A Sharp Seasoning of Truth: A Comprehensive Commentary in Pursuit of Genuine National Security

By Pascal R. Politano

Précis for A Sharp Seasoning of Truth
Though myriad books have appeared in recent years centering on America’s foreign and domestic policies, they have not addressed the overall state of the Union. None of those books has made an analysis sufficiently comprehensive to light up the dark corners of those matters in national affairs vital to the general popular interest and which must be addressed for the United States to remain truly united and continue to prosper. Those books are too compartmentalized. Focused mainly on one subject of vital interest and importance, they fail to reveal the entire canvas, with all its important aspects and, not least, co-relationships. The citizens of this country are entitled to and must have a comprehensive evaluation of the true status quo if this nation is to survive. The intention of this book therefore, is to illuminate the entire stage of national socio-political activity, not least its direction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781546269632

Pascal R. Politano

Pascal R. Politano’s latest book could be considered a companion to or a second volume of his last survey of the state of our Union. It expands on certain matters covered more briefly in As Darkness Falls and reaffirms others that are worthy of reexamination. As he points out in this latest treatise, he takes us on a ramble through the current state of the Union in its domestic and foreign affairs; our relations with Russia, China, North and South Korea, Japan, Afghanistan, Iran, and more recently, Ukraine. In a word, the author addresses the crises we face in more detail, and suggests possible solutions to resolve them. With gut-wrenching candor and descriptive language, Politano tells us why racism still exists in this country for reasons that transcend skin color and the societal prejudices that have existed in this country for centuries, and he returns to the threat of global climate change and the urgent need for Constitutional change throughout the book. As the book’s subtitle implies, Politano explains how avarice, cupidity, the overweening, unquenchable striving for wealth and power in both the public and private sectors in America, domestically and abroad, is in great part responsible for the precarious position of our “Great Experiment in Democracy” today. And as a leitmotiv, a dominant recurring theme throughout the book, and somewhere given in his esteemed Latin: Too much freedom debases us (Omnes deteriores sumus licentia). In a recent interview, the author revealed that his greatest concern now is that during this time of such disarray in our sociopolitical affairs domestically, the United States is in no condition to engage in a major war, either conventional or even worse, a nuclear one. Politano feels that should China actually invade and ultimately repossess Taiwan, and at the same time conclude a pact with Russia, and perhaps even Iran, victory for the Ukrainians would become a forlorn hope. Adding to our domestic problems, he sees the virtually endless, bipartisan, legal wrangling between our “so-called Department of Justice” and former President Trump, his enablers, and the millions of deluded citizens who blindly support him, even as evidence of his criminal acts while in and out of office continues to grow. He finds it inconceivable that newscasters still speak of Trump as a potential candidate for the Presidency in 2024. Pascal R. Politano served twenty years in the United States Army in a variety of fields such as intelligence, R&D, psychological operations, political warfare, nuclear weapons employment, and special operations. He was selected for the Distinguished Instructor Award at the JFK institute for Military Assistance. He was also the U.S. Senior Advisor to the Republic of Vietnam Political Warfare College. Following his retirement, he lectured for eight years in English and Political Science for the University of Maryland in Europe. He was selected as intra-European faculty speaker on Political Warfare and also was a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He has lived in the Far East, Germany, Italy, and France, and has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, North Africa and South and Central America. He now resides in a remote area in the foothills of the Adirondacks where he continues to write fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

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© 2019 Pascal R. Politano. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/30/2019

ISBN: 978-1-5462-6964-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-6965-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-6963-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018913845

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Foreword

Part One: A General View

A Brief Correlation

A Sinister Symbiosis

The Romans Had a Phrase For It

From Daimlers to Dinosaurs; The Obsolescence of Modern Diplomacy

The Media and Anti-Diplomacy

Public Opinion, Propaganda, and Middle East Terror

Part Two: This Matter of Palestine

A Closer Look at the Arab-Israeli Problem

The Zionist Seizure of Palestine; Western Betrayal, Arab Disunity, and the Specter of Islam

Canaanites, Scriptural Promises, and Zionist Perversion

The Savaging of the U.S.S. Liberty

Susceptibilities, Vulnerabilities, Distractions, and Zionist Exploitation

What Price Wrongheadedness?

Part Three: A Potpourri of More Moderate Seasoning

What’s in a Name?

Leveling the Playing Field

Sunset

A Peculiarly American Obsession

Legal Matters

The Great God Mammon

The Bastard Muses

Puerility and Racism

UFOs, Artificial Intelligence, and God

Part Four: The Domestic Scene

The Abridgement of Free Speech in America

Freedom of Speech, the Self-Righting Principle, and Zionist Perversion

Propaganda: The Rhetoric of Power

Propaganda as an Instrument of Political Warfare

A Speech George W. Bush Might Have Given During His First Campaign for President ¹

Un Beau Geste

The Good News and The Bad News

Part Five: Men are from Mars

Creepers

The Last Love Battle

Defense? Or Deceit, Incompetence, and Self-indulgence?

The Beginning of the End, and September 1¹th 2001

Part Six: Fascism and Enlightened Despotism

The Nature of Fascism

Renaissance

Afterword

Bibliography

This book is

dedicated to the late Alfred M. Lilienthal, a courageous man who dreamed the impossible dream and who, in the teeth of vicious condemnation, because he loved truth and justice and dared to speak out on their behalf, was driven into the outer darkness by his own people. And to the memory of my Father, who in his innate wisdom saw it all coming eighty years ago.

I must speak the truth,

…nothing but the truth.

Cervantes

Author’s Note

As to any technology described in these pages, the devices or procedures discussed are either unclassified, have been declassified and thus are in the public domain, or they are simply creations of the author’s imagination.

Acknowledgment

I am extremely grateful to Mary Lynn Fager, my P.A., research assistant, and meticulous editor, whose intelligent and unflagging devotion to this work has been invaluable.

Foreword

Myriad books, some gaining a wide publicity, have appeared in recent years centering on America’s foreign and domestic policies, and the state of the Union. None of those books, however, have made an analysis sufficiently comprehensive to light up the dark corners of those matters in national affairs vital to the general popular interest; they must be addressed for this nation to be truly united and to continue to prosper. I don’t say it pejoratively, but the books to which I allude are compartmentalized in that, though they focus mainly on one subject of vital interest and importance, they fail to reveal the entire canvas with all its important aspects and, not least, co-relationships. The citizens of this country are entitled to a comprehensive evaluation of the status quo if this nation is to survive, literally. The intention of this book is to illuminate the entire stage of national socio-political activity, along with its direction.

