So far there have been 44 U.S.
presidents, each with their own legacy. Two of these presidents were in office
for only a month, so their legacies are short. Generally, the more malevolent a
particular president was in office the more the legacy needs to be spun to flatter
the subject and keep America’s powerless in the dark so as not to weaken the power
elite of America’s corpocracy; namely, its corporate, political, and military
leaders, along with the shadow government (e.g., the CIA director), and, in the
inner circle, fanatical proponents of America’s manifest destiny to control the
world’s resources.
The 42 presidents all had in
common two malevolent characteristics that needed the most spinning. One was
their psychopathology, a condition of them all that has been substantiated by
experts.1 The other is their unflinching willingness to authorize
covert and overt wars that all told and so far have claimed and are continuing
to claim countless millions of lives of civilians and those killed in combat.2
Currently, we are told that “the US is dropping bombs quicker than it can make
them.”3 Before continuing reflect for a moment on what that quote really
means. It means it’s just another sickening reminder of how heinous America’s power
elite are in their endless effort to control the world’s resources.
The purpose of this article is threefold:
to shed the slime light on the whitewashing by America’s corpocracy of five of
our nation’s truly despicable yet revered presidents; to show how legacy
spinning is but a microcosm of the power elites’ broader agenda; and to point
out the overall implications of that agenda.
The Real Legacy of President George Washington
As the nation’s first president
George Washington also became the nation’s first “warrior-in-chief.” He
advocated a “regular and standing” army to “awe the Indians, protect our Trade,
prevent the encroachment of our Neighbours of Canada and the Florida's---[and] establishing arsenals of
all kinds of military stores.”4 He relied on that army in the
Northwest Indian War that resulted in several thousand casualties and also in
quelling the so-called “whiskey rebellion.”5 Why should any
different behavior have been expected from a man who was an experienced warrior
on numerous occasions even before the American Revolution?6
The Real Legacy of President Abraham Lincoln
“Honest Abe?” As a young man,
legend says it’s so. As president, real legend says “absolutely not!”
Ordinarily I don’t quote whole paragraphs from other sources, but I am making
an exception here: “A president of the United States would never operate
outside the law, ignore the U.S. Constitution and the courts, shut down the
presses, imprison his domestic adversaries or turn his guns on his own people.
Well, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president did of all of that and, curiously,
has been turned into a national hero for his troubles. Lincoln ignored his closest advisors and the
temper of the times to engage in the bloodiest war in American history, a war
that could easily have been avoided.” Thomas DiLorenzo, economics professor,
historian, and prolific author, wrote that passage in his book about “The Real
Lincoln.”7 One of his other books highlights the “dishonest Abe.”8
I have also written in two of my books about Lincoln and the Civil War, but I
don’t have Professor DiLorenzo’s credentials.9 In doing the research
to write the newer of those two books I read twice over Howard Zin’s
enlightening book on American history, and learned that Lincoln was actually a
racist.10 Perhaps more than any other president, Lincoln’s legacy is
the most spun.
The Real Legacy of President Thomas Jefferson
“The Monster of Monticello” is a
most unflattering, nonfictional account of our third president as being “a
creepy, brutal hypocrite.”11 He bought, kept, cruelly punished and
sold his slaves (at least 85 slaves to pay for wine, art and other luxury
goods) and “advocated harsh, almost barbaric, punishments for slaves and free
blacks.”12 Even his own mistress remained a slave. He also excelled
as a warrior-in-chief, presiding over battles with the Native Americans, the
Barbary War, and in military battles against Spain.
The Real Legacy of President Harry Truman
Not much more truth needs to be
revealed about the first inhuman being in the world to order the unnecessary dropping
of atomic bombs on two populous cities, killing and maiming millions. Here is
one survivor’s account of what happened to some of her schoolmates not so lucky
as her: “Some fell to the ground and their stomachs already expanded full,
burst and organs fell out. Others had skin falling off them and others still
were carrying limbs. And one in particular was carrying their eyeballs in their
hand.”13 The bombs didn’t need to be dropped.14 Japan was
prepared to surrender, but not on Truman’s unreasonable conditions. Six of America’s
seven five star WWII admirals and generals said the atomic bombs were either
militarily unnecessary or morally reprehensible or both.15 Unfortunately,
they did not override their president. He fiendishly dropped the bombs to scare
the Soviet Union which, as everyone ought to
know, escalated into the military budget busting, nation wide scare (e.g. the
mania for bomb shelters) and saber rattling Cold War. Not to be outdone by
himself, he sent over 36,000 UA military to their graves during the Korean War.
The Real Legacy of President Dwight Eisenhower
Notable figures, including America’s
presidents, begin to think about and start fashioning their legacies while they
are still alive. In his farewell address to the Nation warning about its
military/industrial complex, Ike masterfully implanted his legacy in the minds
of the gullible and unthinking public. It is probably the most duplicitous,
dishonest, disingenuous, hypocritical speech a national leader has ever made.
