Do you remember the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974? I didn’t remember much about it either, except for a vague recollection that there had been a military coup just before elections were scheduled to be held in May of that year. The elections were predicted to be won by Georgios Papandreou’s Center Union, a leftist party that had won elections in 1963 and 1964, the second by a large majority. The right wing in Greece was rattled by the probable election of Papandreou in1967. They were even more alarmed that his son, Andreas, who was even further to the left than his father, would have a role in a new government, so a group of generals and colonels pulled off a coup just before the elections to keep Papandreou from winning.
I lived in central Athens when the coup happened on April 21, 1967 and I watched it in real time. I was a senior in an American high school. One of my best friends was a classmate, the U.S. Ambassador’s younger daughter, two other friends were the daughters of the Egyptian Ambassador. This is significant because that morning the only thing on the radio was military music interspersed with declarations ordering citizens to stay calm and remain in their homes, but with permission to go buy food nearby. All
Public transportation was suspended, private cars and taxis were ordered off the streets. Because the terrace of our apartment looked out onto a large street just afew blocks up from a major avenue, we stood and watched as tanks with soldiers walking next to them, rifles out, came rolling down the street. When our father went out with my brother and a friend to line up at the markets for food, my sister, insisting she would walk to get to class at college, was halted at the corner, and I watched as a young soldier pointed his rifle at her, commanding her to return home. The phones were out of order. When they resumed service we reached out to family we knew had leftist leanings, and found out one of my cousins and her husband were arrested at their home, their two year old clinging to their legs as they were put in handcuffs and led out (to a detention center, then separated and sent to camps). Nancy told me there were tanks guarding the entrance to ambassadors residence, as well as our marines. My Egyptian friends woke up to find tanks pointing their turrets directly at their residence.
There were secret police mingling on the streets and you didn’t dare speak in public against the Colonels. One (Greek) friend was arrested at a restaurant when he was overheard joking about one of the royal family. He was sent to a camp for a year. Music by songwriters and folksingers associated with the left was no longer publicly played - or on the radio. Films perceived as avant garde were not shown at the cinema. Books were removed from bookstores.
At the theater the audience was instructed to applaud whenever one of the colonels who engineered the coup walked in to be seated.
I saw the movie Z when it played here back then, a few years after you lived it. My memories of the film don’t hold a candle to your description of those days. Thank you Patris 🙏
It was circumstance that placed us there but it was a great lesson in how important our freedoms are here. After I returned to the states in 1969 (transferring to a college), it took me some time to not be on my guard whenever I’d go out with friends to restaurants or other public spaces.
I saw Z. Later traveled to Athens in 69 or 70. I dimly remember there were some military around. Being a smart ass, I started to write Z on a poster or something. Someone- maybe someone from Western Europe who joined our group-stopped me. Told me it was dangerous, no joke and reminded me I was not in America.
Z was a huge deal when it was released in 1969, which is when I saw it in Boston as a college freshman (with three college antiwar activist friends who were in town for the holidays). For the record, it was based on the 1963 assassination of Grigory Lambrakis, and prompted by director Costa-Gavras's fury at the 1967 coup: you could absolutely see the colonels waiting in the wings. IIRC the film ended with a long scroll of everything the colonels had outlawed. (I've still got the soundtrack on vinyl.)
That was what brought the colonels, and Greek politics, to my attention. Also I had an aunt by marriage who was Greek by birth. She was gung ho for the colonels, so need I say the subject wasn't discussed at family gatherings.
Our parents left us (my older sister and me) in school in Greece in 1963. (We boarded with a relative who lived near the school rather than a dormitory.) As immersed in the culture of the school as we were and so young we still heard about that murder. I know the circumstances and it was outrageous, done openly and with no effort to hide the message: you have to fear speaking out against government policies. Lambrakis became a hero for the left - but was also mourned by moderate everyday Greeks because of the brutality and blatant injustice of his murder.
Greece had gone through not only a German occupation during WW2 but a civil war pitting left and right (royalists) up to 1949. Within Athens there was still evidence of damage from bullets but also collapsed neighborhoods. Bitterness over that violent fight very much remained.
"Z" was a very, very big deal in NYC. I saw a press screening and it had the intended effect. What an indelible experience, Patris. Thanks for detailing it here.
Thank you Patris for a real life example of what it was like to live through a coup. Most people don’t think it will be “that bad”. I’m terrified (& white, although a Dem & now Buddhist if anything).
Repubs who have spent the last years “owning the libs” may think they’re immune, but it doesn’t take much to rub a Nazi the wrong way. First they came for …
Sooner or later they’re coming for everyone they don’t like.
Thank you again & thanks Lucian for this timely post, even for the few who knew or remembered this piece of history.
With tv, internet, & social media hopefully the word will get out that Repubs don’t stand for “law & order” or for anyone other than themselves. 🤞🤞
My somewhat disjointed narrative I think failed to make a point that the anecdote concerning my school friends meant to - the American embassy was lit up like Christmas the night before (when my brother was coming home from a late class at the U.S. Air Force base) - kissingers hands were all over this coup. Other less friendly countries (like Egypt in this case) were being warned to keep still. Our interests those years were firmly in the camp of a significant faction in Greece who didn’t want a left-friendly government in place. This was the Cold War, no one inclined to flip Greece to a Russian friendly stance was tolerable. Many of my friends at school were the children of USAF personnel. That base and the fact that Greece supported and welcomed the (I think it was the 6th)Fleet so proximate to Turkey and the Soviet Union eas very important. That said even I understood it while hating the military dictatorship so antithetical to what was a very warm and democratic culture only previously. Americans like us were very welcomed (though I was usually perceived as German). Especially with the assassinations in the U.S., I could hardly avoid being embraced on the street in consolation. I was glad to leave when I came back to the states.
Eastern Mediterranean, (coups in Greece and Turkey), a half dozen or so in Latin-South America, SEA, and on and on.
What passes as American conservatism has always been Boogieman-centric, any movement or group of people associated with anything to the left of them. The more conservatives stacked on the scale, the farther right they needed to be to balance out their Boogiemen aka Commies, Marxists, Leninists, Socialists, Leftists, Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, (...) by lumping them all together. Doing so resulted in declaring them all to be the enemy while proclaiming self to be the white hats come to save the day from the evil doers.
Stuart Stevens framed it best in his book title, It Was All A Lie. Makes all that advanced modern American conservatism liars. No exceptions.
I had hoped we’d gone beyond the ultra right knee-jerk bullshit when Barack Obama was elected (admittedly a big step was the dissolution of the Soviet Union) but those reactionary white hats are using everything they can think of to claw their way back. It’s so imperative to keep that faction from getting their soft but dirty hands on the throats of those of us who disagree with their narrow premise of you’re either for us or against us. Coexistence is possible and advantageous in so many parts of the world.
Well-said and agree with every word and wager would be a consensus of apolitical, non-partisans, moderates, liberals, progressives, and lefties as well as smattering of what was once known in the US as Chamber of Commerce/Country Club Republicans.
Unfortunately, whether here in the states or abroad the confluence of a rigid political ideology with a rigid religious ideology has created a dividing wall. One the MSM lazily labeled tribal or some form of binary choice.
We are now seeing this locally. If you don’t like something or don’t want it near you, use social media to broadcast the worst possible outcomes, and people eat it up!
Kissinger should have been tried for war crimes. Hillary’s embrace of Kissinger probably cost her many Progressive votes.
From The Nation:
Kissinger is a unique monster. He stands not as a bulwark against Donald Trump’s feared recklessness and immorality but as his progenitor. As Richard Nixon’s aide-de-camp, Kissinger helped plan and execute a murderous, illegal foreign policy—in Southeast and South Asia, Southern Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America—as reckless and immoral as anything Trump now portends. Millions died as a result of his actions. Kissinger and Nixon threatened to use nuclear weapons, and, indeed, Kissinger helped inscribe the threat of “limited nuclear war” into doctrine. Kissinger, in the 1970s, not only dug the hole that the greater Middle East finds itself in, but, as an influential cheerleader for both the first Gulf War in 1991 and its 2003 sequel, helped drive the United States into that ditch.