The title for this collection of socio-political essays was taken from a letter by St. Jerome, who wrote: Everything must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth. I use the quotation not merely because it is appropriate to the subject, but also because, like St. Jerome, I live and write very reclusively. Though not in a cave with lions, I share my house with three large cats who thus far have disputed nothing I have to say. But let not this lighthearted comment set the tone for what otherwise is a very serious matter. This book is a comprehensive survey and commentary on the deterioration and impoverishment of the morals and culture of the United States of America in both foreign and domestic affairs.

What do my feline companions know of truth, or lies? They are innocent. They may attack us for a variety of reasons, not least their fear of us, but never from malice aforethought.¹ They do not plan and wage wars, and they do not harbor ill will. Human infants will grow and, when they reach the age of seven years or so they, unlike cats, will be endowed with an intellect and a free will. It is the lack of this capacity that ensures cats will remain, for the short span of their lives, guiltless, while human children will not. This seemingly precious gift of rationalization and choice causes us to examine what form truth takes among the human species. Cats, like other animals, live simple lives in tangible reality: when hungry they look for something to eat; threatened, they defend themselves. They will steal, but usually only items they need to sustain themselves, such as food, especially in harsh environments or where their natural foods are scarce. There are certain interesting exceptions, such as magpies and pack rats who have a proclivity to take certain items that attract them and store them back in their nests. And then there are kidnappings, such as those among certain of the anthropoids who, having none of their own, will take an infant that is neglected and who otherwise might not survive. But except in desperate cases such as that exemplified by the fictional Jean Val Jean, who stole bread to feed his family,² only our species of animal steals for profit or other financial gain. When animals must satisfy the urge to propagate their species, they find a member of the opposite sex. In satisfying this last urge they show no interest in what has become a virtual obsession within the human species: a spirit of anything goes in our sexual pursuits. These include such divertissements as sado-masochism, pedophilia, bestiality, and even scatological sex, to name but a few of the deviant sexual activities studied and expounded upon by Kraft-Ebbing, Stickle, Freud, and others interested in abhorrent human sexual behavior.

Also of importance in the title of this book is the phrase National Security. Initially I used Defense, but in going over some references I came across V.G. Kiernan’s America: The New Imperialism; From White Settlement to World Hegemony (1978, 1980). While thumbing through the book’s pages I was reminded that the word defense as used by the U.S. Government since the end of World War II (when that cabinet department was known more honestly as the War Department), is possibly the greatest euphemism used today. Kiernan, that same Cambridge scholar, had it right when he said:

Itself increasingly militarized, America found men of the sword attractive. An army can be the nearest thing to the great industrial-financial organizations that dominate American life. A modern army is an embodiment of technology, closely geared to industry by its equipment, rational like big business in its structure and routine, if not its objectives, and with an analogous chain of command. Militarism blends with capitalism as smoothly as it did with feudalism.¹

I can add that war—with its attendant haste to make killing, destruction, and ironically, the saving of lives and restoring the wounded to front line duty—brings many advances into the industrial and other corporate inventories. These include, aside from more efficient weaponry, significant advances in the fields of communication, and now cybernetics, metallurgy and plastics, medicine, transportation to include ground, sea, and aerospace movements (including drones), clothing and other accouterments, and even food and its selection, packaging and preservation.

Our defense budget now is nearing a trillion dollars. We continually risk government shutdowns to sustain, among other objectives, our 700 military and naval bases in eighty countries throughout the world. This current dilemma over our budget and spending simply shows the rest of the world that we are incompetent to manage our own affairs. How then could we possibly help them to cope with theirs?

As a result of Kim Jong-un’s adamant refusal to give up his missile-launched nuclear weapons development, coupled with President Trump’s brutum fulmen, the saber-rattling rhetoric emanating from our White House, it is not beyond belief that a war still could break out on the Korean Peninsula at any moment. To counter such a threat 80,000 men and women of the armed forces are stationed in Korea and Japan,³ supported by our stand-off weapons such as Cruise-Tomahawk missiles and smart bombs. These forces might be adequate to acquit themselves creditably, but as was was the case in Vietnam, they would not be predictably victorious. Might we see helicopters evacuating people from the U.S. Embassy roof in Seoul, reprising that fiasco in Saigon of April 1975?

U.S. troops were left in South Korea (and in Japan) after the Korean War as part of George Kiernan’s containment strategy in our opposition to Soviet inspired communist expansion and the more imminent threat posed by our recent enemies, the Chinese communists, led by a belligerent Mao Tse Tung. The Soviet communist threat no longer exists, and Mao and his overt hostility went with him to his grave. Since Nixon’s visit to China in 1971 our relations with China have continued to improve. We are at least in a state of rapprochement. So why do we still maintain an armed force of over 80,000 troops in Korea and Japan, to say nothing of that Seventh Fleet which hovers now near, now not so near, but always near enough, and those nuclear-capable Air Force B-2s on Guam?

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. In her acceptance speech Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director, made this comment about current relations between the U.S. and the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea): It’s a war that is only an impulsive tantrum away. I leave it to you to decide at whom that trenchant prudential statement was personally aimed. Like Dean Swift, malice never was my aim; but unlike Swift I lash’d the name as well as the vice. Without citing certain names this book would be worthless.

There is a broad spectrum of speculation and opinion of what truth truly is, reaching back to very earliest days of the Earthlings’ conscious thought processes. The Bible tells us, cynically: The truth is not in us, while Sophocles refers to the Dreadful Knowledge of Truth, and Byron, with more subtlety, declares that A lie is but the truth in masquerade, echoing Dryden’s Such subtle covenants shall be made Till peace itself is war in masquerade. Valid though Shakespeare’s apothegm, What’s past is prologue, sadly the dictum seems to apply to that less fortunate record and less laudatory events in man’s recorded history. Then there is that other, ascribed to George Santayana: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. I’m sure that the Native and African Americans would shudder to think that their past treatment by the white European invaders and eventual occupiers here in what we are proud to call the Land of the Free was to be repeated. But if we were to take the two aphorisms together and in a spirit of justice, following their precepts could lead to our collective salvation, at least here, in this temporal existence.

