The Authoritarian Cudgel In the Live Free or Die State

 

February 5th, 2024 is the day where small town democracy is scheduled to be on display in Hampton, New Hampshire. 

The town, now grown to a population of 20,000 no longer holds the old "town hall meetings"--the numbers simply would not permit it--and these have been replaced by two "Deliberative Sessions," held in public school buildings in town, where "warrant articles" are presented and discussed. 

These warrant articles range from whether or not Mrs. Jones can plant her petunias on that strip of grass which belongs not to Mrs. Jones but to the town, on the far side of the sidewalk crossing her front yard, to questions of whether or not to spend money on repaving High Street or whether or not to use taxpayer funds to pay for computers, office supplies or, possibly, crucifixes at the town's Catholic church school, Sacred Heart (SHS).

These warrant article ballots run to 20 pages and each runs from a single paragraph to several paragraphs and most, if not all, are followed by two boxes below the article and directly above the boxes where you check off "Yes" or "No." In the box is a statement: "Recommended (or not recommended) by the School Board" and in the box below that, "Recommended (or not)" by the Budget Committee." 

Last year's Ballot looked like this:

4. Shall the School District vote to raise and appropriate funds in the amount of $57,503 to provide child benefit services, in accordance with RSA 189:49, for students who are residents of the Hampton School District and attend Sacred Heart School located in Hampton, New Hampshire? 

BY PETITION. (Majority vote required.) 

Recommended by the School Board 4-1-0. 

Recommended by the Municipal Budget Committee 8-0-1. 

YES                   NO

Voting on these articles is preceded by meetings of the relevant committees--in the case of the SHS by a meeting of the School Board and another of the Budget Committee.

One might ask what Americans would say if they saw a ballot for the election of President Putin with a "Recommended by the Politbureau and Recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff," just over the voting space. Well, comrades, you know so little, just follow the recommendations of those officials who have really studied the choices and who are wiser and more intelligent than you.

It's All About 

We are told, these "Recommendations" must be provided and printed on the ballots because of "state law" and the reasons the state requires these may have to do with the sheer volume of warrant articles and the practical reality that most voters may have little idea about the impact of these proposals on their taxes or other factors. So the voters are told, virtually, "You don't know about this, but trust just us, just vote 'yes.'"

The Kids

This, of course, raises the whole issue of whether as a society we should be encouraging people who have not followed relevant issues to show up and vote for stuff they really know nothing about, as a sort of sham participation in a sham democracy.

When you are told you can vote on something, but here is the recommended way to vote, does anyone not think you are being manipulated?

It's All About the Kids

But the other feature of the nuts and bolts of "democracy" in Hampton is what happens at the meetings of the committees which make these recommendations.

The rules there are no citizen, "member of the public" (proletarian) may speak for more than 3 minutes, even if there are only 3 or 4 speakers, and no citizen may question any elected official on the stage or attempt a "back and forth" (i.e. a question and answer or a dialogue) with said officials, who are seated on the state above the audience. "Any back and forth should happen at the Deliberative Sessions," we are told. Of course, by the time the Deliberative Sessions occur, it's all over but the shouting as the committees have already voted their recommendations.

It's All About the Kids

Even during the School Board meeting this year, speakers with whom the chairperson of the school board disagreed were not allowed to speak freely: she cut off any detractor with a booming, "Okay, wind it up, now!"  

This happened just after one speaker had pointed out a fact  embarrassing to the chairperson, namely that the chairperson had voted in favor of granting $52,000 to the SHS on the grounds that this money supported town children, Hampton residents, who chose to attend the Catholic school) but only 25% of the children in the school receiving these public funds reside in Hampton--the vast majority coming from surrounding towns. And what made it particularly embarrassing to the chairperson was she had never mentioned that demographic fact. It was "all about the kids." 

Note also, NB: the way the warrant article is worded it sounds as if the town funds are only given to the children at the school who come from Hampton, but, of course, if the computer is set up in the classroom to show the Christmas mass from St. Patrick's cathedral, all the kids in the school (75% of whom do not live in Hampton) are benefited from the town's largesse, the town's purchase for the entire school that computer. So there's a lot of winking and nodding going on here.

It's All About the Kids

Others who spoke against the article were similarly cut off and shouted down from the stage by the chairperson. 

