12.31.2011
11.20.2011
An Outsider's View of PSU and the National Narrative UPDATED
I am a 65 year old Tennessee graduate and fan who's only ties to Pennsylvania was a year spent it Sayer, Pa in 2002. My father was a Judge and political figure in Tennessee and I attended law school there for a time. Dad was a past president of the UT Alumni Association and I know something about the love of a university and it's football program. I know first hand how those institutions can sometimes protect themselves to the detriment of others but I do not believe that is what was happening in State College in the wake of Jerry Sandusky
Perhaps some people can dismiss those who object to what is being touted in the national press from PSU alumni and students as misplaced loyalty but they can't dismiss it from an outsider on those terms. I have no ties or particular love for PSU or JoePa. But I am appalled at the knee jerk reactions of much of the media and political figures who have created a rush to judgment of Mike McQueary and Joe Paterno and the good people at PSU.
The Grand Jury Report is a summary of allegations designed for the sole purpose of getting an indictment. It is in no way a fair or complete description of testimony or facts. It contains no full quotes, no Q & A, no exculpatory evidence, no cross-examination, and only the most damning parts of testimony presented in a manner that is most damaging to the target of the investigation.
Yet so many media people use the allegations in this document as if they were unassailable FACT and the whole story without any regard for the damage it might do to those who testified as "credible witnesses".
The Grand Jury Report makes credible witness Mike McQueary out to be some kind of coward who ran from an old man sodomizing a 10 year old boy. But is that what happened? I doubt it.
Suppose that Mike McQueary's testimony went something like this: "I entered the locker room on March 1 2002 hearing noise like a slapping sound from the showers. I didn't think much of it and went to put some shoes in my locker. I passed by the entrance to the showers on my way out and much to my shock I saw my former coach and mentor and a man both I and the football community held in the highest esteem behind a young kid of maybe 10 to 14 years of age with the kids hands against the shower room wall. It was steamy and there was water running but I thought I might be seeing anal sex or sodomy due to the noise and positions. They saw me immediately and both turned toward me. Jerry yelled "Hey we were just horsing around" "I can't be certain what I saw because I was in shocked disbelief. The two of them turned off the showers and grabbed their towels and I went into a nearby office to call my father for advice where I could observe them. I thought about ordering them not to leave but they seemed to be on friendly terms. I could not get that first impression out of my head but the shock of it made it difficult to be certain and I couldn't think straight. I did not know if I should try to stop them from leaving and did not know if I had the right to do that. JS seemed very embarrassed and the boy seemed unconcerned as they hurriedly left the locker room after dressing. From the time I first saw them to the time I went to make the call it was only seconds. It all happened so fast but I was mortified to see a naked grown man I respected in such close contact with a young boy where it seemed to me something of a sexual nature was happening. I was stunned and shocked so I spoke to my Dad for several minutes to calm down and get my head straight and then went to his house to discuss with him what if anything I should do. On his advice we went to see Joe Paterno early the next morning and I told him this same story." " I then spoke to the AD and VP in charge of campus police and told them what I told JoePa and what I am telling you now."
The prosecutor then summarizes this testimony into - Graduate assistant witnessed a 10 year old victim of anal rape and ran to call his father. JoePa summarizes it a some kind of inappropriate horsing around of a possibly sexual nature. The AD and VP summarize it as inappropriate horseplay and inform Second Mile and tell JS that he must not bring any kids to the PSU locker rooms. Remember they don't know who the victim or kid in the shower was.
Most people will describe a boy in an age range = maybe 10 to 14 or 8 to 12 years old because it's tough to guess the exact age of children. The DA will use the youngest age mentioned because the younger the boy the worse the perception. It's like using "anal rape" when given a choice of "something of a sexual nature, fondling, or sodomy". How does a 6 foot 4 inch tall man do that to a 10 year old who's head does not reach his chest while standing up?
I suppose the VP or AD should and could have gone to Sandusky and asked him to take them to the kid and then asked what was going on, or they should have had their campus police do it. If the boy seemed scared or if he begged for assistance McQueary's response would be one thing but if he behaved as if nothing were wrong it would be something else. If the activity stopped immediately and they were dressing and leaving does McQueary have the right to hold them there without the 'victim' asking for help? Would the police hold them if the boy said it was all a mistake? Did McQueary know for certain the boy wasn't a foster child of Sandusky or a grandchild. Why don't they show us a diagram or picture of the locker room, McQueary's locker and the view and distance to the showers?
The point is that we don't know what happened but we can identify with a 28 year old graduate assistant who is shocked and dumbfounded by seeing his longtime family friend, coach and mentor in the showers with a boy and the possible confusion over what exactly what he was witnessing can't we? You would of course know exactly what you saw in fleeting seconds from some indeterminate distance through steam and water if one of the parties was a person you respected and even loved - right?
THE NATIONAL NARRATIVE and the rush to judgment based on a summary of allegations.
I can't believe how so many professional reporters and talking heads like Mark May and Greg Doyle can rush to judgement based on the one sided and incomplete Grand Jury Report and the stupidity and callousness of the DA who made that report public without explaining it's purpose. He has caused the PSU Board Of Trustees to rush to judgment by firing the man who did the right thing and who has given a lifetime of service to Penn State University. He has ruined the life of a reportedly fine young man who grew up in State College and loved his university by making it appear that he was a coward who ran away while a 10 year old boy was pleading for help as he was being brutalized. So many people outside of PSU have formed an indelible opinion based on this Grand Jury Report that what has been done can never be undone.
I could be wrong - but then again I could be right and none of us outside of those that have read the complete testimony of Mike McQueary know exactly what he said and even if we had he was not cross examined by a defense attorney who would likely get to the root of his confusion, doubts, and state of mind even if the prosecutor did not.
The moral is don't rush to judge what you do not fully understand. You cannot put yourself in Mike McQueary's mind given his personal history with JS, State College, and PSU, and there is no way we know the exact nature of what he and JoePa discussed or how he described the event to the AD or the VP. There is so much the Grand Jury Report does not tell us and what it does is by design totally biased.
Watch out for the Governor who was leading this investigation for 1 year 3 years ago. He is trying to cover his ass as is the prosecutor who will use this case to further his political career if he can. The DA summarized the McQueary testimony to suggest the gist of what the prosecution wants to try to prove. SEE BELOW in the comments the full text of the McQueary summary and notice there are no quotes or Q&A. We don't know exactly what was said and until we do we cannot judge Joe Paterno or Mike McQueary. That makes the firing of JoePa a complete travesty of justice for political gain and the reaction of the media and the public a judgment based on woefully incomplete information.
And this is from and outsider who has no ties or loyalty to Joe, Mike, PSU or the State of Pa.
Legal Definitions - Presentment or Report and Indictment
A Grand Jury Report or Presentment is a Summary of Allegations designed to justify an INDICTMENT
Legal Definition – PRESENTMENT, crim. law, practice. The written notice taken by a grand jury of any offence, from their own knowledge or observation, without any bill of indictment laid before them at the suit of the government; 4 Bl. Com. 301; upon such presentment, when ’proper, the officer employed to prosecute, afterwards frames a bill of indictment, which is then sent to the grand jury, and they find it to be a true bill. In an extended sense presentments include not only what is properly so called, but also inquisitions of office, and indictments found by a grand jury.
Legal Definition -indictment n. a charge of a felony (serious crime) voted by a grand jury based upon a proposed charge, witnesses’ testimony and other evidence presented by the public prosecutor (District Attorney). To bring an indictment the grand jury will not find guilt, but only the probability that a crime was committed, that the accused person did it, and that he/she should be tried. District Attorneys only introduce key facts sufficient to show the probability, both to save time and to avoid revealing all the evidence. The Fifth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution provides that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on presentment of a Grand Jury…” However, while grand juries are common in charging Federal crimes, many states use grand juries sparingly, and use the criminal complaint, followed by a “preliminary hearing” held by a lower court judge or other magistrate, who will determine whether or not the prosecutor has presented sufficient evidence that the accused has committed a felony. If the judge finds there is enough evidence, he/she will order the case sent to the appropriate court for trial
When reading these definitions it is evident that the DA presents only key parts of testimony sufficient to get a case to trial. This is meant to be the biased unchallenged most damning statements by witnesses without revealing anything like the complete testimony. And despite what any witness might provide under questioning by investigators or prosecutors, the testimony has not been subjected to cross-examination to determine things like 1) degree of certainty 2) circumstances of state of mind, distance, obscured vision by steam or water, position of the parties involved, or potential misconceptions.
Exact Text of the Grand Jury Report regarding Mike McQueary
On March 1, 2002, a Penn State graduate assistant who was then 28 years old entered the locker room at the Lasch Football Building on the University Park Campus on a Friday night before the beginning of Spring Break. The graduate assistant , who was familiar with Sandusky, was going to put some newly purchased sneakers in his locker and get some recording tape to watch. It was about 9:30pm. As the graduate assistant entered the locker room doors, he was surprised to find the lights and showers on. He then heard rhythmic slapping sounds. He believed the sounds to be those of sexual activity. As the graduate assistant put the sneakers in his locker, he looked into the showers. He saw a naked boy, victim 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky. The graduate assistant was shocked but noticed both victim 2 and Sandusky saw him. He left immediately, distraught.
QUESTIONS on above statement:
1) How far from McQueary’s locker to the showers?
2) So MM could see exactly what? penetration? was there steam and water?
3) 30 seconds of this view? 15? Did JS and the boy see McQueary immediately?
The graduate assistant went to his office and called his father, reporting to him what he had seen. His father told him to leave the building anc come to his home. The GA and his father decided the GA had to promptly report what he had seen to Coach Joe Paterno, head football coach of Penn State. The next morning, a Saturday, the GA telephoned Paterno and went to Paterno’s home where he reported what he had seen.
Joseph V. Paterno testified to receiving the GA’s report at his home on a Saturday morning. Paterno testified that the GA was very upset. Paterno called Tim Curley the PSU AD and Paterno’s immediate superior to his home the very next day, a Sunday, and reported to him that the GA had seen Jerry Sandusky in the Lasch Building showers fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy.
QUESTIONS: So did he say fondling or something of a sexual nature or Anal rape?
Did he say “something that might have been sexual like anal intercourse” to the investigator?
How certain was he of what he saw exactly? And exactly what was his quoted testimony?
Approximately one and a half weeks later, the GA was called to a meeting with PSU AD Curley and Sr VP for Finance and Business Gary Schultz. The GA reported to Curley and Schultz that he had witnessed what he believed to be Sandusky having anal sex with a boy in the Lasch Building showers. Curley and Schultz assured the GA that they would look into it and determine what further action they would take. Paterno was not present for that meeting.
QUESTIONS: So he told Paterno something of a sexual nature or fondling and he told the AD and VP it was anal intercourse? Somehow I doubt that completely.
The defense will tear his testimony apart if he changed his account and I doubt he did. I think this is all the prosecutors summary aggrandized to get an indictment.
Notice these things about the Grand Jury Report
NO quotes
NO Q & A
NO ‘believes’ ‘maybe’ ‘could have been’s’ or ‘uncertainty’
Without direct quotes we can’t know the language used and that makes it obvious that the DA or prosecutor summarized or interpreted the gist of the testimony
The summary contradicts itself OR suggests that MM told Paterno, the investigators, the AD and the VP different versions of what he might have seen.
That is how we know his statements in the email’s lately are likely to be more accurate than this Grand Jury report concerning “Making sure it stopped” and “reporting to the police”.
This is a terrible report for the prosecution if it suggests to a jury that MM had different versions of what he saw – and it appears from the summary that he did.
Everyone should read LET’S ALL FEEL SUPERIOR piece in the NYT and take the time to view this interview with JON RITCHIE on ESPN along withd the GROWING UP PENN STATE piece.
If you have previously made up your mind about the Sandusky Scandal you now have a chance to reevaluate your position in the light of additional information and a clear definition of the Grand Jury Report and it's purpose.
I am a 65 year old Tennessee graduate and fan who's only ties to Pennsylvania was a year spent it Sayer, Pa in 2002. My father was a Judge and political figure in Tennessee and I attended law school there for a time. Dad was a past president of the UT Alumni Association and I know something about the love of a university and it's football program. I know first hand how those institutions can sometimes protect themselves to the detriment of others but I do not believe that is what was happening in State College in the wake of Jerry Sandusky
Perhaps some people can dismiss those who object to what is being touted in the national press from PSU alumni and students as misplaced loyalty but they can't dismiss it from an outsider on those terms. I have no ties or particular love for PSU or JoePa. But I am appalled at the knee jerk reactions of much of the media and political figures who have created a rush to judgment of Mike McQueary and Joe Paterno and the good people at PSU.
The Grand Jury Report is a summary of allegations designed for the sole purpose of getting an indictment. It is in no way a fair or complete description of testimony or facts. It contains no full quotes, no Q & A, no exculpatory evidence, no cross-examination, and only the most damning parts of testimony presented in a manner that is most damaging to the target of the investigation.
Yet so many media people use the allegations in this document as if they were unassailable FACT and the whole story without any regard for the damage it might do to those who testified as "credible witnesses".
The Grand Jury Report makes credible witness Mike McQueary out to be some kind of coward who ran from an old man sodomizing a 10 year old boy. But is that what happened? I doubt it.
