Does Woodrow Wilson deserve more than a two-hundred-page biography? Given his historic impact, yes. Am I gracious enough to grant him one? That remains to be seen. Do I really want to spend hours of my life reading about the man who won reelection under the slogan “He Kept Us Out of the War,” only to lead the United States into that very war, and then prosecute Americans for speaking against it? Who jailed political opponents and shuttered newspapers? Do I want to spend several hundred pages trying to find the human being behind the president who expanded segregation throughout the federal civil service? Not particularly. There is nothing I like about him; even his idealism, expressed in pretty words and inspiring lofty thoughts, they are but a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal when set against the man’s overweening pride and profound outrages committed against Constitutionalism. So, H.W. Brands, do your best.
As this is part of The American Presidents series, edited by Schleisinger Jr, it’s a quick read. I could have finished it days ago, but I don’t like Wilson and I’ve been finding RFK, Nixon, LBJ, and Eisenhower more interesting to read about. Brands is impressively impartial, trying to take Wilson’s idealism seriously while at the same time not ignoring the civil liberties travesties committed during his administration. While Wilson allegedly altered course on entering the war because the Germans were set to resume unrestricted submarine warfare — endangering the lives of Americans who decided that taking a pleasure cruise through a war zone is a grand idea — Brands also includes the more realistic pressure-point — the economy. American banks were loaning money to all the European powers for their war efforts, but because England and France were more readily accessible, much more American money was sunk into the Entente cause: if they failed, the American economy could be thrown into upheaval. When I asked about this aspect of the war back in college, my professor/mentor told me I was too cynical for my own good, but now I have Brands at my back. I’ve never read about the peace process before, so I was surprised to learn that Wilson was viewed as a bit of an interloper for participating directly, and his position — that the American people were overwhelmingly for his measures, aside from a few morons whose future gibbets would scrape the sky (his words) — was undermined by the Republicans sweeping Congress. The book ends, of course, with his debilitating stroke and the very curious role played by his wife in ‘helping administer’ the nation, as well as a reflection on Wilson’s legacy has risen and fallen over the last century — reaching a zenith in the post-WW2 era when the United States did what he wanted and assumed a dominant role on the world stage.
In the end, Brand suggests that Wilson died too late: had the stroke that enfeebled him killed him, he might have been remembered as a hero, a martyr even — but the actions of the federal government during his weak years helped poison his legacy, as did a growing conviction that American involvement in the war had profited no one but the defense contractors and other businesses who benefited from Wilson closing his eyes to labors’ demands. This proved a more interesting book than I expected, though if I read another Wilson title I don’t think it will be this year: I suspect the Truman-Nixon bloc is going to continue consuming my attention.
Quotations
“The Democrats will be very likely to abuse power if they get it,”[Wilson] predicted. “Men are greedy fellows as a rule.”
“Whether you did little or much,” Wilson answered, in what McCombs characterized as a haughty tone of voice, “remember that God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal or mortals could have prevented that.”
Mere mortals wrestled with doubt and confusion, but the self-assured Wilson possessed, to judge by his manner, a direct line to heaven. He wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but he did think God was usually on his side, and the alliance afforded him a moral serenity few could match.
The growth in federal power, however, had a darker side—the side Wilson had feared before taking office. Even as the CPI rallied Americans behind the war effort, the Justice Department hounded those who wouldn’t come along. The Sedition Act of 1918 prohibited “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy,” as well as any language that tended to bring the government or the military “into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute.”¹⁵
As the sedition law and its companion, the 1917 Espionage Act, were eagerly enforced by Attorney General Gregory and his successor, A. Mitchell Palmer, the measures effectively stifled questioning of the wisdom of the war or the high-mindedness of American leaders. The socialist and labor leader Eugene Debs, for one, was arrested for opposing the draft and spent the duration of the war (and beyond) in federal prison. Radical unionists of the Industrial Workers of the World were jailed, and many of them were deported. To assist in this regimentation, the Justice Department enlisted the quasi-official American Protective League, whose 250,000 members spied on their neighbors and reported any activity deemed insufficiently enthusiastic regarding the war.
When Orlando laid claim to the Adriatic port of Fiume on grounds that the language, population, and culture of the city were overwhelmingly Italian, Wilson put him off with a joke: “I hope you won’t press that point with respect to New York City, or you might feel like claiming a sizable piece of Manhattan Island.”
You cannot throw off the habits of society immediately any more than you can throw off the habits of the individual immediately. They must be slowly got rid of, or, rather, they must be slowly altered.” Waxing metaphoric, he said, “You cannot in human experience rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.”
No one wanted to accept responsibility for the debacle that the war had become in the popular mind. When Wilson died, Americans mourned him respectfully for a moment, then made him a scapegoat for their collective disillusionment. Journalists and historians reexamined the American intervention in the world war and accounted it fool’s game. “We have been played for a bunch of suckers,” wrote Harry Elmer Barnes in a widely endorsed indictment of Wilson’s wartime diplomacy.
Another long moviewatch post, this time mainly because I was very chatty about the movies when I made my notes.
Ella Enchanted, 2004. I saw Anne Hathaway. I clicked “play”. Simple as. Then I heard Eric Idle offering narration and I was hooked. AH plays a woman who is given the ‘gift’ of obedience; no matter what she’s told, she has to comply. This becomes a problem when she receives two step-sisters (glory, are they ever good news?) who quickly realize they can exploit it. Ella’s inability to not obey orders can apparently override the laws of physics, as she stops mid-jump if told to freeze. This is a playful mix of pseudo-medieval fantasy and pop culture storytelling, very much like A Knight’s Tale. A favorite of mine, Cary Elwes, appears as the Evil Uncle. He has a talking snake for a mentor and black hair, so he’s obviously a rotter. (He..also orders AH to do the hokey-pokey and turn herself around.) A silly, but fun movie. Given the amount of serious drama I ingested in May, an hour and a half of Anne Hathaway smiling and helicopter-kicking baddies was in order. Also, it ends with AH and whoever her male lead was singing “Don’t Go Breakin’ my Heart”. It sounds weird, though, like some kind of early auto-tune.
Saving Private Ryan, 1998. My third or fourth re-watch of this visceral WW2 movie. This time I was occasionally distracted by Cinephile Brain. “Wait, is that Bryan Cranston? HO!!! That’s Paul Giamatti! Wait – CAPTAIN MAL? I’m joking, but this is….an intense movie. The first 20+ minutes depict the D-Day landings and it is as real and bloody and somber as you can imagine. The movie – if you’re living under a rock or something – is about a squad of men who are assigned to find and evacuate a Private James Ryan of the 101st Airborne: his three brothers were killed and the Army wants him out for the sake of his parents. This was not my first World War 2 movie – I’m pretty sure that was Battle of Britain – but it made the war real in a way that’s never been surpassed. I remember watching this for the first time and being slightly agonized by the squad not being able to help a poor French family, but now I could more fully identify with Captain Miller and the thought of losing his poor boys for a potential fool’s errand. It gave the “Earn this” line a lot more meaning.
“Every man I kill…..the farther away from home I feel.”
“Tell her..when you found me, I was with the only brothers I have left. I’ll never desert them. There’s no way I’m leavin’ this bridge.”
Star Trek: Generations, 1994. My review doesn’t arrive until Tuesday.