We have all heard about the "bully pulpit" but this was the bully from the pulpit.

On February 5, there will be a "moderator" putatively in charge to be sure speakers remain civil and do not talk too long--presumably the 3 minute rule will be in place again. The School Board Chairperson will, once again, be on the stage, her glowering presence and her microphone looming large.

Always done it that way...

Oddly, at the school board meeting, because speakers were cut short at 3 minutes, the full 30 minutes for discussion--which the superintendent of the SAU schools noted is required by state law--had never been met. There was 15 minutes left for "discussion." Somebody had to talk. 

So the speaker who the chairperson of the school board had cut off was asked if he had anything more to add. He stood at the microphone and asked: "I don't understand. First, I am cut off during my remarks, presumably for speaking too long. Now, I am asked to speak longer. How much time am I going to be allowed now?"

Three minutes, he was told.

"Will that fulfill the 30 minute requirement?"

"If there are other speakers, maybe."

But then a member of the School Board asked the speaker a question and so his question, which took some time to ask, put the session well toward the goal of the sacred 30 minutes. 

"Why, after all these years, during which we have always voted Sacred Heart this money, are you only now objecting? When did you move here anyway? And what's the problem. We have always done it this way and nobody's ever objected before."

The speaker replied, "Well, as I said before, there is a principle which has apparently been ignored or thought to be unimportant: Separation of church and state, but perhaps that sounded too abstract to you. Maybe you could not really believe I would rise on principle when there is $50,000 at stake. 

But, to your next point, I grew up in the South, and when I caught my bus to school, waiting across the street from me was a Black boy, about my age, maybe 7 or 8, and he waited for another bus to come to take him to the Black school, while I went off to the White school. I asked why he went to a different school and I was told, 'We've always done it that way. Nobody's ever objected.' And so, I think, sometimes we have to think anew. 

Did I take more than three minutes?"

Is Separation of Church and State Unconstitutional in New Hampshire?

 

At every Deliberative Session, School Board meeting and Budget Committee meeting where the warrant article granting public funds to the Sacred Heart School is discussed an attorney rises to say this is all settled law now, and there is no question about the constitutionality of this warrant article because the New Hampshire State Supreme Court has spoken about this. 

This question arises because the New Hampshire state constitution is so explicit about the separation of church and state: 

"No money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination." 

This woman, who always identifies herself as "Attorney" says that in 1969 the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled on this issue. 

Now, Mad Dog is not an attorney; he is just a humble citizen with a Google account, but he has searched the internet looking for a decision in a case about public funds to religious schools in New Hampshire, and found none. 

What he did find was a state Supreme Court "advisory" which was apparently requested by the legislature to see if bills they were considering would be inevitably found unconstitutional by the Court.  So there is no case law, which depends of the details of a particular case, only a general statement of principles, which the Court clearly stated it was loathe to make, but it went ahead and made the statements anyway.

When you read through the justices' statements they first make it clear that if the Supreme Court of the United States rules it is unconstitutional, then it is unconstitutional in the State of New Hampshire (14th amendment.)

Then it goes through each of the bills proposed, each with its own circumstances:

1. Can distributions of money from sweepstakes be given to religious schools?: No. The justices said there was no way to know if this money would be used for religious purposes in those schools.

2. Can public schools be made to give or sell textbooks to the religious schools, textbooks (presumably of math or biology)? And the justices said, yes, as forbidding this might deprive the town's students at religious schools from education in those areas

Then they get to the nub: "It is our opinion that since secular [religious] schools serves a public purpose, it may be supported by tax money, if sufficient safeguards are provided to prevent more than incidental and indirect benefit to a religious sect or denomination. We are also of the opinion as expressed in the Opinion of the Justices 99N.H. 519, that members of the public are not prohibited from receiving public benefits because of their religious beliefs or because they happen to be attending a parochial school."

It is not entirely clear what "public purpose" the justices think religious schools served, although they do mention these schools served two purposes: general education (math, science) and religious education, and maybe they mean that one purpose served is enough for a public purpose. But what they do make clear is "adequate safeguards" must be in place to protect separation of church and state, i.e. to prevent public funds from pay for religious purposes.