Suppose that Mike McQueary's testimony went something like this: "I entered the locker room on March 1 2002 hearing noise like a slapping sound from the showers. I didn't think much of it and went to put some shoes in my locker. I passed by the entrance to the showers on my way out and much to my shock I saw my former coach and mentor and a man both I and the football community held in the highest esteem behind a young kid of maybe 10 to 14 years of age with the kids hands against the shower room wall. It was steamy and there was water running but I thought I might be seeing anal sex or sodomy due to the noise and positions. They saw me immediately and both turned toward me. Jerry yelled "Hey we were just horsing around" "I can't be certain what I saw because I was in shocked disbelief. The two of them turned off the showers and grabbed their towels and I went into a nearby office to call my father for advice where I could observe them. I thought about ordering them not to leave but they seemed to be on friendly terms. I could not get that first impression out of my head but the shock of it made it difficult to be certain and I couldn't think straight. I did not know if I should try to stop them from leaving and did not know if I had the right to do that. JS seemed very embarrassed and the boy seemed unconcerned as they hurriedly left the locker room after dressing. From the time I first saw them to the time I went to make the call it was only seconds. It all happened so fast but I was mortified to see a naked grown man I respected in such close contact with a young boy where it seemed to me something of a sexual nature was happening. I was stunned and shocked so I spoke to my Dad for several minutes to calm down and get my head straight and then went to his house to discuss with him what if anything I should do. On his advice we went to see Joe Paterno early the next morning and I told him this same story." " I then spoke to the AD and VP in charge of campus police and told them what I told JoePa and what I am telling you now."
The prosecutor then summarizes this testimony into - Graduate assistant witnessed a 10 year old victim of anal rape and ran to call his father. JoePa summarizes it a some kind of inappropriate horsing around of a possibly sexual nature. The AD and VP summarize it as inappropriate horseplay and inform Second Mile and tell JS that he must not bring any kids to the PSU locker rooms. Remember they don't know who the victim or kid in the shower was.
Most people will describe a boy in an age range = maybe 10 to 14 or 8 to 12 years old because it's tough to guess the exact age of children. The DA will use the youngest age mentioned because the younger the boy the worse the perception. It's like using "anal rape" when given a choice of "something of a sexual nature, fondling, or sodomy". How does a 6 foot 4 inch tall man do that to a 10 year old who's head does not reach his chest while standing up?
I suppose the VP or AD should and could have gone to Sandusky and asked him to take them to the kid and then asked what was going on, or they should have had their campus police do it. If the boy seemed scared or if he begged for assistance McQueary's response would be one thing but if he behaved as if nothing were wrong it would be something else. If the activity stopped immediately and they were dressing and leaving does McQueary have the right to hold them there without the 'victim' asking for help? Would the police hold them if the boy said it was all a mistake? Did McQueary know for certain the boy wasn't a foster child of Sandusky or a grandchild. Why don't they show us a diagram or picture of the locker room, McQueary's locker and the view and distance to the showers?
The point is that we don't know what happened but we can identify with a 28 year old graduate assistant who is shocked and dumbfounded by seeing his longtime family friend, coach and mentor in the showers with a boy and the possible confusion over what exactly what he was witnessing can't we? You would of course know exactly what you saw in fleeting seconds from some indeterminate distance through steam and water if one of the parties was a person you respected and even loved - right?
THE NATIONAL NARRATIVE and the rush to judgment based on a summary of allegations.
I can't believe how so many professional reporters and talking heads like Mark May and Greg Doyle can rush to judgement based on the one sided and incomplete Grand Jury Report and the stupidity and callousness of the DA who made that report public without explaining it's purpose. He has caused the PSU Board Of Trustees to rush to judgment by firing the man who did the right thing and who has given a lifetime of service to Penn State University. He has ruined the life of a reportedly fine young man who grew up in State College and loved his university by making it appear that he was a coward who ran away while a 10 year old boy was pleading for help as he was being brutalized. So many people outside of PSU have formed an indelible opinion based on this Grand Jury Report that what has been done can never be undone.
I could be wrong - but then again I could be right and none of us outside of those that have read the complete testimony of Mike McQueary know exactly what he said and even if we had he was not cross examined by a defense attorney who would likely get to the root of his confusion, doubts, and state of mind even if the prosecutor did not.
The moral is don't rush to judge what you do not fully understand. You cannot put yourself in Mike McQueary's mind given his personal history with JS, State College, and PSU, and there is no way we know the exact nature of what he and JoePa discussed or how he described the event to the AD or the VP. There is so much the Grand Jury Report does not tell us and what it does is by design totally biased.
Watch out for the Governor who was leading this investigation for 1 year 3 years ago. He is trying to cover his ass as is the prosecutor who will use this case to further his political career if he can. The DA summarized the McQueary testimony to suggest the gist of what the prosecution wants to try to prove. SEE BELOW in the comments the full text of the McQueary summary and notice there are no quotes or Q&A. We don't know exactly what was said and until we do we cannot judge Joe Paterno or Mike McQueary. That makes the firing of JoePa a complete travesty of justice for political gain and the reaction of the media and the public a judgment based on woefully incomplete information.
And this is from and outsider who has no ties or loyalty to Joe, Mike, PSU or the State of Pa.
Legal Definitions - Presentment or Report and Indictment
A Grand Jury Report or Presentment is a Summary of Allegations designed to justify an INDICTMENT
Legal Definition – PRESENTMENT, crim. law, practice. The written notice taken by a grand jury of any offence, from their own knowledge or observation, without any bill of indictment laid before them at the suit of the government; 4 Bl. Com. 301; upon such presentment, when ’proper, the officer employed to prosecute, afterwards frames a bill of indictment, which is then sent to the grand jury, and they find it to be a true bill. In an extended sense presentments include not only what is properly so called, but also inquisitions of office, and indictments found by a grand jury.
Legal Definition -indictment n. a charge of a felony (serious crime) voted by a grand jury based upon a proposed charge, witnesses’ testimony and other evidence presented by the public prosecutor (District Attorney). To bring an indictment the grand jury will not find guilt, but only the probability that a crime was committed, that the accused person did it, and that he/she should be tried. District Attorneys only introduce key facts sufficient to show the probability, both to save time and to avoid revealing all the evidence. The Fifth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution provides that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on presentment of a Grand Jury…” However, while grand juries are common in charging Federal crimes, many states use grand juries sparingly, and use the criminal complaint, followed by a “preliminary hearing” held by a lower court judge or other magistrate, who will determine whether or not the prosecutor has presented sufficient evidence that the accused has committed a felony. If the judge finds there is enough evidence, he/she will order the case sent to the appropriate court for trial
When reading these definitions it is evident that the DA presents only key parts of testimony sufficient to get a case to trial. This is meant to be the biased unchallenged most damning statements by witnesses without revealing anything like the complete testimony. And despite what any witness might provide under questioning by investigators or prosecutors, the testimony has not been subjected to cross-examination to determine things like 1) degree of certainty 2) circumstances of state of mind, distance, obscured vision by steam or water, position of the parties involved, or potential misconceptions.
Exact Text of the Grand Jury Report regarding Mike McQueary
On March 1, 2002, a Penn State graduate assistant who was then 28 years old entered the locker room at the Lasch Football Building on the University Park Campus on a Friday night before the beginning of Spring Break. The graduate assistant , who was familiar with Sandusky, was going to put some newly purchased sneakers in his locker and get some recording tape to watch. It was about 9:30pm. As the graduate assistant entered the locker room doors, he was surprised to find the lights and showers on. He then heard rhythmic slapping sounds. He believed the sounds to be those of sexual activity. As the graduate assistant put the sneakers in his locker, he looked into the showers. He saw a naked boy, victim 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky. The graduate assistant was shocked but noticed both victim 2 and Sandusky saw him. He left immediately, distraught.
QUESTIONS on above statement:
1) How far from McQueary’s locker to the showers?
2) So MM could see exactly what? penetration? was there steam and water?
3) 30 seconds of this view? 15? Did JS and the boy see McQueary immediately?
The graduate assistant went to his office and called his father, reporting to him what he had seen. His father told him to leave the building anc come to his home. The GA and his father decided the GA had to promptly report what he had seen to Coach Joe Paterno, head football coach of Penn State. The next morning, a Saturday, the GA telephoned Paterno and went to Paterno’s home where he reported what he had seen.
Joseph V. Paterno testified to receiving the GA’s report at his home on a Saturday morning. Paterno testified that the GA was very upset. Paterno called Tim Curley the PSU AD and Paterno’s immediate superior to his home the very next day, a Sunday, and reported to him that the GA had seen Jerry Sandusky in the Lasch Building showers fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy.
QUESTIONS: So did he say fondling or something of a sexual nature or Anal rape?
Did he say “something that might have been sexual like anal intercourse” to the investigator?
How certain was he of what he saw exactly? And exactly what was his quoted testimony?
Approximately one and a half weeks later, the GA was called to a meeting with PSU AD Curley and Sr VP for Finance and Business Gary Schultz. The GA reported to Curley and Schultz that he had witnessed what he believed to be Sandusky having anal sex with a boy in the Lasch Building showers. Curley and Schultz assured the GA that they would look into it and determine what further action they would take. Paterno was not present for that meeting.
QUESTIONS: So he told Paterno something of a sexual nature or fondling and he told the AD and VP it was anal intercourse? Somehow I doubt that completely.
The defense will tear his testimony apart if he changed his account and I doubt he did. I think this is all the prosecutors summary aggrandized to get an indictment.
Notice these things about the Grand Jury Report
NO quotes
NO Q & A
NO ‘believes’ ‘maybe’ ‘could have been’s’ or ‘uncertainty’
Without direct quotes we can’t know the language used and that makes it obvious that the DA or prosecutor summarized or interpreted the gist of the testimony
The summary contradicts itself OR suggests that MM told Paterno, the investigators, the AD and the VP different versions of what he might have seen.
That is how we know his statements in the email’s lately are likely to be more accurate than this Grand Jury report concerning “Making sure it stopped” and “reporting to the police”.
This is a terrible report for the prosecution if it suggests to a jury that MM had different versions of what he saw – and it appears from the summary that he did.
Everyone should read LET’S ALL FEEL SUPERIOR piece in the NYT and take the time to view this interview with JON RITCHIE on ESPN along withd the GROWING UP PENN STATE piece.
If you have previously made up your mind about the Sandusky Scandal you now have a chance to reevaluate your position in the light of additional information and a clear definition of the Grand Jury Report and it's purpose.
11.14.2011
MISPLACED OR JUSTIFIABLE OUTRAGE???
A great deal of outrage is being voiced toward a witness in the biggest scandal to hit sports in a long long time from the media to the governor to ordinary citizens posting on forums claiming they know exactly what they would have done and what the witness should have done. Most blame the witness and want him prosecuted for what they think is inaction.
See where you stand on this situation.
Studies show that the average person would avoid or remain silent when confronted with this type of situation
These are the facts about the witness:
1) He was born and raised in the small community where the situation happened.
2) His father was a close personal friend of the alleged perpetrator
3) He grew up knowing the alleged perpetrator from a very early age
4) His classmate was the son of the alleged perpetrator and they were close friends
5) The alleged perpetrator was a coach and he was a player recruited by the perpetrator
6) He spent a great deal of time with the alleged perpetrator and never suspected or encountered anything like what he witnessed years later.
7) The coach of the university in this small town had achieved the status of a Deity
8) The alleged perpetrator was this Deity's right hand man and heir apparent
9) The witness's family, his father, his idol and the administration of the university he has loved and revered all his life all seem to respect and adore the alleged perpetrator
10) In 1977 the alleged perpetrator starts a charity to help underprivileged kids
11) From 1977 to 2002 the charity grows and the alleged perpetrator achieves the status of a SAINT for his charitable work
12) the alleged perpetrator receives public acclaim and an award from Senator Rick Santorum.
13) In 1999 the alleged perpetrator gives up his successful career as an award winning defensive coordinator for one of the most respected defenses in football to devote himself to his charity.
14) The witness finishes his college career at the university that same year having spent 4 years as quarterback with the alleged perpetrator as one of his coaches.
15 In 2002 the witness gets his dream job chance to be a graduate assistant for the same university football team
View Jon Ritchie's 10 minute video describing the above situation in full detail with passion. Jon Ritchie is a very intelligent graduate of Stanford University who grew up knowing both the witness and the alleged perpetrator.
It is true that the witness is in a position where could lose his chance of a dream job while doing great harm to the reputation of the university he loves as well as creating problems for his coach and the local Deity. That could play into his reaction so take that into account before you weigh in on what you would do.
So try to imagine this event. You are walking into the locker room for your beloved institution and football program around 9pm. You here the shower running as you walk to your locker to deposit a pair of shoes. On the way out you glance into the locker and see this well respected charitable man and family friend and it appears he is holding a young boy against the wall and both are naked. You think it is a sexual assault. They see you and the activity stops.
At this point we don't know if anything was said or if the two in the shower left the shower but we think the witness then went into the office and called his father.
Did the witness see the activity stop?
He says "I MADE SURE IT STOPPED"
I can imagine the witness was shocked, confused, dumbstruck with disbelief and he decided that calling his father was what he had to do. He and his father talked til midnight and went to see the coach the next morning. The coach went to his boss the AD and the VP in charge of the campus police. I'm not sure what else he could or should do. He told his boss the coach and fully disclosed his opinion of what he thought he had witnessed to the Athletic Director and more importantly the head of the Campus Police.