Popular today, especially since the Vietnam War, is the politicians’ unconvincing excuse for their outright lies about the causes and conduct of our small wars,: Truth often is obscured by the fog of war. Interestingly, nowhere in Robert Debs Heinl, Jr.’s Dictionary of Military and Naval Quotations (1966) can the word truth be found. Shakespeare in his benevolent way tells us that Truth will come to light, or as Milton had it, will emerge in the marketplace of ideas. One can only hope they were right.

P.J. Bailey, a somewhat obscure writer of the early nineteenth century wrote, Where doubt [skepticism], there truth. My own conviction about the word tends to agree with Cervantes’, Nothing but the truth. The 20 April 2017 edition of Rolling Stone magazine featured a full-page list of its definitions of truth to accompany a special report about President Trump (about whom more anon). I will cite a few examples that I favor:

Truth is hard to hear.

The truth has no agenda.

The truth is under attack.

The truth requires taking a stand.

What St. Jerome said more fully was, Everything must have a sharp seasoning of truth. And that Truth, as in the title of this book, is spelled with a capital T.

This collection of socio-political essays is divided into parts to reflect the distinction between the social and the political. However, you will find as you read along, a certain conflation of the societal and political. This recalls from my teaching days a student’s astute comment that whatever the class purported to deal with, there was always a strong undercurrent of philosophy in my lectures. His comment was accurate and relates to something you should be aware of.

History should not be compartmentalized. The history teacher should not lecture on the French and Indian Wars to the exclusion of the Seven Years War that was taking place simultaneously in Europe. There are times when to speak of societal affairs without touching on political matters, and vice versa, is not merely neglectful but is educationally unfair and a disservice to those seeking the true facts, much like displaying only a detail of the larger canvas. When speaking about the political attitudes and behavior of the general populace in regard to certain foreign policy matters, I may digress to examine certain domestic social problems, such as the fearful drug scourge of epidemic proportions currently ravaging the nation and its effect on our international relationships.

I belong to no social, environmental, political, or other groups. Rather, my affiliations are philosophical. I find any sort of radicalism repellent. I am not an ideologue. In a purely secular sense I favor the Cardinal Virtues, most especially Justice, and I do my best to avoid those Seven Deadly Sins. I beat my own rather muted drum from time to time, in a passive way, among friends, when I have the opportunity to do so and when I think the audience is worth playing to. Although I cannot pretend to have the wisdom of the ages, I do have my share of the hard-earned wisdom that comes only with age and experience.

I have decided to make one last effort to reach a wider audience, and that is my purpose in putting this collection of essays, some written over the past thirty years, some new and current, into book form. Over the years I repeatedly and tirelessly submitted some of these essays, mainly the shorter ones, as opinion pieces, to major newspapers all over this country. This proved, with a few minor exceptions, a fruitless effort. My writing was judged to be too controversial, opinionated, or judgmental and often was rejected out of hand. I was seen as "politically incorrect"; an iconoclast, an upstart not sympathetic to The Code—a covenant whose intentions are never revealed and whose very existence is never admitted to the public.

A classic example of this censorship, for that clearly is what it amounts to, is the preclusion of any public discussion of Israel’s nuclear arsenal or her obstinate and continued refusal, never questioned by the U.S., to join the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Nonproliferation Pact. All major communications media outlets in the U.S., as well as the entertainment media are governed by this shadowy mutual agreement, somewhat like that Gentlemen’s Agreement of former times to exclude Jews and African-Americans from select hotels, restaurants, and clubs throughout the country. In many cases I was not even sent an acknowledgment that my opinion piece(s) were received. The longer works contained here, coupled with your honest and intelligent assessment of certain matters, will explain why this is so.

Those Americans whose ulterior loyalties have relegated this country to a secondary position in their hearts and minds will find what I have written either of little interest, be offended, or even enraged by it; in the latter case I will know that I have succeeded in my objective (as the hate mail, or worse, pours in). It should come as no surprise that this book was published at my own expense; therefore, I remain solely responsible for its contents, which is just as I would wish it. Like Poe and H.P. Lovecraft I had to self-publish; unlike them I had to do it for political reasons. In publishing my other books my reason was to leave my children a little more than my best wishes; my reason in the case of this book will be revealed in the book itself.

Additionally, you will find here and there polemical personal experiences told anecdotally so as to explain more clearly certain matters or positions I take. Some readers may find rather tedious the lengthier footnotes I have provided for amplification. In defense of this criticism I should say that these reminiscences serve yet another purpose, and that is to lighten the somber, even dismal tone of information I must provide and opinions I may offer. And it was the late Robert Graves, another sometime infantryman, who said people like to read good stories.

I have lived a very long time and thus I am able to provide from first-hand experience certain facts and events that one would only discover with more close research. There is no vanity in these illustrations from my personal life; I am too old for such indulgences. Take these passages as you will. Appreciate and enjoy them as much as I did writing them. Understand and believe that truth has become as important to me in these latter years as life itself. Otherwise I would lose any self-respect I still cling to.

The essay on Fascism is relevant to the overall scope of the book. In those desperate years of the Great Depression our democratic form of government seemed incapable of coping with the crisis. It could not solve the problem. Meanwhile Mussolini was getting the trains to run on time and Hitler was pulling Germany out of its slough of despond, building those magnificent Autobahnen and manufacturing that excellent, and affordable, Volkswagen, the people’s car. Interesting to me is the fact that serious consideration was given by people at all levels of society during that seemingly hopeless catastrophe to adopting some form of enlightened despotism or benign dictatorship as a new and more effective form of governance. So also was Communism a candidate at that time, especially and understandably among the working classes, a third of whom were unemployed.