So in the case of the Hampton warrant article, it is a matter of public record no such safeguards exist. Although the Treasure of SAU 90, who writes the checks paying for the Sacred Heart School's computers, talks about all the "audits" involved in those payments, she has been repeatedly and clearly and directly asked if those computers are used to stream religious services from St. Patrick's Cathedral and she has said, "I have no idea." On the public record. So there are  no safeguards in Hampton.

Of course, there are two arguments against Separation of Church and State:  

Gorsuch

1/ "Separation of Church and State"-- those 5 words strung together--appear nowhere in the US Constitution. This has prompted Justice Gorsuch to refer to "the so called Separation of Church and State." During arguments in Shruteleff v Boston, Justice Gorsuch remarked:

"As I understand it, Mr. Rooney said that he thought it was concern about the so-called separation of state, church and state, or the Constitution's Establishment Clause."

2/ Separation of Church and state discriminates against religion and religious institutions.

To take the first point first:

1/ Nowhere in the Constitution: 

Yes, this is quite true, you will not find those 5 words strung together anywhere in the Constitution, and for a very good reason. When the founding fathers wrote the Constitution in the 18th century, they did not want to write a document for lawyers with their "windy phrases;" they wanted to write a layman's document which any citizen could read and understand. So instead of that phrases they simply laid down a working definition of Separation of Church and State: Congress [government] shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.

Now, you may say that leaves the matter open to interpretation: What constitutes establishment of religion? Well, in 1789 it was much the same as 2024: You can establish religion only in two ways--A/ You can state "The Anglican Church is the official state church of England"  or B/ You can simply pay the priests, pay for the upkeep of the church buildings and schools etc. 

You might, conceivably, argue if the government cannot make a law regarding the establishment of religion then it might be forbidden from making a law forbidding the establishment of religion, but you'd have to be a lawyer to believe that, not a citizen.

It is curious that both Lauren Boebert, the Congresswoman who has said Separation of Church and State is nowhere in the Constitution, and so is not really a and  Justice Gorsuch are both from Colorado. Could it be all that thin air is insufficient for cerebral function? Is this the true meaning of "Rocky Mountain High?"

2/ Separation discriminates against religion:

Alito

So, here we have the "establishment clause"--no law establishing religion--coming into conflict with the "free expression" clause, "nor the free exercise thereof."

Here, we have Justice Alito finding that if the State of Maine refuses to pay an evangelical Christian school for the education of 15 students in a remote Maine town where there is no public school, on the grounds that to pay that church and its school would violate the separation, then we are discriminating against religion because it is religion.

To which Mad Dog has to reply: Absolutely!

Suppose that one school out in remotest Maine had been a Madrassa, a school which taught that, on the basis of their deeply held religious beliefs, young men ought to fly airplanes into tall buildings to get into Heaven and have at all those waiting virgins? Suppose you had a school in the South, where the Christians there believed the races should not mix, that Blacks should not be allowed in the same hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, busses as whites? Would we discriminate against those schools?

You betcha!

We would say: You can harbor all those odious beliefs, and you can meet on your holy Sabbath days and preach those beliefs, but you cannot use taxpayer, public funds to do all that.

That is discrimination Mad Dog can embrace.

So, the Attorney who sites a New Hampshire Supreme Court endorsing public funds for religious schools, the Supreme Court of the United States which harbors a justice who snidely dismisses Separation as "so called" and another justice who uses his own prejudice in favor of churches to destroy Separation, these are all wrong minded, small minded people.

Roger Taney, the Supreme Court Justice who ruled that Dred Scott, the slave, had no right to sue for his freedom in the Supreme Court of the United States because Scott is not a human being, but a slave, with no rights and no standing before the Court--that justice's name became a sort of sick joke, an emblem of how far out a Justice can go when he is not elected, when he is appointed for life and when the only law he respects is the little tune playing in his own mind.

Gorsuch, Alito and Justice Thomas (who is even more of a right wing nut) will be footnotes in the history of the Court--either that, or the Court itself will become a footnote.

Without the Infestation, Where Would Trump Be?

Absent from the public space is a revelation of intent on "Border Security:"  Republicans who have drawn their most ardent support from the boogeyman of dark skinned immigrant invasion, "infestation" by caravans of Spanish speaking people who will poison the blood of this white nation, do not want this invasion or the daily videos to stop. 