What would you have been able to do if confronted with the most respected family friend you know in a similar situation? Remember this family friend is viewed as a Saint in your community for his charitable work.
NOW READ the VICTIM 2 section of the GRAND JURY REPORT on which those who accuse the witness base their outrage. Notice there are no quotes. No Q&A just a summary of charges as composed by the Grand Jury. It is not comprehensive and there is no cross examination. Based on this one sided incomplete brief summation of the events of the night of March 1, 2002. To me it makes these big mouths look incredibly unfair and stupid. This report is all anyone has to go on to determine exactly what happened.
A great deal of outrage is being voiced toward a witness in the biggest scandal to hit sports in a long long time from the media to the governor to ordinary citizens posting on forums claiming they know exactly what they would have done and what the witness should have done. Most blame the witness and want him prosecuted for what they think is inaction.
See where you stand on this situation.
Studies show that the average person would avoid or remain silent when confronted with this type of situation
These are the facts about the witness:
1) He was born and raised in the small community where the situation happened.
2) His father was a close personal friend of the alleged perpetrator
3) He grew up knowing the alleged perpetrator from a very early age
4) His classmate was the son of the alleged perpetrator and they were close friends
5) The alleged perpetrator was a coach and he was a player recruited by the perpetrator
6) He spent a great deal of time with the alleged perpetrator and never suspected or encountered anything like what he witnessed years later.
7) The coach of the university in this small town had achieved the status of a Deity
8) The alleged perpetrator was this Deity's right hand man and heir apparent
9) The witness's family, his father, his idol and the administration of the university he has loved and revered all his life all seem to respect and adore the alleged perpetrator
10) In 1977 the alleged perpetrator starts a charity to help underprivileged kids
11) From 1977 to 2002 the charity grows and the alleged perpetrator achieves the status of a SAINT for his charitable work
12) the alleged perpetrator receives public acclaim and an award from Senator Rick Santorum.
13) In 1999 the alleged perpetrator gives up his successful career as an award winning defensive coordinator for one of the most respected defenses in football to devote himself to his charity.
14) The witness finishes his college career at the university that same year having spent 4 years as quarterback with the alleged perpetrator as one of his coaches.
15 In 2002 the witness gets his dream job chance to be a graduate assistant for the same university football team
View Jon Ritchie's 10 minute video describing the above situation in full detail with passion. Jon Ritchie is a very intelligent graduate of Stanford University who grew up knowing both the witness and the alleged perpetrator.
It is true that the witness is in a position where could lose his chance of a dream job while doing great harm to the reputation of the university he loves as well as creating problems for his coach and the local Deity. That could play into his reaction so take that into account before you weigh in on what you would do.
So try to imagine this event. You are walking into the locker room for your beloved institution and football program around 9pm. You here the shower running as you walk to your locker to deposit a pair of shoes. On the way out you glance into the locker and see this well respected charitable man and family friend and it appears he is holding a young boy against the wall and both are naked. You think it is a sexual assault. They see you and the activity stops.
At this point we don't know if anything was said or if the two in the shower left the shower but we think the witness then went into the office and called his father.
Did the witness see the activity stop?
He says "I MADE SURE IT STOPPED"
I can imagine the witness was shocked, confused, dumbstruck with disbelief and he decided that calling his father was what he had to do. He and his father talked til midnight and went to see the coach the next morning. The coach went to his boss the AD and the VP in charge of the campus police. I'm not sure what else he could or should do. He told his boss the coach and fully disclosed his opinion of what he thought he had witnessed to the Athletic Director and more importantly the head of the Campus Police.
What would you have been able to do if confronted with the most respected family friend you know in a similar situation? Remember this family friend is viewed as a Saint in your community for his charitable work.
NOW READ the VICTIM 2 section of the GRAND JURY REPORT on which those who accuse the witness base their outrage. Notice there are no quotes. No Q&A just a summary of charges as composed by the Grand Jury. It is not comprehensive and there is no cross examination. Based on this one sided incomplete brief summation of the events of the night of March 1, 2002. To me it makes these big mouths look incredibly unfair and stupid. This report is all anyone has to go on to determine exactly what happened.
8.15.2011
MASS DELUSION AND IT'S CONSEQUENCES
It’s a funny thing you know. The information is all out there to be discovered or read. The information about how so many are duped into some mass delusion like:
JFK was gunned down by a lone assassin
WMDs were in IRAQ
Saddam was trying to purchase yellow cake from Niger
Trickle down economics will enrich the middle class
Putting more money in the hands of the extremely wealthy creates jobs
Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed from fire.
George W Bush actually won the 2000 Presidential Election
There is no global warming due to man’s activity
Climate change is a liberal plot
Hibbert’s peak is a myth
God gave man dominion over the Earth so we don’t have to care about the environment
Barack Obama is responsible for the debt and unemployment
The ‘liberal media’ lacks journalistic integrity
Fox News tells the unbiased truth
The Bible tells the literal truth
The earth is only around 8,000 years old
Man and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.
Natural selection and Darwinian principals of evolution are nonsense
The Domino Theory (Vietnam falls to totalitarian’s & all of asia will fall) is undeniable
There were death panels in the Obama health care plan
Katrina hit New Orleans because GOD punished them for their sins
AIDS is Gods punishment for homosexuality
Gay marriage will ruin the sanctity of marriage
Termination of a pregnancy is murder of a child.
A good Christian would insist that Terry Schivao be kept alive on a machine
A good Christian would murder any abortionist
Homosexuals should be thrown in prison or executed
The Patriot Act is required to keep us safe
The war on drugs is required to save our youth
The war on terror is a noble cause well worth the cost
The founding fathers built this nation on Faith in God as a Christian Nation
Liberals want to redistribute the wealth (even though we've seen the greatest redistribution of wealth in history since Reagan from the middle class to the ultra wealthy)
These are all commonly held delusions by a substantial segment of the population fed by the fundamentalist Pentecostal evangelical LDS and SBC churches and right wing authoritarian political leaders aided by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News
A Brief History of the USA since 1956
Richard Milhouse Nixon runs the country for Ike setting into motion Operation 40 using E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, David Atlee Phillips, G. Gordon Liddy, Portor Goss and a bunch of Cubans exiled from Castro’s Cuba to engage Sam Giancana, Trafficante, Johnny Rosselli and Charles Nicoletti in several plots to assassinate Fidel. George H. W. Bush and his Zapata Oil company are involved in the CIA’s efforts and Bush begins his CIA career. George H. W. Bush is the son of Prescott Bush of CT who made his fortune helping the Nazi’s finance WWII.
1960 JFK is elected to the Presidency with the assistance of Giancana in Illinois and he appoints RFK as Attorney General. RFK then goes after the mob with a vengeance enraging Giancana. JFK barely defeats RM Nixon sending Nixon to California where he is soundly beaten by Gov Brown prior to announcing his retirement from politics.
1960 Allen Dulles dupes JFK into going forward with the absurd Bay of Pigs invasion planned by Dulles and Nixon. Afterward Dulles is summarily fired by JFK who says he will break the CIA into a million pieces. This puts CIA Operation 40 operatives and a crew of Texas wingnut oil men in position to collude with mobsters and other government officials in the elimination of JFK and a coverup. The homosexual head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover is enraged with JFK for putting his brother Bobby over him in the Justice Department and he wastes little effort trying to get to the truth.
November 1963. James Files, Charles Nicoletti, and Johnny Rosselli are the three shooters who murder JFK at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Files fires the fatal shot from the grassy knoll. George H. W. Bush and Richard Nixon are both in Dallas with LBJ and JFK on that day. LBJ appoints Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission along with Gerald Ford and Arlen Spector to complete the cover up of the assassination by pinning the murder on Lee Harvey Oswald
This Coup d'état puts LBJ in office resulting in the deaths of over 58,000 and the wounding of over 250,000 young Americans in Viet Nam along with the death and incapacitation of over a million Vietnamese at a cost of a trillion dollars. A civil war we should have never been part of and that we lost. But that loss proved the fallacy of the Domino Theory and the pure delusion of the incredibly stupid anti-communist hysteria foisted on the American people by the McCarthyites for 20 years. The totalitarian dictatorships that use the word ‘communist’ to cover up – their dictatorial tyranny. Stalin and Mao and their heirs are ultimate authoritarians and their power is derived from Authoritarian Totalitarianism. The right wing authoritarians in this country use similar propaganda to arrive at a similar result. It’s a shared delusion
The ‘democratic’ totalitarians are more confusing to the undereducated people in the west. They use words like ‘freedom, democratically elected, capitalism, free market and power of the people’ while promoting fear and loathing of the ‘communists’ to control the electorate while doing everything they can to deny the truth to the people. It’s a shared delusion fostered by the right wing authoritarians.
In addition the American totalitarian authoritarians use religion – basic fundamentalist dogma and a professed belief in God – to cover up their basic lust for power. They insist on privacy, secrecy, and the surveillance state to “protect” Americans from “threats” they either invent or enhance and in some cases assist in order to gain and maintain authoritarian power over the people as part of the same delusion.
Richard M. Nixon becomes President in 1968 and he uses the same group of Operation 40 characters as ‘plumbers’ in an attempt to destroy the truth exposed by Daniel Ellsburg and his absurd inferiority complex drives him to bug the offices of the DNC even when there is no possible way he can be defeated by George McGovern. But driving Nixon from office does nothing to change the situation for the wealthy and powerful men who use Presidents as puppets to accomplish their ends – the accumulation of wealth and power.
The defeat of Gerald Ford by Jimmy Carter gives us a glimpse of truth as Carter tells us we need to conserve and cut back on the depletion of oil but Carter is an easy mark for the Right Wing Authoritarians and their unholy alliance with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and their fundamentalist “Christianist moral Majority” – yet another delusion.
So Ronald Reagan gains office in 1980 and begins the greatest redistribution of wealth in the history of the world. After FDR and Truman the oligarchs were effectively broken down to a situation where the weathiest 10% of the population controlled/owned 60% of the wealth and income. At this point in 2011 they own or control 90%. Reagan’s deregulation continued through George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton making possible the rise of Rupert Murdock, the Savings and Loan hijacking of the Treasury by people like Charles Keating, and finally the ultimate looting of federal funds by the likes of Halliburton and the military industrial complex during the mid-east terrorism wars, and the final insult of the mortgage crisis during “W’s” second term. Theft on a massive scale brought about by delusion.
Since Reagan the middle class has been systematically destroyed and the Rightwing Authoritarians have consolidated power to the point there is no way out. They can and have managed to elect an insipient fool like “W” to the presidency twice to get everything they ever wanted. And what they wanted was MORE. We are now back to a situation that is demonstrably worse than time prior to FDR when the Robber Barons took this country down the path to the Great Depression.
W and his handlers including his brother and Katherine Harris in Florida stole the election from Al Gore in 2000 and that was the last chance the country had to overcome the damage done by Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Bush ran the government for Reagan much like Nixon did for Ike and Cheney for W. With W the authoritarians proved that even a cheerleading frat boy C student with all the speech making ability of a 10th grade illiterate could be elected in this country if he invoked GOD.
Kevin Phillips AMERICAN THEOCRACY expounds on the power of the SBC and LDS in Presidential Elections. Take the LDS influenced states of Utah, Wy, Id, Nv, and AZ for 33 votes. Then add the line from ND to TX for another 62 votes from states that have both an SBC and LDS majority. Then add the solid Southern Baptist south - LA, Ark, AL, MS, TN, GA, SC, KY for 73 more electoral votes and that gives us 168 of the 173 required to take the White House. WVa offers 5 that went to McCain while Obama won in NV in 08 for 5. Missouri, Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina all have to be won by Obama for any chance at re-election. A Bachmann, Santorum, or Perry can win no matter how insane it may seem that our country suffers from this mass delusion.
Obama could carry a serious majority of the popular vote with big wins in New England, Illinois, California, and New York and actually have a million vote margin while losing the White House. In fact I predict a Republican “win” of the electoral college even while that Republican loses the popular vote by over 1 million.
Obama loses 7 electoral votes from his 2008 total as the population shifts west and south from New York, New
England, and Ohio. This is not a pretty picture for his hopes in 2012. The real strength of America from New York and New England to the creative power of California and the progressive inspiration of the Pacific Northwest and across the populous centers of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania is threatened by domination from the SBC south and the Mormon west with the vast featureless plains of Oklahoma to North Dakota. In many ways it’s too bad we don’t have two separate countries we are so far apart culturally and intellectually.
No need to pop off your absurd objections to the idea of conspiracy. There was no ‘conspiracy’ to murder JFK. It was a well planned and financed coup d'etat by the most powerful financial interests in this country aided and abetted by elements of the Clandestine Services division of the CIA expertly covered up by the deluded and power hungry director of the FBI complicit with Allen Dulles and the CIA and the politicians who benefited from his death. All three Kennedy brothers were eliminated from the power struggle for the soul of America. The situation is now totally untenable as the unholy alliance between fundamentalist religious elements that naturally support the idea of Right Wing Authoritarianism as Dogma and the political power and interests of corporate America with 90% of our wealth can do whatever they want and shove it down the throats of the people with 24 hour a day misinformation from FOX News and talk radio
We will never be able to stop the effects of climate change even with the consensus of 93% of the scientific community. We can’t even agree on the undeniable facts of the age of the Earth and the idiotic misinformation campaign against simple Darwinian natural selection.
