Dear Bartcop:
 
Thanks for your many valuable insights. I have been giving things a lot of thought since the (s)election.
You have rightly pointed out that Kennedy's assassination was linked to his standing up to the military
and the Right Wing. He was the first Democrat elected since the HUAC hearings. Johnson proceeded
to get us into Vietnam. When the people rose up, Johnson tried to get out of Vietnam, but Nixon,
as a private citizen, sabotaged peace talks with the South Vietnamese military. Of course that was treason,
but neither Johnson or Hubert Humphrey exposed it even though Johnson discovered it.
 
So Nixon and Kissinger went on to kill another million Vietnamese, 500,000 Cambodians directly
through our bombing, and indirectly, destroying that country, thus paving the way for the Khmer Rouge
to kill another 2 million Cambodians. Well, we did finally nail Nixon. But when Carter got elected,
he was immediately met with the same kind of Right Wing Buzz Saw that Clinton got, and was given
the "coup de grace" by the Reagan Bush treason with the Iranian hostage deal. Then there was Bush's
dirty tricks with the Willie Horton ads that did in Dukakis.
 
So one Johnson, one Carter and two Clinton elections are really
the only free and fair elections we've had since 1960.
 
But  look at the vast sweep of American history. Genocide/ethnic cleansing of Native Americans--
10 million killed, slavery of Africans plus another 10 million killed in that Holocaust,  a civil war needed
to stop slavery, the near collapse of Capitalism itself during the Great Depression needed to establish
the very meager social safety net of Social Security and Welfare programs like Aid to Dependent Children,
decent Workers Compensation laws, and
the pattern is clear.
 
When I was in college, I studied German, and read a book called Schizophrenic Germany. The premise
of the book was that Germany is inhabited by the Goethe's, Beethoven's, Mozart's, yet buried in its
consciousness is the Fascist, the Prussian General Bismarck, the Fascist, racists, the Nazi.
 
And likewise, here in America we have our beloved Constitution, Gettysburg Address, Lincoln,
George Washington and the Cherry tree, etc. That is America the Myth. The reality is the genocide,
the slavery, the repression of workers, women, child labor, and all the brutal rest, which is all
conveniently repressed by the media and the educational system. Ask any kid and most workers,
and they haven't a clue why they have (or had) an eight hour day, 40 hour work week. It's because
people suffered and died for some basic human rights in this country.
 
Without a sense of the source of the problem, the same people who brought us the slavery , genocide,
Sacco and Vanzetti, Haymarket Massacre, Karen Silkwood murder, the overthrow of democracy in
Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1976, Indonesia in 1966 (500,000 killed with US support),
and many more such atrocities, we cannot fully appreciate or understand the enormity of the cancer
represented by the Bush family and its allies.
 
It will take a major uprising and concerted effort by at least a million Americans marching on Washington,
plus general strikes and other actions, to turn both parties around.
 
Is it possible? Remember, the Mongols, who had about the same track record as the Europeans/ Americans,
eventually realized that wholesale repression and slaughter was not such an enlightened approach.
Hopefully, we'll get it someday, too.

 
--- Eric Arnow