…okay, kidding. This is the Star Trek to The Next Generation transition movie. It opens with Kirk evidently dying in an attempt to save the Enterprise-B during her maiden voyage, but we soon learn that he was sucked into a mysterious phenomenon called The Nexus. A mad scientist starts blowing up planets in TNG’s time so he can get sucked back into The Nexus. The plot is a bit out there, but there’s a lot to like about the movie: the TOS dialogue, the old Wooden Ships and Iron Men scene, Data experimenting with his emotion chip, etc. The latter allows Brent Spiner to show off more of his range and personality. The worst part of the movie is crashing the Enterprise-D, who we get to see in this one movie before they destroy her to make room for the Enterprise-E. I’ve grown rather fond of the Sovereign-class Big E, but seeing the D’s saucer plow into the planet always hurts. (I have no attachment to the ships of the Kelvin-verse. There’s no….personality to them. They’re basically flying apple stores.) Watching this with some years under my belt, there were production aspects I noticed with new eyes – like how the lighting in Picard’s office simulates late dusk, appropriate for a man contemplating the death of his family line. Picard’s sorrow hits a lot harder in middle age than at 20, I can tell you. I don’t know if I appreciated – as a kid – the fact that Picard spends his entire movie trying to be The Captain while dealing with his brother and nephew’s violent death AND while trying to counsel Data who is also dealing with emotions. As a kid – and by which I mean a twenty year old – that’s incidental. As a 40 year old, it’s an existential crisis. How does Picard pull down his tunic and captain? Also, I’m tickled by Picard’s Christmas fantasy that is as Victorian as you can get without a coal scoop.
Me, watching a champagne bottle fly through space to hit the Enterprise-B: I question the space-physics of this shot.
Chekov, looking at Demora Sulu: I was never that young. Kirk, amused: No….you were younger.
Kirk: Scotty, keep things together until I get back. Scotty: I always do.
Time is gaining on you.
Data, singing: “Life-forms….you tiny little life-forms….you precious little life-forms, where are you?” Riker:
Star Trek: First Contact, 1996. The Borg are back, and you’re gonna be in trou-ble! Hey la, hey la, the Borg are back. And this time, they have….time travel. When a Borg assault on Earth is thwarted by a Starfleet that has been seasoned by the Dominion War, the Borg launch a sphere that can go back in time: their mission quickly proves to be stopping First Contact. This event, one of the Federation’s greatest holidays, marks when Zefram Cochrane made Earth’s pioneering warp voyage, caught the attention of the Vulcans, and inaugurated Star Trek’s future of peace, love, and replicators. While Picard & co are able to stop the assault, the Borg beam drones into the E itself and start slowly taking it over. The crew of the Big E and the officers on Earth are soon out of contact with one another. The only reason that is is not easily Star Trek’s best action movie is that it has to compete with Wrath of KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! The movies obviously mark a change in Picard’s character: now he goes sallying forth to the planet without a peep from Riker, and he gets to lead the counterstrike against the Borg while wearing his Cool Combat Vest. Also, continuing props to whomever – and I hope it was Sirtis herself – chose to continue with Marina Sirtis’ natural hair rather than those awful wigs she sported in TNG. Similarly, I’m glad to see LeVar Burton not having to wear that VISOR. I thought that thing was ridiculous when I was seven years old watching ST and ST TNG for the first time during a month-long hospital stay and I still do.
One of the under-rated aspects of this movie is the use of Jerry Goldsmith’s Klingon theme every time Worf appears.
Picard: I’m about to commit a direct violation of our orders. Any of you who object should do so now; it will be noted in my log. Data: Captain, I believe I speak for everyone here when I say…to hell with our orders.
Troi: If you’re looking for my professional opinion, as ship’s counselor, he’s nuts. Riker: …I’ll be sure to note that in my log.
Pressure, 2026. Brendan Frasier plays Dwight Eisenhower, planning D-Day, and Ike needs a verdict: go or no go on D-Day on June 5? Andrew Scott plays Group Captain James Stagg, who – going on raw data, not historic precedents – has to present, and defend, a forecast that June 5 is a poxy day for weather. Pretty good character drama, but despite the trailer this is not a Brendan Frasier-dominated movie. He plays more of a 40/60 role against Andrew Scott’s Group Captain Stagg, who is tasked with the unenviable duty of delivering a weather forecast for D-Day, planned for Monday June 5. It is not a forecast Ike, or anyone, wants to hear. Does Frasier do Ike well? As much as I like him, I never “lost” him in the role the way I did Bryan Cranston in “ALL THE WAY”, where he plays LBJ. Still, enjoyable on the whole.
Star Trek: Insurrection, 1998. “Can anyone remember when we used to be explorers?” The crew of the Big E receive word that Data has gone slap-ass crazy and exposed a previously-concealed observation of a pre-warp planet. The Enterprise crew discover that (1) this planet is hella weird, with an atmosphere that can heal injuries and aging and (2) Starfleet, or a part thereof, is entertaining a sketchy-as-hell plan to remove the people on the planet so the atmosphere can be commodified. “How many people does it take, admiral – before it becomes wrong?” is Picard’s response. He is outraged by this perverse application of “the goods of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, and so he must battle F. Murray Abraham….to the death. My favorite part of this movie remains Picard and Data singing “A British Tar”, but it’s a good all around story. I’ve heard it claimed that this is a good TNG episode, but not quite up to snuff as a movie; the practical stakes are definitely lower than in the prior two TNG movies, but the moral argument – that the ends can never justify the means, that good ends cannot be achieved through the devil’s tools – has lingered with me for nearly thirty years now. Frankly, one reason I love TNG so much is because of its morality plays – whether that be “Measure of a Man” or “Drumhead”. The theme here is one that is echoed in SF films like Serenity, or in human history – the poisoned chalice of doing evil to serve The Greater Good. Also, we get to see the Big E a lot. Pity she gets plowed into Shinzon’s Scimitar in the next film. I really wish TNG films had a longer lease, but Star Trek had been ridden long and hard by the mid-2000s. Also, this movie established what a “drone” was for me, and I was extremely weirded out to realize we’ve made the damn things now, just with more irritating noise.
Not Patrick Duffy: We believe when you create a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man.
Picard: We are betraying the very principles on which the Federation is founded. Admiral Doherty: Jean Luc, we’re only moving six hundred people. Picard: How many people does it take, admiral, before it becomes wrong?
Star Trek Nemesis, 2002. Riker and Troi want to get married. Then an evil clone of Picard interferes and forces Picard to drive the bloody Enterprise-E right into his Villain Ship of Evil to stop him. The death of Data, and alas, the death of the TNG movies. I was SO HYPED to watch this when it first came out, but it basically ended Star Trek for nearly a decade; Enterprise, regardless of its virtues, was just rehashing the same formula of TNG and VOY but to more and more marginal results. I think Hardy is brilliant these days, in films like Bronson and The Drop, so it was interesting to watch him in this first film where even in the full flush of my Trekkie-dom, I felt….The Cringe, as gen-z peeps might say. Unlike the other TNG films, I didn’t feel a difference watching this one, except for appreciating Hardy a little more – possibly out of habit since he’s become a favorite. It still frustrates me that we were given fantastic ship models, a great new character in Donatra, and then – we never see them again.
The Big Lebowski, 1998.
Oh reader.
Dear reader.
You know how they describe movies as a cult classic?
…I’m a Big Lebowski cultist. I once spent four hours dressed as Walter Sobchak quoting the movie. The Big Lebowski is about a Dude – the Dude – whose rug, which, like, totally tied the room together, is peed on after a case of mistaken identity. The Dude reaches out to the Big Lebowski, some old man whose catchphrase is “THE BUMS WILL ALWAYS LOSE!”, for recompense. Things happen. Bowling. Toes. Scenes that feel like an acid trip. I’ve been watching this movie for twenty years and have yet to tire of it.
“THIS IS NOT ‘NAM, SMOKEY, THIS IS BOWLING! THERE ARE RULES!”
“THE CHINAMAN IS NOT THE ISSUE HERE, DUDE! I’m talking about drawing a LINE IN THE SAND, Dude, ACROSS THIS LINE YOU DO NOT – also, Dude? ‘Chinaman’ is not the preferred nomenclature. ‘Asian-American’, please.”
“You want a toe? I can get you a toe. There are ways, Dude, you don’t want to know. I can get you a toe by 3 o’clock, with nail polish.”
Girlfriends Day. I found this not through my love of Bob Odenkirk (Better call Saul!) but because I searched for Amber Tamblyn looking for some movie about traveling pants. (I like Tamblyn from Joan of Arcadia, but I was looking for movies about female friendship for writing reasons.) A greeting card writer loses his mojo after his wife leaves him for some other guy; he loses himself in moping and the bottle until he hears about an emerging greeting card category, and by chance he also runs into Amber Tamblyn who evidently likes jaded alcoholics who hang around in bars. And then….MURDER! Murder most foul. Enter mood whiplash and general entertainment.