Since the (avoidable) tragedy of 9/11, we as a nation, in declaring war on that nebulous abstract noun, Terrorism, have in the name of national security continued to aggrandize, even to glorify that war, and by association all the wars in which we have been engaged. Thus, our young men and women continue to return, maimed both physically and psychologically, leaving behind those comrades who shall never return while we go on in our failed, misguided and wrongheaded effort to bring justice and democracy to people who despise our interference in their affairs. In doing so we kill harmless civilians who are no threat to us. We kill them in their thousands, too often accrediting the butcher’s bill to unavoidable collateral damage. All this, along with the continuing and increasing abridgement of civil rights under the specious justification of national security or defense, merely is another form of that insidious spirit of anything goes that currently is sweeping the country.

In our patriotic fervor we no longer refer to soldiers or sailors; merely to wear a uniform today means that you are a warrior, even a hero, dedicated to our national defense (even if you are stacking blankets in a supply depot somewhere). Why are members of these glorious forces committing suicide at the rate of twenty a day? All this as a result of our unconscionable, benighted pursuit of national security. Modern prosthetic devices, band-playing, flag-waving, and fireworks won’t make those young men and women what they could and should have been; especially those who never came back, all under the dictates of leaders who have never endured the horrors of war. As Herbert Hoover once said Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. Many young soldiers don’t even know where in the world they find themselves. If in the late 1960s you asked them where Vietnam was, the great majority of them couldn’t tell you. Much less could they tell you the real reasons why they were there to begin with. Yet many of them would die there. As is inscribed on the war memorial at the German cemetery at El Alamein: The price of pride is very high, and it is always paid by the young.

Why instead of examining and dealing sensibly with the root causes of all this waste of blood and treasure (I include our children here in both senses) do we pursue this chimerical Terrorism, which has and continues to eludes our seemingly endless and futile efforts to rise victorious over it? To cite just two examples: sixteen fruitless years in Afghanistan and seventy years of bloody strife over the question of Palestine, still with no resolution anywhere in sight. For my part, if ISIS had a navy and they had assembled a formidable invasion force off the coast of southern New Jersey, I would be down there in my old home town—even now, a veteran soldier at a ripe old age—helping to emplace land mines and dragon’s teeth, barbed wire entanglements and weapons; and I’d stay and fight there if I were allowed.

By comparison I’m rather small beer among those who can influence the direction of domestic and foreign affairs. It is certain that I’ve been blacklisted, even unto my poetry and prose fiction, and blacklisted in a more subtle and insidious way than the victims of the overt, blatantly pseudo-patriotic declamations of those infamous McCarthy hearings in the early 1950. This is due to the position I’ve taken on our special relationship with Israel, which I will continue to defend with my life if I must. There was just enough of that fabled First Amendment left to permit me to get this book into print. Otherwise I’ve been relegated to the same fate but in the good company of such courageous people as Alfred Lilienthal, Noam Chomsky, Rabbi Elmer Berger, Paul Findley, Paul McCloskey, Georgie Anne Geyer, J. William Fulbright, George Ball, Adlai Stevenson III, Jesse Jackson, and others.

Clearly, we must awaken to the hard reality that we The People ultimately should be and must be held responsible for redirecting this country into its proper path. After all, Democracy by definition is governance by the people. Of the People, by the People, for the People (Jefferson’s words, my italics). Any beneficial change will depend upon us, and if we fail the blame also will be ours. Cynical and skeptical as I may appear to be throughout this book, you must be assured that if I felt truly hopeless about the future of our country and of this, the only world we can call our own, I would never have had the will or felt the necessity to write it. I don’t have delusions of grandeur; I have delusions of adequacy. I don’t recall who first said that (Philip Roth?), but I wish I had.

So what, in brief, is this book all about? In replying to that question I’m reminded of one wintry day years ago in Heidelberg when I encountered a colleague and history professor at the Bahnhof. I greeted him with, "What’s new, Klaus-Dieter? —or, as you might say, What’s old?—and glancing at his watch he replied with his wry Germanic grin, I’ve got just three minutes before my train goes; let’s talk about the world!"

Constableville, New York (1 March 2019)

Notes

1 V.G. Kiernan, America: The New Imperialism, Zed Press, 1980, p. 224.

PART ONE:

A GENERAL VIEW

A Brief Correlation

Years ago I saw a film about a boy who was unable to produce any antibodies and therefore mortally vulnerable, susceptible to any and every form of disease, and doomed to live in complete isolation in a large plastic bubble. The sterile environment protected him from every potentially harmful hazard. Bacterial, viral, even pathogens as yet unknown to medical science might be lurking outside his life-preserving sphere. His complex, all-encompassing life-support systems were, understandably, closely monitored without interruption.

We, the vast majority of Americans, also live in such an insular bubble. Outside the bubble a relatively small group of U.S. citizens under ruthless sanctions directly from our halls of government, indirectly from our boardrooms, are sent forth to kill and maim the less-fortunate inhabitants of the planet. To a lesser extent these relative few are killed and maimed themselves while doing so. Their mission, to destroy their governments and their sovereign property, however humble, so the rest of us can go on with that placebo the Romans referred to as bread and circuses. In today’s America, Super Bowls, Disneyland, video games, and Doritos have replaced chariot races—the bread and circuses of Roman times. As 50,000 people once packed the ancient coliseums of Rome to witness the brutal spectacles performed there, Americans now crowd the Los Angeles Coliseum to cheer Justin Bieber.⁴ Keep the people content and the government can continue on with its nefarious activities. While we become fatter and fatter, and consequently more indolent on that fast food, our brains are concentrated on meaningless games or other entertainments in our closely and uninterruptedly monitored social life-support system. We become more and more turned in upon ourselves. As we concentrate more and more upon our own selfish little spheres of interest and activity we become less and less concerned with what really is going on outside our huge but isolated sphere, outside our national boundaries, in the real world which, like that boy in the plastic bubble, we seem never able to experience or understand.

But unlike that boy, who probably would have done almost anything to get out of his confined and limited little world, we seem willing to do (and believe) anything in order to stay in ours.

True to my title, but unlike virtually all the people in those government halls and big business boardrooms, I’ve been brief. After all, "Brevity is the soul of wit" (wit in the better, more serious sense). Moreover, and surely more important, there would be no sense in expounding endlessly upon a thesis which the majority of my audience has been intentionally pre-conditioned to reject as at the very least unpatriotic, at worst heretical and even treasonous.