Speaker Mike Johnson wants to kill off the last remaining glimmers of hope for a bipartisan immigration compromise to emerge from Congress this year. The House will move ahead next week with its drive to impeach Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, and demands that Congress embrace either an immigration crackdown bill the House passed last year or an equally severe measure.

--New York Times

It's their best bludgeon with which to beat the Democrats.

For decades the southern border has festered and Congress,  the only branch of government having the power to fix it--if any branch has the power, and it's not clear there really is a fix--has refused to act because acting would take courage, study, steadfastness and would likely have no political gain.

But only now are the Republicans acknowledging publicly what Democrats have said all along: Republicans, (most especially Trump) do not want to fix the border because without that border in upheaval, Trump might not get elected. Trump and his party need that border cauldron to keep boiling.

It would be as if Hitler suddenly discovered all the Jews had left Germany. Where then is the urgency for electing the Nazis?

Without that coming infestation, invasion, what is the Republican party?

These are the "replacements" which so terrify the Trump base, which motivated those January 6th insurrectionists. 

Trump openly called Speaker Johnson to tell him that.

So we will elect Trump, who will string up barb wire, build walls to tunnel under and scream about the poisoning for as long as it plays. 

None of this is new, of course. Hitler and Goebbels knew it and used it, and generations of American politicians did to. In fact, Bob Dylan wrote a song about it, which he performed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1963: Only a Pawn in their Game. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSmkeb_7uq0

The weak minded manipulated. 

Who Are These People? It's Not Just Guns and Religion

 

The big question about Donald Trump is not Donald Trump. 

It has always been: who are these people who love him so?

Why did he know what he said from the very beginning? "I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue, and it wouldn't matter. They'd still vote for me."

We all know people who love Trump and we know there are many different roads to perdition, but a study from the University of Chicago's Richard Pape has illuminated some surprising things about those who committed insurrection his behalf on January 6, 2021, which may be a distinctive group of Trumpsters.

It turns out those 420 men (nearly all men) who were arrested at the Capitol were not living in their parents' basements, unemployed, isolated, but the were mostly owners of their own businesses or CEO's or professionals with extensive connections in their communities. These men had something to lose; they were not loser, drifters. What they shared was they mostly came from counties where the demographics had shifted, where Biden won, counties which had shifted from deep Red, and these mostly white men saw their power and privileges were being displaced and "handed" to non whites. They were the "we will not be replaced crowd."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xuvdU2flSE&t=140s

They were straight out of Charlottesville.

"I would have thought," said Terrence O'Rourke, running for Congress in New Hampshire, after Charlottesville, "That with all the divisions in our country, all the deep differences of opinion, there would be one thing we could all agree on: There is no such thing as a very fine Nazi." (Which is how Trump described those torch carrying throngs in Charlottesville--"some were very fine people.")

Apparently, not.

This is not Bible thumping Iowa evangelical stuff. 

This is more the Thomas Friedman resentment from "What's the Matter with Kansas?" As Friedman observed, "All claims on the right...advance from victimhood." 

But how could these men, successful in so many ways, feel victimized? In this crowd, apparently, it wasn't resentment of being down, but the fear they were headed down.

For most Trump supporters, who are wage earners or tradesmen, not business owners, Friedman's 2004 book is still true: "Ordinary working class people are right to hate the culture we live in. They are right to feel they have no power over it, and to notice that it makes them feel inadequate and stupid."

But the group at the Capitol was more the "officer class" of the Trump Orcs.

Both groups have a right to be offended. 

I can see it myself, in my own experience, although none of this would ever push me into Trump's camp.

But consider my son, who applied to the same medical school from which my brother and I both graduated. Now this particular college  was for more than half a century a bastion of WASP privilege on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Classes consisted of 90 men and 4 women, all white and no Jews. Sometime in the early 60's they started admitting Jews, but my class had only one Black man and one Black woman. Many of the students had uncles, fathers, grandfathers who graduated from the same school. Then, in the late 1990's, someone decided this was not a good thing and the class shifted to over half women (likely a good thing) and more non whites than whites. So when my white son applies, he never gets an interview. It didn't hurt him, he was promptly accepted at the rival medical school across town, which, truth be told is likely a little better school, so no harm, no foul, right?

