The Big Itch

Years after his death in 1994, Nixon's "anti-semitic" tapes were released. The usual offended yakety yak from the Jewish community ensued. Many were especially pissed concerning the comments of Rev. Billy Graham. Graham told Nixon he believed Jews "controlled the American media, and called for the “stranglehold to be broken or the country’s going down the drain."

Graham: “A lot of Jews are great friends of mine. They swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth. But they don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them.”

Nixon replies: “You must not let them know.”

Now Mark Felt, Jewish man at the F-B-I, not that he remembers much of it, boasts of bringing down Nixon via the media. Excellent example of a "bloodless coup." But better than a triangulated head shot in the plaza heh? Dumped Dicky and paid off Ford for the Warren Report. Nixon was allowed to live well, pardoned and undisturbed, for a good 20 years after his resignation. He must have had more tapes in a safe place that we will never hear; his social security and old age pension reels.

What I find surprising about Graham's opinion is not that he's a bigot or racist, but his idea that "Zionists are the good Jews." Egads!! Is that similar to the redneck logic that "there are Black folks and then there are niggers?" I've never understood the principle behind that backwoods maxim but it's said often in the heartland so it must make sense here in a Deliverance sort of way.

And I suppose in my lifetime I'll never hear the end of the standard excuse "Dr. Graham grew up at a different time and all of us have been affected by the generation with which we grew up.” Yes, I've heard that excuse for the founding fathers and their mulatto & quadroon babies. Heard that about the white folks who sent one another postcards of Black lynchings signed "wish you could've been here for this one." I continue to hear that "generation" excuse made for someone's mamaw or papaw here in the heartland who blurt a Black "sho' is purty to be a ni____ " and stop short but seldom embarrassed because they think you're probably not smart enough to finish the sentence for them anyway.

Were Nixon and Graham correct on the Jewish stranglehold? The media has rerun Holocaust footage and survivor testimonies to a degree not seen since Goebbel's playbook of repetition and repetition. What will Jews do when the last survivor dies? Every slight is anti-semitism. Jews are portrayed as a tiny group, hounded in a world where they are abused, criticized, and ridiculed, while the same media portrays racism against Blacks nigh unheard of because we have Condi, Colin, and Denzel. When was the last time a Jew was dragged to death behind a pick-up truck? Or taken into the Everglades and set fire to alive? Or shot by the police in his doorway pulling out his wallet? How many millions died in America's slave trade? Yea, let's compare media causts and what's been played the last 25 years.

Note too a lot of repetition in the media these days. Over and over "terror, war, moral clarity, appeasement, good and evil, free and open society." Is Natan Sharansky writing for Bush? Pardon, I digress.

Jews had to deal with the Truman diaries about the same time the Nixon tapes hit the fan. "I think we're all upset to hear it because it's so much easier to hold the view of him as the great defender" of Jews and of Israel, said Deborah Dwork, director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "It was comforting to hold that view, and now that view is challenged."

Before the diary comments were released, Truman was best known in Jewish circles for making the United States the first country to recognize Israel after the Jewish state was declared in 1948 -- and for passing refugee acts that allowed many Jews languishing in displaced persons camps to immigrate to the United States.

But the diary entries reveal another side to the buck-stops-here Truman, who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt as president in 1945 and served in the White House until 1952.

"The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as" displaced persons, "as long as the Jews get special treatment," Truman wrote in 1947.

At this point you're expected to believe that the words and thinking of past presidents was unknown but to intimate associates and diaries. Shock, surprise, no gossip in DC circles about who says what and the "other (unknown) side" of these men challenge the comfort level. If we didn't believe everything we're told I bet there's more unknown history to make us squirm.

Also during Truman's time the Republicans pulled out the "soft on communism" when Harry S. fired the hawk General MacArthur. The General had called for an attack on China unless Communist forces laid down their arms in Korea. Truman feared it would lead to a third world war. Had Republicans been successful in their attempt to nominate Mac in 1952 and he won the presidency we might have gotten that third WW.

Then under Dwight Eisenhower we had the Suez Crisis and the Berlin crisis with all the major players huffing. But, here again China, Russia, and the US ended their standoffs and after Khrushchev's visit to the US in 1959 Khrushchev and Eisenhower issued a joint statement that the most important thing on the agenda was disarmament and that the problem of Berlin and "all outstanding international questions should be settled, not by the application of force, but by peaceful means through negotiations." Damn, another potentially big one averted by Eisenhower and Khrushchev, appeasers.

And the unforgettable warning from Ike:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

After Ike, JFK was eliminated, Johnson pleased the machinery with Vietnam, which he called his "bitch mistress" but his incompetence forced him to stand down a second term, and then Nixon was assassinated politically as he couldn't outsmart his enemies. Carter came in briefly so we'd think there's actually a 2 party system. Reagan and Bush definitely an improper meshing as the citizenry became increasingly dulled, doped, and dumber. Thank the gods Hinckley was a poor shot. Reagan did overt weekend wars, covert freedom fighters, but even the Beirut Bombing didn't piss him off enough for a big one. Daddy Bush gave us the Panama Kingpins War; he won. There's been a big itch for a big war for a long time, we're overdue.

Then came Clinton. Were there ethical quirks on his watch that prevented the US from getting a big one on? Anthrax mailers not ready? OKC not blamed on the right patsies? Kosovo didn't spill over? I have to grudgingly give Bill some credit, although he is systemically part of the problem, while in office he held off the character assassins for nearly 8 years, and got head while doing it.

Lastly, we have Bush the Boy, a wet brain with a big ego, a life spent mimicking emotions most of us actually feel, determined to scratch a big killer itch, pumping his fist in "feels good" style, smirking as we circle the drain.