“I’m a cynic.” “No, I’m a cynic. You’re cynical. There’s a difference. I never believed in the first place, but you – you wake up every morning disappointed to find the world the way it is….because you’re a dreamer.”
The Karate Kid, 1984. I am a terrible Millennial, as I’ve never watched this, despite growing up with martial-arts oriented stuff like TMNT and the Rush Hour movies. A boy (Daniel) and his mother move to Cali; Daniel meets a girl (Allie) and hits it off, but when he’s beaten up after trying to stop a blonde bully from antagonizing Allie, Daniel becomes a near-pariah and is relentlessly bullied by the bully (Johnny) and his crew. After an older Japanese neighbor witnesses Daniel being beaten up by Johnny & co, and teaches “Daniel-san” to defend himself. At the same time that Daniel is being schooled in karate through…unorthodox methods, he’s also trying to date a girl who is several classes above him. Ultimately, Daniel and Johnny will face off in a regional karate competition. Watching this in 2026 (forty-two yearslater) added the eighties aesthetic to its original karate appeal – especially the music. There was also unexpected character richness in it, like Mr. Miyagi being a grieving widower whose losses probably owed to FDR’s order that Japanese-Americans be interned in camps during WW2.
Also, this prompted me to start watching COBRA KAI. Strike hard! Strike fast! NO MERCY! It’s surprisingly good. The principle actors from Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio and William Zabka, reprise their roles – but they’re both middle-aged men in the grips of triumph, parenthood, and failure. Both manage to be extremely sympathetic despite being antagonists. Zabka’s Johnny Lawrence is stuck in the eighties, which is both sad, sympathetic, and hilarious for storytelling: he has no patience whatsoever for modernity’s infinite neuroses.
People will Talk, 1951. Cary Grant plays a physician with a mysterious past who falls in love with a patient (oh dear) who is unwed and pregnant (oh dear) and who tells her she isn’t so he has time to tell her father. (Wait, what?) Then she runs off and he runs after her and they get married, but some professor at the university believes Cary Grant was up to no good in his mysterious past, and he’s bound and determined to expose him. Great story; I’ll stick this as my 2nd favorite Cary Grant, the first being (forever and always)Philadelphia Story. (It displaced His Girl Friday, for the curious.)
“He was a duck.” “A duck?” “He healed people.” “How?” “If I knew that I’d be a doc myself.”
“It’s not much fun, gettin’ to be old.” “It’s even less fun not getting to be.”
“Funny. This calls for tears, and I haven’t got any.”
“Elwell, you can use more words more unpleasantly than any irritating little pipsqueak I’ve ever known!”
Emperor, 2013. Tommy Lee Jones plays….eh, Tommy Lee Jones, but answering to the name Douglas MacArthur. Mac has to decide whether or not to persecute Emperor Hirohito for Japanese war crimes. This an eye-opener; I’d never heard about the Kyūjō Incident, in which a small group of the Japanese army attempted to seize the palace and stop the Emperor from surrendering.
“If you understand devotion, then you will understand Japan.”
My First Mister, 2001. I watched this twenty years ago purely for Leelee Sobieski, aka ‘Young Helen Hunt”. Somehow talked the ladyfriend into watching it with me. It’s about a troubled teenage girl deep into goth culture and piercings who becomes friends with Albert Brooks, who is….as square as square can be. For him, being a square is aspirational. There’s a kind of paternal relationship that emerges, and it’s why I thought of this movie after watchingWelcome to the Rileys. One thing I like about this movie is that it shows emotional intimacy that’s not romantic. It’s also…tragic, so much so that I lost movie-picking privileges with the ladyfriend for the rest of the month. In my defense, I hadn’t seen it in 20 years. It’s brutal but beautiful.
“She was a troubled teenage girl. She chose indifference as a state of mind.”
“Who do you talk to? Who are your friends?” “…you?” “Me? I’m 49 years old!” “I’m 17. Nice to meet you.”
“It’s one of those small….but enormous, things.”
“I’d like to propose a toast to all the special F-words – to friends, family, fate, forgiveness, and – forever.”
Ike: Countdown to D-Day, 2004.
Tom Selleck plays Dwight Eisenh–
Tom Selleck?
Okay. Tom Selleck plays Dwight Eisenhower, planning D-Day. He’s also having to manage his peers and subordinates, like the prickly Bernard Montgomery and the pugnacious Patton. The Brits are chomping at the bit to give Jerry a little what-for, but Eisenhower has to manage spirit and logistics, as well as keep mum as the word. Selleck’s voice provides an appropriate gravitas for Eisenhower; although as with Frasier I did not lose him in the role, his drastic change in appearance (bald Selleck is odd Selleck) went further in that purpose.
“It’s Churchill’s job to make the decisions. It’s mine to make them work.”
“Whaddya say, Beetle? Want to show the reporters your ‘human face’?” “I wasn’t issued one, sir.
“‘Anglo-Saxons to Rule the Postwar World’. The hell is this, George?” “The straight skinny, sir. After this it’ll be us and the Brits who have to put things back together.” “That will come as a surprise to Joe Stalin!” “Communism’s for the next war, sir.”
Today’s prompt from Long and Short reviews is, “Websites we wish still existed”. The first thing that comes to mind is the old 3DO forums: 3DO was a game-publishing company that did several very different series, including the Army Men games and Heroes of Might and Magic. Their forums, which were the first I ever tried, had a ranking system based on your post count — but, the expressed rank was different depending on the “class” you registered as. I registered there as a fan of the Army Men games, so our titles were military ranks and job duties: we’d appear as Smellincoffee the Rifelman (yes, they really misspelled it), or Sarge506 the Tank Driver. The ranks had a steep progressive curve, so it was easy to be promoted from “Puddle of Warm Goo” to “Recruit”, but it would take ages to move from Brigadier to Major General. (Er, Army Men is a series in which the rival armies are plastic. The games took this premise seriously to varying degrees. Most were straight-up WW2-esque games but others had fun with it.) Someone who registered in the Might and Magic class, though, would have completely different, but still escalating, ranks. I can’t remember what they used but it was probably stuff like “goblin123 the Halfling” and “josecanseco the Orc Slayer”. Only one person, General Plastico, ever made 100 as far as I know. (We Army Men people were so proud it was one of us and not one of those Might and Magic people who made it first.)
circa 2001
One popular board was the Halfway House, which opened at level 50: it was a major moment to get access there, since the discussions were a lot more serious. When I came home on 9/11, the Halfway House was the first place I looked for information. It was tremendously creative and, so far as I know, unique to us: the 3DO forums had a genuine sense of ‘we’re special’, with one user creating a website to chronicle members and stories gone by. (It was called The Codex but I have never been able to find it in the wayback machine.) I was particularly invested in it: I had a monopoly on the Captain Blade display photo, and designated myself the Army Men: Air Tactics expert, complete with a Homestead website with mission guides. When 3DO switched to generic forum software, a lot of old hands left — though some of us persisted, even after 3DO closed its forums permanently and we wound up regrouping on another user (Sarge506)’s private forum. I would love to see even just a screenshot of the old 3DO boards: it was my internet “home” for many years, and even today I’m facebook friends with several people from The 3DO Days. (The first time I ever shared photos or talked on a mic to People On the Internet involved faith130 and Sarge506…3DO peeps.)
Sarge506’s place circa 2004. We had an active role-playing game that led me to discovering NationStates and creating the Holy Republic of the Cofficon Union.
WHAT have you finished reading recently? Woodrow Wilson, . I wanted to go ahead and get him out of the way before the year’s second half begins.
WHAT are you reading now? The Power and the Dream, about the relationship between RFK and MLK. I’m also listening to an audiobook called The Hidden Coalition, about the sub rosa dealings of Eisenhower and LBJ to work together.
WHAT are you reading next? I should really read faith130’s Rupture since I was just waxing nostalgic about the 3DO days.