Kissinger’s crimes aren’t just related to covert murder, genocide, and illegal bombing. In 1975, for example, as Gerald Ford’s secretary of state, he helped Union Carbide set up its chemical plant in Bhopal, India, working with the Indian government and helping secure a loan from the Export-Import Bank of the United States to cover a portion of the plant’s construction. Then, after the plant’s 1984 chemical-leak disaster, Kissinger Associates, the consultancy firm he set up after leaving the State Department, represented Union Carbide, helping to broker, in 1989, a $470 million out-of-court settlement for victims of the spill.
Growing up, not studying history, not paying attention to anything other than headlines etc. I was ignorant of Kissinger’s despicableness and much else. I read A LOT these days and still realize that there is SO MUCH I don’t know.
How many other Americans are the way I used to be? It’s hard work to understand all the issues. It’s even harder if your social group has already decided what’s worth “knowing”
I pray daily for another Biden term, for a Dem Senate & House majority, for the youngsters to show up in droves at the polls, & to see at least TFG behind bars.
it's funny. my friend at Harvard took Kissinger's course in 1967 and apparently, all Kissinger did was talk about how nobody knew anything about foreign policy, the government was wrong about everything, Vietnam was a bad idea and the war needed to end asap...
then Nixon wins (arguably by treason), appoints Kissinger his NSA chief and Kissinger proceeds to double down on pretty much every single thing he'd so easily trashed the government for doing before he was a part of it.
so that yekke from Washington Heights thought he was SO SMAHT...
Wow. But that fit into what I’d heard of him. A chameleon. Someone I worked for in the early 70s at Cornell had been in the state dept during the Kennedy administration and went on to be an expert in nuclear disarmament. She was friendly with Kissinger (“Hank”) Mondale (“Fritz”) and close to Humphrey. A liberal who was on Nixon’s enemies list, an independent spirit who wrote, travelled, was at the Paris peace Talks, she obviously liked Kissinger enough to be socially connected with him, which confounded me. Working for and with her educated me like no college course could have.
Well that made me sick right off the bat. Now that I’ve read that article (and am in love with the writer), what can we say except that celebrated Toad should ask to be buried in an asbestos onesie. Fucker.
Well-said. MSM, Republicans, and conservatives lionized Kissinger into mythological status. For that to be a ~truth~ then Kissinger is the Grim Reaper. Kissinger's FP/natsec approach is wrongly characterized as pragmatic, when in truth it is the textbook definition of oversimplification. That is the primary reason Rs/cons adore the mumbling and bumbling Doctor of Death.
Best example is how to this very day Nixon Goes To China is heralded as FP/natsec genius. WTAF. Nixon-Kissinger convinced themselves China could be positioned to be a foil to the USSR. The hubris and the naiveté of it! Instead, they awakened the sleeping dragon from its cave. A cave not that unlike from the one in DPRK exists only on a different scale.
And for the record Kissinger has visited with Putin at least 6times since Putin came to power, 4 in the Kremlin and 2x at one of Putin's residents. To the MSM 2 geopolitical geniuses having tea. Any person who fell for Elizabeth Holmes Theranos's One-Drop Rule for all things, is a fool, not a genius.
Stories like Lucian’s and yours need to be spread widely. The people who think they want this have no idea how quickly the dictators will turn on them, too. We have a Greek friend who was a teen at this time and is still traumatized by what happened to some family members.
Greek citizens were powerless in the face of what was often arbitrary and unjust incarceration. We were conscious of being protected and insulated by our American citizenship. As filled with outrage as I was then there was nothing we could do for some of the people we loved.
yep...all stuff I heard when I was there. I also remember that you couldn't find a box of matches without that fucking Phoenix and the date of the coup.
two of my "crypto-fascist" friends were in Athens the night of April 21st because they'd just successfully pitched a movie for Fox. they told me they knew what was happening because they'd both read "The Technique of the Coup D'Etat" by Curzio Malaparte. the Colonels (with their "American Friends") did it by the book.
It was hard not to cringe reading this - I still have one of those damn matchboxes somewhere. I’d had it in my purse when I flew home to NYC in 1969. As well as a small change purse made in one of the camps by my cousin’s husband, (an idealistic medical student) which I treasure.
sorry for inducing the cringe, Patris. I remember at the time that the matchboxes were just another occasion for my freedom-loving Greek friends to curse out the junta. quietly.
and in his case, I'll make an exception and call him a "self-hating Jew."
that was the first time I've even seriously used that phrase which, for a long time, was levelled at any Jew who might have disagreed with any aspect of Israeli policy. it was stupid then and it's stupider now.
If NYT wants to survive past 2024, it might consider dropping that paywall for the 6 months prior to the election. If not, they won't need a paywall because there'll be no NYT anything longer.
"The company reported an adjusted operating profit of $89.8 million in its latest quarter, up from $69 million a year earlier.
"The New York Times now has more than 10 million subscribers, the company said on Wednesday, edging closer to its goal of 15 million by the end of 2027. [ … ]
"For the final quarter of this year, the company expects total subscription revenue to increase 8 to 11 percent from a year ago on an adjusted basis, it said, while it forecast a single-digit percentage increase in digital advertising revenue." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/business/media/new-york-times-q3-earnings.html
? You subscribe free? The paywall is a third of why the nyt online version has made the paper so profitable while the wapo has struggled alarmingly post-trump. Another third is that the nyt offers a lot of affordable sub choices. My problem is I don't do plastic—can't deal with fine print. The wsj paywall is pretty impenetrable, not so the Times or Post. Evasion just wastes time. No. 3? The Times is the Times. People bitch about stuff they say the paper ignores, easy to miss if they don't actually read the paper. (Thomas Edsall's current op-ed, e.g., refutes current complaints in this forum.)
Oh, I like this! Can't wait for an opportunity to quote it. (It also didn't allow for places like Indochina, and if you give me a day or two I can probably work out a connection to Saudi Arabia.)
it's a dangerous belief. and the Russians have a mystical thing just like it. I have a feeling that when Putin talks about re-establishing the "Russian Empire," he's appealing to the same stupid shit so many of our politicians (and not just the ones on the Right) like to embrace when they have nothing of any substance to say.
I keep thinking back the oath military officers take "to support and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." When I was on active duty I always understood it to include defending the country against would-be dictators.
That's interesting. An option that you *never* hear discussed in all the punditocracy's breathless bloviating. As shocking as the notion of a military coup in the United States may be, if it were the only way to keep the orange turd out of the White House, I'm not sure I'd be opposed.
I don't think honoring the oath would result in a milutary coup. Quite the opposite. I think it means that were a would-be dictator to try to use the military to take away the rights of the people, the military officers should respectfully decline to follow any illegal orders, which would have to include unconstitutional orders. That was covered in leadership training as well.
Well, you're right, of course - deposing a duly elected president, even one who acts as dictator, is entirely contrary to the military oath. And it's comforting to know that the military, unlike elected Republicans, still take their oaths seriously. It's just that he's such a clear and present danger, I need unlikely fantasy scenarios to get me to sleep at night. 😳
I've never believed in the concept of American Exceptionalism. Smacks of jingoism and the "love it or leave it" mentality I heard every day as a kid in the 60s and 70s.
We lost our way when three great leaders - JFK, RFK, and MLK - were murdered in the space of 4 1/2 years.
That JFK was murdered in Dallas was not happenstance; it was a hotbed then, and now, of right-wing insanity. Our family's friend, Adlai Stevenson, then Ambassador to the U.N., was physically attacked in Dallas a few weeks before JFK's assassination. Stevenson warned JFK not to go there. The Dallas Morning News used to stir up a lot of right-wing hate back then; they, too, played a huge roll.