The God Delusion may not be that there is no GOD. That cannot be proven because there is no evidence to support existence and since it is a matter of Faith no lack of proof is compelling to the Faithful. But there is no doubt that even the Fundamentalists don’t intend to follow every edict in their Bible. The God Delusion is that somehow God spoke to W and told him to smite Saddam or that Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry or Rick Santorum in the White House is a decision graced by the will of God.
The God Delusion is an affectation of the followers of Right Wing Authoritarians. They’ve deluded themselves into thinking that freedom of or from religion is not an option in the USA. Despite their protestations it’s clear they believe that law in the USA should include criminalization of homosexuality because of their Bible. Some actually buy into the Pat Robertson Jerry Fallwell delusion that God visited Katrina on New Orleans because of sin or that AIDS was an act of God against homosexuals or that Paul Hill and other murderers are ‘instruments of their GOD.
One day in the future we may know why building 7 collapsed at the World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001. It will be far too late to prosecute the perpetrators just as it is now far too late to prosecute the perpetrators of the Coup d'état in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963 or those who arranged the death of Bobby Kennedy.
One truth is clear. A significant majority of the wealthiest 10% of Americans are only interested in gaining more wealth and power despite what it may do to the country or what was once the middle class. Most people in this country just want a decent job and a chance to go home to their families and watch their kids dance of play little league or soccer. But many if not most have now been denied that opportunity because of the unlimited greed of the very wealthy and the lie that rich men somehow create jobs. The rich are now richer than ever yet the unemployment rate rises. That’s called a delusion.
Many have somehow bought into that lie just as they bought into the lone assassin theory promoted by Dulles, Warren, Ford and Spector and kept in place by Nixon, Bush and LBJ.
DELUSION
It’s a sickening truth that still makes me angry.
This country will collapse financially – . But we won’t even allow the absurd Bush tax cuts to expire in order to reduce this debt. We certainly wouldn’t want to tax the obscenely wealthy another 10% to save the country from financial collapse - Even if it would benefit the wealthy more than the poor. Many will cry “redistribution of the wealth” when they can’t even acknowledge that the wealth has already been redistributed from the bulk of us to the wealthiest 10% since Reagan
Liberal wealth redistribution is a delusion
This country will suffer a good deal more than most as either cheap oil runs out or climate change hits the point of no return or both. Many are somehow deluded into the belief that we deserve to use 25% of the world’s energy even knowing that the resources that make that possible are running out at the alarming rate of 90,000,000 barrels of oil a day.
Many are deluded into thinking the incredible rise of Carbon elements in the atmosphere is a natural phenomenon without consequence.
Denial of Peak Oil and Climate Change is a delusion
We are deluded – we know that W and his wealthy handlers pushed us into a war over WMD that never existed yet we watch people who should be intelligent and morally responsible attack Barack Obama as the cause of the current situation.
We know that those bent on accumulating even greater wealth caused the mortgage crisis with their instruments of mass deception CDOs and other bogus worthless paper instruments that brought the nation to the brink of financial collapse. They blame that on Obama and the money that goes to keep the dispossessed from dying on the streets WMDs were a delusion. Welfare and social programs are causing the financial collapse – that’s a delusion.
They think there is some kind of big government plot by liberals to take away their freedom when they want to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us by criminalizing homosexuality or early termination of pregnancy. They absurdly believe there is some kind of plot against Christianity when ostensible Christians are now in almost complete control of the Electoral College.
That’s a delusion – the GOD Delusion.
One does not need to be a prophet to read and learn the truth about the past or to extrapolate from the available information the inevitable future. Once we begin to see even more effects of the incredible greed of the wealthy on the financial system, and once we begin to feel even greater effects of climate change, and once we actually become aware of the reality that cheap available energy in the form of fossil fuels is running out even they will eventually be unable to deny the delusion.
Or maybe not.
We are only 3 years past the financial meltdown wrought by Wall Street and only 7 years away from knowing the truth about Iraq and the WMDs. But those revelations have had zero effect on the delusional.
INCREASE AND DECREASE IN THE NATIONAL DEBT BY ADMINISTRATION.
Eisenhower R 1953–1957 71.4% 60.4% +6 -11.0% 83rd R, 84th D 83rd R,
Eisenhower R 1957–1961 60.4% 55.2% +20 -5.2% D D
Kennedy/Johnson D 1961–1965 55.2% 46.9% +30 -8.3% D D
Lyndon Johnson D 1965–1969 46.9% 38.6% +43 -8.3% D D
Richard Nixon R 1969–1973 38.6% 35.6% +101 -3.0% D D
Nixon/Ford R 1973–1977 35.6% 35.8% +177 +0.2% D D
Jimmy Carter D 1977–1981 35.8% 32.5% +288 -3.3% D D
Ronald Reagan R 1981–1985 32.5% 43.8% +823 +11.3% D R
Ronald Reagan R 1985–1989 43.8% 53.1% +1,050 +9.3% D 99th R, 100th D
Geo H. W. Bush R 1989–1993 53.1% 66.1% +1,483 +13.0% D D
Bill Clinton D 1993–1997 66.1% 65.4% +1,018 -0.7% 103rd D, 104th R
Bill Clinton D 1997–2001 65.4% 56.4% +401 -9.0% R R
George W. Bush R 2001–2005 56.4% 63.5% +2,135 +7.1% R 107th Split, 108
George W. Bush R 2005–2009 63.5% 84.2% +3,971 +20.7% 109th R,
Barack Obama D 2009– 84.2% 93.2% (2010) +1,653 (2010) +9.0% (2010) 111th D,
It’s clear that the myth of unreasonable spending during the terms of Democratic presidents is totally untrue. W’s debt increase was nearly 28% over 8 years
While during the Clinton years the debt decreased by 10%. Reagan and Bush 1 increased the deby by 30% over 12 years. The Kennedy Johnson years saw a decrease by 16.6%
The Nixon Ford years were a wash. And Jimmy Carter presided over a 3% decline. While the Eisenhower years saw a 26% increase.
Anybody having trouble seeing the picture yet?
It’s a DELUSION to consider Democrats as the prolific spenders. Even Obama was caught by the Bush administrations financial meltdown
Delusion will only end at the time of death for many. Wish I could be there when they learn the depth of their delusion. For others delusion will end with the financial collapse and the onset of a depression like none ever seen in this country. I may be here to see the effect of that collapse on their minds. For others it may be when gas hits $15 a gallon as part of that financial collapse. For others it may be a 4 degree rise in annual average temperature and the melting of the ice that covers Greenland, wiping out a lot of expensive coastal property. Don’t know if I will make it long enough to see it happen but perhaps you will and in advance “I TOLD YOU SO”.
In the meantime we can look forward to a Bachmann, Santorum, or Perry Presidency with population growth from unwanted pregnancy and a vast increase in prison populations from the criminalization of abortion and homosexuality. That kind of religious radicalization of politics will inevitably lead to violence and increased hatred of the American Taliban as they try to eliminate the vote for women. Their religion mixed with politics is a cyanide for America and you are deluded if you think God will somehow reward the country for enacting those laws. That’s a serious religious delusion.
A FEW GLOOMY PREDICTIONS BASED ON THE POPULAR DELUSIONS
Few people have the imagination or awareness to realize the fragility of this nation in the face of the dire consequences possible in the current situation. We've never faced a situation were so many factors of delusion converge with such polarizing political anger. The rhetoric has become as violent as the number of weapons in the hands of so many unemployed and militarily trained males. This is an extremely violent country and we have imprisoned thousands of men for smoking pot. There are thousands more in debt that they can never repay and millions who have no work and no hope. Many of these men blame the government because the right wing authoritarians along with the ultra wealthy have pushed the idea that government is evil. Many of these me believe in Armageddon, the rapture and a Second Coming. Think about 10 million American males that have nothing to lose and extreme anger against the government. A million Timothy McVeighs or Brevik's who believe the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants.
As the economy suffers further collapse and the price of a gallon of gas climbs to over $15 and it becomes impossible to put food on the table these political illiterates will blame the government and then the welfare queens and freeloaders but it will eventually dawn on them that their jobs were not exported to China by the weak. They will eventually look around at the gated communities and the multiple Mcmansions of the men who exported their jobs. They will then remember the Enron's and World Coms and the unbridled greed of the right wing authoritarians and it will dawn on them that their enemy isn't the poor jerk on welfare. The lights will eventually come on and they will begin to wonder about Cheney and Halliburton and W's claims of WMD's. Eventually they will figure out that it isn't the gays or the hippies or the poor that caused their misery and demise. They will realize the lie that giving more money and less taxes to the rich does not result in more jobs for them. Eventually they will wake up and realize that Ruper Murdock, Rodger Ailes, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have nothing in common with them. These filthy rich liars are simply the worst of the right wing authoritarian delusion.
Unregulated Capitalism will eventually drag this country into revolution and chaos. It doesn’t take that many hungry armed people with nothing to lose to loose the dogs of war against their oppressors in this country. 6.4 million men are now unemployed and want jobs in the USA – their jobs shipped overseas by their wealthy owners. Once that number starts to hit 5 million and people finally wake up to the truth that putting more money in the hands of the ultra rich has absolutely nothing to do with job creation it will become dangerous.
2.5 million in prison 6.4 million in the US want jobs and don’t have them
The 800 per 100,000 now in prison in the USA will reach 1000 soon and when we realize that’s really 1000 of every 30,000 males between 20 and 60 we will begin to see that the imprisoned plus the unemployed plus the black and Hispanic population will make it increasingly difficult to control. The trained military that will no longer be affordable as the economy collapses will return to a land where no jobs exist and where Blackwater is defunct. That’s a significant portion of 1.5 million males in the military (say 500 to 700,000)
And as the common people come to grips with the delusions that have been visited upon them there will be hell to pay. We face a dangerous uncertain future and that danger is not a few Muslim terrorists. That danger will come from the faithful armed followers of the right wing authoritarians who are trained and armed but no longer affordable. They smoke a little pot and have a relative or friend who is gay and a girlfriend or daughter or friend who is pregnant by mistake and they learn that the people they trusted to tell them the truth have been caught lying about everything they thought was true.
Eventually they will lay the blame for what has happened where it belongs and they will have nothing to lose when they seek retribution against those who destroyed their American dreams. We already know the authoritarians will strike hard in fear and those who see their intentions will eventually strike back.The Right wing authoritarians have no other way to go. They will make the mistake of thinking they can eliminate or imprison the monster they have created with their greed
People who have been deluded by their leaders have a common trait. They become enraged at the deceit. When they become hungry and unemployed they have nothing to lose and they are susceptible to serious rage. It will be difficult for the underpaid security forces to shoot those with whom they served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
And those of you counting on a ‘second’ coming should beware:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. Surely so
revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
WB Yeats.
It’s a funny thing you know. The information is all out there to be discovered or read. The information about how so many are duped into some mass delusion like:
JFK was gunned down by a lone assassin
WMDs were in IRAQ
Saddam was trying to purchase yellow cake from Niger
Trickle down economics will enrich the middle class
Putting more money in the hands of the extremely wealthy creates jobs
Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed from fire.
George W Bush actually won the 2000 Presidential Election
There is no global warming due to man’s activity
Climate change is a liberal plot
Hibbert’s peak is a myth
God gave man dominion over the Earth so we don’t have to care about the environment
Barack Obama is responsible for the debt and unemployment
The ‘liberal media’ lacks journalistic integrity
Fox News tells the unbiased truth
The Bible tells the literal truth
The earth is only around 8,000 years old
Man and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.
Natural selection and Darwinian principals of evolution are nonsense
The Domino Theory (Vietnam falls to totalitarian’s & all of asia will fall) is undeniable
There were death panels in the Obama health care plan
Katrina hit New Orleans because GOD punished them for their sins
AIDS is Gods punishment for homosexuality
Gay marriage will ruin the sanctity of marriage
Termination of a pregnancy is murder of a child.
A good Christian would insist that Terry Schivao be kept alive on a machine
A good Christian would murder any abortionist
Homosexuals should be thrown in prison or executed
The Patriot Act is required to keep us safe
The war on drugs is required to save our youth
The war on terror is a noble cause well worth the cost
The founding fathers built this nation on Faith in God as a Christian Nation
Liberals want to redistribute the wealth (even though we've seen the greatest redistribution of wealth in history since Reagan from the middle class to the ultra wealthy)
These are all commonly held delusions by a substantial segment of the population fed by the fundamentalist Pentecostal evangelical LDS and SBC churches and right wing authoritarian political leaders aided by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News
A Brief History of the USA since 1956
Richard Milhouse Nixon runs the country for Ike setting into motion Operation 40 using E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, David Atlee Phillips, G. Gordon Liddy, Portor Goss and a bunch of Cubans exiled from Castro’s Cuba to engage Sam Giancana, Trafficante, Johnny Rosselli and Charles Nicoletti in several plots to assassinate Fidel. George H. W. Bush and his Zapata Oil company are involved in the CIA’s efforts and Bush begins his CIA career. George H. W. Bush is the son of Prescott Bush of CT who made his fortune helping the Nazi’s finance WWII.