Well, dear readers, we are six months into 2026. Time to look and see how I’m doing on my reading goals. One happy bit of news is that I found a new binge-able artist. The last years I haven’t done a “20__ in Other Media: Music!” post, mostly because I’ve been listening to artists whom I already knew. There’s nothing wrong with that, but one does like a bit of adventure from time to time, to become obsessed with a new artist. In my case, her name is “Sophie Grey.”. The period is part of her name. Her main genre is “Retro Electro”, and as someone who loves synthwave I’m enjoying the connection. She works in a lot of…telecom/IT audio into her videos. Yes, I’m serious. I stumbled on her randomly when I had youtube set to pop-female (think B*Witched, Britney, Spice Girls, Taylor Swift) and it decided to feature her cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star“. I spent the entire day listening to her! But this is a book blog, not a music blog, so let’s get to it — and more importantly, we are halfway through the year, so I need to assess how I’m doing on my goals.
Science Survey
I read When the Earth Had Two Moons, though I dragged my feet through it and was continually distracted by Nixon and Kennedy so I’ve retained almost nothing. Ten categories remain for the Survey: so far I’ve only claimed the Wildcard and Local Astronomy categories.
Classics Club
I’m steadily working on Angle of Repose; Stegner’s writing is exquisite.
Bible in a Year
As mentioned in January, I decided to read the Bible in a year following Fr. Mike Schmitz’s podcast. While I have not followed it evenly (there have been periods where I lapsed and then binged), I am on course. To date I have read everything from Genesis through to Kings and Chronicles, plus Job, the Gospel of John, Ecclesiastes, and large portions of the Psalms. I’d also planned to read a book a month about the Bible to aid in my quest, but you know the old saying: Man proposes and Reading Frenzies disposes. It’s been an…interesting journey so far. The Hebrew scriptures are rich with wild, emotionally volatile stories — especially the Tamar/Amnon/Absalom drama — but the amount of census-taking is insane. A lot of times I’d just boot up Stardew Valley and fish while I listened to Fr. Mike read out the Hebrew phone book. I think the second half of the year will be a lot more lively than the first half, because we get the Prophets and the Gospels. (We also get the Epistles: St. Paul’s love of long, complicated sentences is something you really notice when you’re a lector.)
America @ 250
As far as my three-track model goes, I’m doing rather poorly. I’ve read a history of one period-city, Boston and the Revolution; I’ve read almost no general American history save for presidential biographies and histories; and track three on ‘Americans of Note’ has been wholly dominated by presidents, with a couple of exceptions in the form of Thomas Sowell and RFK. I’d wanted Americans of Note to feature musicians, authors, etc. However, the presidential fixation — which has included books about political relationships, not just biographies — has allowed me to absorb a lot of American history on the side, including stuff I know virtually nothing about like the Vietnam war. Do I have intentions of trying to return to my three-track model? You bet. Will I?
New Acquisitions
Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy vs Jimmy Hoffa, James Neff Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, Chris Matthews Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, Chris Matthews The Promise and the Dream: The Untold Story of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, David Margolick Communion, J.D. Vance
Coming up in July….
Um..history. History is a really safe bet.
2026 Goals in the Back 9?
I still want to do some place-oriented reading, celebrating American cities and states, but to be honest I think America @ 250 is just going to focus on finishing my Hail to the Chief reading project. The amount of dead presidents I need books for is under twenty, so it’s COMPLETELY plausible that I could finish that before year’s end. Heck, if I was as fixated on it as I have been on Nixon and Kennedy, I could knock it out in two months. The potential issue is that a lot of the men left are so frustrating and interesting (like Nixon) that I’m not going to be satisfied with one book. I can’t Zachary Taylor men like LBJ: even if I don’t like LBJ (and I don’t, he was a vulgar boor albeit a master politician), I feel like he’ll deserve a serious study.
As far as Science Survey and Classics Club….may the odds be ever in their favor. Neither is by necessity doomed but the America @ 250 fire would really need to dampen down. It’s entirely possible — look at CJ Box taking over February — but not necessarily probable.
The danger of speaking badly about others or exposing their secrets on social media lies in our inability to repair the damage once we later recognize our sin. When I gossip or slander someone privately, I may apologize and mend the situation once I realize the evil I have done. But on social media, countless people who read what I wrote will never know of my repentance, while the harm done to the other person remains. – Metropolitan Saba Isper
Whoever has not been formed by the Gospel will not be corrected merely by manners. – ibid
“The devil does not destroy a man with one blow, but whispers ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow.’ And so, the heart is lulled to sleep, and the soul forgets eternity. But the wise man says, ‘Today is the day of salvation,’ and he rises to repent while there is still time.” – St. Moses the Black, quoted by Michael Warren Davis
You are not coming to Orthodoxy to optimize your personal spiritual metrics. You are being woven into a body. – Martin Myers, “On Orthodox Formation and Convert Burnout“.
Fr. John Behr recently said in an interview with the guys at Worse for the Facts that you can really only get to know a handful of thinkers in your life. Bear in mind, Fr. John probably fits that description of person we’re not found two paragraphs above better than most. So, if one of the greatest living scholars of patristics says that he can only know a few thinkers in his life, well, shoot, I’d love to even know one then. – “How Should We Think about the Church Fathers?”, Austin Suggs
“However successful the darkness may be, for however long a time, and however it may increase, yet the Light is imperishable. All lies die. Truth alone remains.” – Dr Peter Kreeft, “Ten Lies of Contemporary Culture”.
The Desert Fathers did not leave us a religion of comfort, affirmation, and therapeutic self-discovery. They left us a faith of repentance, sacrifice, discipline, and holiness. – Frank Bruno, comment
“If man were born only to be happy, he would not also be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on Earth must evidently be more spiritual. Not to gorge on everyday life, not to search for the best ways of obtaining material goods and eagerly consuming them, but to bear perpetual, earnest, duty — so that one’s entire life journey may become, above all, an experience of moral assent, To leave life a better human being than one started it.” – Ignat Solzhenitsyn, quoting (I think) his father Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at ARC 2026.
“Solzhenitsyn’s conclusion was, a totalitarian state isn’t a dictator oppressing the freedom-loving masses. That’s a fool’s vision of the world. It’s the universal grip of The Lie on every soul, every single one. Not a single man, in a totalitarian state, is willing to stand up and say what he knows to be true.” Jordan Peterson, “Does God Speak to You?”, a reflection on Job.
“Perhaps the greatest difference between those years from my childhood and the current era was not that life was slower back then, but that our attention was directed somewhere other than ourselves. We were occupied with neighbors, friends, family, and whatever adventure the day happened to bring. Today’s world, by contrast, constantly invites us to become students of ourselves. We are encouraged to analyze our feelings, cultivate our self-esteem, curate our identity, and endlessly examine our own story. It is precisely here that the wisdom of the Orthodox Church becomes important, for the saints consistently teach that the more preoccupied we become with ourselves, the less free we become to love God and our neighbor.” – “Orthodox Christianity Doesn’t Want You Living in the Past“, Kenneth B
The longer I live, the more I realize that that cheesy coffee mug saying, “Be kind, for everyone you know is fighting a great battle” — really is true. I don’t live by that admonition as much as I should. – Rod Dreher, “Mirror, Mirror, on the Mall“.
So, in a real sense, just as every individual monastery is a place where a group of people have committed to live together in order to be perfected in Christ, so every individual marriage and family is a “domestic monastery”. They are BOTH communities of imperfect people who come to it with different issues, sins, inclinations, failures, and dispositions chosen, forced, habitual, and genetic. The community is joined and established by free will and within that community we learn to be like Christ. It is also a place to learn how to give up your self will and sacrifice your desires for the sake of love for others. It is where we learn to man our post in spite of…. It is the place we ultimately learn the humility of the Trinity: the laying down of my individuality for the sake of my fulfilling my created personhood. It is the cross on which our self dies and our humanity is raised transfigured. – “The Domestic Monastery“, Steve Robinson.