Wonderful book on Texas, 1963:
Dallas: 1963: The Road to the Kennedy Assassination
One forgotten footnote to the news of JFK's murder, Rich, was that some Dallas schoolchildren were reported to have cheered when they heard it. They would be ~ in their 70s now. What else has changed? The Dallas pestilence has only spread? (Actually, my uninformed impression is that Dallas itself is now liberal by Texas standards.)
The assassinations were a factor for sure, but IMO the country began to come apart at the seams when the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts passed in 1964 and '65 respectively. Millions of USians, many of them Black, thought these were milestones on the road to a more democratic democracy. Other millions, the overwhelming majority of them white, thought they were a repudiation of the country's founding principles. The war in Indochina was part of it too, of course. But it's hard not to wonder where the country, and the world, would be now if 1968 had gone differently.
After WWII, rigid segregation had to yield. I think the schism more likely started when Truman desegregated the military. Look at all those finally-erased Confederate hero-named bases. The Lost Cause doesn't let go with grace.
I think you're right. Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat in 1948. The timing seemed significant so I checked Wikipedia. Sure enough, the "Dixiecrat" entry links Thurmond's run, and the emergence of the Dixiecrats, specifically to Truman's integration of the military and other civil rights initiatives. "The Lost Cause doesn't let go with grace" -- understatement of three centuries!
Truman was far from an equal rights zealot, but was supremely realistic—so surely knew the enduring political consequences. OFF TOPIC Susanna, I remember your interest in bluesky. Have you joined? If not, pls email me: comdifi AT mail DOT com
I'm still interested in several of the Twitter successors -- esp. Bluesky, but also Mastodon and Threads -- but I haven't been motivated to join any of them. What I *really* want to do is get my own Substack going. I don't need any more time sinks until after I pull that off. Why Bluesky in particular?
twitter was open internet—you didn't need to join to read it. I never joined and found the read invaluable. I whipped through the feeds of members I wanted to read daily in always-open tabs on an android browser (kiwi) that makes that easy. muck quickly closed twitter. bluesky promises to be open by the end of the month.
Since it's not yet, I joined because bluesky is Dorsey-rooted and I found the other wannabe twitter replacements I tried—threads and mastadon—convoluted and klutzy; bluesky is simple enough. Those who have used both say bluesky is a twitter workalike. That surprises me because apparently members of both choose accts they want to follow; an algorithm decides which accts to render. (Guess that's the algorithm They talk about.) I had total control as a twitter nonmember. The price was that I couldn't engage, which I didn't want to do anyway. After you enroll nobody makes you post to bluesky.
Some of my journo/thinker usual suspects are on both x and bluesky now; I expect to see a flood from x to b. soon. Membership growth is impressive, as is demand for invite codes (did you get yours?). bluesky development is moving fast and muck self-destruction is keeping pace. …
I'd love to see you start writing steadily, hope reality is friendlier than it looks to me. substack's greatest value seems to be in giving recognized names an independent platform. Accts that civilian subscribers start impulsively seem to languish empty or read by some old friends. With no publication to nourish bylines as in olden times, Taylor Lorenz would tell you to brand yourself. For starters, incite a trashy social media fight. One indefatigable friend stays in the game by writing a jazzy column from Scottsdale for a society site aptly called NY Social. Could you nail down space in the Vineyard Gazette or is that idea just silly? That would be an influential readership. Lucian and I both have opened doors with provocative letters to editors that asked for nothing but caused *them* to take the initiative. … Well, you know your way around—you hardly need *my* advice.
We have to keep hammering this into everyone's heads-even the Magats, who don't believe a word of it because they've never seen a bad fascist yet.
What they and other dummkopfs (sorry, I've run out of polite words to describe these people by) do not understand and refuse to believe is that those 'immigrants' and other undesirable people (IE not white) can soon lead to 'leftists", "the guy next door who plays music loud' and "that weird kid who wears purple earrings' could and will end up in those 'detention facilities because they were too strange to not be.
Sort of like what happened 80 years ago.
They refuse to think that "It can't happen here" but I can damn well guarantee that it will should Trump and his true believers ever get close to the Oval office again.
It's terrifying enough to remind oneself of that poem:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemoller
Strangely enough, if you read his biography in Wikipedia, he was at first a supporter of Hitler, and was an anti-Semite, but he became a target, and narrowly escaped being killed in the Holocaust. Later, he deeply regretted that he did not do more for the victims, and hence this poem came to be.
My point is that if we are not very, very careful, we can have the same thing here happen because their are enough people who do believe the Holocaust was either faked, exaggerated or it didn't go far enough.
They'll be in power and empowered to do exactly as they please should we forget this poem, and the event that inspired it.
Yes. Authoritarians are only out for themselves. Even their henchmen have to be careful. But humans always think they’ll be in the special, untouchable category. 😵💫😵💫
Please remember Chile, Allende, and Pinochet's coup that had the filthy paws of those fucking criminals Nixon and Kissinger all over it. The only exceptional thing about the US is its brazen and blatant hypocrisy. Half of the country would have no problem with a fascist regime as long as it went after those the yahoos hate; too many others would simply shrug, noodle around on their phones, and play more video games. The level of ignorance, stupidity, and bigotry is such that we are in peril of our lives. If I could get out of here, I would, but I'm too old and too poor to escape.
American women must resist by adopting the Lysistrata strategy. I have been yelling this for months. Do not have sex, get married, or allow yourselves to have relationships with toxic American men.
My sister and I have spoken about this often with my adult daughters. We have decided that there. Should be enough dildos provided to women and girls so that they can have fun without getting pregnant. Our idea was that a plane should fly over all of the shitty states who have decided to take away women’s rights and drop these pieces of wondrous exotic machinery in every town. They would come with a note saying “Have a blast!”
Each of my married daughters married outside of these fraught States: Canada and Australia.
My son is dating a Polish women with an advanced medical pedigree, despite his lack of having meaningful work in these twisted States. The youngest daughter (approaching 39), recently returned from living on the West Coast for many years, dating Boyz2Men for years, and is now working full-time as a high school teacher in the Bronx. Content with her own pursuits.
The problem is not in these States, but in the human condition which seeks domination and control, particularly by the male of the species. Women must learn to be self-reliant and men . . . I don't know where to begin.
I tamed one and must admit that marriage is a cage. Those who possess the key must show consideration and alacrity. Relationships are essential and require patience and persistence.
I have no explanation for this, but reading this warning/prediction by Mr. T. brought to mind some set pieces (OK, cliches): What goes around comes around. Nothing lasts forever.
But they take a lot of the rest of us with them, that's the part that keeps me up at night. Plus, look at all history's dictators and horrible leaders who died in bed.
Lucian, you and a few others are sounding the alarm bells, much to your credit, but the inertia of complacency here in these disunited states of America continues under the rubric that ‘it can’t happen here’. Except for that large minority who can’t wait for it to happen here, and who will do everything they can to bring it on. The planning and intentions are all out in the open. This is no secret coup that will happen in the middle of the night, but will happen in broad daylight regardless of the 2024 election results - if *Rump has his way. Invoking the Insurrection Act to facilitate an insurrection is too clever by half, but still requires the cooperation and support of the military for it to succeed. On J6 we were very fortunate in having General Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who made it crystal clear that the military would not interfere with the 2020 election results. *Rump has already stated repeatedly that Milley should be executed for treason. And as long as *Rump is not president Milley is safe, and the noninvolvement of the military in civilian politics is reasonably assured. However, he has also already declared that assurance is toast on day one of his second term. His usual hyperbole, one would think, but we should never underestimate his ability to create chaos. Firing all the chiefs of the military branches, taking direct control as Commander-in-Chief, issuing orders prepared by the coup planners in advance are all possible. Who will stop him? The nightmare scenarios are endless. We have to stop him from getting near any levers of power. I’m not convinced the courts are going to be helpful in keeping him off the ballot or that he will be in prison after all the trials. It will still come down to the vote, and the integrity of the election.