1960 JFK is elected to the Presidency with the assistance of Giancana in Illinois and he appoints RFK as Attorney General. RFK then goes after the mob with a vengeance enraging Giancana. JFK barely defeats RM Nixon sending Nixon to California where he is soundly beaten by Gov Brown prior to announcing his retirement from politics.
1960 Allen Dulles dupes JFK into going forward with the absurd Bay of Pigs invasion planned by Dulles and Nixon. Afterward Dulles is summarily fired by JFK who says he will break the CIA into a million pieces. This puts CIA Operation 40 operatives and a crew of Texas wingnut oil men in position to collude with mobsters and other government officials in the elimination of JFK and a coverup. The homosexual head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover is enraged with JFK for putting his brother Bobby over him in the Justice Department and he wastes little effort trying to get to the truth.
November 1963. James Files, Charles Nicoletti, and Johnny Rosselli are the three shooters who murder JFK at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Files fires the fatal shot from the grassy knoll. George H. W. Bush and Richard Nixon are both in Dallas with LBJ and JFK on that day. LBJ appoints Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission along with Gerald Ford and Arlen Spector to complete the cover up of the assassination by pinning the murder on Lee Harvey Oswald
This Coup d'état puts LBJ in office resulting in the deaths of over 58,000 and the wounding of over 250,000 young Americans in Viet Nam along with the death and incapacitation of over a million Vietnamese at a cost of a trillion dollars. A civil war we should have never been part of and that we lost. But that loss proved the fallacy of the Domino Theory and the pure delusion of the incredibly stupid anti-communist hysteria foisted on the American people by the McCarthyites for 20 years. The totalitarian dictatorships that use the word ‘communist’ to cover up – their dictatorial tyranny. Stalin and Mao and their heirs are ultimate authoritarians and their power is derived from Authoritarian Totalitarianism. The right wing authoritarians in this country use similar propaganda to arrive at a similar result. It’s a shared delusion
The ‘democratic’ totalitarians are more confusing to the undereducated people in the west. They use words like ‘freedom, democratically elected, capitalism, free market and power of the people’ while promoting fear and loathing of the ‘communists’ to control the electorate while doing everything they can to deny the truth to the people. It’s a shared delusion fostered by the right wing authoritarians.
In addition the American totalitarian authoritarians use religion – basic fundamentalist dogma and a professed belief in God – to cover up their basic lust for power. They insist on privacy, secrecy, and the surveillance state to “protect” Americans from “threats” they either invent or enhance and in some cases assist in order to gain and maintain authoritarian power over the people as part of the same delusion.
Richard M. Nixon becomes President in 1968 and he uses the same group of Operation 40 characters as ‘plumbers’ in an attempt to destroy the truth exposed by Daniel Ellsburg and his absurd inferiority complex drives him to bug the offices of the DNC even when there is no possible way he can be defeated by George McGovern. But driving Nixon from office does nothing to change the situation for the wealthy and powerful men who use Presidents as puppets to accomplish their ends – the accumulation of wealth and power.
The defeat of Gerald Ford by Jimmy Carter gives us a glimpse of truth as Carter tells us we need to conserve and cut back on the depletion of oil but Carter is an easy mark for the Right Wing Authoritarians and their unholy alliance with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and their fundamentalist “Christianist moral Majority” – yet another delusion.
So Ronald Reagan gains office in 1980 and begins the greatest redistribution of wealth in the history of the world. After FDR and Truman the oligarchs were effectively broken down to a situation where the weathiest 10% of the population controlled/owned 60% of the wealth and income. At this point in 2011 they own or control 90%. Reagan’s deregulation continued through George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton making possible the rise of Rupert Murdock, the Savings and Loan hijacking of the Treasury by people like Charles Keating, and finally the ultimate looting of federal funds by the likes of Halliburton and the military industrial complex during the mid-east terrorism wars, and the final insult of the mortgage crisis during “W’s” second term. Theft on a massive scale brought about by delusion.
Since Reagan the middle class has been systematically destroyed and the Rightwing Authoritarians have consolidated power to the point there is no way out. They can and have managed to elect an insipient fool like “W” to the presidency twice to get everything they ever wanted. And what they wanted was MORE. We are now back to a situation that is demonstrably worse than time prior to FDR when the Robber Barons took this country down the path to the Great Depression.
W and his handlers including his brother and Katherine Harris in Florida stole the election from Al Gore in 2000 and that was the last chance the country had to overcome the damage done by Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Bush ran the government for Reagan much like Nixon did for Ike and Cheney for W. With W the authoritarians proved that even a cheerleading frat boy C student with all the speech making ability of a 10th grade illiterate could be elected in this country if he invoked GOD.
Kevin Phillips AMERICAN THEOCRACY expounds on the power of the SBC and LDS in Presidential Elections. Take the LDS influenced states of Utah, Wy, Id, Nv, and AZ for 33 votes. Then add the line from ND to TX for another 62 votes from states that have both an SBC and LDS majority. Then add the solid Southern Baptist south - LA, Ark, AL, MS, TN, GA, SC, KY for 73 more electoral votes and that gives us 168 of the 173 required to take the White House. WVa offers 5 that went to McCain while Obama won in NV in 08 for 5. Missouri, Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina all have to be won by Obama for any chance at re-election. A Bachmann, Santorum, or Perry can win no matter how insane it may seem that our country suffers from this mass delusion.
England, and Ohio. This is not a pretty picture for his hopes in 2012. The real strength of America from New York and New England to the creative power of California and the progressive inspiration of the Pacific Northwest and across the populous centers of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania is threatened by domination from the SBC south and the Mormon west with the vast featureless plains of Oklahoma to North Dakota. In many ways it’s too bad we don’t have two separate countries we are so far apart culturally and intellectually.
No need to pop off your absurd objections to the idea of conspiracy. There was no ‘conspiracy’ to murder JFK. It was a well planned and financed coup d'etat by the most powerful financial interests in this country aided and abetted by elements of the Clandestine Services division of the CIA expertly covered up by the deluded and power hungry director of the FBI complicit with Allen Dulles and the CIA and the politicians who benefited from his death. All three Kennedy brothers were eliminated from the power struggle for the soul of America. The situation is now totally untenable as the unholy alliance between fundamentalist religious elements that naturally support the idea of Right Wing Authoritarianism as Dogma and the political power and interests of corporate America with 90% of our wealth can do whatever they want and shove it down the throats of the people with 24 hour a day misinformation from FOX News and talk radio
We will never be able to stop the effects of climate change even with the consensus of 93% of the scientific community. We can’t even agree on the undeniable facts of the age of the Earth and the idiotic misinformation campaign against simple Darwinian natural selection.
The God Delusion may not be that there is no GOD. That cannot be proven because there is no evidence to support existence and since it is a matter of Faith no lack of proof is compelling to the Faithful. But there is no doubt that even the Fundamentalists don’t intend to follow every edict in their Bible. The God Delusion is that somehow God spoke to W and told him to smite Saddam or that Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry or Rick Santorum in the White House is a decision graced by the will of God.
The God Delusion is an affectation of the followers of Right Wing Authoritarians. They’ve deluded themselves into thinking that freedom of or from religion is not an option in the USA. Despite their protestations it’s clear they believe that law in the USA should include criminalization of homosexuality because of their Bible. Some actually buy into the Pat Robertson Jerry Fallwell delusion that God visited Katrina on New Orleans because of sin or that AIDS was an act of God against homosexuals or that Paul Hill and other murderers are ‘instruments of their GOD.
One day in the future we may know why building 7 collapsed at the World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001. It will be far too late to prosecute the perpetrators just as it is now far too late to prosecute the perpetrators of the Coup d'état in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963 or those who arranged the death of Bobby Kennedy.
One truth is clear. A significant majority of the wealthiest 10% of Americans are only interested in gaining more wealth and power despite what it may do to the country or what was once the middle class. Most people in this country just want a decent job and a chance to go home to their families and watch their kids dance of play little league or soccer. But many if not most have now been denied that opportunity because of the unlimited greed of the very wealthy and the lie that rich men somehow create jobs. The rich are now richer than ever yet the unemployment rate rises. That’s called a delusion.
Many have somehow bought into that lie just as they bought into the lone assassin theory promoted by Dulles, Warren, Ford and Spector and kept in place by Nixon, Bush and LBJ.
DELUSION
It’s a sickening truth that still makes me angry.
This country will collapse financially – . But we won’t even allow the absurd Bush tax cuts to expire in order to reduce this debt. We certainly wouldn’t want to tax the obscenely wealthy another 10% to save the country from financial collapse - Even if it would benefit the wealthy more than the poor. Many will cry “redistribution of the wealth” when they can’t even acknowledge that the wealth has already been redistributed from the bulk of us to the wealthiest 10% since Reagan
Liberal wealth redistribution is a delusion
This country will suffer a good deal more than most as either cheap oil runs out or climate change hits the point of no return or both. Many are somehow deluded into the belief that we deserve to use 25% of the world’s energy even knowing that the resources that make that possible are running out at the alarming rate of 90,000,000 barrels of oil a day.
Many are deluded into thinking the incredible rise of Carbon elements in the atmosphere is a natural phenomenon without consequence.
Denial of Peak Oil and Climate Change is a delusion
We are deluded – we know that W and his wealthy handlers pushed us into a war over WMD that never existed yet we watch people who should be intelligent and morally responsible attack Barack Obama as the cause of the current situation.
We know that those bent on accumulating even greater wealth caused the mortgage crisis with their instruments of mass deception CDOs and other bogus worthless paper instruments that brought the nation to the brink of financial collapse. They blame that on Obama and the money that goes to keep the dispossessed from dying on the streets WMDs were a delusion. Welfare and social programs are causing the financial collapse – that’s a delusion.
They think there is some kind of big government plot by liberals to take away their freedom when they want to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us by criminalizing homosexuality or early termination of pregnancy. They absurdly believe there is some kind of plot against Christianity when ostensible Christians are now in almost complete control of the Electoral College.
That’s a delusion – the GOD Delusion.
One does not need to be a prophet to read and learn the truth about the past or to extrapolate from the available information the inevitable future. Once we begin to see even more effects of the incredible greed of the wealthy on the financial system, and once we begin to feel even greater effects of climate change, and once we actually become aware of the reality that cheap available energy in the form of fossil fuels is running out even they will eventually be unable to deny the delusion.
Or maybe not.
We are only 3 years past the financial meltdown wrought by Wall Street and only 7 years away from knowing the truth about Iraq and the WMDs. But those revelations have had zero effect on the delusional.
INCREASE AND DECREASE IN THE NATIONAL DEBT BY ADMINISTRATION.
Eisenhower R 1953–1957 71.4% 60.4% +6 -11.0% 83rd R, 84th D 83rd R,
Eisenhower R 1957–1961 60.4% 55.2% +20 -5.2% D D
Kennedy/Johnson D 1961–1965 55.2% 46.9% +30 -8.3% D D
Lyndon Johnson D 1965–1969 46.9% 38.6% +43 -8.3% D D
Richard Nixon R 1969–1973 38.6% 35.6% +101 -3.0% D D
Nixon/Ford R 1973–1977 35.6% 35.8% +177 +0.2% D D
Jimmy Carter D 1977–1981 35.8% 32.5% +288 -3.3% D D
Ronald Reagan R 1981–1985 32.5% 43.8% +823 +11.3% D R
Ronald Reagan R 1985–1989 43.8% 53.1% +1,050 +9.3% D 99th R, 100th D
Geo H. W. Bush R 1989–1993 53.1% 66.1% +1,483 +13.0% D D
Bill Clinton D 1993–1997 66.1% 65.4% +1,018 -0.7% 103rd D, 104th R
Bill Clinton D 1997–2001 65.4% 56.4% +401 -9.0% R R
George W. Bush R 2001–2005 56.4% 63.5% +2,135 +7.1% R 107th Split, 108
George W. Bush R 2005–2009 63.5% 84.2% +3,971 +20.7% 109th R,
Barack Obama D 2009– 84.2% 93.2% (2010) +1,653 (2010) +9.0% (2010) 111th D,
It’s clear that the myth of unreasonable spending during the terms of Democratic presidents is totally untrue. W’s debt increase was nearly 28% over 8 years
While during the Clinton years the debt decreased by 10%. Reagan and Bush 1 increased the deby by 30% over 12 years. The Kennedy Johnson years saw a decrease by 16.6%
The Nixon Ford years were a wash. And Jimmy Carter presided over a 3% decline. While the Eisenhower years saw a 26% increase.
Anybody having trouble seeing the picture yet?
It’s a DELUSION to consider Democrats as the prolific spenders. Even Obama was caught by the Bush administrations financial meltdown
Delusion will only end at the time of death for many. Wish I could be there when they learn the depth of their delusion. For others delusion will end with the financial collapse and the onset of a depression like none ever seen in this country. I may be here to see the effect of that collapse on their minds. For others it may be when gas hits $15 a gallon as part of that financial collapse. For others it may be a 4 degree rise in annual average temperature and the melting of the ice that covers Greenland, wiping out a lot of expensive coastal property. Don’t know if I will make it long enough to see it happen but perhaps you will and in advance “I TOLD YOU SO”.
In the meantime we can look forward to a Bachmann, Santorum, or Perry Presidency with population growth from unwanted pregnancy and a vast increase in prison populations from the criminalization of abortion and homosexuality. That kind of religious radicalization of politics will inevitably lead to violence and increased hatred of the American Taliban as they try to eliminate the vote for women. Their religion mixed with politics is a cyanide for America and you are deluded if you think God will somehow reward the country for enacting those laws. That’s a serious religious delusion.