I think that last one is particularly….chewy, because Christianity occupies this odd space where the individual is important as a Person — Christ always dealt with people one on one — but not important merely in themselves, as an individual. The modern ‘liberal’ world prioritizes the individual to a large degree — declaring that people have their own truths, that feelings dictate reality, and so on — even as it damns those like Ayn Rand who take individualism to its logical conclusion.
In conclusion, June was a heck of a month, and it’s been a fun reading year so far. If you made it this far, good for you! Here’s your reward.
Today’s TTT is books we’re looking forward to being released, but the books I was anticipating have already been released (GIRLS, etc) and the next book on my radar (Rod Dreher’s Warning to Weimar America or whatever final title it takes) has a hazy ‘probably in 2027’ date. Rod posted recently that he just found another book he’s going to be incorporating into the final draft, so who knows. Anyway, I thought today might be a fun day to treat as a freebie and look at never-published drafts. It’s more of a meditation on drafts in general.
Teaser Tuesday
Some thought the straightlaced [Robert] Kennedy, a man who threw Fanny Hill overboard during a Potomac cruise and barred Playboy from his house, was put off by King’s sexual indiscretions, minutely chronicled by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. (Other Kennedy intimates found that laughable, given the womanizing of his father and brother.) Paradoxically, King’s saintliness was also hard to take. “Doc was a moralist,” a Kennedy backer, referring to King, once told the pioneering black journalist Simeon Booker. “A politician just can’t honeymoon with this kind of guy. Sooner or later, there has to be a falling out.” Stylistically, [Robert] Kennedy seemed to prefer the company of grittier black leaders, like the ones who’d organized the rally for him in Indianapolis. Kennedy might have been bitter over King’s sex-laced wisecracks about his late brother and his wife, overheard and recorded and then gleefully transmitted to him by Hoover’s FBI. But guilt too, may have been a barrier. Just how do you befriend someone you’ve wiretapped, especially if, as former attorney general Ramsey Clark has speculated, Kennedy was ashamed of what he had done? THE PROMISE AND THE DREAM: THE UNTOLD STORY OF MLK AND RFK
Top Ten Unpublished Drafts
I frequently work on posts well in advance: for instance, I already have a draft for next year announcing twenty years of book blogging, since this blog’s first post was in May 2007. Sometimes I start a book review post before I’ve even read the book, because I want to get tags and such in order while I’m thinking about it. Witness:
I have finished none of these books with the exception of that Stephen Fry as Lady Bracknell piece: it wound up being short-rounded, I think. (Fry played a part in an audiobook version of “The Important of Being Earnest”, the stage play I have seen performed the most times.) “Some music from the White Zulu” is a Johnny Clegg music post I have prepped for whenever I finish Scatterling of Africa, “Wake Me Up Before You Go, Jo” is the start to a review of Jo Jorgensen’s biography — she was the Libertarian candidate for president in 2020 and is thinking about running again, and Confidence Man is a book I haven’t even bought yet, let alone read. (Nor will I, for a while: I won’t be reading any biographies of living presidents until I finish my dead presidents, and Confidence Man is a Trump biography.)
As you can see, my drafts tend to be more whimsically titled than the final versions. (That’s a Gilda Radner biography I’d checked out, gotten distracted by, and have not yet returned to.)
Sometimes my drafts have nothing to do with books: they’re just something I’m thinking about. Sometimes the thinking is fairly raw and bristling, especially when I’ve been thinking and feeling about a subject.
I will often sit on a review for years because I am not happy with it. To me, the book was great: it needs a great review. If the disparity between the book and what I’ve written is broad enough, I simply don’t post a review. This is why I have never gotten to reviewing Death and Life of Great American Cities: for me, it would be not in the neighborhood but at least the exurban fringes of, reviewing the Bible.
God Bless You Past Me, You Were So Naive and Unsuspecting
I like to look at this preview every now and again and laugh bitterly. It was obviously composed before March 2020.
Two dormant reviews:
I read this book five years ago and I still haven’t arrived at a proper review of it, but I do like that intro for its synthesis mojo.
Of course, the Winnah for “Books I read a Long Time Ago and Haven’t Reviewed” is Age of Absurdity. I’ve read it three times since 2013.
Ridiculously Ambitious Series Posts
Yes, there is a version of me who wants to do an entire month of just medieval history and historical fiction. I’m mad, mad! (But one of these days I’m going to do it, so help me.)
Reading Lolita for Jeremy Irons
I started listening to this audiobook for Jeremy Irons, but didn’t finish. It did not stop me from beginning a Margin Call-inspired post, however.
IRONS: Let me tell you something, Mr. Sullivan. Do you care to know why I’m in this chair with you all? I mean, why I earn the big bucks? I’m here for one reason and one reason alone. I’m here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That’s it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I’m afraid that I don’t hear a thing. Just…silence.
Books I Read and Chose Not to Review
Last year I read Tulsi Gabbard’s For the Love of Country, which I’d bought thinking was a campaign biography of sorts: I’ve been watching her since she was an anti-war Democrat, so I was interested. The book proved to have one remark which was interesting as hell (John Lewis mentioned to Gabbard that the ‘racists’ attacking white students doing sit-ins were often white members of SNCC), but I wound up not posting the book because it was too partisan: while I have posted polemics, they’re good libertarian polemics with a barrel for both parties.
STUFF I LITERALLY FORGOT TO POST
Considering how long I labored on my Provoked review, not posting quotes from it is hilarious.
Interesting Stuff that Doesn’t Quite Belong
Sometimes I create a draft and think, “mm….does this really belong on a book review blog?” I mean, sure, I do create off-topic posts sometimes, but by and large this is a blog about books. And, once a month, movies.
Stuff I Just Didn’t Finish
It happens.
Past me did not use a quote block because such things did not exist back then. That is how old this draft is.
Funny story: that book has two unfinished posts about the same theme. This from 2017;
Past-me obviously meant “VE Day @ 80”.
Another “Post I Didn’t Finish”, and on this one I’m giving a shoutout to the lady-friend who recently publically chided me for not finishing the stack of girl books she gave me back when she was just “a friend of the blog”.
Stuff I Didn’t Post for Whatever Reason
Back in October 2024, I went to a screening of the first episode of “Live Not by Lies”, based on a book I’ve not yet reviewed (damn you, past me, you are such a bum). The post detailed my arriving an hour early along with everyone else because of some miscommunication, but the absolute delight I found in just hanging out with an hour with people who READ BOOKS. (Actually, past me deserves an apology, present-me: he wrote a five-paragraph review of Live Not By Lies but it’s in “I’m Not Happy With It Just Yet” territory. Also, past-me wrote it during COVID, so he was really angry.)
This is probably my favorite part of the post:
Fr. Longenecker and Joseph Peace have both written on how we gollumize ourselves — that is, allow sin or vice or whatever to turn us into pathetic yet proud half-versions of ourselves — but I never posted this for whatever reason.
Well, so ends my thinking about drafts. I hope it doesn’t go too much into “man behind the curtain” territory; my posts begin with brutal honesty and then get made respectable by my editing voice. They’re made to comb their hair, to wear shoes, to straighten their collar. Parts of me are told, “Hey, maybe you just should….chill out back here while the more photogenic thoughts take the runway.” There is more of a look into what’s happening when that happens.
TODAY IS THE LAST DAY OF JUNE! I have one book review I might post (it’s a short biography of Woodrow Wilson, don’t get excited) and I may finish a movie tonight in which Tom Selleck plays Dwight Eisenhower. Yes, really. It’s a fairly quiet movie, though, and I opened the month with Saving Private Ryan and Pressure so the main thing keeping me going is “Tom Selleck playing Eisenhower is weird“.
When J.D. Vance’s formidable grandmother died, his connection to Christianity went with it. Although he’d been raised going to church with her on occasion, the faith had never become internalized; as he deployed to Iraq, he was moving further and further away from the memory of it. Communion is the story of how a young man came to believe again, and a reflection on how Christianity’s eternal truths have inspired him as a father, husband, and public servant.