In Nazi Germany, any judge (or other) who didn’t toe the Nazi line was marched off to prison & a more compliant individual was put in his place to give the illusion of solidarity & “justice.”
Add to that all the Military positions Tuberville (with help from Repub senators including Manchin & Sinema) are keeping open for a Repub president…
Seinfeld was a show about nothing. The MAGA experience is a movement about nothing. It depends on people being disgruntled when there's nothing to be disgruntled about. We currently have the best economy on the planet. Check out inflation in Argentina. Trump is getting people riled up over imaginary transgressions. Now even the Independents are acting like petulant children over Israel, stomping their feet and refusing to eat their pudding. Then when the pollsters call they say they will vote for the guy who wants to institute a Muslim ban. Complete insanity.
What worries me is what seems to be the absence of alarm in the general public --suppose democracy died and no one cared?
I take enormous comfort in reading the comments on a site like this one, but online opinion is so ghetto-ized -- how can you avoid preaching to the converted? The people who respond to the essays tend to agree with each other -- shouldn't we be trying to reach the people who sincerely believe that Trump walks on water and pees champagne?
Years ago (why do most of my sentences start like that) I took a Political Science class at college. I did not do well. But I still remember something that the professor said -- not an exact quote -- he said that the principles of democratic government in America were upheld and maintained by an extremely small elite, when in theory, democracy meant participation by the people who were governed. He said that he was afraid that most people would not miss democracy. And did any of us have any idea why?
I thought that I might have an answer but I was afraid to speak up. Even now, I worry about sounding simplistic and naive but what the hell, it's one o'damn thirty in the morning and either I spout theories or I finish cleaning the refrigerator.
Here goes. I attended public schools for twelve years. Repeatedly, I was told that democracy was the bestest, the greatest, the most just system of government ever created by the mind of man. However...
We were taught about democracy, we just weren't allowed to use it.
To me, high school was a series of minor monarchies and dreary dictatorships, each lasting about fifty minutes. Ten minutes of shoving through crowded halls, another room, and a new regime change.
I don't know if there was a solution to this -- order must prevail and public schools are bureaucracies, not republics, and a bureaucracy is always going to protect itself first.
My brother would have reminded me of the Student Government Association (he was an ardent participant) and I would have replied "but what actual power does this organization have? Can it influence school policy? Does it have any money? Do you do anything except hold committee meetings? Isn't it just a puppet government?"
My ninth grade English teacher had the bright notion of teaching our class in the style of the Soviet Union school system. This was greatly admired. (I preferred the student who promptly defected to the Problems of Democracy class.)
So, the following Monday, we had a discussion about this great experiment. The teacher and my classmates were burbling on about how our experimental week under a totalitarian system proved the greatness of American and the evil ways of the Soviet Union. One student said that the Communists was terrible because they "used propaganda."
I put my hand up.
"Don't we use propaganda too? And how do we really know how classes are taught in the Soviet Union? Do we have the facts or just American propaganda?" And just to dig my grave a wee bit deeper, I added "Anyway, about the Soviets being totalitarian... I didn't see all that much difference between what we did last week and the usual stuff."
The teacher was flabbergasted. Every one of my classmates swiveled around, glaring at me and hissing "COMMUNIST!" (I have to admit I kind of enjoyed that sort of reaction.)
I have one tiny hope -- Trump is spewing all his plans about doing this and suppressing that -- but he also said he was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. Did that ever really happen?
I suspect there will be a separate camp for smart-asses like me. I'd better start packing...
I loved that you were that little shit who questioned things! That’s what is missing in MSM, the needling to get an answer to questions that provoke thought. Look, I think we have to remember that Fake 45 is piece of garbage who isn’t going to live forever. In fact, he’s 77 and he looks really unhealthy, unlike Joe, who is older but is in much better physical shape.
Fascism has come to America waving a Cross wrapped in a flag. Fascism came to Germany waving a Cross wrapped in a flag. As an American Jew, I must ask: to where to we flee? Will there be an Israel?
It's difficult for ANYONE outside to emigrate to those places, without money or connections or some other in. But at least those are places with a pretty decent history of being tolerant, not pogroms or the like. Scotland in particular. Ireland is currently not happy with the state of Israel, but it's not about Judaism.
I often spouted off in the past 40 years, to the indifference or boredom of associates, that the next Hitler would be American. I doubt any of those people remembers those statements, but I am not happy to see them proved correct now.
The film by Costas Gravas ‘Z’ brought it into my young consciousness. It still haunts me to know the manipulation of elections ... and it can happen here
Interesting you mention that film. I saw it in Chicago with the then NYT Bureau Chief, Tony Lukas, who was covering the Conspiracy Seven trial. He wept. After the trial was over, he left the Times.
As far as the message, it's like you were reading my mind, although I didn't know anything about Greece. It seems like every day I see comments on FB to the effect of "Trump supporters should read this." And I say, "Yeah right. Like it would matter." Well you know what? Trump supporters should read this. It might actually make a difference.
What truly frightens me is the breakdown of our justice system. Remember when the Supreme Court was actually a venerated institution, instead of a den of grifters? How is Clarence Thomas still sitting on the court? He’s not even hiding it anymore. And Donny Boy, a repugnant con man with a permanent hard-on of rage and narcissistic petulance, how can he still be running for president with 91 indictments? How is Judge Cannon able to sabotage a really big trial? It’s not as if it’s a matter of suppositions. The photos of classified documents strewn about his rococo bathroom should be enough. Where is Jack Smith hiding? That Donny’s lawyers are now arguing that he should be able to publicize the names and addresses of jurors is a warning shot. And then there’s Congress, in the grip of the flying monkeys, fighting over impeaching Joe Biden. Without really being articulate why because there is no why it’s just spite and ugliness It’s astonishing. Everyone I know, eventually the conversation turns to where we can we go. What country is better? How bad does this one have to get before we acknowledge it is no longer America? I try really hard not to be cynical, but I don’t believe we’re a democracy anymore. Not when the federalist society has grabbed so much control behind the scenes. And we’re watching a useless former president weasel out of the 91 indictments with his usual toxic blend of belligerence, weaponizing the courts and a refusal to stop. I think we’ve been in a slow moving coup since January 6, and it hasn’t stopped
I lived in central Athens when the coup happened on April 21, 1967 and I watched it in real time. I was a senior in an American high school. One of my best friends was a classmate, the U.S. Ambassador’s younger daughter, two other friends were the daughters of the Egyptian Ambassador. This is significant because that morning the only thing on the radio was military music interspersed with declarations ordering citizens to stay calm and remain in their homes, but with permission to go buy food nearby. All
Public transportation was suspended, private cars and taxis were ordered off the streets. Because the terrace of our apartment looked out onto a large street just afew blocks up from a major avenue, we stood and watched as tanks with soldiers walking next to them, rifles out, came rolling down the street. When our father went out with my brother and a friend to line up at the markets for food, my sister, insisting she would walk to get to class at college, was halted at the corner, and I watched as a young soldier pointed his rifle at her, commanding her to return home. The phones were out of order. When they resumed service we reached out to family we knew had leftist leanings, and found out one of my cousins and her husband were arrested at their home, their two year old clinging to their legs as they were put in handcuffs and led out (to a detention center, then separated and sent to camps). Nancy told me there were tanks guarding the entrance to ambassadors residence, as well as our marines. My Egyptian friends woke up to find tanks pointing their turrets directly at their residence.
There were secret police mingling on the streets and you didn’t dare speak in public against the Colonels. One (Greek) friend was arrested at a restaurant when he was overheard joking about one of the royal family. He was sent to a camp for a year. Music by songwriters and folksingers associated with the left was no longer publicly played - or on the radio. Films perceived as avant garde were not shown at the cinema. Books were removed from bookstores.
At the theater the audience was instructed to applaud whenever one of the colonels who engineered the coup walked in to be seated.
