Whose interests does erasing history serve?

Does the rise of a neo-Nazi movement in America indicate that we are failing to teach history in our schools?  Or are we teaching it in too simplistic a fashion, as a kind of sci-fi story with poorly-written characters that are too clearly good or evil?

We like our history served up to us plain and unequivocal.  Give us gods and monsters or give us no history at all!

But history is complex, and within each soul of us there exists the potential for both good and evil.  So beware of history served up like an old western -- with cardboard cutout figures wearing black or white hats.  It is too easy, and explains nothing.

Within the lifetimes of most Americans, the Taliban went from being "freedom fighters," battling the Soviet Union, to the enemy harboring Osama Bin Laden.  As always, Hollywood tried to shape history and made movies to glorify them...

But we forget this as we forget everything that is uncomfortable.  We want "goodies" and "baddies" -- gods and monsters -- and we want to leave it at that.

The Taliban provides an interesting lesson in the attempt to erase history.  They are monument destroyers.  They wish to forget the past, erase it, and behave as though it never was:

It seems they have something in common with this crowd:

Here in America, there are those who want to cleanse the past from memory too, as the Turks have attempted to do with regards to the Armenian Holocaust.  The difference between how the Turks and the Germans accept their respective pasts is instructive and should hold a lesson for America.

Last week, we wrote about the need to remember, when Assemblyman John Wisniewski joined Democrat candidates Kate Matteson and Gina Trish at the former Camp Nordland in Andover Township, New Jersey.  We noted that it was a member of the local political establishment back in the 1930's, Newton lawyer William Dolan, who handled the land transaction that granted an American Nazi group control of the land that became Camp Nordland.  Mr. Dolan was then the sitting State Senator of Sussex County, a Democrat, at a time when each county had one state senator. 

According to a scholar at the University of Michigan, "New Jersey Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, Republican of Sussex, noted that New Jersey State Senator William Dolan, a Democrat, had aided the Bund in buying Nordland and that the Democratic Township Committee of Andover had granted Nordland a liquor license." 

According to historian and author Warren Grover, Camp Nordland in Andover Township was incorporated in March 1937.  Fritz Kuhn, the American Fuehrer himself, was one of the eight trustees of Camp Nordland.  When the camp formally opened in July, State Senator Dolan was introduced by the American Nazi Bund's New Jersey Bundesleiter, and he greeted the "swastika waving" crowds. 

Dolan was a political enemy of Franklin's Alfred "Bike" Littell, who went on to take his place as State Senator and to serve as Senate President.  Littell, whose education at Princeton University had been interrupted for service in an artillery regiment in World War I, went to war with the American Nazis.   Alfred Littell was the father of Senator Bob Littell, father-in-law of NJ Republican Party Chairwoman Virginia Littell, and the grandfather of Assemblywoman Alison Littell McHose.

Wikipedia notes:  "Camp Nordland was a 204-acre resort facility located in Andover Township, New Jersey. From 1937 to 1941, this site was owned and operated by the German American Bund, which sympathized with and propagandized for Nazi Germany in the United States. This resort camp was opened by the Bund on 18 July 1937.  In the years before the Second World War, the Bund held events at the facility to encourage pro-German, pro-Nazi values—many of these events attracting over 10,000 visitors. On 18 August 1940, it was the site of a joint rally with the Ku Klux Klan...  While much of its history and notoriety has faded over the last 70 years, many local residents of Sussex County still refer to the area as the 'bund camp.'"

Here is a short video that provides something of a history lesson for Assemblyman Wisniewski and the Democrats:

The writer Sinclair Lewis published a satirical novel in 1935 called, It Can't Happen Here, two years before it did happen here -- right here, in Andover Township, New Jersey.  It is high time for the Township to acknowledge that history -- as a warning against an ideology that sent so many millions to their deaths.

It was one heck of a venue for Assemblyman Wisniewski and the Democrats' to choose.  Especially given their party's history in establishing the camp.

Maybe the Assemblyman can propose a resolution to memorialize what happened in New Jersey and the attempt here to normalize Nazism?  Lest we forget...

Meryl Streep as Marie Antoinette

Look at how they dress at these awards ceremonies -- it's like something out of a Three Stooges send up on the rich and pompous (unfortunately without the obligatory pie fight, and a pie fight would actually make something as dreary and self-regarding as the Golden Globes quite entertaining).

So there's Meryl Streep telling us that Hollywood does what it does for the betterment of mankind, because it is "art" -- and let's forget that every enterprise coming out of Hollywood starts with a business plan, and capital, and that if it isn't profitable that's a mark against next time, no matter how "artistic" it claims to be.  Hollywood is a money machine and like every other money machine in America, it employs a huge number of lobbyists who hype for its self-interest.  In fact, Hollywood is the ultimate lobby machine because it can tap into so many self-interested celebrities who are immediately recognizable to a larger public.

Look at how these people dress!  Shoes that cost more than the average worker earns in a month and a gown that costs a year's wage.  And that's before we get to the jewelry, the hair-dresser, the face-painter, the nails (fingers and toes), and whatever else goes into fussing them up for presentation.