Although I’ve been sold on this book as a memoir of his coming to the Catholic church – an improbable decision given his origins in Protestant hill country – that is not strictly the case. The first half follows his faith’s decline and fall, but I noticed ambiguity. Even in the desert, he was reading Chronicles of Narnia and wishing Jesus was more like Aslan – and when he’s in college and identifying as an atheist, he still notices contempt for Christians as if he’s still connected to the faith. While pursuing the cursus Mammonae – law school, clerking for a judge, lucrative practice – Vance began having a crisis of meaning. What was all this for? His coworkers were seemingly married to their jobs, with no time left for their children or the simple enjoyment of life. He realized, with a Girard-esque start, that he was simply modeling the desires and ambitions of those around him, just as if he were in high school again. Around this time, he fell in love with a woman, Usha, who seemed destined for a great career in the law – but she had little interest in getting and spending and laying waste to all her powers. She wanted an interesting job, but she wanted a meaningful life – children to love, a husband to experience adventures with – not to be a girlboss. Her perspective, and his realization that he needed to be a worthier partner, put Vance on a quest for meaning. The more he read, the more interesting he found the wisdom of the Church – particularly its social doctrine, which places the human person and not GDP at the center of social, economic, and political thinking. After a quiet evening reflecting in a cathedral while his son slept, he made the choice to swim the Tiber.
Communion is an intimate work; conversion stories cannot help be. Part of the story is his learning to accept grace, to realize that as haunted as he may be by his past of violent, dysfunctional relatives, it needn’t – won’t – define him. It dovetails neatly with Christianity’s message of grace and redemption, of escaping sin’s power. The second half of the book is more of a reflection on Christianity’s place in the West, both historically and now, and he muses on ways that the Christian appreciation of the person can inform politics. This is not your granddaddy’s ‘moral majority’: while no doubt agreeing that much of what is tolerated in society is destructive, like pornography, Vance focuses his thinking on other issues, particularly labor and the family. Given how central becoming a husband and father was to Vance changing his life, making him assess the why of things, he unsurprisingly agrees with the social doctrine (and others, like Wendell Berry) that the economy exists for human needs, not the other way around. Corporations should not be allowed to keep wages miserly by relying on illegal migrant labor, nor should apps that allow for the complete commodification of labor – calling in workers only when The Algorithm suggests they’ll deliver the most bang for the buck – be tolerated. Human beings are persons made imago Dei, not cogs to be manipulated or resources to be managed. We know what happens when those resources are wasted or those cogs are worn down in materialist societies: they are disposed of.
I devoured this book, staying up until the early hours of the next day and then gnawing on it all day the next. Those of you who are familiar with what I tend to read and write about are probably not surprised – trying to figure out what the flourishing life is, and how to guide people towards it, has been my passion for twenty years now. I think it’s rare, though, for someone who have this itch, this bug, this desire to break out of going with the flow, and asking – what’s it all for? I think it’s especially rare for politicians, because as honorable as some of their intentions might be, it’s a field of human endeavour that attracts those who crave power, authority, influence, etc. Seneca aside, I don’t think the pursuit of gold and the pursuit of wisdom overlap overmuch. But Vance proves in this book to be an author deeply versed in Augustinian thought, and that’s not just this layman’s notion: Bishop Robert Barron, who presumably knows a thing about patristics, said as much in his own review. One thing Vance criticizes throughout the text is that economics increasingly displaces morality as our default language to evaluate matters of concern to the republic – and his rejection of that in his earnest defense of humanity against the machine, is a throughline. Unfortunately, I think this book will be judged by many simply because of Vance’s role in the Trump administration, which is doubly sad because Vance and progressives who are oriented toward family needs could have a conversation. The political parties are changing, in both good and unhinged ways, and those who genuinely care more about the body politic rather than an ideology, need to find one another instead of trolling for twitter cred. Vance, like Sasse before him, and Ralph Nader too, is raising questions that can and should be considered by everyone.
And just as it is a sin to assume that we can control everything, so it is a sin to ignore that we can—with the help of grace—defeat the demons of the past and chart our own course. I might never escape my past. But by the grace of God, it would never consume me.
I saw one billionaire, who had nothing to do with the entertainment industry, laughing hysterically with Matt Damon and Denzel Washington. One of the minor celebrities I’d befriended at the bar turned to me and observed: “Look at them, man. It’s high school all over again. The awkward kid laughing too hard at the popular kid’s jokes. The girls floating around them. The dork paying them too much attention; the cool kid kind of ignoring them.” He was right.
“But,” he went on, giving voice to something I’d long pondered, “for most of us, grace is not something that happens in a moment. You don’t feel God’s presence and then change in an instant. Real grace comes through practice. This is why we demand that you live a sacramental life: going to church, taking Communion, doing confession. This is a process. You don’t accept Jesus into your heart—or get baptized—and fix everything. That’s not the promise of the Church. The promise of the Church is that you are lost, and the Church will provide you a road map to God.”
A college friend, Ethan, once remarked to me how easy it would be to believe in God if, like Peter the Apostle, he saw Christ walk on water and if Christ pulled him out of a lake when he was drowning. I acknowledged that, yes, everyone would believe if they saw a real live miracle. But the Christian argument is a bit more complicated: No matter what we see, we are all tempted by doubt. The Peter whom Jesus pulled out of the sea is the same Peter who denied Christ three times shortly before His crucifixion.
Indeed, one of the subtexts of the Trump rebellion in the Republican Party in 2016 was that the business elites found out the working-class members of their party cared far more about factory jobs than abstract libertarian economics.
But we now live in a society almost blinded to considerations outside of the economic. This way of thinking is inherently opposed to the Christian way, which demands more focus on people.
A Christian approach to economics would demand something different: concern for GDP, yes, but only insofar as it promotes human flourishing. The economy is a means—an important one—to enable people to live good lives. The point at which we see the economy as the end in itself is the point at which we dehumanize ourselves.
When I first made some money, I reached out to an eighty-year-old cousin to buy the family cemetery in Eastern Kentucky. I spoke about this cemetery—probably about a half acre—in my acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Even as vice president, I try to visit at least once a year. It’s a beautiful part of the country, my favorite part in many ways, and I still have relatives there whom I love to see. But I also visit because I find it oddly comforting to know that I’ll be buried among my ancestors. I walk in that ancient plot of land and speak to people long dead, some of them gone before my grandmother was even born. I’ve visited that cemetery before every major life decision, from proposing to Usha to running for the Senate. I listen to the birds chirp and watch the grasshoppers dance from grave to grave, and I remember that I used to chase the ancestors of those grasshoppers in these very mountains, when the people now buried were alive and breathing and watching over me. I talk to my grandparents and my great-grandparents, like patron saints of the episodes and emotions we all experience in the course of life. I talk to Mamaw when I need strength or focus and to Papaw when I need wisdom. I talk to Mamaw’s mother, Mamaw Blanton, when I need kindness or empathy and to her father, Papaw Blaine, whom I never met, when I need toughness. I bought the cemetery for selfless reasons. I wanted to preserve this outdoor temple of the dead for my family and the sake of those buried. But I bought it for selfish reasons, too: for the moments of quiet reflection I find only in this place, unique in all the world.
Despite only serving most of two years, JFK has loomed large in the memories of Americans, and his brutal assassination has much to do with that. His presidency was potential cut short; hope, aborted. In John F. Kennedy, Brinkley writes: “What made Kennedy’s image so powerful and so enduring was not the product of his own achievements; it was that so many people have imagined what might have happened had he lived.” This is a short but servicable biography of our 35th president, a man who served through the Cold War’s most dramatic moments — a man who still haunts Americans, whose life still inspires volume after volume written on what he did, what he might have done, and who killed him before he could do more.