I saw the movie Z when it played here back then, a few years after you lived it. My memories of the film don’t hold a candle to your description of those days. Thank you Patris 🙏
It was circumstance that placed us there but it was a great lesson in how important our freedoms are here. After I returned to the states in 1969 (transferring to a college), it took me some time to not be on my guard whenever I’d go out with friends to restaurants or other public spaces.
I saw Z. Later traveled to Athens in 69 or 70. I dimly remember there were some military around. Being a smart ass, I started to write Z on a poster or something. Someone- maybe someone from Western Europe who joined our group-stopped me. Told me it was dangerous, no joke and reminded me I was not in America.
It took us (American expat kids) a while to get that through our heads, even living there.
Z was a huge deal when it was released in 1969, which is when I saw it in Boston as a college freshman (with three college antiwar activist friends who were in town for the holidays). For the record, it was based on the 1963 assassination of Grigory Lambrakis, and prompted by director Costa-Gavras's fury at the 1967 coup: you could absolutely see the colonels waiting in the wings. IIRC the film ended with a long scroll of everything the colonels had outlawed. (I've still got the soundtrack on vinyl.)
That was what brought the colonels, and Greek politics, to my attention. Also I had an aunt by marriage who was Greek by birth. She was gung ho for the colonels, so need I say the subject wasn't discussed at family gatherings.
Our parents left us (my older sister and me) in school in Greece in 1963. (We boarded with a relative who lived near the school rather than a dormitory.) As immersed in the culture of the school as we were and so young we still heard about that murder. I know the circumstances and it was outrageous, done openly and with no effort to hide the message: you have to fear speaking out against government policies. Lambrakis became a hero for the left - but was also mourned by moderate everyday Greeks because of the brutality and blatant injustice of his murder.
Greece had gone through not only a German occupation during WW2 but a civil war pitting left and right (royalists) up to 1949. Within Athens there was still evidence of damage from bullets but also collapsed neighborhoods. Bitterness over that violent fight very much remained.
Thanks so much for your personal perspective. I've learned a few things from this thread!
"Z" was a very, very big deal in NYC. I saw a press screening and it had the intended effect. What an indelible experience, Patris. Thanks for detailing it here.
we were probably at the same press screening.
Really? I thought your background was all in education, David. I remember the black-walled room, nothing else but the film.
How horrifying, Patris! This is exactly what could happen here and we cannot allow that to happen.
Thank you Patris for a real life example of what it was like to live through a coup. Most people don’t think it will be “that bad”. I’m terrified (& white, although a Dem & now Buddhist if anything).
Repubs who have spent the last years “owning the libs” may think they’re immune, but it doesn’t take much to rub a Nazi the wrong way. First they came for …
Sooner or later they’re coming for everyone they don’t like.
Thank you again & thanks Lucian for this timely post, even for the few who knew or remembered this piece of history.
With tv, internet, & social media hopefully the word will get out that Repubs don’t stand for “law & order” or for anyone other than themselves. 🤞🤞
My somewhat disjointed narrative I think failed to make a point that the anecdote concerning my school friends meant to - the American embassy was lit up like Christmas the night before (when my brother was coming home from a late class at the U.S. Air Force base) - kissingers hands were all over this coup. Other less friendly countries (like Egypt in this case) were being warned to keep still. Our interests those years were firmly in the camp of a significant faction in Greece who didn’t want a left-friendly government in place. This was the Cold War, no one inclined to flip Greece to a Russian friendly stance was tolerable. Many of my friends at school were the children of USAF personnel. That base and the fact that Greece supported and welcomed the (I think it was the 6th)Fleet so proximate to Turkey and the Soviet Union eas very important. That said even I understood it while hating the military dictatorship so antithetical to what was a very warm and democratic culture only previously. Americans like us were very welcomed (though I was usually perceived as German). Especially with the assassinations in the U.S., I could hardly avoid being embraced on the street in consolation. I was glad to leave when I came back to the states.
head bows ~respect~
Eastern Mediterranean, (coups in Greece and Turkey), a half dozen or so in Latin-South America, SEA, and on and on.
What passes as American conservatism has always been Boogieman-centric, any movement or group of people associated with anything to the left of them. The more conservatives stacked on the scale, the farther right they needed to be to balance out their Boogiemen aka Commies, Marxists, Leninists, Socialists, Leftists, Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, (...) by lumping them all together. Doing so resulted in declaring them all to be the enemy while proclaiming self to be the white hats come to save the day from the evil doers.
Stuart Stevens framed it best in his book title, It Was All A Lie. Makes all that advanced modern American conservatism liars. No exceptions.
I had hoped we’d gone beyond the ultra right knee-jerk bullshit when Barack Obama was elected (admittedly a big step was the dissolution of the Soviet Union) but those reactionary white hats are using everything they can think of to claw their way back. It’s so imperative to keep that faction from getting their soft but dirty hands on the throats of those of us who disagree with their narrow premise of you’re either for us or against us. Coexistence is possible and advantageous in so many parts of the world.
Well-said and agree with every word and wager would be a consensus of apolitical, non-partisans, moderates, liberals, progressives, and lefties as well as smattering of what was once known in the US as Chamber of Commerce/Country Club Republicans.
Unfortunately, whether here in the states or abroad the confluence of a rigid political ideology with a rigid religious ideology has created a dividing wall. One the MSM lazily labeled tribal or some form of binary choice.
We are now seeing this locally. If you don’t like something or don’t want it near you, use social media to broadcast the worst possible outcomes, and people eat it up!
So true.
"Boogieman-centric," lol that's too good not to steal and give Shadowcloud credit!
Kissinger should have been tried for war crimes. Hillary’s embrace of Kissinger probably cost her many Progressive votes.
From The Nation:
Kissinger is a unique monster. He stands not as a bulwark against Donald Trump’s feared recklessness and immorality but as his progenitor. As Richard Nixon’s aide-de-camp, Kissinger helped plan and execute a murderous, illegal foreign policy—in Southeast and South Asia, Southern Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America—as reckless and immoral as anything Trump now portends. Millions died as a result of his actions. Kissinger and Nixon threatened to use nuclear weapons, and, indeed, Kissinger helped inscribe the threat of “limited nuclear war” into doctrine. Kissinger, in the 1970s, not only dug the hole that the greater Middle East finds itself in, but, as an influential cheerleader for both the first Gulf War in 1991 and its 2003 sequel, helped drive the United States into that ditch.
Kissinger’s crimes aren’t just related to covert murder, genocide, and illegal bombing. In 1975, for example, as Gerald Ford’s secretary of state, he helped Union Carbide set up its chemical plant in Bhopal, India, working with the Indian government and helping secure a loan from the Export-Import Bank of the United States to cover a portion of the plant’s construction. Then, after the plant’s 1984 chemical-leak disaster, Kissinger Associates, the consultancy firm he set up after leaving the State Department, represented Union Carbide, helping to broker, in 1989, a $470 million out-of-court settlement for victims of the spill.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/hillary-clintons-embrace-of-kissinger-is-inexcusable/
I despise him. What sane person looking at his record could not.
Growing up, not studying history, not paying attention to anything other than headlines etc. I was ignorant of Kissinger’s despicableness and much else. I read A LOT these days and still realize that there is SO MUCH I don’t know.
How many other Americans are the way I used to be? It’s hard work to understand all the issues. It’s even harder if your social group has already decided what’s worth “knowing”
I pray daily for another Biden term, for a Dem Senate & House majority, for the youngsters to show up in droves at the polls, & to see at least TFG behind bars.
With you in this.
it's funny. my friend at Harvard took Kissinger's course in 1967 and apparently, all Kissinger did was talk about how nobody knew anything about foreign policy, the government was wrong about everything, Vietnam was a bad idea and the war needed to end asap...
then Nixon wins (arguably by treason), appoints Kissinger his NSA chief and Kissinger proceeds to double down on pretty much every single thing he'd so easily trashed the government for doing before he was a part of it.
so that yekke from Washington Heights thought he was SO SMAHT...
translation for yekke:
one who follows orders;
a company man who doesn't ask question.