Well, maybe not. You can never know about school admissions, but from where I stood, he could not attend the school he deserved, because his spot was reserved for someone else who fit more desirable demographics. 

Then there is the case of the white man who applies for a faculty position at the University of California and asked on his application how hiring him would serve the goal of diversity at the university and what plans he had to foster diversity (and equity and inclusion) on campus. The guy taught engineering. He said, "I felt like I was being asked to take a loyalty oath."

And then there is the topic which causes my female friends to threaten to kill or castrate me or do the one before the other, whenever I talk about it: Campus sexual assault. 

Anyone who has ever gone to college since the 1960's knows that young women, in a variety of settings, are sexually assaulted, or at the very least, have sex forced on them after they have said, "No."  Some of these women have gotten inebriated, gone to the bedroom of the man, got naked and then said "No," but the argument is, "No means no, whenever it is said." 

The problem is, on most campuses if the man is accused he has no due process rights. The university courts do not operate by state court standards. Neither the man, nor his lawyer, are permitted to cross examine the accuser. He has no right to face or challenge his accuser. That cherished Ivy League spot he competed for since age 7 crashes and burns. 

But that is liberal orthodoxy: "No means no! Believe the Woman!"

This, too, is liberal orthdoxy.

And transgender athletes who went through male puberty, only to transition to female, and then win all the glittering prizes in women's swimming or track, that too sets aflame the liberal house of straw.

During the Weimar Republic, Berlin became a cauldron of experimentation, free love, gay love, sexual expression and the non urban population was appalled by this "liberal" revolution, this Sodom and Gomorrah. 

As the republic unraveled, 500 assassinations of political officer holders undid political stability--all but about 20 were assassinations of liberals. 

During the 60's assassinations took the Kennedy brothers, and Martin Luther King: liberals.

"Why aren't these conservative firebrands ever assassinated?" people asked. (Well, eventually someone shot George Wallace, but that was just some crazy, with no political agenda.)

Because, we all knew, the whole idea of conservative authoritarianism is power, control and violence to maintain all that. Liberals do not do violence; they abhor violence.

Which brings us back to the January 6 rioters. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, the man said. 

Archie Bunker is someone few people remember, but from his loins have sprung the Trump crowd today. 

 Archie Bunker : If your spics and your spades want theirrightful share of the American dream, let 'em get out thereand hustle for it like I done. Mike Stivic : So now you're going to tell me the black manhas just as much chance as the white man to get a job? Archie Bunker : More, he has more... I didn't have no million people marchin' and protestin' to get me my job.Edith Bunker : No, his uncle got it for him

Archie Bunker:
If your spics and your spades want their rightful share of the American dream, let 'em get out there and hustle for it like I done.

Mike Stivic:
So now you're going to tell me the black man has just as must chance as the white man to get a job?

Archie Bunker:
More, he has more... I didn't have no million people marchin' and protestin' to get me my job.

Edith Bunker:
No, his uncle got it for him.

Public Funds for Church School: The Ghost of JFK

 

"I believe in an America where separation of church and state is absolute, where no public funds are ever granted to any church, or to any church school. Today the finger of suspicion may be pointed at me, but tomorrow, it may be at you. Until the whole  fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."

--John F. Kennedy

Hampton Union Publicity 

Yesterday, the Hampton Union published an article about the fight over a Hampton warrant article, voted in every year, which sets up an account ($55,000 this year) from which bills are paid, after being presented by the Sacred Heart School (parish school of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal) to the SAU treasurer. 

The Hampton Union quotes an attorney parishioner, who claims that despite the clear language of the New Hampshire constitution saying, "But no person shall every be compelled to pay towards the support of the schools of any sect or denomination," state supreme court decisions say otherwise. No response to that assertion was solicited or elicited by the reporter, Max Sullivan. The fact is, despite what Ms. Nevins (who always identifies herself as "attorney Nevins") says, this is by no means settled law. Mr. Sullivan simply quotes her, but never investigates whether or not this is true.