In looking at my Hail to the Chief series, or project, ordinarily I would not be content with using this slim volume from the American Presidents series to address Kennedy. However, I have read so much around Kennedy this summer that it seemed time for more of an overview, and Alan Brinkley’s book provides that handily. The first quarter concerns his early life and rise to power; the middle half concerns his presidency; and the last quarter focuses on how he is remembered. I was pleasantly surprised by Brinkley as an author, because he does not shy away from Kennedy’s moral failings, particularly his womanizing and utter betrayal of his wife. This evidently ran in the family, with the possible exception of Bobby. (I say possible exception because the only book I’ve found that hints toward RFK having an affairs had to settle for “he was a flirt and probably had affairs”, which is about as credible as a campaign promise after the election.) That said, Brinkley is also not writing a gossip column, and keeps the focus squarely on JFK’s role as an administrator and leader. While he frequently fumbled there — the Bay of Pigs and early inaction on Civil Rights — he did have an enormous charisma that inspired people to hope for the future, despite the gloom of the Cold War. His speeches are far and and away the most recognizable in 20th century American political rhetoric.
If you are looking for an introduction to JFK, this was both well-written and quite fair.
For those weary of Kennedys, I’m presently finalizing a review that has nothing to do with them at all, and one of my Kennedy books that is forthcoming will introduce MLK Jr. I haven’t read anything on King since 2010, and since my library has a new biography on him I may check it out.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is the closest time the Cold War came to turning into a hot war, and (presumably) a global holocaust. RFK served the President most immediately not as his attorney general, but his confidant and advisor. Thirteen Days is a memoir — in part — of the crisis from a man who was embedded in it almost as long as the president himself. RFK was one of the first people notified by the president about the new intelligence, and his closest confidant during the crisis. The book isn’t just a record of RFK’s memories, though, but contains his views on important lessons from it. RFK stresses how the United States acted within the framework of international cooperation, for instance: JFK had enlisted the support of the entire Organization of American States, which added weight to his protestations about nuclear missiles in Cuba. He also stresses how JFK labored to understand events as they might be interpreted within the Kremlin: with humanity itself at stake, he could not afford any ‘my way or the highway’ thinking. The book was not in a finished state when it was published following RFK’s assassination: RFK had intended to add to his memories of the two weeks a reflection on ethics in the nuclear age. in place of that, Richard Neustadt and Graham Allison offer their own reflection on what the Crisis meant, the futility of nuclear war, and the role of the Constitution in immediate crises like this. It’s a very short work (~100 pages or so), and best read knowing something about the context of the era, but I wanted to experience RFK as an author.
Quotations
My belief when I went to Havana was that we had over-dramatized the danger. After all, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, was well aware that the United States had conventional superiority in the Caribbean and nuclear superiority overall. As a rational man, he would never have launched a suicidal war. This complacent view did not survive the conference. Going to war is not necessarily a rational process. – from the preface by Arthur Scheislinger Jr
Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding.” – Basil Hart. From the preface.
Each one of us was being asked to make a recommendation which would affect the future of all mankind, a recommendation which, if wrong and if accepted, could mean the destruction of the human race. That kind of pressure does strange things to a human being, even to brilliant, self- confident, mature, experienced men. For some it brings out characteristics and strengths that perhaps even they never knew they had, and for others the pressure is too overwhelming.
“It isn’t the first step that concerns me,” [President Kennedy] said, “but both sides escalating to the fourth and fifth step—and we don’t go to the sixth because there is no one around to do so. We must remind ourselves we are embarking on a very hazardous course.”
Opinion, even fact itself, can best be judged by conflict, by debate. There is an important element missing when there is unanimity of viewpoint. Yet that not only can happen; it frequently does when the recommendations are being given to the President of the United States. His office creates such respect and awe that it has almost a cowering effect on men. Frequently I saw advisers adapt their opinions to what they believed President Kennedy and, later, President Johnson wished to hear.
We had virtual unanimity at the time of the Bay of Pigs. At least, if any officials in the highest ranks of government were opposed, they did not speak out. Thereafter, I suggested there be a devil’s advocate to give an opposite opinion if none was pressed.
While I was there, [President Kennedy] placed telephone calls to former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. As I was leaving, he said, making reference to Abraham Lincoln, “This is the night I should go to the theater.”
THE FINAL LESSON of the Cuban missile crisis is the importance of placing ourselves in the other country’s shoes. During the crisis, President Kennedy spent more time trying to determine the effect of a particular course of action on Khrushchev or the Russians than on any other phase of what he was doing. What guided all his deliberations was an effort not to disgrace Khrushchev, not to humiliate the Soviet Union, not to have them feel they would have to escalate their response because their national security or national interests so committed them.
As mentioned before, Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August had made a great impression on the President. “I am not going to follow a course which will allow anyone to write a comparable book about this time, The Missiles of October,” he said to me that Saturday night, October 26. “If anybody is around to write after this, they are going to understand that we made every effort to find peace and every effort to give our adversary room to move. I am not going to push the Russians an inch beyond what is necessary.”
“The fourteen people involved [in Ex-Comm] were very significant…. If six of them had been President of the U.S., I think that the world might have been blown up.”
“I’m the only candidate who has ever united business and labor, Southerners, party bosses, and intellectuals. They’re all against me.”
David Halberstam was already a seasoned reporter when he began covering RFK’s fatal 1968 bid for the presidency. The bid itself was almost dead on arrival; RFK dragged his feet on deciding, and continually probed those around him as to whether or not he should. “No,” said the party leadership, “Wait until 1972.” LBJ still had a second full potential term to look forward to, after all, and going in 1972 would allow for a lot more groundwork than a scant few weeks RFK was giving himself before the primary season opened. RFK decided to go for it, regardless: LBJ was sinking the US deeper into the mire of Vietnam, and while Eugene McCarthy was vying for the Democratic nomination on that point alone, RFK didn’t think McCarthy had any platform besides escaping Vietnam. Unfinished Odyssey is a history of that campaign.
If I’d known the scope of the book was so narrow, I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but I’m newly curious about RFK and I’ve enjoyed Halberstam’s baseball books before. I’m interested in RFK the man — particularly the man who worked and cried for Joe McCarthy, who criticized LBJ’s Great Society for simply throwing money at problems, and yet who remains an icon of liberalism– rather than the campaigner. The book has the virtue of showing RFK in his final days, as he would be gunned down immediately after winning the California primaries, and has some additional interest in that the author was directly involved in following it. Halberstam in fact writes about himself sometimes, especially in Indiana when he and the other reporters were bored by the rubes and complained about everything from the restaurants to the accommodations. The book is presumably intended for the RFK devotee who wants to read about “Bobby’s Last Campaign”, as Halberstam doesn’t bother giving any introduction or background to RFK himself until the last third of the book where he’s reflecting on what RFK meant to him, then and now. An interesting title, but again not one I would’ve bothered with had I not recognized the author and been generally curious about its principle subject. Although a lot of this is just about the art of electioneering, we do get to see RFK’s personality at times — in particular, his genuine curiosity about, and interest in, the lower classes that DC loves to ignore.
I must admit he’s growing on me a bit.
Quotations
A well-known columnist once asked for a copy of his speech. “What do you care?” [Gene] McCarthy asked back, “You’ve never accurately reported my speeches before.”
Part of it was that he was a Kennedy, which meant that everything was bigger than life. He could not be judged like other men; more had been given to him, more was expected of him, and more would be doubted about him.
Another kid asked a belligerent question, a question filled with hate spilling over so that in the end one forgot what the question was about and remembered only the hatred and the edge and the bitterness. Kennedy, a little tired, answered, “What we need in this country is to cut down the belligerence. If we let this hatred and emotion control our lives, we’re lost.”
Bright, upper-middle-class kids, children of affluence, they believed in the doctrines of the New Left, that if a society is wrong you can do anything you want to redress it, and if someone says something you don’t like, you can drown him out and deprive him of his speech. It was an ugly hour, for one sensed that it would get worse, that this was not going to be the last such evening in American life.
Then he descended to acknowledge his victory, to talk about the violence and the divisiveness, and to let a nation discover in his death what it had never understood or believed about him during his life.