A FEW GLOOMY PREDICTIONS BASED ON THE POPULAR DELUSIONS
Few people have the imagination or awareness to realize the fragility of this nation in the face of the dire consequences possible in the current situation. We've never faced a situation were so many factors of delusion converge with such polarizing political anger. The rhetoric has become as violent as the number of weapons in the hands of so many unemployed and militarily trained males. This is an extremely violent country and we have imprisoned thousands of men for smoking pot. There are thousands more in debt that they can never repay and millions who have no work and no hope. Many of these men blame the government because the right wing authoritarians along with the ultra wealthy have pushed the idea that government is evil. Many of these me believe in Armageddon, the rapture and a Second Coming. Think about 10 million American males that have nothing to lose and extreme anger against the government. A million Timothy McVeighs or Brevik's who believe the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants.
As the economy suffers further collapse and the price of a gallon of gas climbs to over $15 and it becomes impossible to put food on the table these political illiterates will blame the government and then the welfare queens and freeloaders but it will eventually dawn on them that their jobs were not exported to China by the weak. They will eventually look around at the gated communities and the multiple Mcmansions of the men who exported their jobs. They will then remember the Enron's and World Coms and the unbridled greed of the right wing authoritarians and it will dawn on them that their enemy isn't the poor jerk on welfare. The lights will eventually come on and they will begin to wonder about Cheney and Halliburton and W's claims of WMD's. Eventually they will figure out that it isn't the gays or the hippies or the poor that caused their misery and demise. They will realize the lie that giving more money and less taxes to the rich does not result in more jobs for them. Eventually they will wake up and realize that Ruper Murdock, Rodger Ailes, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have nothing in common with them. These filthy rich liars are simply the worst of the right wing authoritarian delusion.
Unregulated Capitalism will eventually drag this country into revolution and chaos. It doesn’t take that many hungry armed people with nothing to lose to loose the dogs of war against their oppressors in this country. 6.4 million men are now unemployed and want jobs in the USA – their jobs shipped overseas by their wealthy owners. Once that number starts to hit 5 million and people finally wake up to the truth that putting more money in the hands of the ultra rich has absolutely nothing to do with job creation it will become dangerous.
The 800 per 100,000 now in prison in the USA will reach 1000 soon and when we realize that’s really 1000 of every 30,000 males between 20 and 60 we will begin to see that the imprisoned plus the unemployed plus the black and Hispanic population will make it increasingly difficult to control. The trained military that will no longer be affordable as the economy collapses will return to a land where no jobs exist and where Blackwater is defunct. That’s a significant portion of 1.5 million males in the military (say 500 to 700,000)
And as the common people come to grips with the delusions that have been visited upon them there will be hell to pay. We face a dangerous uncertain future and that danger is not a few Muslim terrorists. That danger will come from the faithful armed followers of the right wing authoritarians who are trained and armed but no longer affordable. They smoke a little pot and have a relative or friend who is gay and a girlfriend or daughter or friend who is pregnant by mistake and they learn that the people they trusted to tell them the truth have been caught lying about everything they thought was true.
Eventually they will lay the blame for what has happened where it belongs and they will have nothing to lose when they seek retribution against those who destroyed their American dreams. We already know the authoritarians will strike hard in fear and those who see their intentions will eventually strike back.The Right wing authoritarians have no other way to go. They will make the mistake of thinking they can eliminate or imprison the monster they have created with their greed
People who have been deluded by their leaders have a common trait. They become enraged at the deceit. When they become hungry and unemployed they have nothing to lose and they are susceptible to serious rage. It will be difficult for the underpaid security forces to shoot those with whom they served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
And those of you counting on a ‘second’ coming should beware:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. Surely so
revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
WB Yeats.
6.03.2010
TENNESSEE - the VOLUNTEER state and Knoxville the capitol of right wing Republicanism in the State may seem like a strange place for recollection of the 40 year passed KENT STATE MASSACRE and it's aftermath. But Knoxville home to the University of Tennessee is where Richard M. Nixon chose to make his first "campus" visit in the wake of the protests and strikes that roiled the nation's campuses in the days that followed the murders of four students. In their memory I give you a bit of that history for your edification.
January 15 and May 28 of 1970 in Knoxville Tennessee, two days that altered the course of a life. One through no fault of my own and the other by my own design as a result of the first.
Listening to audio books while cycling helps me stay well read and passes the time. Imagine my surprise last month as I listened to Rick Perlstein's NIXONLAND and heard my name coming through the headphones. I almost fell off the bike.
Hearing Perlstein reference an event from forty years in my past got me to thinking about events that shaped and changed my life so I began to do some research to see what I could find to share about the experience.
If you have any interest in the trials of a liberal Democrat born into a Republican stronghold follow me below and see what I produced for you as a result of Mr Perlstein's prodding. A lot of work went into this and there is a lot here. I only hope I've done justice to two truly remarkable events in a truly remarkable time. Thank you for reading.
In order to understand the impact of this place you need to know a bit about Knoxville politics and history. Knoxville is the urban center of the Second Congressional District of Tennessee. This District had never seen a Democrat in that office. In 60 years of my 64 year lifespan the office has been held by two families. Howard Baker Sr served from 1950 until his death when his wife Irene served out his term in 1965, John Duncan Sr from 65 to 88 and his son John Duncan Jr from 1988 until the present. Knoxville is the capitol of conservative Republican East Tennessee and home to the University of Tennessee where these events took place.
2 events in early 1970 resulted in a radical change to the course of my life at age 24. - the first was marked by my designation as the KNOXVILLE 22nd and the 2nd was a visit to the UT Campus by Richard Nixon at the invitation of the Reverend Billy Graham.
This week on FACEBOOK a friend posted pictures of the Jan 15, 1970 police riot that took place outside the Administration Building on the famous UT Hill. In the picture below a crowd is gathered on the west side of Ayers Hall observing the action in front of the Austin Peay administration building across the street. The guy with a raised hand below the red line is me.
Evidently observing a demonstration and raising one's hand as seen in the picture above is enough to merit indictment on the FELONY charge of INCITING TO RIOT in Republican East Tennessee.
Prior to these two early 1970 events I had been a mainstream college Democrat participating in campus politics of the kind that elected student body & class Presidents and got fraternity brothers in positions like Homecoming Chairman and CARNICUS advisory committee. As Freshman Class President I even organized a "Support the Troops" rally in front of the Student Center.
HOW I BECAME THE KNOXVILLE 22ND
In early February 1970 I got a visit from my father's law partner at my apartment on the UT Campus. It came as quite a surprise. Jim Jones was a young lawyer in Dad's law firm who said he was sent because my father thought he could 'relate' to me better. His message was that I had been indicted by a grand jury on the Felony charge of INCITING A RIOT for my participation in a demonstration on January 15th. To say I was shocked is considerable understatement and this is why.
I had traveled to Miami with my younger brother's band over the Christmas and New Year's holiday to assist the band as a manager/sound mixer. My brother and I returned to Knoxville in early January and I decided to enroll at UT to finish up a couple of courses required to complete my degree even though I had truly been lucky in the first draw of the new draft lottery in December. For the first time in years I was not required to attend school to avoid the draft. But on Jan 15 I went up to the Hill to register for classes and there encountered a relatively small group of students listening to speeches by guys I later came to know as Peter Kami, Gus Hadorn, and Carroll Bible. They were protesting the decision by the student faculty selection committee to name Dr Edward J. Boling as the next UT President.
I had known Dr Boling quite well for some time because I worked for him as the student in charge of the Alumni Giving program and my family was close friends with the Boling family. I understood that the students and some faculty were upset with the choice because they had been named to the selection committee and they wanted an academic person to be President. Boling was a development person who mainly raised money and helped build the physical part of the university. Over their specific objections Boling was named making their participation on a selection committee a sham.
The speeches were not too exciting until Peter Kami an anemic looking guy with a Brazilian accent and wire rimmed granny glasses perched on his nose challenged Dr. Boling to an arm wrestling match for the office of President. It was funny because Peter's arm was pencil like and his lack of imposing physical attributes was quite apparent. Few would have bet on him prevailing in such a contest.
This detail should show you that the issue involved in this small protest was rather minor and not emotionally charged like the war or civil rights protests. There was no reason it should have resulted in arrests and serious disruption to several lives.
The small group grew smaller and weary as they began to drift away so a long haired fellow (Gus Hadorn I believe) jumped on the stump and suggested that the participants enter the admin building and "gum up the works" by standing in the Drop and Add lines. This suggestion failed miserably in rallying the troops and they continued to drift toward the stairs leading down the Hill.
Then two amazing things conspired to alter personal histories:
First the bells rang marking an end to that period of classes and several hundred students poured from nearby classroom buildings causing a temporary huge increase of people in the area, and 2) there appeared on the Hill a phalanx of UT Campus Police in full riot gear - White storm trooper helmets, clear acrylic shields, and large riot batons. The 30 men marched in a V formation toward the group at the administration building from the south with shield and helmets glistening in the bright Winter sun. What the speeches failed to do - inspire the interest of the students - the storm troopers managed in an instant. Now the students were very interested although only a few had any idea what the fuss was all about.
Over the next 30 minutes about 30 of the students gathered at the door to the admin building demanding to be admitted and a few hundred more stood around waiting to see what would happen next. An announcement over a loudspeaker demanding everyone clear the area was met with derision as students insisted they had the right to free assembly. A couple of the guys nearest the door were pushed an a single diamond shaped leaded pane of glass in a window broke. The troops formed a semicircle around the walkway and front door but people came and went in and out of that line with little resistance. Eventually an ultimatum was issued and a deadline set to clear the area by then "or else" and we got to wait and watch the clock tick down.
When the appointed time was reached the front doors to the administration building opened and out poured some 100 Knoxville Police in full riot gear with gas masks and dogs. We now had over 130 police for around 30 student demonstrators and maybe 300 observers. The cops grabbed 15 or 20 of the closest people and everyone else headed off the hill in a hurry. Tennessee is not Columbia or Berkeley.
While I was on the Hill that Jan afternoon I spoke to several fraternity brothers and a number of other students I knew. I had been President of Phi Sigma Kappa Fraternity, An elected representative from the liberal arts college in the student government, a member of the student tribunal, and President of the Freshman Class during the previous 5 years. In 1968 I had been selected as a national student field secretary for my Fraternity and traveled the country for a year in that capacity. I had then gone to the Law School for one year before deciding that law was not for me. I knew many of the students who were in the area while being a truly ambivalent and objective observer who was not a participant.
My year working for the fraternity had taken me to UC Berkeley and Stanford in the west where student activists were prevalent and relatively powerful. I had been to universities in New York, Pennsylvania, and New England in the East and the students were quite active ways seldom seen in the South. One thing I knew beyond all doubt was that there was little hope any similar student activism would thrive at the University of Tennessee.
I really was shocked at the police response. What were 100 city police officers in riot gear doing inside the administration building? I thought for certain they had to be there prior to the start of the gathering. It would have been nearly impossible for them to arrive later because there was no way inside that would not have revealed their entry to some students in the crowd. Why would the administration decide on such a massive police response to such a small gathering of students making speeches about their discontent with the selection of a President? There was never any credible threat to the security of the administration building. The 30 Campus police could easily handle that small part of the 'crowd' that might try to force their way inside.
In the days that followed the event I began to spend some time trying to help raise money for the defense of those students who had been arrested. Among them were two fraternity brothers who also had nothing to do with the demonstration. They like me had watched the events out of curiosity. One of them is now a staunch Republican - a stance I find difficult to believe given his experience. The other passed away some time ago. Both were mild mannered southern guys who definitely did not fit the "radical" mode or mindset. Both were shocked and rather embarrassed by their arrests. All of the then KNOXVILLE 21 were charged with FELONY "INCITING TO RIOT" for an event that bore no earthly resemblance to a riot even after the UT cops made their dramatic entrance or the mass of KPD officers poured out of the administration building. The extent of any 'damage' was the small pane of window glass a perhaps a trampled shrub.
BUT here it was a few weeks later and I was being driven downtown and booked as the 22nd person arrested for the events of Jan 15. The question is why?
The answer is simple.
Knoxville Tennessee as a part of the Second Congressional District that never had a Democrat in the seat was solidly Republican until 1948 when my father became County Judge(equivalent of Mayor of the City) to fill out the last two years of his predecessor who resigned to become Mayor of Knoxville. Dad was then elected to two full 8 year terms in 1950 and 1958 serving for 20 years and building a bit of momentum for Democrats. He had made one run for the Congressional seat in 1956 coming closer than any Democrat in history in a race against Howard Baker Sr.
The District Attorney of Knox County was a staunch Republican. The picture you see shows that I was present on the hill that day and that is all they required to get an indictment. Their logic was clear - indict the Judge's son and harm the Democrats politically.
Eventually most of the charges were reduced from felonies to the misdemeanor of Obstructing the Entrance to a Public Doorway on every participant except Peter Kami the frail Brazilian who challenged Ed Boling to an arm wrestling match. Poor Peter was forced to flea the country over this event His life was put in peril over a harmless bit of theater because he dared to register his protest and speak his mind here at the largest University in the South. Since Peter was foreign he fit the description 'outside agitator' and his last name could rhyme with 'COMMIE'. Wrong name, wrong place, and wrong time Peter. We don't treat our foreign guests well here Peter, particularly if they have the gall to think our freedoms apply to them.
