a billion here a billion there

a billion here, a billion there... and pretty soon ('bout 100 years) you're talking about... an end to the 'global warming crisis', fewer wars, and a lot less individual prerogative

A PRODUCT OF "NIXONLAND"

in retrospect i must have absorbed some of the atmosphere of suspicion and tension of 1968 when i was 5 years old living in Baton Rouge, hearing the adults speak of the assassinations, LBJ's recusal, the war in VietNam, and the Garrison investigations just 90 miles away in New Orleans. but for me it really began on a sunny afternoon in Maryland when i was 9 years old, as i experienced it, "live" it was called then, sitting in front of a television in a suburb of Cleveland watching George Wallace shot down in a supermarket parking lot during the Democratic party primaries.

by the end of 1972, Richard Nixon's landslide election victory was said to have erased the question marks of public impressions of his narrow loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960, even his minority victory in the turmoil of 1968. indeed Nixon's overwhelming trouncing of George McGovern was thought by his most heartfelt supporters to be a repudiation of the Kennedys (the only state McGovern carried was Massachusetts)

the subsequent few years were a continuous series of revelations of the machinations known as WATERGATE, including the tangential FBI program COINTELPRO courtesy of break-in by the WEATHER UNDERGROUND (most ironically the program was directed by Mark Felt), all of which culminated in Nixon's resignation in August of 1974. soon thereafter came the first public television showing of the ZAPRUDER film of President Kennedy's assassination, which when combined with the prevailing public opinions derived from Nixon's downfall, led to public demand for the CHURCH COMMITTEE investigations.

attracted to investigate the contrarian point of view, then and since, just before my 13th birthday, it led me to me to my junior high school library to find a copy of the WARREN COMMISSION REPORT, thus beginning a lifelong study of POWER. who has it, how it's obtained, how it is used, who is seeking it, and why, which prescribed an equally intense and congruous study of HISTORY, especially WORLD WAR TWO.

the subsequent discovery of CARROLL QUIGLEY'S "Tragedy and Hope", MARK TWAIN'S commentaries that by his command were not published until after his death, H.L. MENCKEN'S chronicles of the politics of the early 20th Century, which were disturbingly similar to the present day, and a few hundred others have served me well in the 35 years since, as i experienced and analyzed politics, often up close and personally due to the curious coincidences of my time, place, station, and the concurrent advances in communications technology. (i no longer require a storage building full of filing cabinets for collected newspapers and magazines)

please forgive the long and personal preface and tease, but i felt it necessary as a contextual preamble to what i have finally written. after all what could be more personal than one's core view of why what has happened has and what is coming? in this sense, there are no distinctions between Politics, History, and Religion.

it is a template for viewing recent and current events, a contextual tool for how they can be made to make sense. it is only a few paragraphs, less than half the preface, covering the past century and projecting the next one. it is quite dark unless one possesses an abiding faith in the ability of mankind's nobler instincts to eventually overcome his animal's (a faith i do not yet share with certainty or probability) and it is available only upon request. it is titled "The MOST Inconvenient TRUTH".