. ($75,000,000?)

It was a type of foreign aid program inexpensively backstopped by the military. Investments were made and natives rose: Chile, mining; Venezuela, oil; Egypt, cotton. For Europeans they spared the expense of the Marines and business diplomacy, by colonization. There were horrors like the Belgiums in the Congo. Yet the world situation caused Mark Twain to observe: “The British are mentioned in the Bible. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” All that colonization was well and cheap until the Europeans began fighting other Europeans for concessions and land: An issue over British Guiana in the 1890s brought the British much closer to the Americans, being the bedrock of the special relationship. The Boar War on its heels was destructive and expensive. Further into the Twentieth Century concessions and colonies became untenable changing policies for the British, Dutch, French, Italians, Turks, Spaniards, Portuguese and Americans (copper in Chile in 1970).

The whole set of business arrangements was imperfect and unfair to natives by today’s standards. Yet today’s circumstances are dissimilar. There were about a billion humans on earth in 1900, and many foreign military units were untrained. That’s how smaller forces of Marines could make a difference. How would any of those people, natives and Marines, do on earth with eight and a half billion humans?

I don’t fault Smedley for knowing he was defending American financial and investment interests – persons and activities he found distasteful and disagreed with. There were a lot of frauds which completely exploited natives and investors. Laws were not yet written. The British used their excellent espionage services. Americans were lucky if they knew where the country was. (The same ignorance prevailed into the early 1960s with Vietnam.) Americans did sent a lot of do-gooders – Christian ministers and some journalists: “Doctor Livingston, I presume,” said Harold Stanley of The New York World.    

That was Smedley’s world – innocent, individual and somewhat messy. His Marines were needed, but the whole historical context is not found in this book. Smedley’s protestations in the Thirties seemed to come from no where. It is inadequate history to cite a poll saying most Americans were against foreign intervention, when the country had been using its military in like situations for 120 years. 

Finally, about Smedley, as an individual, what did he do to establish the Marines was an entity, as he rose through the ranks? Certainly he was beloved and could lead fellow Marines, but once he was gone what was left? I don’t know. I raise this point because during the Civil War, U.S. Grant identified and promoted men who led the U.S. Army into the 1890s. Smedley was not political enough to make such changes.

I’ve read books about investigations, and I’m not surprised that this investigation failed: There was no legislation to remedy anything, which can be a point: Investigations lead to nothing. In the last 30 years someone ought to have proposed a constitutional amendment defining and limiting Executive Privilege. Nope. So in our life time we’ve seen a lot of investigations, however worthy, begun and gone no where.

Specifically, about The Plot there is no explanation about The American Legion and its power. It was a rival organization to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. There needs to be at least 10,000 words to explain its organization and power which the book does not give.

I got nothing about The American Legion from The Plot. It seems an essential part of the story – activities before and after the 1930s, during World War Two, and words explaining after the War. By the Fifties the Right splintered e.g. John Birch was a missionary in China, one of the persons Americans innocently sent overseas to preach religion. Once dead by the dreaded Chinese communists (the Nationalists were good murderers), John Birch became a martyr.   

HOME

There’s no place like home, so Dorothy reminds us. Who is she kidding? Nobody in America. “Home, home on the range,” is a celebration of being in nature, not at home, play with deer and antelope, animals in every yard in New York. And every American knows a store, a restaurant, a bar, or sometimes Home Depot is a second home. That’s grim.

Home is not about family. Home is not about conflict. Home is not about tranquility. Home is not a sanctuary. Home is a place of reality, where each American must look in the mirror and be reconciled with the person causing the image. And homes, however comfortable by magazine standards, does not change these perceptions. Today are scattered sketches of Americans being at home – bored, disturbed, anxious, need sort a familiar spot but to where, when and how often. I’ve heard an American say what he wanted to do during retirement: Do what I want and travel so he and his wife should live life a bit.  

Because that American was moving a thousand miles to live in a new dream home, I asked, “Do you have to travel to live?” Traveling is tough business. Before Corona one had an itinerary, somewhat predictable, and an accompanying schedule to maintain and hours to heed, all like going to elementary school with bells. Travel required strict adhesion to time, or a traveller might  be left behind. Days are rare when one can go and write a diary like an author writing a book. One review of a travel book was perfect, “He has produced a talkie, so dip and skim.” There’s a lot of dipping and skimming in travel writing today.

Travelers have to live out of suitcases; some travelers have to carry their own luggage. Every day travelers see something obtainable in one location in the world but not elsewhere. Should that object be bought as a memory, a treasure, or as an item to forget and disremember its significance not to be conveyed to anyone in the family? It will hang around home until charity gets it.

Home is where there are disagreements, which might be or are not rooted in reality. Fear and terror to families using the home, the family relies on memories to cover deep-seeded hatreds, irrational arguments which go on forever, where incidents are misremembered and placed long before, or long after their actual occurrences, and always a place of great spontaneities which flash rage and idiocies but are unhelpful to understand the past of anything. Unsettled uncertainty of home and its persons drives individuals into a loathing relationship with home, impressions, superstitions and hauntings by which one person can beleaguer as much of the population of the earth as can heard it. These preoccupations make home great stores of psychological ill-effects, violence and bewilderments: God made me do it. I did not have control over myself or my senses. 