Beyond that, Ms. Nevins allowed that the 1969 decision public funds may go to religious schools "if sufficient safeguards are provided," and clearly there are no safeguards with respect to this tithe to the school. The treasurer of the SAU, Mariah Curtis, has on several occasions admitted she has no idea what the bills for supplies are used for, although "everything is audited."  As opponents have suggested molding clay may be used to fashion crucifixes for classroom walls, and computers may be used to stream religious services--there is no safeguard at all. Ms. Curtis admits in all the years she's been presented invoices from the church school, she's never once refused to pay for an invoice

The history of this warrant article is reported to date to a time when public schools were crowded and diversion of students to the church school was seen as a way of saving money, but the reporter failed to say that is no longer true in Hampton, and, in fact there are empty seats at Hampton public classrooms, and the SHS award diverts needed funds from public schools. That $55,000 could pay for a desperately needed school custodian.

The principal is quoted as saying this is all about educating Hampton students, whose parents pay taxes in the town, but she does not say that only 25% of the students at the school are from Hampton; the rest are from out of town. 

So what the taxpayers are really paying for is to support families from anywhere who want to educate their kids in the Church.

This phrase, "It's all about the kids," particularly galls opponents because it says really, "it's only about the kids," which of course is not true. It's also about separation of church and state. Not to mention there is something so sanctimonious about saying "I am all about the kids'" as if you are more about the kids than the opponents of the article, who feel they are just as much "about the kids."

The warrant article process is, of course tainted by a state law which requires that the School Board and the Budget Committee vote to either recommend or to not recommend voters vote for the article and those recommendations are printed right below the article and right above the checkboxes "yes" or "no" where the voters marks their ballots.

One might ask why the state wants these boards to put their thumbs on the scale so flagrantly, but one look at the 20 page "ballot" and you know why. Voters are allowed to vote based on what the authorities in town recommend, authorities who have presumably given more thought to the article than the voter who has only thought about it for a minute.

This year, Mr. Sullivan tells us, the School Board voted 2 in favor to 0 against to 3 abstentions to recommend. He tells us two of the 3 who abstained abstained because they were parishioners. He does not mention these two parishioners voted public funds to their own church last year when the warrant article vote came up, but this year they were called out for that at a public School Board meeting, and they abstained rather than being accused of doing what they had done in the past--voting for public funds to their own church. 

The 3rd abstainer, Wendy Rega, had voted against the article last year, but this year she thought it would be defeated only if she abstained, because if she voted no, then a majority of the Board would have voted, (i.e. 3 out of 5) and it would be carried as a 2-1 vote. But with her abstention, it was a 2-0-3 vote and that meant the majority had not voted. It was a tactical move. Mr. Max Sullivan reported none of that.

He also did not mention that Ginny Bridle Russel, the chairperson of the school board voted for the warrant article as a School Board member and again as a Budget Committee member, so she got to cast deciding votes twice.

He did not mention that the Budget Committee voted 4-3 to recommend, and it is not known how many of those 4 voters were parishioners. And he did not report what the three No voters had said to explain their votes. Sullivan explained why the abstainers abstained--but he did not give equal space to those who voted against the article.

So, according to the Hampton Union, the fight over separation of Church and State is over in Hampton.

As Justice Sotomayor has noted, with the current United States Supreme Court it may be that separation of church and state is now unconstitutional. It certainly is in Hampton.

And it's too bad, really.

What was that "finger of suspicion" JFK was talking about? Well, in 1960, I well recall being told by my neighbors, "Oh, you can't vote for a Catholic to be President. You may as well move the Pope into the White House. Your taxes will go right to the Church."

JFK promised that would not happen and he kept that promise. It is his legacy, his sacred legacy, that nobody ever asks if a candidate for high office is Catholic anymore.

I've met plenty of people who do not even know Joe Biden is Catholic. Never comes up. John F. Kennedy did that for us. This abstract notion, separation of church and state, which elicits nothing but dull stares and slack jaws from so  many, has very real, practical consequences.

So, when the voters at the Deliberative Session on February 5th, mustered out to vote for the warrant article, to support their Church and their faith, they will actually be doing just the opposite.

They will be voting to destroy the legacy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which allowed Catholics to fully participate in the politics of their nation, without that ugly "finger of suspicion" pointed at them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CClNXNeYBIw&t=7s

Sympathy for the Enemy: In Need of Some Restraint

 

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith


Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game


I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank


I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made


So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste

--The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"

Sir Max Hastings wrote a history of the American war against Japan called, exquisitely, "Retribution."