A Sinister Symbiosis

Big business supports politicians; supports them with big contributions for campaign expenses (mainly TV time) without which these politicians would have little chance of winning elective office. Big business also supports the news media (mainly TV) which in themselves are a form of big business. That’s what sponsors, commercials, and advertisements in the printed news media are all about. Without them the media couldn’t survive financially. Therefore, politicians, once they are in office, and the news media, if they want to stay in business, must support big business (who in both cases, though in slightly different senses, are their sponsors). The logic is virtually syllogistic. What’s a syllogism? Well, crudely put, it’s a three-part exercise in right reasoning.

Why don’t we get this? Because we rely mainly on the news media to tell us about things like this, to tell us what’s really going on this country. You cannot reason rightly without facts. But would you talk about it if you were an important TV talk-show host with an annual salary in the millions? Well, you’re not, so there’s one moral dilemma you don’t have to face. Meanwhile, the rest of us get it where the sun never shines, if you’ll excuse my crudity. Occasionally we see a CBS 60 Minutes segment featuring an articulate former skinhead who has seen the light and now fervently deplores his former hatred of the Jews and goes about speaking to his former colleagues, trying to convert them to the right path.

And of course this only is one part of what’s going on, the domestic part of the situation—well, part of the domestic part. There’s a lot more going on that you’ll never hear about. The influence of the sinister symbiotic triumvirate—government-business, business-news media, government-news media—on our foreign policy hardly bears thinking about, especially the influence of the multinational corporations on our political and economic international relations.

You won’t read this in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The Wall Street Journal, or any other large, self-seeking, monopolistic, manipulative newspaper. They will never be interested in hearing from me. No; unfortunately there merely is the possibility that you might read this in a paper small enough to be still honest and exercise the independence and freedom of expression which is in keeping with the spirit and intent of the First Amendment to our Constitution. The unfortunate irony of course, which is fully appreciated and thoroughly enjoyed by the larger news media outlets, lies in the sad fact that small newspapers equate with small readerships.

The Romans Had a Phrase For It

Si fecisti nega! If you did it, deny it! Stonewall! Today this well could be our national motto, possibly emblazoned across the National Color to be flown upside down as a sign of distress. The late former President Nixon was seen by most people as the classic exemplar of this political tactic; former (and also the late) President Reagan almost assuredly also availed himself of this dictum, which seems to have become a fundamental part of the national political and commercial philosophy. How was the American public to know that Nixon and Reagan were nothing but tyros compared to Donald Trump?

Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, giving as his reason that if he hadn’t, legal proceedings against the felonious president would have gone on endlessly to the confusion and detriment of the entire nation. So another highly placed criminal got a free pass. President Trump has pardoned Scooter Libby, underhanded hawk and right-hand man of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who should himself be in prison. We can expect that this is in preparation for the same action that will be taken should any of Trump’s cronies, confidants, and co-conspirators be indicted and subsequently convicted as a result of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigations into any number of criminal activities involving Trump himself. There are too many people in our prisons who shouldn’t be there, and the converse of that also is true, and that includes those we have come to refer to, benignly, as white-collar criminals.

How can we expect anything less in this all for profit society where lawyers, then dentists, and now even hospitals have begun advertising themselves on TV like any other huckstered commercial product? Ironically, doctors still expect to be treated with the same deference as they were in the past.

One hears about plausible deniability, a term used mainly by defense attorneys when trading on that golden thread woven through our system of jurisprudence: innocent until proven guilty, guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This ploy has been used countless times by prominent members of our society: Clinton adamantly denied any sexual congress with Monica Lewinski until confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary; Roy Moore of Alabama stubbornly rejected all allegations of sexual misconduct with teenagers, but, fortunately for the Alabamans, lost his bid for a Senate seat. Plausible deniability simply means this: If you tell a lie make it a good one (and be prepared to tell a hundred more in its support).

In the 1980s Ronald Reagan should not have been permitted to get away with his summary and arrogant dismissal of the Walsh findings regarding his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair. His deceitfulness cost taxpayers at least $40 million to uncover the truth, to say nothing of what he cost us in national self-esteem and in our international image (which, politically, wasn’t much to boast about anyway). Understandably, Reagan’s then co-conspirator, George H. W. Bush, wasn’t saying much if he said anything at all. Former Attorney General Meese’s shameful, puerile denials and attempted rebuttal of the independent counsel’s findings make one wonder how such a facile dissembler was the highest law enforcement official in the nation, a sad commentary on our entire judicial system. Oliver North, who for a time became a target of Reagan’s self-righteous wrath, should be in prison today. Instead he unsuccessfully attempted to achieve an exalted Senatorial seat and then went on to briefly become a television talk show host.

The Clinton-Lewinski mess with its marathon of lies was followed a few years later by reports of George W. Bush’s conniving to get certain of his Saudi friends and business partners out of the U.S. following the disaster of September 11th, 2001 (these latter allegations stemming mainly from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 movie). How in all that is holy can we expect our general populace to remain honest and law abiding while such blatant, gross examples are placed before them with such appalling regularity?

Governmental principals seem to have adopted the attitude that the U.S. public is collectively so stupid, ignorant, or apathetic about vital matters that they can be euchred by even the clumsiest dissimulations. Why are we, the American public, so pathetically submissive about these matters? Perhaps we just don’t care anymore; perhaps we have become as cynical as those at the head of government who are doing such terrible damage to the public interests and our national image throughout the world. If that is true then we are doomed. But I cannot think that we, the people, are so dim and uncaring as to permit these practices to continue, no matter what it takes to effect a change in the right direction.

Clearly we should be troubled by the silence which descends over news media outlets in regard to these scurrilous affairs. I ask myself, as we all should, why is this so? Did the groundswell produced by Whitewater, a matter which still was in its speculative stage, submerge the hard facts revealed by the Iran-Contra investigation? Can one scandal be used to mask another? Are we to think, as a journalist put it, that no one is interested anymore because these are old issues? If the murderer of that journalist’s child, let us say, were still at large after eight or ten years would the same journalist take such a breezy attitude? But then as any astute journalist knows, the media never can have too much bad news.

There are two fundamental qualities a true patriot must possess. The first is love of country; the second, and just as important, is a healthy skepticism. We must ask, Why? Why is this so? Why is this happening? And what are the true actual motives behind the decisions our government takes: its positions on every issue involving both domestic and foreign affairs.

