Cold (blooded) War - US Style

The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins

New York: Public Affairs, c2020, 2021.

ix, 340 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm  

It's hard to say whether US citizens have very short memories or face such a powerful propaganda apparatus that it takes a bit of hard work and (soul-crushing honesty) to learn the dirty truths of US history and foreign policy. Considering this, books like The Jakarta Method are wonderful (and painful) antidotes to the flood of official misinformation and willful forgetting that plague the US. 

How many US citizens realize that their government actively helped and encouraged the slaughter of about 1 million unarmed, harmless, and law-abiding civilians in Indonesia in 1965 because of their actual or alleged connections to the completely legal and open communist party of Indonesia.  And how many people who know of this vaguely or in more detail, know that it set the pattern for US sponsored/supported ruthless attacks on civilians in Asia, Africa, Central and South America? Bevins does a remarkable job of pulling together this lethal history from the overthrow of Iran to the rise of the extremist president Bolsonaro in Brazil. The reader learns about the deep connections of the Indonesian slaughter with slaughter and atrocities in Brazil, Guatemala, Angola, Vietnam and other states. The numbers and cruelty are truly appalling.

Bevins also does a good job in scoping out to consider the profound effects that such widespread and cold-blooded killing has had in shaping the world we live in now.  He questions what it means to "win" the Cold War when the means were so depraved and terrible.  He wonders about what kind of world we might live in if the pro-democracy, constitutional parties that leaned left or opposed US hegemony had been allowed to survive. Would we see the same appalling wealth inequalities that plague the world, would the rule of law be stronger, and would there be better human rights protections today? 

His book is profound and timely as both in the US and abroad many leaders are encouraging authoritarian rule and promoting lies and violence as a way to preserve their power.

It is a book I highly recommend.

The Whole Nine Yards

Things That Make White People Uncomfortable by Michael Bennett
Chicago, Ill. : Haymarket Books, 2018.
xxxviii, 220 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.

Seattle Seahawks defensive star (until 2018), Michael Bennett, has a lot to say about injustices in the United States in this remarkable book from Haymarket Books.

It is a great read, revealing Bennett's passion for social justice - especially around issues of racism and police violence.  But Bennett is not a single issue crusader; he is also a feminist, food justice activist and workers' rights advocate. 

Though called Things that Make White People Uncomfortable, the first half of the book could as easily have been called Things to Make Football Fans Uncomfortable as he exposes the heartless, predatory "business" of college football and the tough exploitation to be found in the actual business of professional football.

Whatever you end up thinking of the positions that Bennett takes on issues, you have to admire him as a man of integrity and heart.  I would definitely recommend his book.

Money and Revenge

The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston
Brooklyn : Melville House, [2016]
xvi, 263 p. ; 24 cm.

I'm a pretty cynical person by nature, but this book is a very depressing summary of the life of Donald Trump, who is now President Donald Trump.  David Cay Johnston is an investigative reporter who has been covering Trump since the late 1980s.

Probably what makes this book so stunning, is the unrelenting negatives that make up Trump's life.  A reader hoping to find something redeeming in the actions of Donald Trump will come away with nothing.  Instead what emerges is a person who is incredibly talented at skirting the edges of legality to make himself famous and - whether or not as wealthy as he claims - a conduit for the transactions of vast sums of loans, credits and money.

Sadly, what emerges is the portrait of a man who celebrates revenge and greed, and treats women as objects.

Johnston released his book in August of 2016, probably hoping that it would dissuade voters from supporting Trump.  That, obviously, was not the case.

If a student is interested in a well researched, well documented accounting of the life of Donald Trump, this is a book to recommend.  As for President Trump, we will have to wait several years at least, for a book that will provide an assessment of the life of President Trump and what the results of that will be.

Not a Good Spiral

Spiral: trapped in the forever war by Mark Danner
New York : Simon & Schuster, 2016.
267 p. ; 24 cm.

Spiral may make you angry.  Spiral may make you sad.  Whatever your reaction, Spiral is a timely and urgent book that you should read.  Danner, a veteran reporter makes a very damning case that in the reaction to the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US government has embarked on an unending security/military mission that has increased the spread of global terrorism, has fostered a dangerous and antidemocratic culture of fear, and has perhaps forever destroyed significant parts of the Constitutional framework of US law (and wrecked the already weak framework of international laws of war and human rights that emerged out of the ruins of WWII).

His book is not easy reading.  He presents the details of torture and lawlessness committed by US agents that were the hallmark of the Bush years - none of which were (as required by law) investigated, and some of which (e.g. mass surveillance and assassination) have been codified and expanded by the Obama administration.  He pointedly notes that Obama - by protecting the torturers of the Bush era from prosecution - has essentially made the strict US and international laws against torture all but meaningless, likely guaranteeing that torture will be committed by US operatives again in the future.  He also notes that the expansion of secretive war operations -whether by drones or special forces - has made US military actions free of any democratic oversight.

Danner also presents strong evidence to bear on the fact that not only has the mult-trillion dollar war on terror not ended global non-state terrorism, but has lead to a vast growth in the numbers and reach of global terrorism.

He ends his book with a few suggestions of how the "forever war" could be reigned in and perhaps ended.  They are steps that were unlikely when the book was published and that are clearly not going to happen for at least four more years based on the elections of November 2016.  It's  a heavy book, but well written and researched.  For anyone concerned about the future or interested in the recent past, it offers much to think about.

Less Loathing Please

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
New York : Modern Library, 1996, c1971.
vii, 283 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.

I've seen Matt Taibbi referred to as an "heir" to Hunter Thompson's Gonzo journalism. I like Matt Taibbi and so I figured I'd take a stab at Thompson's Fear and Loathing. I also have had students interested in this book, and so I gave it a go. 

I probably read about 2/3 of the book and found it ok, but honestly a bit too hyper-masculine for my taste.  A lot of it reads like an extended brag about what an out-there, iconoclastic, mega-drug-abusing, cynical, passionate and alienated journalist Thompson is.  He loves both being immersed in US pop and consumer (and tourist) culture, all the while holding it in contempt and disdain.  It's good for a while, but maybe I just don't feel terribly moved by it.  I also think some of the power of Thompson was its shock value in the early 1970s and its rather gritty nastiness being a reflection of the even more obscene official business of the United States political system both in Vietnam and at home under the Nixon illegality.

Read it?  Sure, if you want a sampling of the 1970s tough guy anti-establishment journalism of the day.  Recommend it?  I probably won't, unless someone is looking for it.

Mourning for America

The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America
by William Kleinknecht
New York: Nation Books, 2009.
317 p. ; 22 cm.

This book is a great antidote to the hagiography surrounding our 40th President, Ronald Reagan. Kleinknecht doesn't pretend to be unbiased, but lambastes the policies and legacy of the Reagan administration. However, the book is not just polemics, but a well researched investigation into activities of the Reagan administration and especially its powerful legacy of deregulation and redistribution of wealth upward.

The book is a bit long for general high school readers, but is indispensable for research into the politics of the 80s. The book is not a biography, but an analysis of the successes of the Reagan revolution - successes that Kleinknecht argues have made our society less equal, less compassionate, more consumerist, and more vulnerable to the predations of unfettered capitalism.