That is what that war was about, at its core. Of course, there were many things that fed into that war, but some wars, like our own Civil War, have one clearly definable cause, which ascends above all others--for the Civil War, it was, as Lincoln famously said, slavery--"These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war." 

For Roosevelt, it was Pearl Harbor. "The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation...No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. [We]will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us."

This, of course, is what the Prime Minister of Israel said after the October 7 attack from Palestinian Hamas warriors. Hamas cannot be allowed to ever endanger us again.

The parallels go further: The Japanese attack was launched after America had embargoed oil and other war materials from Japan, which was in the process of over running China, Indochina and much of the South Pacific. We sought to limit Imperial Japan's ambitions. The Japanese islands had little to no oil, limited capacity to produce food enough to feed itself and a burning ambition to replace European powers as the masters of the Far East. The Palestinians, of course, have been confined to something which conjures up images of the Warsaw ghetto, while Palestinians on the West Bank are expelled from their lawfully owned homes by Israelis who claim that land as Lebensraum, "living space."

In the process of pursuing revenge, the American military effectively strangled Japan for resources. A modestly small submarine force sank enough Japanese transport ships to deny the Empire enough fuel to power its industry, its Navy and its air force.  

Unlike Germany, Japan was safe from American airpower, protected by great distances of the Pacific ocean, and so the Americans embarked on an island hopping campaign to obtain island air bases from which to attack Japan. Iwo Jima was one of those islands. But the Marianna islands, Saipan,  proved all that was actually needed. 

As Hastings sees it, and as many American military and State Department officials said at the time, Japan lost the war as soon as the American blockade tightened.

But the Japanese refused to accept this. And Japan was ruled and motivated by a military class governed by the "bushido" (warrior) code which did not allow for surrender, which generated Kamikaze attacks, which caused civilians, mothers with their children on Saipan, to leap from cliffs rather than surrender to the advancing Americans.

Horrific acts of Japanese brutality, beheadings, immolation of prisoners, were well know to the American public which had no sympathy for that devil.

Japanese routinely shot their own wounded soldiers rather than leave them to be captured by Americans. Cruelties, both individually and by policy, were incomprehensible to Americans and it sparked a ruthlessness which had not occurred in any widespread way in the European theater. 

So the bombings began. Curtis LeMay developed the idea of fire bombing which killed untold numbers of Japanese in their wooden and straw homes, at the very least 100,000 in Tokyo, before the bombs were ever dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hastings' meticulous, detailed descriptions of the results of the fire bombing on Japanese in multiple cities makes John Hersey's famous "Hiroshima" look like bedtime fairy tales. The destruction in Gazza pales next to what the American B 29's did to Japanese cities.

While some American State Department officials and generals questioned whether this wholesale and indiscriminate bombing of Japanese civilians was justified or even necessary, no higher civilian authority, neither FDR nor Truman, ever intervened to stop it.

Hastings found a record of one Japanese housewife, Yoshiko Hashimoto, who, having lost her home and her parents said, "Who did I blame for it all? The Americans? The Japanese had done the same thing to people. It was the war. Mine is the generation which allowed the war. We did nothing to stop it."

In all the reporting from Gazza, I have never seen or heard a single Palestinian say anything of the sort. Every single Palestinian voice and face on American TV claims to be an innocent victim of a ruthless, unwarranted Israeli attack.

After the war, especially after Vietnam, when Americans once again burned babies in villages where the only offense was being Vietnamese in a zone thought to be controlled by the enemy, the next generation of Americans recoiled from the idea of group punishment, of indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians.

Now, we look at what the Israelis are doing in response to a day of infamy and we take the moral high ground. 

But our parents' generation, when faced with that bushido, "warrior" implacable enemy, reacted much as Israel is today. 

The problem of an enemy in tunnels was solved by filling the tunnels with a mixture of salt water and gasoline, then set afire. One wonders if Hamas took hostages to prevent just this tactic.

In fact, after the 9/11 attacks on New York City, Americans were not too fussy about identifying actual culprits but simply invaded an Arab country looking for retribution.

The problem, as Ms. Hashimoto said, is with the whole idea of "war," unrelenting, total war.

Sir Max Hastings

When I emailed Sir Max Hastings asking whether the Israeli response to October 7, the indiscriminate bombings sounded like the American response to Japan he responded: "The same utter ruthlessness in play."