Новости за 09.09.2018

       The current occupant of the White House has been compared to other figures from history from Joseph McCarthy with whom he shared the dubious legal counsel of Roy Cohn, a harrier Benito Mussolini, a character from a Sinclair Lewis novel, James Buchanan, a minor league Hitler, Andrew Johnson and, previously by this writer, Huey Long.

Two years into the presidency of Donald Trump, many of us are still scratching our heads. How did such a corrupt, narcissistic, TV celebrity win a national election? We saw the “Blue Wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin turn red in November 2016, but why?

Murray Polner, formerly HNN's senior book review editor, blogs at There's No There There. He is the author of No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran, Branch Rickey: A Biography, and co-editor of We Who Dared Say No To War.

Senate Reception Room

In 1957, a committee was formed in the US Senate to honor great Senators in the history of that body. Democrat John F. Kennedy (Massachusetts) was named the head of the committee; the other members included Democrats Richard Russell (Georgia) and Mike Mansfield (Montana), and Republicans Styles Bridges (New Hampshire) and John Bricker (Ohio). The majority of the committee were conservatives, and that affected their choices.

An advisory committee of 160 scholars was asked to contribute suggestions... Читать дальше...

On August 9, 2018 California’s big three burns – Ferguson, Carr, and Mendocino – reached 539,000 acres, and counting, and commanded national attention. They had human causes, two unknown in particulars, one from a faulty car. The Ferguson had forced Yosemite National Park to close its west entry and Yosemite Valley. The Carr fire had burned into suburbs of Redding. The Mendocino fires were two, nearly adjacent, treated as a single megacomplex. None were contained; fire officials stated the Mendocino... Читать дальше...

Huey Long: Share the Wealth

President Trump continues to attack news media critical of his policies as "enemies of the people" who perpetuate "fake news." In mid-August of this year, 300 of the nation's newspapers published editorials decrying his continuing attacks on first amendment rights. "Journalists are not the enemy," said a Boston Globe editorial. "This reckless assault on the free press has dangerous consequences."

A few previous presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln... Читать дальше...

Andrew Gillum’s recent win in the Florida Democratic primary for governor provoked a quick backlash by his Republican opponent Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump. The morning after the primary results, DeSantis warned Floridians, “the last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state.” Trump tweeted that Gillum is “a failed Socialist Mayor… who has allowed crime & many other problems to flourish in his... Читать дальше...

Henry Kissinger spoke at Senator John McCain’s funeral. He said that McCain was one of those rare public servants who understood duty and honor. He believed that McCain embraced America’s power and its ideals, holding each dearly to his chest. This, for Kissinger, is the mark of a true leader. Of course, Kissinger was really talking about himself. The 95-year-old Kissinger, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, also recalled that he had... Читать дальше...

A Russian vaccine disinformation campaign targeting the United States and Western Europe described in a recent study is part of a chain of Russian and Soviet medical disinformation campaigns that stretches back for decades. During the Cold war the KGB fanned the flames of conspiracy theories in stories planted in obscure foreign newspapers and disseminated on shortwave radio broadcasts. Russian intelligence has updated its playbook to incorporate Twitter bots and trolls, but the motives and effects haven’t changed. Читать дальше...

John Dean's Testimony Before the Watergate Committee (1973)

In a recent tweet, President Trump attacked John Dean, Nixon’s White House Counsel, as a “RAT.” He wrote: "The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel (sic) Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel (sic), he must be a John Dean type 'RAT.' But I allowed him and all others to testify. . . .” 

Rudy Giuliani (Courtesy of Gage Skidmore)

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky co-founded the Pro-Truth Pledge (at ProTruthPledge.org), a project joined by anyone who cares about creating a united constituency of all who care about truth and facts. He authored a number of a number of books, most notably the national bestseller The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide, and is regularly featured in venues like CBS News, Time, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Newsweek, The Conversation, CNBC, and elsewhere. Читать дальше...

Attack against Fort Sumter

A new arena in our burgeoning political circus has opened in the form of short-take political commentary: American Civil War, 2.0. Not restricted to 4chan, alt-left or alt-right, it grows instead from the fever swamps of what was once called the respectable middle. Examples of these predictions can be found here, here and here.  And one knows it’s “a thing” when Twitter features a parody hash tag, #SecondCivilWar.

Few of these forecasters see a repeat of our last civil war. Читать дальше...

Labor Day pamphlet, 1942, produced by the Office for Emergency Management.

Professor Jay Winter

Imagining war is the curse of our violent world; we have no choice but to face that task with as much intelligence, compassion, and courage as we can.

Professor Jay Winter is a renowned expert on the cultural history of modern war and its disastrous consequences for all caught in the industrialized horror, soldiers and civilians alike, from around the globe. He is also acclaimed for his knowledge of the imagery that emerges from conflict and forms of remembrance. Читать дальше...

Across the country, the number of university students majoring in history continues to decline. Students think history is boring, just a bunch of uninteresting dead people and too many dates that need to be memorized.

From Friday, August 3, 2018 at 6:00 p.m. until Sunday, August 5, 2018 at midnight, reported Chicago police, gunfire claimed sixty-six victims on the predominantly African American South and West Sides of the city. Twelve residents, ranging from the ages of eleven to sixty-two, died from the gunshot wounds during the weekend. The sudden outburst of gunplay underscored the fact that, although some metrics had indicated a recent decline in the city’s astronomical homicide rate, Chicago was still struggling to curb gun-related violence. Читать дальше...

As summer break comes to an end, teachers across the country will flock to stores purchasing school supplies with their own money, turn their undecorated classrooms into places of excitement and learning, and prepare themselves for another year of testing, low pay, and underfunding. However, following a year that witnessed numerous teachers’ strikes across the country for the first time in decades, teachers and school districts may also be preparing themselves for another wave of militancy. 

Since the advent of the Trump administration, large numbers of Americans have been aghast at its narrow nationalist approach to world affairs. But many of them are also uneasy about the alternative championed by the foreign policy Establishment. 

The possibility now exists that up to seven Democrats who are younger than our youngest President, Theodore Roosevelt, and our youngest elected President, John F. Kennedy, may compete for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination. If any one of these seven were to be the nominee, such an individual would join three other past Presidential nominees in American history, who would have taken the oath of office at an age younger than TR and JFK.

On August 29, 2018, the Washington Post reported that US immigration officials have been refusing to issue passports to Hispanic Americans. This despite the fact that they possess birth certificates, despite their many contributions to American society, despite even their service in the United States military. With that development, the country has taken a significant step closer to realizing Donald Trump’s vision of America as a white, Christian herrenvolk democracy. What began as exclusion with... Читать дальше...

The provocative quotation following appears, alone, by itself, on the back jacket for everybody to read. You might as well: “He rambled. He spoke gibberish. He contradicted himself from one sentence to the next…. While watching that interview, I realized that something real and serious was going on in Donald’s brain. His mental decline could not be denied. Many didn’t notice it as keenly as I did because I knew him way back when. They thought Trump was being Trump, off the cuff. But I knew something... Читать дальше...

While we’re shouting that the emperor has no clothes, we should also remember that there should be no emperors either.