I have little to complain about because I'm still here and I didn't even pay the $25 fine imposed for my non-infraction. But the events of Jan 1970 made me a radical in a land where 'freedom of speech and assembly' are empty and hollow terms even on the campus of a University. The fear and paranoia of local Republicans shown in their massing of 100 cops to quell a small protest rally is in a large part responsible for what happened in the 70's all over the country. The high minded idea of FREEDOM wasn't really enjoyed in AMERICA when REPUBLICANS are in control.
As a result of that arrest my Spring quarter at UT involved a lot of fund raising for defense of the KNOXVILLE 22 - in the time of the Catonsville 9 and the Chicago 7 we had our place and number - and a run for President of the Student Body - a race lost when the Radical (me) and the liberal split the vote and elected the standard frat guy John Smith. That turned out to be interesting when the big show rolled into Knoxville in the end of May.
HOW NIXON USED THE MEDIA AND BILLY GRAHAM TO RAP TO THE STUDENTS AT TENNESSEE. - title by GARRY WILLS subtitle JESUS WEPT
Time and events conspired that Spring to force Richard Nixon into a trip to Knoxville. The massacre at Kent State and the bombing of Cambodia had brought the anti-war effort to a crescendo and the campuses across the country to a screeching halt.
Nixon wanted to show that he was welcome on a college campus somewhere - anywhere. And when it was discovered that his good friend the Reverend Billy Graham was holding a crusade in Neyland Stadium on the campus of the largest University in the south during final exam week the prospect was just too good to pass up. It would also serve as a campaign stop to bolster the chances of the opponent of his nemesis Senator Albert Gore Sr who now openly opposed his war.
Never mind that the stadium would be filled with bus loads from outlying churches instead of students. The stadium was on the campus and the students would be cramming for exams or on their way home for the Summer with their exams behind them. Surrounded by good Christian Republicans from East Tennessee the threat of any demonstration was minor and this would be a religious service where he would be at worship. Never mind that the platform would host the entire Republican state Congressional Delegation without a single Democrat in sight and feature prayers for the success of his war policy.
As the recently defeated candidate of the left for Student Body President it fell to me to help organize some kind of protest to the NIXON visit. Luckily there were many who shared my disgust over the sham appearance including several prominent members of the faculty including Dr Richard Marius
who later moved to Harvard, and Dr Charles H Reynolds the head of the Theology Department (who's son you may know as the INSTAPUNDIT )
We put together a plan for a silent demonstration inside the stadium as part of the Crusade audience. I helped print up several hundred small signs that read simply THOU SHALT NOT KILL. Afterall who could object to a commandment at a religious service?
We gathered at the Student Center a few hours before the stadium would open and the speakers including myself urged the demonstrators to be respectful and silent and allow our signs to make our statement. We talked about going down on the field when Reverend Graham made "the Call" and holding up our signs or our hands in the PEACE sign.
One hour prior to the opening of the stadium we moved about 600 strong to the concrete interlocking U and T - a gift to UT from my fraternity when I was it's President seen in the stadium picture above. Everyone remained calm and orderly as they opened the gates.
At that point the problems began. Knoxville and Campus Police did their best to disrupt our orderly entry to the stadium. When they saw our THOU SHALT NOT KILL signs they ripped them out of our hands. Only a small number made it to the stands hidden inside clothing. A student who had our bull horn was handcuffed and dragged the length of the field to the roar of approval by the "Christians". It was like the Biblical Christians and lions in some bizarre reverse.
This youtube vidio shows a fleeting glimpse of the demonstrators who managed to get their signs into the stadium at the 1 minute mark of the 3:22 video
I INTERRUPT MY NARRATIVE HERE TO OFFER THE RECOLLECTIONS OF THE MAN YOU SEE IN THE PICTURE ABOVE WITH THE STRIPED ROBE AND "LET OUR PEOPLE GO" SIGN - Mr William Carroll Bible:
Since most of the signs were confiscated and demonstrators were being subjected to some rather vile comments and shouts from the assembled "Christians" the idea of a silent protest soon fell apart when Nixon took the podium. Police photographers took pictures of the protesters and police filled the sidelines in front of the protester section. Nixon's words were not drowned out by the small group of protesters but they were overwhelmed by the 90,000 Christians who successfully shouted the protesters and Nixon down.
HERE is what GARRY WILLS had to say about the events and my participation:
You can read the entire excellent article by GARRY WILLS right here
Once you've seen the video and read the GARRY WILLS article you will see that our protest didn't have much effect. Nixon and the media left the impression that Nixon had indeed gone on a major American Campus and was welcomed. But we tried and for our efforts 57 arrest warrents were issued and served for people who dared to take THOU SHALT NOT KILL signs to a religious service. They were charged with DISRUPTING A RELIGIOUS SERVICE. A religious service for only the Republican Right in the Rightwing Republican city of Knoxville. Their convictions were appealed to higher courts until they were eventually overturned.
For me these events represented a final stage in change from my original ambition to serve my father's wishes that I enter politics and run for Governor. Instead I left for Canada on the eve of Nixon's reelection in 72 despite my lucky lottery number because I refused to live in a country that would elect that him twice.
If you happened to be in Knoxville around that time I am collecting the recollections of participants in these events for a website and a book and I would love to hear from you via my FACEBOOK page
If all of this hasn't satisfied your thirst for East Tennessee politics read the Faculty Report on the events involved HERE The Faculty did acknowledge that the confiscation of our THOU SHALT NOT KILL signs was regrettable.
You may also find a few pages of BILLY GRAHAM: A BIOGRAPHY - ON THE NIXON VISIT - interesting:
THIS IS THE SECTION OF THE BILLY GRAHAM BIOGRAPHY INVOLVING THE NIXON VISIT TO THE KNOXVILLE CRUSADE AND THE PROTESTS.
January 15 and May 28 of 1970 in Knoxville Tennessee, two days that altered the course of a life. One through no fault of my own and the other by my own design as a result of the first.
Listening to audio books while cycling helps me stay well read and passes the time. Imagine my surprise last month as I listened to Rick Perlstein's NIXONLAND and heard my name coming through the headphones. I almost fell off the bike.
Hearing Perlstein reference an event from forty years in my past got me to thinking about events that shaped and changed my life so I began to do some research to see what I could find to share about the experience.
If you have any interest in the trials of a liberal Democrat born into a Republican stronghold follow me below and see what I produced for you as a result of Mr Perlstein's prodding. A lot of work went into this and there is a lot here. I only hope I've done justice to two truly remarkable events in a truly remarkable time. Thank you for reading.
In order to understand the impact of this place you need to know a bit about Knoxville politics and history. Knoxville is the urban center of the Second Congressional District of Tennessee. This District had never seen a Democrat in that office. In 60 years of my 64 year lifespan the office has been held by two families. Howard Baker Sr served from 1950 until his death when his wife Irene served out his term in 1965, John Duncan Sr from 65 to 88 and his son John Duncan Jr from 1988 until the present. Knoxville is the capitol of conservative Republican East Tennessee and home to the University of Tennessee where these events took place.
2 events in early 1970 resulted in a radical change to the course of my life at age 24. - the first was marked by my designation as the KNOXVILLE 22nd and the 2nd was a visit to the UT Campus by Richard Nixon at the invitation of the Reverend Billy Graham.
This week on FACEBOOK a friend posted pictures of the Jan 15, 1970 police riot that took place outside the Administration Building on the famous UT Hill. In the picture below a crowd is gathered on the west side of Ayers Hall observing the action in front of the Austin Peay administration building across the street. The guy with a raised hand below the red line is me.
Evidently observing a demonstration and raising one's hand as seen in the picture above is enough to merit indictment on the FELONY charge of INCITING TO RIOT in Republican East Tennessee.
Prior to these two early 1970 events I had been a mainstream college Democrat participating in campus politics of the kind that elected student body & class Presidents and got fraternity brothers in positions like Homecoming Chairman and CARNICUS advisory committee. As Freshman Class President I even organized a "Support the Troops" rally in front of the Student Center.
HOW I BECAME THE KNOXVILLE 22ND
In early February 1970 I got a visit from my father's law partner at my apartment on the UT Campus. It came as quite a surprise. Jim Jones was a young lawyer in Dad's law firm who said he was sent because my father thought he could 'relate' to me better. His message was that I had been indicted by a grand jury on the Felony charge of INCITING A RIOT for my participation in a demonstration on January 15th. To say I was shocked is considerable understatement and this is why.
I had traveled to Miami with my younger brother's band over the Christmas and New Year's holiday to assist the band as a manager/sound mixer. My brother and I returned to Knoxville in early January and I decided to enroll at UT to finish up a couple of courses required to complete my degree even though I had truly been lucky in the first draw of the new draft lottery in December. For the first time in years I was not required to attend school to avoid the draft. But on Jan 15 I went up to the Hill to register for classes and there encountered a relatively small group of students listening to speeches by guys I later came to know as Peter Kami, Gus Hadorn, and Carroll Bible. They were protesting the decision by the student faculty selection committee to name Dr Edward J. Boling as the next UT President.
I had known Dr Boling quite well for some time because I worked for him as the student in charge of the Alumni Giving program and my family was close friends with the Boling family. I understood that the students and some faculty were upset with the choice because they had been named to the selection committee and they wanted an academic person to be President. Boling was a development person who mainly raised money and helped build the physical part of the university. Over their specific objections Boling was named making their participation on a selection committee a sham.
The speeches were not too exciting until Peter Kami an anemic looking guy with a Brazilian accent and wire rimmed granny glasses perched on his nose challenged Dr. Boling to an arm wrestling match for the office of President. It was funny because Peter's arm was pencil like and his lack of imposing physical attributes was quite apparent. Few would have bet on him prevailing in such a contest.
This detail should show you that the issue involved in this small protest was rather minor and not emotionally charged like the war or civil rights protests. There was no reason it should have resulted in arrests and serious disruption to several lives.
The small group grew smaller and weary as they began to drift away so a long haired fellow (Gus Hadorn I believe) jumped on the stump and suggested that the participants enter the admin building and "gum up the works" by standing in the Drop and Add lines. This suggestion failed miserably in rallying the troops and they continued to drift toward the stairs leading down the Hill.
Then two amazing things conspired to alter personal histories:
First the bells rang marking an end to that period of classes and several hundred students poured from nearby classroom buildings causing a temporary huge increase of people in the area, and 2) there appeared on the Hill a phalanx of UT Campus Police in full riot gear - White storm trooper helmets, clear acrylic shields, and large riot batons. The 30 men marched in a V formation toward the group at the administration building from the south with shield and helmets glistening in the bright Winter sun. What the speeches failed to do - inspire the interest of the students - the storm troopers managed in an instant. Now the students were very interested although only a few had any idea what the fuss was all about.
Over the next 30 minutes about 30 of the students gathered at the door to the admin building demanding to be admitted and a few hundred more stood around waiting to see what would happen next. An announcement over a loudspeaker demanding everyone clear the area was met with derision as students insisted they had the right to free assembly. A couple of the guys nearest the door were pushed an a single diamond shaped leaded pane of glass in a window broke. The troops formed a semicircle around the walkway and front door but people came and went in and out of that line with little resistance. Eventually an ultimatum was issued and a deadline set to clear the area by then "or else" and we got to wait and watch the clock tick down.
When the appointed time was reached the front doors to the administration building opened and out poured some 100 Knoxville Police in full riot gear with gas masks and dogs. We now had over 130 police for around 30 student demonstrators and maybe 300 observers. The cops grabbed 15 or 20 of the closest people and everyone else headed off the hill in a hurry. Tennessee is not Columbia or Berkeley.
While I was on the Hill that Jan afternoon I spoke to several fraternity brothers and a number of other students I knew. I had been President of Phi Sigma Kappa Fraternity, An elected representative from the liberal arts college in the student government, a member of the student tribunal, and President of the Freshman Class during the previous 5 years. In 1968 I had been selected as a national student field secretary for my Fraternity and traveled the country for a year in that capacity. I had then gone to the Law School for one year before deciding that law was not for me. I knew many of the students who were in the area while being a truly ambivalent and objective observer who was not a participant.
My year working for the fraternity had taken me to UC Berkeley and Stanford in the west where student activists were prevalent and relatively powerful. I had been to universities in New York, Pennsylvania, and New England in the East and the students were quite active ways seldom seen in the South. One thing I knew beyond all doubt was that there was little hope any similar student activism would thrive at the University of Tennessee.
I really was shocked at the police response. What were 100 city police officers in riot gear doing inside the administration building? I thought for certain they had to be there prior to the start of the gathering. It would have been nearly impossible for them to arrive later because there was no way inside that would not have revealed their entry to some students in the crowd. Why would the administration decide on such a massive police response to such a small gathering of students making speeches about their discontent with the selection of a President? There was never any credible threat to the security of the administration building. The 30 Campus police could easily handle that small part of the 'crowd' that might try to force their way inside.