Here, after all, was the very man who presided over that very complex. What
else can we discredit him for as a warrior-in-chief? Ike rained havoc and
death, with the goading of his sinister Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles,
in Iran, Guatemala, Laos,
and the Congo
where, on Ike’s orders, the democratically elected governments of those
sovereign countries were toppled by the CIA, countless lives were lost, and to
this day bloodshed continues. And, along with Dulles, Ike introduced the world
to the doctrine of massive retaliation, bringing America to the brink of nuclear war
with China.16 To Ike’s credit, he was one of the generals objecting
to the nuclear bombing.
There you have it. The spun
legacies of five admired US
presidents who were in reality five psychopathic, surrogate murderers (Einstein
called war an act of murder). But not just five. The other 37 are simply
replicas in their own time.
Beyond Spinning to National and International Control
Power can be thought of as the
capacity to control natural resources such as people, oil, gold; and unnatural
resources such as deadly weapons. Obviously, the power elite have the most of
that capacity in America,
if not also in the world. Less obvious, America’s presidents have
constrained power. It is not constrained as it should be by the Constitution
and the American people but by the rest of the power elite and not in a
positive way.
It is deliberate not ironic that
so much spinning is done on the presidents’ legacies when the rest of the power
elite are probably as much to blame for America’s imperialistic and deadly behavior
past and present. I made that perfectly clear in one of my books.17
But façade maintenance, or
spinning, is hardly the only means for the power elite to maintain control over
325 million powerless Americans and to progress further toward the elite’s overall
goal of controlling resources everywhere. The later form of control is the sine
qua non of American imperialism, which has motivated her power elite ever since
the birth of our nation.18
There are at least six ways in
which the corpocracy’s power elite maintain control over America’s powerless and, through the sixth way
to varying degrees of success over foreign nations where their rulers, ousted
by U.S.
conniving and military might, had opposed American hegemony. Let’s briefly
review those ways. Note that only a few include the spinning of presidential legacies.
Dumbing Down, Entertaining and
Deceiving the Powerless
Journalist Charles Pierce calls
us an “idiot America” where stupidity or ignorance is glorified.19 The
power elite can’t risk a smarter America so they dumb her down.20
They started this process by launching public education not to educate but to standardize
human robots for the Industrial Revolution and later to help America get ready
for WW1.21 The spin masters took a page from religion, the standard
for filling young, formative minds with doctrines, leaving little room left for
critical reasoning to question those doctrines, including learning how to
discover and distinguish real knowledge from beliefs, myths and propaganda.
The entertainment and mass media branches
of the corpocracy are a perfect source for dumbing down the powerless. Hollywood,
for instance, has had a “reel” interest in Washington’s wars and foreign policy
affairs ever since it made training and propaganda films for President Woodrow
Wilson’s administration in support of WWI and has typically portrayed U.S.
Presidents idealistically.22 Needless to say, mass media coupled
with government mouthpieces are even more influential because of their
propagandized treatment of America’s past and present and, because the
powerless, being much less knowledgeable, are easily deceived.23
Keeping the Powerless
Impoverished
Curiosity, or the need to know, as
in the need to know the truth about America’s presidents, is one of the human
needs at the top rung of the late psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of
human needs, a level the powerless rarely reach, and the powerful are
determined to keep it that way.24 Struggling to reach or stay on top
of the poverty level, a level that about 50 million Americans are below, the
impoverished don’t have the time or even the energy to be curious about real
history or even current events for that matter.25
Giving the Powerless Simulacrums,
Holidays and Patriotic Props
Presidential images on money;
presidential statues; presidential monuments; presidential names for States, cities, streets, and airports;
and presidential holidays are all comparable ways of ensuring that the powerless
remember and honor their past presidents, not dishonor them. Over the years,
for example, millions of visitors have visited and been in awe over the Washington Monument,
the Lincoln Memorial and Mt.
Rushmore.
Flag waving, flag day, National
Anthem, Pledge of Allegiance, honor guards, are all props of the power elite to
ensure a sufficient level of patriotic obedience. The operative word there is
obedience. True patriotism means declaring “my country, do right and no wrong.”
Obedient, or jingoistic patriotism, on the other hand means “my country right
or wrong.”
Giving the Powerless Operant
Conditioning
Operant conditioning is a trick
of the trade for psychologists who started it and for the power elite who have
borrowed it. It involves continuously pairing something that is liked with
something that is otherwise ignored or perhaps disliked so that the latter
becomes liked also or at least tolerated. This trick comes in very handy for
the power elite, making the spinning of legacies and the perpetuation of
warriors-in-chiefs and their endless wars much easier. Think, for example, of
the flyover of Air Force jets during a national holiday televised sporting event.