From my side of the blanket we pronounce it Yecker.
Wow. But that fit into what I’d heard of him. A chameleon. Someone I worked for in the early 70s at Cornell had been in the state dept during the Kennedy administration and went on to be an expert in nuclear disarmament. She was friendly with Kissinger (“Hank”) Mondale (“Fritz”) and close to Humphrey. A liberal who was on Nixon’s enemies list, an independent spirit who wrote, travelled, was at the Paris peace Talks, she obviously liked Kissinger enough to be socially connected with him, which confounded me. Working for and with her educated me like no college course could have.
I cringed, and got very angry, when my beloved NY LIbrary was the site of Kissinger's 100th birthday celebration.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/the-elite-dont-want-to-talk-about-henry-kissingers-party.html
Well that made me sick right off the bat. Now that I’ve read that article (and am in love with the writer), what can we say except that celebrated Toad should ask to be buried in an asbestos onesie. Fucker.
Well-said. MSM, Republicans, and conservatives lionized Kissinger into mythological status. For that to be a ~truth~ then Kissinger is the Grim Reaper. Kissinger's FP/natsec approach is wrongly characterized as pragmatic, when in truth it is the textbook definition of oversimplification. That is the primary reason Rs/cons adore the mumbling and bumbling Doctor of Death.
Best example is how to this very day Nixon Goes To China is heralded as FP/natsec genius. WTAF. Nixon-Kissinger convinced themselves China could be positioned to be a foil to the USSR. The hubris and the naiveté of it! Instead, they awakened the sleeping dragon from its cave. A cave not that unlike from the one in DPRK exists only on a different scale.
And for the record Kissinger has visited with Putin at least 6times since Putin came to power, 4 in the Kremlin and 2x at one of Putin's residents. To the MSM 2 geopolitical geniuses having tea. Any person who fell for Elizabeth Holmes Theranos's One-Drop Rule for all things, is a fool, not a genius.
Stories like Lucian’s and yours need to be spread widely. The people who think they want this have no idea how quickly the dictators will turn on them, too. We have a Greek friend who was a teen at this time and is still traumatized by what happened to some family members.
Greek citizens were powerless in the face of what was often arbitrary and unjust incarceration. We were conscious of being protected and insulated by our American citizenship. As filled with outrage as I was then there was nothing we could do for some of the people we loved.
The US isn't as protective of its citizens today as it was back then.
Haven’t been travelling lately but not surprised.
Awful. We cannot let it happen here.
It is much on my mind.
yep...all stuff I heard when I was there. I also remember that you couldn't find a box of matches without that fucking Phoenix and the date of the coup.
two of my "crypto-fascist" friends were in Athens the night of April 21st because they'd just successfully pitched a movie for Fox. they told me they knew what was happening because they'd both read "The Technique of the Coup D'Etat" by Curzio Malaparte. the Colonels (with their "American Friends") did it by the book.
and on the 22nd, Fox canceled the movie.
It was hard not to cringe reading this - I still have one of those damn matchboxes somewhere. I’d had it in my purse when I flew home to NYC in 1969. As well as a small change purse made in one of the camps by my cousin’s husband, (an idealistic medical student) which I treasure.
sorry for inducing the cringe, Patris. I remember at the time that the matchboxes were just another occasion for my freedom-loving Greek friends to curse out the junta. quietly.
No worries. It’s in the past.
Well said, Lucian. Remembering all that, the American exceptionalism was the smug certainty that that is them, we're exempt.
I'll steal "smug" and use it in a title.
Lucian, while you're at it, feel free to change "henchman Stephen Miller" to "hatchet man" which is a far more apt description of that American Nazi.
Try "Kapo" too.
that too.
and in his case, I'll make an exception and call him a "self-hating Jew."
that was the first time I've even seriously used that phrase which, for a long time, was levelled at any Jew who might have disagreed with any aspect of Israeli policy. it was stupid then and it's stupider now.
why not both? they both apply.
Happy to supply it ;)
And just think, you can enjoy the smug NYT every single day!
Without crawling on my belly under the damn paywall, thank you! It's a miracle.
If NYT wants to survive past 2024, it might consider dropping that paywall for the 6 months prior to the election. If not, they won't need a paywall because there'll be no NYT anything longer.
~Two weeks ago:
"The New York Times Passes 10 Million Subscribers
"The company reported an adjusted operating profit of $89.8 million in its latest quarter, up from $69 million a year earlier.
"The New York Times now has more than 10 million subscribers, the company said on Wednesday, edging closer to its goal of 15 million by the end of 2027. [ … ]
"For the final quarter of this year, the company expects total subscription revenue to increase 8 to 11 percent from a year ago on an adjusted basis, it said, while it forecast a single-digit percentage increase in digital advertising revenue." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/business/media/new-york-times-q3-earnings.html
as a subscriber, I had no idea the NYT had a paywall. those chiseling fucks. I associate paywalls with the miserable WSJ.
? You subscribe free? The paywall is a third of why the nyt online version has made the paper so profitable while the wapo has struggled alarmingly post-trump. Another third is that the nyt offers a lot of affordable sub choices. My problem is I don't do plastic—can't deal with fine print. The wsj paywall is pretty impenetrable, not so the Times or Post. Evasion just wastes time. No. 3? The Times is the Times. People bitch about stuff they say the paper ignores, easy to miss if they don't actually read the paper. (Thomas Edsall's current op-ed, e.g., refutes current complaints in this forum.)
It just dawned on me that all my life I've been mixing up "American exceptionalism" and "manifest destiny."
well there IS a relationship between the two...
Symbiotic, one might say. ;-)
well, I sure would.
"American Exceptionalism is what's left when you've hit the Pacific."
of course that doesn't allow for places like Hawaii (not on the map when people started going on about "Manifest Destiny").
Oh, I like this! Can't wait for an opportunity to quote it. (It also didn't allow for places like Indochina, and if you give me a day or two I can probably work out a connection to Saudi Arabia.)
knock yourself out. but if you come up with any improvements, let me know.
it's a dangerous belief. and the Russians have a mystical thing just like it. I have a feeling that when Putin talks about re-establishing the "Russian Empire," he's appealing to the same stupid shit so many of our politicians (and not just the ones on the Right) like to embrace when they have nothing of any substance to say.
I keep thinking back the oath military officers take "to support and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." When I was on active duty I always understood it to include defending the country against would-be dictators.
That's interesting. An option that you *never* hear discussed in all the punditocracy's breathless bloviating. As shocking as the notion of a military coup in the United States may be, if it were the only way to keep the orange turd out of the White House, I'm not sure I'd be opposed.
I don't think honoring the oath would result in a milutary coup. Quite the opposite. I think it means that were a would-be dictator to try to use the military to take away the rights of the people, the military officers should respectfully decline to follow any illegal orders, which would have to include unconstitutional orders. That was covered in leadership training as well.
Well, you're right, of course - deposing a duly elected president, even one who acts as dictator, is entirely contrary to the military oath. And it's comforting to know that the military, unlike elected Republicans, still take their oaths seriously. It's just that he's such a clear and present danger, I need unlikely fantasy scenarios to get me to sleep at night. 😳
I've never believed in the concept of American Exceptionalism. Smacks of jingoism and the "love it or leave it" mentality I heard every day as a kid in the 60s and 70s.
We lost our way when three great leaders - JFK, RFK, and MLK - were murdered in the space of 4 1/2 years.
How could conspiracy theories not be rampant? It's all too easy to imagine some imperious Texas zillionaire sitting there calmly buffing his nails …
That JFK was murdered in Dallas was not happenstance; it was a hotbed then, and now, of right-wing insanity. Our family's friend, Adlai Stevenson, then Ambassador to the U.N., was physically attacked in Dallas a few weeks before JFK's assassination. Stevenson warned JFK not to go there. The Dallas Morning News used to stir up a lot of right-wing hate back then; they, too, played a huge roll.