‘Cause Lyndon now we’ve got bad blood Ya know we used to be mad love
When LBJ mentioned that Joe Kennedy’s son Robert would be excellent at leading something like NASA, RFK recorded this in his diary. The master of the Senate thought he had potential! Only a few years later, however, RFK and LBJ would stare at each other in contempt, and when LBJ inherited the Presidency following JFK’s assassination, his brother would stand down rather than serve long a man he hated. Bad Blood is the story of how Johnson and Kennedy’s relationship turned into a summer squall, black and crackling with lightning. The book is preceded by a note from the author that he feels endnotes and footnotes impede truly narrative history, but having immersed myself in presidential politics for the last two months, I saw nothing untoward — and the narrative was a cracking good read.
I rather looked forward to this book, because its stars are two men whom I dislike — but about whom I wanted to learn more. Bad Blood allowed me to start learning about LBJ and RFK without diving into a full biography, and made me intrigued about both men. LBJ was essentially a career politician: he came from a family of Texas politicos, and after a brief stint at teaching moved into the family racket himself. He developed ‘leadership’ skills early, bossing his younger siblings around, and would only grow in manipulative acumen as the years progressed. While he wasn’t exactly born into poverty, it was still a hardscrabble life. Bobby Kennedy, on the other hand, was born with a titanium spoon in his mouth — but was overshadowed by his brothers. He was the family runt, the one destined to be forgotten. It was one of his brothers, JFK, who would bring RFK and LBJ together — and make them antagonists.
After Joseph Kennedy Jr died in an experimental mission in World War 2 (flying a plane packed with explosives, with the intent of bailing out so that the plane could then be remotely-steered as a guided missile), JFK assumed the responsibility of being the family’s political face. The don of the Kennedy clan, Joe Sr, pitched the idea to LBJ of running for president and taking Jack with him as VP — but LBJ had no interest in throwing away money and energy challenging Eisenhower. By the time LBJ was ready to run for the White House, he and Jack were direct competitors — and LBJ was a hard campaigner. Smith writes that RFK was offended by LBJ not wanting to run with JFK in ’56, and outraged by LBJ’s attacks on the Kennedys during the primaries. A young idealist, he also didn’t like brother Jack contemplating bringing LBJ on as his running mate, even if LBJ would bring the South with him. LBJ was both cunning and crude, and RFK didn’t have JFK’s easy ability to work with those who differed from him. I’ve gotten the sense from other books and especially from this one that RFK had a hard personality: he wasn’t at ease with people the way his brothers were, and definitely not a natural politician. Although he’d win a senate seat — with LBJ’s help — he struggled there in a way that JFK and Ted simply didn’t. Once JFK was shot, LBJ inherited his presidency — and, Smith argues, entered into a contest with RFK over JFK’s legacy. RFK had been the number two man in DC, with LBJ sidelined despite being vice president, but on November 23, 1963, he was as Jimmy Hoffa said, “Just another lawyer”. As LBJ settled into power, RFK became more of an open critic of him, particularly on Vietnam– and while they met cordially, their relationship never had time to heal before RFK met his own end at an assassin’s bullet.
This was a riveting, fascinating, but sad read. I regard LBJ as the most vile human specimen to ever sit in the Oval Office, a man who was obsessed with his genitalia who loved physically humiliating others by forcing them to meet with him while he was on the toilet & so on — and as a libertarian I am of course against his engorgement of the federal government, good intentions or no. This book left me with the impression that his concern for the poor was sincere, however, not simply politically useful, and we’re allowed to see the poisoned flower of Vietnam burst into bloom and then completely destroy Johnson’s presidency and arguably the man himself. There’s such a sad irony that LBJ and RFK were both driven by concern for the poor, but could not tame their egos — more in RFK’s case, surprisingly — enough to realize that. RFK did bounce the idea of running as LBJ’s vice president in the ’64 election, but LBJ had no interest in running alongside a man who was a persistent critic and scold. (RFK would become more critical of LBJ’s Vietnam policy as more troops were committed.) And there’s the sadness of RFK, too — a man whose humanity is allowed to emerge after he was broken by his brother’s death. While in my other reading he is consistently a jerk — to use polite language- – after JFK’s death he appears to become more …human. And just as he’s starting to find himself, some human turdlet inflicted the shock and anguish of murder on the Kennedys yet again.
Bad Blood was unexpectedly illuminating. More RFK to come…
Quotes:
LBJ’s long-time aide and future Texas Governor, John Connally, described his mentor’s powerful personality: “There is no adjective in the dictionary to describe him. He was cruel and kind, generous and greedy, sensitive and insensitive, crafty and naïve, ruthless and thoughtful, simple in many ways, yet extremely complex, caring and totally not caring. He could overwhelm people with kindness and turn around and be cruel and petty towards those same people. He knew how to use people in politics the way nobody else could that I know of. As a matter of fact, it would take every adjective in the dictionary to describe him.”
In late August, Jackie Kennedy began hemorrhaging, and was rushed to the hospital. An emergency C-section was performed, but the baby girl was stillborn. Meanwhile, Jack was on a private yacht, thousands of miles away, enjoying the company of other women. When he received the tragic news, JFK initially refused to end his vacation and return home to his wife. Two days later, Senator George Smathers, who had accompanied Jack on the pleasure cruise, convinced the seemingly insensitive and uncaring husband to return home: “You’d better haul your ass back to your wife, if you ever want to run for President.”
On March 15, 1958, JFK addressed the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington D.C., and joked about his political future: “I dreamed about 1960 the other night, and told Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson about it yesterday. I told them how the Lord came into my bedroom, anointing my head, and said, ‘John Kennedy, I hereby anoint you President of the United States.’ Stu Symington said, ‘that’s strange, Jack, because I had a similar dream last night, in which the Lord anointed me President of the United States and outer space.’ Then Lyndon Johnson said, ‘that’s very interesting, gentlemen, because I, too, had a similar dream last night, and I don’t remember anointing either one of you!’”
Jackie Kennedy was refreshingly honest: “I think it’s so unjust of people to be against Jack because he’s a Catholic. He’s such a poor Catholic. Now, if it was Bobby, I could understand it.”
On Inauguration Day, a photographer for United Press International, who had known RFK for many years, jokingly asked: “Well, Bobby, what are we supposed to call you now? Is it Bobby, or Attorney General, or General, or Sir?” “Just call me son of a bitch, because that’s what everybody else is going to be doing,” Bobby replied.
In the weeks following JFK’s assassination, RFK exhibited a dark sense of humor. On one occasion, Bobby asked a friend: “Been to any good funerals, lately? I don’t like to let too many days go by without a funeral.”
While the credibility gap ultimately exposed LBJ’s duplicity to the world, those who observed him closely (advisers, fellow politicians, and reporters) had long been aware of his propensity to stretch the truth. Some of the lies were harmless—such as his preference for bourbon (like all good Texans), when he really drank scotch. Other falsehoods achieved whopper status—LBJ claimed his uncle fought at the Alamo, and that he had earned his Silver Star for “helping shoot down twenty Zeros.” Editing a speechwriter’s draft, LBJ scratched out the name Socrates in a quotation, and replaced it with “my Granddaddy.”
“A man can fight if he can see daylight down the road, somewhere. But, there ain’t no daylight in Vietnam. There’s not a bit.”
Kennedy made light of his campaign’s strengths, in a conversation with Ted Sorensen: “I’m the only candidate who has ever united business and labor, Southerners, party bosses, and intellectuals. They’re all against me.”
“It must be quite something to land at an airport named for your brother,” the newsman opined. “I wish it was still called Idlewild,” RFK softly replied.
In New York City, Jackie Kennedy was awakened by a telephone call from her brother-in-law, Stas Radziwill: “Jackie? How’s Bobby?” “He’s fine, terrific. You heard that he won California by (with) 53 percent, didn’t you?” the former First Lady replied, having retired for the evening, after RFK was projected the winner in the primary contest. “But Jackie, he’s been shot. It happened just a few minutes ago,” Radziwill informed her. “No! It can’t have happened!” Jackie exclaimed, realizing that her shocking premonitions about RFK’s fate had come to fruition, “No! It can’t have happened!”
Related: “Why Don’t You Like Me?” Woody Harrelson’s LBJ confronts RFK in the Oval Office.
Reading Freely 