Terrorizing and Spying on the
Powerless
The few thousand power elite know
only too well that their privileged status would end if the majority of
Americans decided in unity to end that status. The power elite have most of the
wealth, perks and might of the land and thus the most to lose in any
confrontation with the determined will of the people. In its self defense, we
might say, the power elite resort to all sorts of tactics to terrorize and spy
on America’s
law abiding citizens. The following are just some of the tactics in use:
militarization of local police; arrests of peaceful protestors; monitoring of
millions of Americans; warrantless searches; and detention without trial. We
live in the land of the fearful and subjugated, not the ballyhooed “land of the
free.”
Waging Endless Covert and
Overt Wars
America’s power elite were born
in the womb of war and have been addicted to it ever since as the most
expedient means to acquire more territory, to acquire more wealth, to change
other nations’ regimes to more subservient ones, and simply to remain the most
powerful, uncontested nation the world has ever known and will ever see. Dropping
bombs quicker than can be made says it all about the power elites’ posture
toward the rest of the world.
Implications: The Tale of Ovid
America’s power elite remind me
of the Greek poet’s tale about Erisychthon, a mythological character who,
because he was so greedy, was cursed to eat everything in sight including him
self after all else had been consumed.26 He symbolizes for me America’s
power elite and raises the question, “when will they consume themselves and the
rest of the world with them”?
There is, however, a far more
pressing question, “what must be done to make America the land for the common
good and a peaceful global neighbor and to stave off doomsday?” The literature,
including my own works is replete with answers. None has worked so far. It is
obviously imperative that the right answer be found before it’s too late.
Notes
1. Apparently the psychopathology
of U.S. presidents is
“normal” if we can believe the findings from a study that relied on some 100
historical experts’ analyses of data on all U.S. presidents. The researchers
say they found this personality trait in every U.S. president. See, Howard, J. Psychopathic
Personality Traits Linked With U.S.
Presidential Success, Psychologists Suggest. The Huffington Post, September 13,
2012. And noted psychoanalyst Dr. Justin Frank seems to have found it also when
analyzing the backgrounds and behavior of Bush and Obama. See, Frank, J. Bush
on the Couch. Harper Perennial, 2005. Obama on the Couch. Free Press, 2012.
2. See, e.g., Brumback, GB. America’s
Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2015, pp. 46-47.
3. Snyder, S. The U.S. is Dropping Bombs Quicker Than
It Can Make Them. PRITheWorld, April 10, 2016.
4. Wikipedia. George Washington.
See also; George Washington, Sentiments on a Peace Establishment. May 2, 1783.
5. Wikipedia. Shay’s Rebellion.
6. Wikipedia. Military Career of
George Washington.
7. DiLorenzo, T. The Real Lincoln: A New Look at
Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. Crown Forum, 2009.
8. DiLorenzo, T. Lincoln
Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe. Crown Forum,
2009.
9. Brumback, GB. The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up
the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch. Author House, 2011, p. 38; see
also, Brumback, 2015, p. 255.
10. Zinn, H.
A People’s History of the United States. Harper Perrenial,
2005, p. 188.
11. Finkelman, P. The Monster of Monticello. New York
Times, November 30, 2012.
12. Finkelman, P. ibid.
13. Todhunter, C. Power and the
Nuclear Bomb: Conducting Foreign Policy with the Threat of Mass Murder. Global
Research, July 21, 2016.
14. Alperwitz, G. We Didn’t Need
to Drop the Bomb-and Even Our WWII Military Icons Knew It. Salon, May 11, 2016.
See also; Stone, O. & Kuznik, P. The Untold History of the United States.
Gallery Books, 2012.
15. Alperwitz, ibid.
16. Chuckman, J. Some Rarely Discussed Truths Shaping
Contemporary American Democracy: The CIA and America’s Presidents. Counterpunch,
March 13-15, 2015. See also; Davies, NJS. America’s Coup Machine: Destroying
Democracy Since 1953. Alternet, April 8, 2014; and Blum, W. Killing Hope: U.S.
Military Interventions Since WWII. Common Courage Press, 1995.
17. Brumback, op cit., 2015, pp. 73-90.
18. Brumback, op. cit., 2015, pp.
32-36.
19. Pierce, CP. Idiot America:
How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. Doubleday, 2009.
20. Iserbyt, CT.
The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.
Conscience Press, Revised & Enlarged Edition, 2011.
21. Brumback, op. cit., 2015, p. 143.
22. Brumback, op. cit., 2015, pp.
158-160. See also; Morgan, I. Reel Presidents: Hollywood Depictions of U.S.
Presidents. E-International Relations, October 24, 2013.
23. Brumback, op cit., 2015, pp.
151-156.
24. Maslow, A. Motivation and
Personality. NY: Harper and Row Publishers, 1970. See also, Maslow, A. Toward a
Psychology of Being. Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley and Sons, 1999.
25. Clyne, M. Americans Living
Below Poverty Level Line Hits Record Under Obama. Newsmax, July 29, 2016.
26. Zohar, D. & Marshall, I. Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By.
Berrett-Koehler, 2004.