Wonderful book on Texas, 1963:
Dallas: 1963: The Road to the Kennedy Assassination
by Bill Minutaglio
One forgotten footnote to the news of JFK's murder, Rich, was that some Dallas schoolchildren were reported to have cheered when they heard it. They would be ~ in their 70s now. What else has changed? The Dallas pestilence has only spread? (Actually, my uninformed impression is that Dallas itself is now liberal by Texas standards.)
Heather talked about some of this last night:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-22-2023
That really did make all the difference about the directions we took afterward.
The assassinations were a factor for sure, but IMO the country began to come apart at the seams when the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts passed in 1964 and '65 respectively. Millions of USians, many of them Black, thought these were milestones on the road to a more democratic democracy. Other millions, the overwhelming majority of them white, thought they were a repudiation of the country's founding principles. The war in Indochina was part of it too, of course. But it's hard not to wonder where the country, and the world, would be now if 1968 had gone differently.
After WWII, rigid segregation had to yield. I think the schism more likely started when Truman desegregated the military. Look at all those finally-erased Confederate hero-named bases. The Lost Cause doesn't let go with grace.
I think you're right. Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat in 1948. The timing seemed significant so I checked Wikipedia. Sure enough, the "Dixiecrat" entry links Thurmond's run, and the emergence of the Dixiecrats, specifically to Truman's integration of the military and other civil rights initiatives. "The Lost Cause doesn't let go with grace" -- understatement of three centuries!
Truman was far from an equal rights zealot, but was supremely realistic—so surely knew the enduring political consequences. OFF TOPIC Susanna, I remember your interest in bluesky. Have you joined? If not, pls email me: comdifi AT mail DOT com
I'm still interested in several of the Twitter successors -- esp. Bluesky, but also Mastodon and Threads -- but I haven't been motivated to join any of them. What I *really* want to do is get my own Substack going. I don't need any more time sinks until after I pull that off. Why Bluesky in particular?
twitter was open internet—you didn't need to join to read it. I never joined and found the read invaluable. I whipped through the feeds of members I wanted to read daily in always-open tabs on an android browser (kiwi) that makes that easy. muck quickly closed twitter. bluesky promises to be open by the end of the month.
Since it's not yet, I joined because bluesky is Dorsey-rooted and I found the other wannabe twitter replacements I tried—threads and mastadon—convoluted and klutzy; bluesky is simple enough. Those who have used both say bluesky is a twitter workalike. That surprises me because apparently members of both choose accts they want to follow; an algorithm decides which accts to render. (Guess that's the algorithm They talk about.) I had total control as a twitter nonmember. The price was that I couldn't engage, which I didn't want to do anyway. After you enroll nobody makes you post to bluesky.
Some of my journo/thinker usual suspects are on both x and bluesky now; I expect to see a flood from x to b. soon. Membership growth is impressive, as is demand for invite codes (did you get yours?). bluesky development is moving fast and muck self-destruction is keeping pace. …
I'd love to see you start writing steadily, hope reality is friendlier than it looks to me. substack's greatest value seems to be in giving recognized names an independent platform. Accts that civilian subscribers start impulsively seem to languish empty or read by some old friends. With no publication to nourish bylines as in olden times, Taylor Lorenz would tell you to brand yourself. For starters, incite a trashy social media fight. One indefatigable friend stays in the game by writing a jazzy column from Scottsdale for a society site aptly called NY Social. Could you nail down space in the Vineyard Gazette or is that idea just silly? That would be an influential readership. Lucian and I both have opened doors with provocative letters to editors that asked for nothing but caused *them* to take the initiative. … Well, you know your way around—you hardly need *my* advice.
And now @annehidalgo.bsky.social:
"‘Vast worldwide sewer’: Paris mayor quits X with swipe at Elon Musk" [ 1 MINUTE READ]
When she quit ex-twitter Monday, 27 November, Anne Hidalgo didn't mention that she also joined Bluesky (en frrancais), bringing Ville de Paris officially with her. Expect a flood. https://www.politico.eu/article/paris-mayor-hidalgo-quits-elon-musks-x-says-its-become-vast-worldwide-sewer/
Did everyone see Heather’s post last night? (Regarding JFK)
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-22-2023
We have to keep hammering this into everyone's heads-even the Magats, who don't believe a word of it because they've never seen a bad fascist yet.
What they and other dummkopfs (sorry, I've run out of polite words to describe these people by) do not understand and refuse to believe is that those 'immigrants' and other undesirable people (IE not white) can soon lead to 'leftists", "the guy next door who plays music loud' and "that weird kid who wears purple earrings' could and will end up in those 'detention facilities because they were too strange to not be.
Sort of like what happened 80 years ago.
They refuse to think that "It can't happen here" but I can damn well guarantee that it will should Trump and his true believers ever get close to the Oval office again.
It's terrifying enough to remind oneself of that poem:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemoller
Strangely enough, if you read his biography in Wikipedia, he was at first a supporter of Hitler, and was an anti-Semite, but he became a target, and narrowly escaped being killed in the Holocaust. Later, he deeply regretted that he did not do more for the victims, and hence this poem came to be.
My point is that if we are not very, very careful, we can have the same thing here happen because their are enough people who do believe the Holocaust was either faked, exaggerated or it didn't go far enough.
They'll be in power and empowered to do exactly as they please should we forget this poem, and the event that inspired it.
NEVER FORGET.
Yes. Authoritarians are only out for themselves. Even their henchmen have to be careful. But humans always think they’ll be in the special, untouchable category. 😵💫😵💫
Please remember Chile, Allende, and Pinochet's coup that had the filthy paws of those fucking criminals Nixon and Kissinger all over it. The only exceptional thing about the US is its brazen and blatant hypocrisy. Half of the country would have no problem with a fascist regime as long as it went after those the yahoos hate; too many others would simply shrug, noodle around on their phones, and play more video games. The level of ignorance, stupidity, and bigotry is such that we are in peril of our lives. If I could get out of here, I would, but I'm too old and too poor to escape.
American women must resist by adopting the Lysistrata strategy. I have been yelling this for months. Do not have sex, get married, or allow yourselves to have relationships with toxic American men.
My sister and I have spoken about this often with my adult daughters. We have decided that there. Should be enough dildos provided to women and girls so that they can have fun without getting pregnant. Our idea was that a plane should fly over all of the shitty states who have decided to take away women’s rights and drop these pieces of wondrous exotic machinery in every town. They would come with a note saying “Have a blast!”
Do you know that Walmart sells dildos in the pharmacy section? All kinds!
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🤣🤣🤣🤣
Lysistrata, that's great! Once again the ancient Greeks figured this all out millennia before anyone else.
Some don’t show their stripes until too late. Many women agree with these creeps to “protect their way of life & their children”.
Women aren’t always the “peace & love” sex. They often push men off to war or label them cowards.
And take over the treasury so the men can't fund their wars!
Each of my married daughters married outside of these fraught States: Canada and Australia.
My son is dating a Polish women with an advanced medical pedigree, despite his lack of having meaningful work in these twisted States. The youngest daughter (approaching 39), recently returned from living on the West Coast for many years, dating Boyz2Men for years, and is now working full-time as a high school teacher in the Bronx. Content with her own pursuits.
The problem is not in these States, but in the human condition which seeks domination and control, particularly by the male of the species. Women must learn to be self-reliant and men . . . I don't know where to begin.
I tamed one and must admit that marriage is a cage. Those who possess the key must show consideration and alacrity. Relationships are essential and require patience and persistence.
Sex is quite another story altogether.
I have no explanation for this, but reading this warning/prediction by Mr. T. brought to mind some set pieces (OK, cliches): What goes around comes around. Nothing lasts forever.
This kind of stuff and these kinds of people end up in history's ashcan.
But they take a lot of the rest of us with them, that's the part that keeps me up at night. Plus, look at all history's dictators and horrible leaders who died in bed.