From Daimlers to Dinosaurs; The Obsolescence of Modern Diplomacy

When one thinks of traditional diplomacy today, one thinks of distinguished European ambassadors, sartorially resplendent in striped trousers, cutaway coats, grey top hats, ambassadorial sashes, and miniature medallions proudly worn over the left breast of ornately uniformed attachés descending from state carriages or massive black automobiles. One pictures mainly quiet discussions conducted in baroque surroundings, discussions sometimes fruitless but sometimes deciding the fate of the teeming masses who, except for those relative few who followed the course of political and international events as well as they could in the newspapers (papers sometimes influenced by what liberals called reptilian funds such as Bismarck used to gain his political ends), went in general ignorance of international maneuvering. One thinks of the typical diplomacy of the belle époque period of relative peace which preceded the Great War. The tensions in Europe before 1914 were not reflected by the gay crowds strolling down the Champs Elysees, lawn teas, and cricket matches at Lord’s in England, or elegant yacht regattas in Germany.

It was the high noon of the nation state, recognizing no authority superior to itself, no morality beyond its own self-interest…The courts, cabinets and foreign offices busied themselves with the traditional European power game, seeking to win advantages and parrying threats, by means of intrigue and intimidation. ¹

Spies and agents provocateurs were employed by all the sovereign actors, but lacked the social status and dignity surrounding the legitimate information-gathering officers of the foreign ministries—the political officers and military and naval attachés. While spies and other undercover agents, romanticized in books by such writers as John Buchan, Somerset Maugham, Erskine Childers, Philips Oppenheim and A.E.W. Mason, were accorded honors and the gratitude of their countrymen, those employed in real life were sometimes paid, but mainly snubbed, ignored, and even socially ostracized as late as 1929. Henry L. Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of State, upon ordering closed America’s Black Chamber (the small department charged with decoding foreign message traffic) said, Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail. ² Terrorist acts, though sometimes state-sponsored to gain political ends, were considered reprehensible and never admitted to by legitimate polities. The assertion by the sovereign states of no authority superior to itself, no morality beyond its own self-interest was reinforced by their maintaining their armed forces in a state of greatest strength and preparedness.

The First World War changed all this. British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey prophesied a tragic change when, while watching a lamplighter in St. James Park on the evening of 4 August 1914, he remarked to a friend: The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. ³ In their ineffable sadness these words sounded the knell for the existing mode de vie and with it traditional diplomatic relations between states. There can be little doubt that with the loss of innocence wrought by four years of unremitting slaughter there was a concomitant loss of the values which, as they inspired poets and artists to glamourize violence and war, as they led young men and women to think of war as an exciting adventure and a test of manliness, led those pursuing a career in the foreign service of their countries to think of diplomatic service as elitist, honorable, dignified and most important, as defined and guided by reasonable (perhaps even ethical) rules of procedure and behavior. In that age of ultra-nationalism, diplomatic representatives saw themselves, though unarmed with the accouterments of the soldier, as charged with responsibilities and objectives which to some were more weighty than the afflictions endured in physical combat.

What was swept aside by the war never to be recalled, on the diplomatic front as certainly as on the battle front, in dress, equipment, weaponry, and mainly in attitude, was the spirit of engagement. F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the romantic mystique which took these men, both military and civilian, to the brink of the abyss in 1914 when young Germans marched off with flowers adorning their rifle muzzles, Frenchmen imbued with the spirit of La Patrie waved from train windows, and Englishmen lined up at the recruitment offices hoping they could get to the front before the fighting ended. During a visit to the deserted trenches on the Western Front after the war, Fitzgerald’s hero, Dick Diver, says,

You had to have a whole-souled mental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancé, and little cafés in Valence, and beer gardens in Unter den Linden, and weddings at the mairie, and going to the derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers…This was the last love battle. ⁵

If you survived the war (let us say you were English) you didn’t talk very much about it at your club, as perhaps the old Crimean veterans talked of their campaigns. International relations, war among them, would never be the same.

But it was not only the First World War’s spiritual devastation which changed diplomacy. Although the principles of the nineteenth century’s balance of power system still determines some of the usages of modern diplomacy, that classical system has been profoundly changed by the diplomatic revolution of the twentieth century. This includes a complex of political, economic, military, ideological (to include the impact of Islam, both secular and religious) and technological factors, which has destroyed the integrity of the international community and confronted diplomats with new problems and the attendant requirement to find solutions to deal with them.

According to Craig and George a viable concert of powers was not reached until the twentieth century and recent efforts to reach even the success of that earlier system have failed because certain requirements must be met. Craig and George list three: (1) an agreement among the principal states concerning aims and objectives which reflects the dominant values they are seeking to preserve and enhance in creating and participating in the system; (2) a structure appropriate to the number of states interacting with each other, the geographical boundaries or scope of the system, the distribution of power among the member states, and the stratification and status hierarchy among them; and (3) commonly accepted procedures—that is, norms, rules, practices and institutions for the achievement of the aims and objectives of the system.⁴ It is with the last of these requirements that we are most concerned for the purpose of this essay. The authors go on to explain that the failure of the nineteenth century experiment and the inability of statesmen to find a substitute is due to a fourth characteristic: the ability to adapt to environmental developments and internal change in member states.

The modern period has been one of profound and continuing changes in socioeconomic organization, military technology, transportation, and communication, to say nothing of those mutations in the internal political structure of states that have resulted from the rise of public opinion, the emergence of a large variety of organized interest groups, and the increasing scope and complexity of governmental organization. It has also been an age of intense nationalism, which has been reflected in the breakup of the old colonial empires and the multiplication of new sovereign states, and of ideological conflict on a global scale. All of these forces, singly and in combination, have had an impact upon international politics that amounts to a diplomatic revolution; and this has made it increasingly difficult to maintain old structures or to devise new ones. Adaptation to accelerated change has become the major problem of modern statecraft, testing the ingenuity and the fortitude of those charged with responsibility both for devising means of controlling international violence and for maintaining the security of their own countries. ⁵

Following 1919 the leading nations of the world no longer were in concert; the nineteenth century system (despite all its antagonisms it was a working system) no longer existed. The British and the French followed separate policy lines; Germany was on its knees; Italy, in large part because of its embitterment with the provisions of Versailles, took the road to Fascism; Russia pursued its experiment in communism, evolving another form of totalitarianism; and the United States, which had emerged from the war a world power, essentially withdrew from the international arena. A new nationalism appeared as colonialism waned and the number of states determined to play a world rôle grew steadily from the dozen which before 1914 had taken a continuous interest and controlling share in international affairs until the independence explosion following the Second World War. That number has grown to the almost 200 now represented at the United Nations.