Don’t blame God, blame yourself and your shortcomings. It is your house and home.  Yet, everything at home that makes a being human grinds against definitions of domestic bliss, tranquility and peace.

During these days of corona Americans are so antsy to get up and get away from spouses, children, parents, visitors, members of the family that the grand assumptions of conventional wisdom are wrong. Americans resent, hate and despise home. They are claustrophobic about being stationary, stuck to one parcel of land, a building and its inhabitants. Open the country, renew the virus, I want to risk dying wherever the cost (and kill everyone at home!). 

Americans have forgotten: If your best friend – someone you love and hold close – were sick with Corona or anything else, would you visit that person if the disease might make you or members of your family sick for two months? The answer is no, you would not visit. You would not want to visit if you could not protect yourself from being a carrier. And the friend, if it be true friendship, wouldn’t want you to visit and possibly give the disease to you or to others. A sick friend would urge you to stay home and protect yourself. 

These are circumstances facing us today with Corona. The only difference is, Americans are not going to visit their best friends which they can do already. INSTEAD, Americans want to go out amongst strangers, in perfect or ill-health and all exercising various degrees of care for themselves or others. That is not trusting fellow Americans. That is reckless and a conscious disregard for the rights and the lives of others.  

Corona is the perfect example of a public health emergency. Americans being in and about with one another – concerts, sporting events, public observances, theaters, political meetings, religious services, community service organizations, on-and-on, as individual Americans do not know who is out there and who they are meeting. Does anyone have a cough, a temperature, an ache, or any other undisclosed symtom. Like Tuberculosis and its asylums 130 years ago, like the flu 102 years ago, like the measles and polio, care had to be taken to protect the great American people, every individual as we have recently learned in our way into the future. Anything short of that reverses the course of centuries, taking human beings into medieval times when subjects of a monarchy or a despot were not citizens and friends to one another. They were units to be discarded! 

The attitudes of Americans begin at home, being at ease in that setting and teaching each self and our families discipline, cleanliness and charity. Find solace and peace there, and the country will benefit from the Corona experience. 

BAD JOURNALISM – MIKA BRZESINKI

Mika, the golden girl of Morning Joe, does not know how to ask a string of questions to get a story.

Witness her interview of Joe Biden, an embarrassment to the program and to journalists everywhere. Mika asked about Joe Biden’s papers at the University of Delaware. Were employee records and papers at the University? Biden answered employee records were with a federal agency. How did Biden know employee records were where? That’s where employee records are sent. How did Biden know the University did not have employee records. Because employee records go to the federal agency.

Mika could not get by her short list of questions. Biden said employee records are confidential. They contain private information, not open to the public. Mika did not understand what almost every American knows. An individual’s employee records do not belong to Biden or any other employing senator. The employer is the United States government. Papers at the University belong to Biden, not to the government.

If Mika had asked, I’m sure Biden would have explained that in his Senate Office employee records were kept separate from Biden’s papers. Employee records, including tax information and everything else, may have gone to the federal agency before the employee left Biden’s office. We’ll never know. Mika did not ask.

Mika’s next big question was, where was the complaint the accuser filed against Biden. Biden said he learned about the complaint recently; he did not know about it in 1993. A New York Times investigation said there was no complaint, and no one in Biden’s Senate office heard about the complaint, or had ever heard the accuser complain within Biden’s office. By persistently asking about the complaint, Mika implied that Biden had the complaint, or a copy of it. NONSENSE. The accuser never gives copies of accusations to the perpetrator. Copies of the complaint would be in a federal agency, or in an agency with investigative oversight. Biden answered that he asked the primary Archive to produce anything resembling a complaint against him. Note that the complaint may be procured without also producing the employee records which Mika has initially stumbled over. Biden and all Americans await a response from the Archives.

On this issue of the Complaint and the papers at the University, in an aftermath rescue plan, Joe and Willie tried to salvage Mika’s interview. If Biden opened his papers at the University, journalists might find an interoffice memo where the accuser’s accusations was discussed: Biden wasn’t being honest. If pigs had wings, they would fly. If Americans drank bleach, they could kill the virus. Don’t believe The New York Times. Don’t believe staffers who said nothing like that ever happened. Just speculate like is done on Fox.

Biden said during the interview that the allegations should be believed and investigated until resolved. Biden denied the assault ever happened. The New York Times investigated and disbelieves. Whatever investigation remains should carry on. The election is in November, six months off. Biden has always supported investigations in these matters.

Parallels with Brett Kavanaugh? Brett was accused during confirmation hearings. About a week of news, a FBI quickie investigation of three days, and Kavenaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Reaction: At the time I considered the Eastern Establishment was protecting Brett and like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, its was time use a flamethrower to burn the Establishment down. Other persons claimed there were other incidences involving Brett at Yale and elsewhere; they were going to write books. Today, some people want to impeach Brett – I’m not sure why: Bad legal decisions or further evidence proving bad-behavior.

Mika needed rescuing following the interview with Biden, but Willie and Joe were hamstrung: uncertain in facts, sloppy in analyses and unwarranted praise for Mika who could not ask anything beyond three questions.

Mika ought to read more. Like her colleagues at Fox, she has to know that being blonde, having pearly teeth and clean skin does not make a journalist.