So there she stands -- a Marie Antoinette -- lecturing us for not behaving as we were told, lording over us in her finery, reminding us of the gulf between who she is and the characters she plays.  Out-of-touch, blinkered, defiant, and invincibly ignorant.

No wonder they lost the rust belt!

Trump/Sanders and the two Americas

Look at these two graphs.  They illustrate the two Americas.

The first shows the ratio between employee compensation to gross domestic product in the United States.  It is at its lowest point in history.

The second shows corporate profits.  They are at an all time high.

These graphs mark the end of America's social contract, according to economist Steen Jakobsen.  The agreement between the ruled and the rulers is broken and marks the rise of heretofore "fringe" candidates like populist Donald Trump and socialist Bernie Sanders.

This may be why new polling shows little taste for such measures as increasing the charitable deduction on taxes paid by wealthy individuals and corporations.  In a time when clearly the rich keep getting richer, voters have become skeptical of letting those rich direct how their potential tax dollars are spent instead of leaving it up to "democratically" elected legislative bodies.  New research by writers such as Jeremy Beer and others suggests why this is so -- and we will be examining Beer's findings in depth next week -- but for now, just consider this passage:

"Even though it sits on $42 billion in resources, and despite the fact that homelessness is one of its strategic areas of concern, the Gates Foundation will not provide direct assistance to any of the displaced people sleeping outside its $500 million Seattle headquarters... modern philanthropy is more concerned with problem solving than with people, more invested in 'high modernist ideology' than in particular human beings... contemporary philanthropy seems more enamored of generic anthropos than of the flesh-and-blood poor we encounter face-to-face. Indeed, twenty-first century philanthropy seems allergic to charity."

Many have noticed the deeply undemocratic, narcissistic nature of the twenty-first century rich.  They worship at the altar of a high church peculiar to themselves.  Charity becomes a form of self-worship. 

The celebrity Bono, reportedly worth $600 million, is a world-class tax avoidance artist who off-shores his business enterprises to avoid paying taxes while he operates a charity, called the One Campaign, that lobbies governments to use the tax money of working people to do what Bono wants done.  Meanwhile Bono links his for-profit musical tours with One Campaign initiatives and derives free positive publicity that translates into increased sales.  The One Campaign has been criticized for "using only 1.2% of their funds for charitable causes."  in response, the One Campaign admitted that it "does not provide programs on the ground but instead is an advocacy campaign for their funding."

They left out that they also make Washington, DC insiders rich with consulting fees.  One such insider is Sue McCue, the Rutgers University Governor who runs the Democrat Party SuperPAC that is responsible for collecting the heads of GOP Assemblywomen Donna Simons, Caroline Casagrande, and Mary Pat Angelini; and Assemblyman Sam Fiocchi. 

The One Campaign's latest initiative was the Electrify Africa Act, signed into law by President Obama on February 8, 2016.  Money from the One Campaign created an Astroturf  campaign that collected 360,000 names in support of the Act and a twitter-based lobbying effort aimed at Congress.  One Republican opponent of the legislation noted:  "American taxpayers spend more than $40 billion per year on foreign aid... Given America's out-of-control deficits and accumulated debt that threatened our economic future, I cannot justify American taxpayers building power plants and transmission lines in Africa with money we do not have, will have to borrow to get, and cannot afford to pay back."

It was also attacked from the Left, with one prominent critic writing in the Huffington Post that "the Electrify Africa Act has merely demonstrated that Congressmen neither know much about nor have a plan for Africa's energy industries."

Increasingly, average Americans are noticing how rich corporations devalue the democratic process and how their corporate charitable arms are just an extension of their public relations lobbying.  For example, the elected Legislature of the State of Georgia recently passed legislation designed to protect "religious freedom."  In response, some unelected but very rich Hollywood types protested what the elected Legislature had done.  Hollywood was joined by Big Business, in what has become an almost annual ritual (Arizona, Indiana...) to threaten and bully a Governor and convince average Americans that corporate money is more powerful than citizens' votes.  Reporting on the Georgia Governor's veto of a bill he had formerly supported, the Associated Press wrote: 

"Within days of its passage, Coca-Cola and other big-name Georgia companies joined prominent Hollywood figures urging Deal to reject the proposal. The Walt Disney Co., Marvel Studios and Salesforce.com threatened to take their business elsewhere. The NFL said it would be a factor in choosing whether Atlanta hosts the 2019 or 2020 Super Bowl."

Until last year, this same NFL called itself a tax-exempt non-profit organization and used its charity status as an excuse to get taxpayers to build its stadiums.  If anyone wants to know why people give up and quit voting, this sorry episode is it.

But something has happened and it shows itself in more ways than just Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.  People are done putting up with it.  As Mike Griffin of the Georgia Baptist Mission Board said, "We're not going to quit.  We definitely don't want to have Gov. Deal listening to Wall Street and Hollywood over the citizens of the state of Georgia who expect him to support religious liberty."

A conservative Baptist attacking Wall Street?  Looks like the old Republican coalition is starting to break up.  When it does, we can't imagine who is going to support all those business tax breaks.