The emergence of communist Russia and the institution of Fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany (we can include Japan and Spain after 1937) impacted strongly on diplomatic communications between democracies and the new totalitarian states. An exchange in September 1938 between Britain’s then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and Germany’s Adolph Hitler, described anecdotally, illustrates the point.

When Neville Chamberlain went to Godesberg, carrying his allies’ approval of the terms for a settlement of the Sudeten question that Hitler and he had agreed on at Berchtesgaden two weeks earlier, he was disagreeably surprised to find that his host had changed his mind and had drafted much more draconian conditions for the Czechs. When Chamberlain was handed a paper embodying these, he is reported to have said angrily, This is an ultimatum, not a negotiation! Pointing to the title page, Hitler replied mildly, It says memorandum. ⁶

During the interwar period, discussions and negotiations between democracies, whose diplomats generally regarded politics as a rational pursuit operating according to generally accepted rules and procedures of accommodation, sought peaceful settlement of disputes without sacrificing one’s interests or security. Totalitarian states rejected these values and operated according to their own rules. This resembled what the French call a dialogue des sourds, a conversation between deaf people, or more properly a conversation in which one side misheard what was being said while the other side wasn’t really listening. ⁷ And the reason for this can ascribed to fundamental differences in values and aspirations. In sum, despite the disenchantments wrought by the Great War the diplomats of the democratic and victorious states continued to regard great-power politics as a rational, reasonable endeavor conducted along sensible procedural lines, while others, mainly those who suffered more politically than spiritually because of the war, rejected traditional diplomacy and began to practice what we know today as realpolitik. With this background and given dramatic advances in communication (including transportation) and weapons technology, the advent of terrorism as a political instrument should have come as no surprise. If one considers the coincidence of rejection of traditional ethical diplomatic procedures, the leveling effect of high technology and its easy accessibility, and the rise of neo-nationalism in a spate of newly formed, relatively weak nations, the use of terrorism as a form of diplomacy seems almost a natural consequence. The question then arises: Should those democratic powers which still cling to the precepts of traditional diplomacy resort to the same level of negotiation, that is, countering terrorism with more terrorism? The answer obviously can only be found through fair-minded (optimistic, impartial) examination of the values, aspirations and motivations of both sides.

Russia made its position very clear following the First World War by: repudiating all Czarist debts, confiscating all foreign property in Russia, and officially rejecting all forms and usages of traditional diplomacy. Soviet actions following the Second World War apropos of diplomatic relations made those measures pale by comparison. With these examples as precedents and given the continued growth of neonationalism, diplomacy by terrorism, even by actors other than the great powers, was only a logical step away. Today such diplomacy (or anti-diplomacy) has become virtually de rigueur and its negotiators far from going almost unnoticed in the inner pages of printed news are given instantaneous, worldwide coverage by the modern electronic news media (radio, the internet, and most effectively, television).

With its revolution coming before the end of the First War, Russia can be said to have been a charter member of the diplomatic revolution which followed. The Bolsheviks made clear their rejection of traditional diplomacy immediately after the war. Then, having consolidated their domestic position they began to pursue their objectives of attaining world communism realistically and methodically; in this pursuit communism introduced a new dimension to international relations. Added to the vertical division of nation states, the concept of class struggle divided the world horizontally and thereby assumed the responsibility (and in actuality, the opportunity) to affect all classes and social groups in other countries so as to exploit their internal conflicts for purposes of promoting and expanding communist world revolution. ⁸

Of the two types of communist international relations, the horizontal mode (class struggle) was the original concept. With the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and with subsequent international recognition, traditional state relations evolved. The Soviets’ war with Poland in 1920 was, in part at least, a means of achieving some international legitimacy for the new communist state. The declaration and conduct of war on a sovereign state conferred implicit if not de facto legitimacy on the new revolutionary government. At the time, the Soviets were also fighting a civil war upon which depended the very life of their political movement. Consider the present dilemma of the Palestine Liberation Organization with which, due to its ad hoc state and lack of sovereign legitimacy, Israel and others refuse to negotiate. Consider more recently ISIS, Islam, and that horizontal tier.

After the Second World War the international system in which the USSR operated was reduced dramatically from seven to three and ultimately, with the dissolution of the British Empire, to two—the U.S. and USSR. Although Russia, China, Japan and the West European conglomerate now are extremely powerful economically, their military power, ergo political power or potential for coercive diplomacy, does not equate with that of the superpowers (France, for example, with about twenty medium-range, land-based missiles and six nuclear powered armed submarines could be neutralized with Russian IRBMs). China’s power lies in its resources—actually demographically—but mainly potentially otherwise; additionally, her interests are seemingly more Asian than global.

Debate continues whether, in this confrontational, bipolar world of today the system or even the theory of balance of power still is visible. In my opinion balance of power in its classical sense, that is, a system characterized by several powerful states in which no one is dominant, a system wherein states maintain their security by preventing any one state from becoming too powerful, is neither still a viable concept of international relations as Hedley Bull says, nor is it completely outmoded as Stanley Hoffmann claims. I agree with Herbert Levine and Kenneth Waltz who maintain that a balance is possible between two states and does in fact exist. What probably should change is that the phraseology: balance of power can be reserved as an historical term and when used we will know that it refers, much as do Von Clausewitz’s dicta with regard to war, to an earlier traditional system of pre-nuclear age. What we can say about the current situation is that there is once again a seeming balance (however precarious) of nuclear war potential between the U.S. and Russia,⁶ and we could call this mutual nuclear deterrence—though Hedley Bull and others of us would call it, justifiably, a balance of mutual terror (teetering on a fulcrum of human, therefore questionable, reliability). Given this position one can see that the coercive tone of recent U.S. administration pronouncements of possible retaliation against North Korea and Iran for their state-sponsored terrorism probably will be proven meaningless because of their ties with Russia, the other keeper of the unthinkable horror.