Lucian, you and a few others are sounding the alarm bells, much to your credit, but the inertia of complacency here in these disunited states of America continues under the rubric that ‘it can’t happen here’. Except for that large minority who can’t wait for it to happen here, and who will do everything they can to bring it on. The planning and intentions are all out in the open. This is no secret coup that will happen in the middle of the night, but will happen in broad daylight regardless of the 2024 election results - if *Rump has his way. Invoking the Insurrection Act to facilitate an insurrection is too clever by half, but still requires the cooperation and support of the military for it to succeed. On J6 we were very fortunate in having General Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who made it crystal clear that the military would not interfere with the 2020 election results. *Rump has already stated repeatedly that Milley should be executed for treason. And as long as *Rump is not president Milley is safe, and the noninvolvement of the military in civilian politics is reasonably assured. However, he has also already declared that assurance is toast on day one of his second term. His usual hyperbole, one would think, but we should never underestimate his ability to create chaos. Firing all the chiefs of the military branches, taking direct control as Commander-in-Chief, issuing orders prepared by the coup planners in advance are all possible. Who will stop him? The nightmare scenarios are endless. We have to stop him from getting near any levers of power. I’m not convinced the courts are going to be helpful in keeping him off the ballot or that he will be in prison after all the trials. It will still come down to the vote, and the integrity of the election.
In Nazi Germany, any judge (or other) who didn’t toe the Nazi line was marched off to prison & a more compliant individual was put in his place to give the illusion of solidarity & “justice.”
Add to that all the Military positions Tuberville (with help from Repub senators including Manchin & Sinema) are keeping open for a Repub president…
Seinfeld was a show about nothing. The MAGA experience is a movement about nothing. It depends on people being disgruntled when there's nothing to be disgruntled about. We currently have the best economy on the planet. Check out inflation in Argentina. Trump is getting people riled up over imaginary transgressions. Now even the Independents are acting like petulant children over Israel, stomping their feet and refusing to eat their pudding. Then when the pollsters call they say they will vote for the guy who wants to institute a Muslim ban. Complete insanity.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
What worries me is what seems to be the absence of alarm in the general public --suppose democracy died and no one cared?
I take enormous comfort in reading the comments on a site like this one, but online opinion is so ghetto-ized -- how can you avoid preaching to the converted? The people who respond to the essays tend to agree with each other -- shouldn't we be trying to reach the people who sincerely believe that Trump walks on water and pees champagne?
Years ago (why do most of my sentences start like that) I took a Political Science class at college. I did not do well. But I still remember something that the professor said -- not an exact quote -- he said that the principles of democratic government in America were upheld and maintained by an extremely small elite, when in theory, democracy meant participation by the people who were governed. He said that he was afraid that most people would not miss democracy. And did any of us have any idea why?
I thought that I might have an answer but I was afraid to speak up. Even now, I worry about sounding simplistic and naive but what the hell, it's one o'damn thirty in the morning and either I spout theories or I finish cleaning the refrigerator.
Here goes. I attended public schools for twelve years. Repeatedly, I was told that democracy was the bestest, the greatest, the most just system of government ever created by the mind of man. However...
We were taught about democracy, we just weren't allowed to use it.
To me, high school was a series of minor monarchies and dreary dictatorships, each lasting about fifty minutes. Ten minutes of shoving through crowded halls, another room, and a new regime change.
I don't know if there was a solution to this -- order must prevail and public schools are bureaucracies, not republics, and a bureaucracy is always going to protect itself first.
My brother would have reminded me of the Student Government Association (he was an ardent participant) and I would have replied "but what actual power does this organization have? Can it influence school policy? Does it have any money? Do you do anything except hold committee meetings? Isn't it just a puppet government?"
My ninth grade English teacher had the bright notion of teaching our class in the style of the Soviet Union school system. This was greatly admired. (I preferred the student who promptly defected to the Problems of Democracy class.)
So, the following Monday, we had a discussion about this great experiment. The teacher and my classmates were burbling on about how our experimental week under a totalitarian system proved the greatness of American and the evil ways of the Soviet Union. One student said that the Communists was terrible because they "used propaganda."
I put my hand up.
"Don't we use propaganda too? And how do we really know how classes are taught in the Soviet Union? Do we have the facts or just American propaganda?" And just to dig my grave a wee bit deeper, I added "Anyway, about the Soviets being totalitarian... I didn't see all that much difference between what we did last week and the usual stuff."
The teacher was flabbergasted. Every one of my classmates swiveled around, glaring at me and hissing "COMMUNIST!" (I have to admit I kind of enjoyed that sort of reaction.)
I have one tiny hope -- Trump is spewing all his plans about doing this and suppressing that -- but he also said he was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. Did that ever really happen?
I suspect there will be a separate camp for smart-asses like me. I'd better start packing...
I loved that you were that little shit who questioned things! That’s what is missing in MSM, the needling to get an answer to questions that provoke thought. Look, I think we have to remember that Fake 45 is piece of garbage who isn’t going to live forever. In fact, he’s 77 and he looks really unhealthy, unlike Joe, who is older but is in much better physical shape.
One smart kid!
tell me what you're deciding to bring; I suck at that shit.
Fascism has come to America waving a Cross wrapped in a flag. Fascism came to Germany waving a Cross wrapped in a flag. As an American Jew, I must ask: to where to we flee? Will there be an Israel?
Ireland? Scotland? Canada?
Perhaps. There are, however, no guarantees that Jews would remain welcome.
It's difficult for ANYONE outside to emigrate to those places, without money or connections or some other in. But at least those are places with a pretty decent history of being tolerant, not pogroms or the like. Scotland in particular. Ireland is currently not happy with the state of Israel, but it's not about Judaism.
I often spouted off in the past 40 years, to the indifference or boredom of associates, that the next Hitler would be American. I doubt any of those people remembers those statements, but I am not happy to see them proved correct now.
The film by Costas Gravas ‘Z’ brought it into my young consciousness. It still haunts me to know the manipulation of elections ... and it can happen here
Interesting you mention that film. I saw it in Chicago with the then NYT Bureau Chief, Tony Lukas, who was covering the Conspiracy Seven trial. He wept. After the trial was over, he left the Times.
I'm guessing you knew Tony.
I just posted this article to FB.
I hate sounding like a lunatic. Kevin McCarthy in the second "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." "THEY'RE COMING!"
And they are.
As far as the message, it's like you were reading my mind, although I didn't know anything about Greece. It seems like every day I see comments on FB to the effect of "Trump supporters should read this." And I say, "Yeah right. Like it would matter." Well you know what? Trump supporters should read this. It might actually make a difference.
What truly frightens me is the breakdown of our justice system. Remember when the Supreme Court was actually a venerated institution, instead of a den of grifters? How is Clarence Thomas still sitting on the court? He’s not even hiding it anymore. And Donny Boy, a repugnant con man with a permanent hard-on of rage and narcissistic petulance, how can he still be running for president with 91 indictments? How is Judge Cannon able to sabotage a really big trial? It’s not as if it’s a matter of suppositions. The photos of classified documents strewn about his rococo bathroom should be enough. Where is Jack Smith hiding? That Donny’s lawyers are now arguing that he should be able to publicize the names and addresses of jurors is a warning shot. And then there’s Congress, in the grip of the flying monkeys, fighting over impeaching Joe Biden. Without really being articulate why because there is no why it’s just spite and ugliness It’s astonishing. Everyone I know, eventually the conversation turns to where we can we go. What country is better? How bad does this one have to get before we acknowledge it is no longer America? I try really hard not to be cynical, but I don’t believe we’re a democracy anymore. Not when the federalist society has grabbed so much control behind the scenes. And we’re watching a useless former president weasel out of the 91 indictments with his usual toxic blend of belligerence, weaponizing the courts and a refusal to stop. I think we’ve been in a slow moving coup since January 6, and it hasn’t stopped
You captured my mood.
Sorry