Although what Churchill once referred to as meetings at the summit, now simply called summit meetings or just summits, have become commonplace, in more traditional times they were not. Such working conferences between heads of state have played their part in the diplomatic revolution by diluting, even preempting or obviating the role of trained, experienced, professional diplomats. No matter how much authority world leaders may bring to these meetings, however attractive they may be personally, especially in the new world of television personalities, they are not necessarily expert diplomatists skilled in the science and art of international negotiation. President Trump is the classic example of this. It is more than possible that his close advisors live in constant fear of what he may say at any given moment. One can only hope for the sake of this country’s future that at summit times the professionals are either at his very elbow or have rehearsed him sufficiently to carry on for brief periods of discussion. This trend of top-heavy representation in more or less public view may be detrimental in the long run. As to the image of the leader, Joshua Meyrowitz claims that a distinction that has broken down under television is that between leaders and followers (since the close-range camera shows us the human flaws of leaders once placed on pedestals). ⁹

The nature of intelligence in its recent history also has contributed to the deterioration of traditional diplomacy. In former times the embassy attachés coupled with ad hoc specialists, comprised of first, second or third country nationals, satisfied intelligence requirements; written or crude electronic coded messages were enciphered and deciphered, carrier pigeons survived or suffered. Two basic changes have taken place: first, the number of classified items has grown exponentially; and secondly because of that the tremendous technological advances in electronic communications and space engineering a whole new class of highly trained specialists and technicians has been spawned. According to Leon Wieseltier in 1986 there were four million people in the United States with clearances for classified government material. ¹⁰ Today there are over five million. National security, no longer whispered about in quiet offices, dim cafés or mainly deserted corridors, is now extremely complex, computerized, too often photocopied, and probably most disturbingly, available to a plethora of petty bureaucrats of highly questionable ethical standards of behavior, in tidy, compartmentalized, but very important bits and pieces. And despite what has been said about summitry, Wieseltier tells us rightly, Most of what will interest our enemies is no longer to be gotten from the top. ¹¹

The President, the members of the Cabinet, the diplomats – the opera and dinner set – no longer possess the overwhelming majority of the information about the plans and the procedures for defending America. They can have it if they want it, but they too will have to turn to the four (sic) million. ¹²

It is worthwhile to go on with the quotation:

Since there are no four (sic) million trustworthy human beings on the entire planet, the situation is rather sticky. More to the point, there are now four million men and women in this country whose importance stands in inverse proportion to their earnings. They may flatter themselves every day of the week, except payday. On that day they change from honorable members of the common defense into weary wage earners trying again to make ends meet. ¹³

As a former federal employee, I myself recall the feeling: more responsibility than one thinks he may be able to manage with no commensurate recompense other than the occasional pat on the back. But simple financial gain is only one motivation (however strong in today’s mainly amoral, acquisitive, materialistic society). Ideology, real or imagined, spurred on by real or conceived societal dysfunctions such as drug use, philandering or alcoholism (Philby, Burgess, MacLean, Blunt); fear of reprisal against relatives living in unsafe areas; blackmail (the classic case of the sex freak or philanderer); or merely cynicism, is just another manifestation of the materialism already mentioned. Finally, though there is not much glamour (except perhaps in the fantasies of the participant) in espionage or other forms of covert action, there is, as in so many pursuits, the rather pure feeling of professionalism, of the sure knowledge that one is proficient at a job and the satisfaction (and fair remuneration) one enjoys from doing work well. This latter class deserves whatever respect, if any, accrues to being a good professional agent, loyalties aside. And there will always be an assignment for a few effective humans, despite computers and no matter how many satellites ring the planet or acolytes inhabit the universities and laboratories.

Words once were the tools of diplomacy. Words chosen with the care that Flaubert exercised in producing a well-constructed paragraph, sometimes at the expense of an entire day. Words delivered either orally or in writing with a seriousness or even gravity which befitted the occasion and certainly the desired outcome of international negotiations. Diplomats were, in the main, master craftsmen in the use of these, their tools or instruments. Today, crude cliché (Trump’s He’s nuts, and Rocket Man, in describing North Korea’s Kim Jong-un), plastic explosives, automatic weapons, and threats of immediate small-scale violence have, at least in one form of international negotiations, largely replaced sensible and well-considered discussion. At various times during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, network television served as a diplomatic conduit without, one assumes, portfolio. In the Iranian situation television acted as a diplomatic conduit not only between the two primary countries involved but other governments and factions. In the case of Iran, the pervasive feeling of helplessness in the U.S., particularly following the abortive, almost farcical Delta Force rescue effort, led to what Edward Said called the temporary eclipse of one kind of American power by another: the military’s by the media’s. ¹⁴

What the news media, and particularly television, have achieved in the field of communications is unquestionably phenomenal; but what is its true impact on the international political process? What gives real meaning to this question is the fact that Roper surveys consistently show that most people get their news from television and now on the internet (fifty-one percent in America). ¹⁵ Rushworth M. Kidder, writing for The Christian Science Monitor said that by most accounts the impact of television on the political process and on the journalism that reports that process is enormous. ¹⁶ Neil Hickey of TV Guide feels that anybody who thinks that they’re (sic) getting most of their news from television is seriously amiss, the best TV newsmen are the first to admit that. ¹⁷ And PBS’s Robert MacNeil seemed to agree when he included among television’s subtle effects….inculcating the idea that complicated and dangerous situations have easy, simple solutions. The need to appeal to a broad audience and compress stories to fit television short time frames almost invariably means oversimplification, trivialization, sensationalism, to name only 3 (sic) crimes. ¹⁸ MacNeil’s trivialization reminds me of George Ball’s comment in an issue of the Monitor where he cites a psychologist friend’s claim for the reason American’s favorite parlor game was Trivial Pursuit and its widely talked about movie was Rambo. On ABC’s 20-20 program years ago President Reagan candidly admitted that although his own films and John Wayne movies are his favorites, he now enjoys watching the Rambo series. Ball lists the characteristic elements of "Ramboism" as:

An undiscriminating commitment to physical violence as an instrument for the easy solution of complex problems regardless of the consequences to innocent bystanders and a compulsion to operate alone without regard for the constraints of law or morality