In the days that followed the event I began to spend some time trying to help raise money for the defense of those students who had been arrested. Among them were two fraternity brothers who also had nothing to do with the demonstration. They like me had watched the events out of curiosity. One of them is now a staunch Republican - a stance I find difficult to believe given his experience. The other passed away some time ago. Both were mild mannered southern guys who definitely did not fit the "radical" mode or mindset. Both were shocked and rather embarrassed by their arrests. All of the then KNOXVILLE 21 were charged with FELONY "INCITING TO RIOT" for an event that bore no earthly resemblance to a riot even after the UT cops made their dramatic entrance or the mass of KPD officers poured out of the administration building. The extent of any 'damage' was the small pane of window glass a perhaps a trampled shrub.
BUT here it was a few weeks later and I was being driven downtown and booked as the 22nd person arrested for the events of Jan 15. The question is why?
The answer is simple.
Knoxville Tennessee as a part of the Second Congressional District that never had a Democrat in the seat was solidly Republican until 1948 when my father became County Judge(equivalent of Mayor of the City) to fill out the last two years of his predecessor who resigned to become Mayor of Knoxville. Dad was then elected to two full 8 year terms in 1950 and 1958 serving for 20 years and building a bit of momentum for Democrats. He had made one run for the Congressional seat in 1956 coming closer than any Democrat in history in a race against Howard Baker Sr.
The District Attorney of Knox County was a staunch Republican. The picture you see shows that I was present on the hill that day and that is all they required to get an indictment. Their logic was clear - indict the Judge's son and harm the Democrats politically.
Eventually most of the charges were reduced from felonies to the misdemeanor of Obstructing the Entrance to a Public Doorway on every participant except Peter Kami the frail Brazilian who challenged Ed Boling to an arm wrestling match. Poor Peter was forced to flea the country over this event His life was put in peril over a harmless bit of theater because he dared to register his protest and speak his mind here at the largest University in the South. Since Peter was foreign he fit the description 'outside agitator' and his last name could rhyme with 'COMMIE'. Wrong name, wrong place, and wrong time Peter. We don't treat our foreign guests well here Peter, particularly if they have the gall to think our freedoms apply to them.
I have little to complain about because I'm still here and I didn't even pay the $25 fine imposed for my non-infraction. But the events of Jan 1970 made me a radical in a land where 'freedom of speech and assembly' are empty and hollow terms even on the campus of a University. The fear and paranoia of local Republicans shown in their massing of 100 cops to quell a small protest rally is in a large part responsible for what happened in the 70's all over the country. The high minded idea of FREEDOM wasn't really enjoyed in AMERICA when REPUBLICANS are in control.
As a result of that arrest my Spring quarter at UT involved a lot of fund raising for defense of the KNOXVILLE 22 - in the time of the Catonsville 9 and the Chicago 7 we had our place and number - and a run for President of the Student Body - a race lost when the Radical (me) and the liberal split the vote and elected the standard frat guy John Smith. That turned out to be interesting when the big show rolled into Knoxville in the end of May.
HOW NIXON USED THE MEDIA AND BILLY GRAHAM TO RAP TO THE STUDENTS AT TENNESSEE. - title by GARRY WILLS subtitle JESUS WEPT
Time and events conspired that Spring to force Richard Nixon into a trip to Knoxville. The massacre at Kent State and the bombing of Cambodia had brought the anti-war effort to a crescendo and the campuses across the country to a screeching halt.
Nixon wanted to show that he was welcome on a college campus somewhere - anywhere. And when it was discovered that his good friend the Reverend Billy Graham was holding a crusade in Neyland Stadium on the campus of the largest University in the south during final exam week the prospect was just too good to pass up. It would also serve as a campaign stop to bolster the chances of the opponent of his nemesis Senator Albert Gore Sr who now openly opposed his war.
Never mind that the stadium would be filled with bus loads from outlying churches instead of students. The stadium was on the campus and the students would be cramming for exams or on their way home for the Summer with their exams behind them. Surrounded by good Christian Republicans from East Tennessee the threat of any demonstration was minor and this would be a religious service where he would be at worship. Never mind that the platform would host the entire Republican state Congressional Delegation without a single Democrat in sight and feature prayers for the success of his war policy.
As the recently defeated candidate of the left for Student Body President it fell to me to help organize some kind of protest to the NIXON visit. Luckily there were many who shared my disgust over the sham appearance including several prominent members of the faculty including Dr Richard Marius
who later moved to Harvard, and Dr Charles H Reynolds the head of the Theology Department (who's son you may know as the INSTAPUNDIT )
We put together a plan for a silent demonstration inside the stadium as part of the Crusade audience. I helped print up several hundred small signs that read simply THOU SHALT NOT KILL. Afterall who could object to a commandment at a religious service?
We gathered at the Student Center a few hours before the stadium would open and the speakers including myself urged the demonstrators to be respectful and silent and allow our signs to make our statement. We talked about going down on the field when Reverend Graham made "the Call" and holding up our signs or our hands in the PEACE sign.
One hour prior to the opening of the stadium we moved about 600 strong to the concrete interlocking U and T - a gift to UT from my fraternity when I was it's President seen in the stadium picture above. Everyone remained calm and orderly as they opened the gates.
At that point the problems began. Knoxville and Campus Police did their best to disrupt our orderly entry to the stadium. When they saw our THOU SHALT NOT KILL signs they ripped them out of our hands. Only a small number made it to the stands hidden inside clothing. A student who had our bull horn was handcuffed and dragged the length of the field to the roar of approval by the "Christians". It was like the Biblical Christians and lions in some bizarre reverse.
This youtube vidio shows a fleeting glimpse of the demonstrators who managed to get their signs into the stadium at the 1 minute mark of the 3:22 video
I INTERRUPT MY NARRATIVE HERE TO OFFER THE RECOLLECTIONS OF THE MAN YOU SEE IN THE PICTURE ABOVE WITH THE STRIPED ROBE AND "LET OUR PEOPLE GO" SIGN - Mr William Carroll Bible:
The Billy Graham Crusade, May 28, 1970, Neyland Stadium, Knoxville, TN
Was it a political or religious event?
For me it was religious.
The robe had been brought to the student government office where people were preparing for the demonstration. It was offered for me to wear, with the suggestion that I needed a robe since I 'looked like Jesus'.
Jesus? I balked inside myself, but decided to wear it anyway. That my zen of intersections should come in the form of a Biblical robe is not surprising. I had spent the past decade on a spiritual quest. In 1961 I had answered a call in Montreat, NC, by missionaries from Brazil to live and travel in Brazil to learn about the church's mission work. After high school graduation I and seven others spent a school year on this quest. My plans after Brazil included a church-centered college and a resolve to return to Brazil to serve as a missionary. I had been prepared for this journey with the mind set of duck-and-cover vigilance against the (Communist) enemy. I had been Cadet Colonel in Jr. ROTC. My father worked for the federal government. I understood Law and Order from the inside out.
The assumptions behind my life plans may have been naive. Some of us were rabbits on the tracks and locomotives were rumbling nearby. Trouble for me began in college when I evaluated my experience in Brazil. I could see that our high standard of living was built on the backs of others' suffering, enforced for corporate gain. I understood the same thing was happening as well in Viet Nam. During this transition the intensity of my private spiritual life remained central, even as religion fell from my conversation and I abandoned the mission plans in exchange for a study of History at UT's graduate school. By the time of the crusade my spiritual life, along with the rest of existence, had become totally focused by the war, its evil nature and lies. Accepting the emerging truth about the nature of Power was destroying the childhood framework that held my world together, creating a vacuum of authority.
Today, distrust of government is taken for granted, not something to shatter one's foundations. But my world then was cracking as I tried to reconcile my Christian faith to my country's role in history. It was a deeper concern for me than the rumble gathering on the tracks, and I sacrificed much for it.
A Biblical robe needed its own sign. The preprinted signs read "Thou shall not kill". I wanted a sign that read, "Let our people go", a reference to the Knoxville 22 (arrests) from an earlier protest on campus, and for all the other political prisoners around the country. I changed Moses's quote to 'our' because they were not 'my' people.
Using a quote by Moses was a step away from comparison to Jesus. But Moses didn't fit me any better. He led his people. Communication and interpersonal skills are required of a leader; I was blessed with an abundance of neither. I was better suited to see large patterns in history than to connect effectively with individuals. I know as people grow old they may not remember everything about the past, but I'd be surprised if anyone remembers me as a leader in those protests of 1970. I was the street-theater element -- independent, stamped by my personal quest, not necessarily relevant to the group's plans.
At some point the phone in the office rang. It was a national radio show wanting an interview. Apparently, nobody wanted to talk to them, so I did. I explained the need to oppose Nixon's appearance on campus under the circumstances. The reporter then asked if I didn't fear arrest. I said I didn't see any reason for arrests to be made. I was sincere in that.
I dressed and folded the sign under the robe to secret it past the sentries at the gate.
Once inside the stadium, I fell under a spell of reverence for the enormity of the event. I remember holding the sign up, and wanting to stare a hole through this evil President. It was a contempt spawned by the betrayal of an innocent faith in my country, made worse because the lies were cloaked in patriotism.
The protesters that day exercised free speech during the political parts of the rally, but practiced no violence. The call for violence that I recall came from one of the singers of a spiritual hymn when she expressed a desire to come down and give us a smack. Exactly what effect that was meant to have on an angry crowd of 90,000 hungry Christians who gladly would have fed us to the lions on the spot, only she can say. I was to feel some of its impact soon enough.
A lot of influences led me into Neyland Stadium dressed in a robe. But there was a common prime mover for everyone protesting that day, on both sides. The war was the bullying of all young people by cynical liars. I understood the lies as a student of History. But those who had no choice but to go to war were the greatest victims, regardless of their attitude about their roles. If their parents were sitting in the stadium that day and saw the protesters as a lightening rod to channel their own anger, then I can't hate them for that. They were in the same position as I -- twisted into circumstances they could not control -- we were all small people in the presence of Power.
Everyone present was transfixed by the moment. Everyone was equally human, living from moment to moment in the space they occupied, just as they were called to do. That included Billy Graham. We were on opposite sides of truth that day, but I have nothing but respect for Dr. Graham today.
When Nixon quit talking and the protesters followed suit, I walked from the stands onto the field to listen to Graham. I had come from an intensely religious background and wanted to communicate my faith by clearly, obviously, paying attention to Graham's words. I sat on the ground at midfield and listened intently to the sermon. Likely, no one caught my drift.
When Graham finished speaking I stood up to leave the stadium. As I left the field. I was met by a uniformed officer and arrested. The spell was broken. I began yelling to the nearby spectators, "They're taking political prisoners!" That earned me a club across the knee -- a smack of sorts, set to a hymn no doubt, intended to cause permanent damage I bet. My knee cap, however, hidden by the robe, survived by an inch.
Once in my cell, I asked that Billy Graham pay me a visit. I wanted to hear his rationale for sponsoring Nixon. That doomed request marked my final break with organized religion. As it sank in that he would never come to my cell, the vacuum of authority split apart at the seams. The phantoms of both 'law and order', and the moral authority of the church stood before me in that vacuum, both hollow of soul. After that, I resolved to take my quest for God on the road, to find whatever truth that comes into my life in the future without appeal to church or state.
Less naive after the crusade, I watched as Power's war on its people limped on for more unnecessary, life-crushing years. More souls were torn apart; lives were lost. The unimaginable horror suffered by the Asia people we don't even want to know. Today I am not surprised that in the new century Power has established a permanent war on its people and their civil liberties, with the blessings of the majority.
Looking into my jail cell that night in 1970, any student of the Bible should recognize the Biblical character I really resembled. I hadn't planned it, but I was in the role of an Old Testament prophet -- an outcast, despised for a message that was too harsh to accept, truth that would challenge a certain moral comfort. All of those people in the stands that day hating the protesters were playing their role too, just as it is in the Bible.
Since most of the signs were confiscated and demonstrators were being subjected to some rather vile comments and shouts from the assembled "Christians" the idea of a silent protest soon fell apart when Nixon took the podium. Police photographers took pictures of the protesters and police filled the sidelines in front of the protester section. Nixon's words were not drowned out by the small group of protesters but they were overwhelmed by the 90,000 Christians who successfully shouted the protesters and Nixon down.
HERE is what GARRY WILLS had to say about the events and my participation:
"Knoxville police, looking about for applicable laws, had found one to protect him from "political" dissent. Tennessee statute TCA 39-1204 forbids anyone to disrupt a religious service. That would allow cops to take away political placards, ban any political shouts (even those for Nixon), expel all who indulged in politics during "the service" so much for outside agitators. For inside ones, the police had another inhibitor. After a disturbance on January 15 of this year, police had identified and arrested some of those present, with the help of photographs; now they would ostentatiously shuffle those same photos while taking new ones, pointing (pointedly) at known campus radicals; promising, by that simple act. more arrests of the January 15 sort. Just to make sure that the nonpolitical nature of the meeting was understood, the campaign manager for Republican senatorial candidate Bill Brock, on the night before Nixon's appearance, talked with a Nixon advance man, Dick Andrews, and told Y.A.F. people not to bring their placards to the stadium—instead to line the motorcade route with them.
Would the plan work? Secret Service men, after careful soundings, decided that it would. After all, this was Big Orange Country. The school belonged to the community, which belonged to the First Baptist Church, which was heart and soul (if only he would have them) devoted to Billy, who is servitor and celebrator of any President (of power), but especially of his friend and fellow addict of success-religiosity, Richard Nixon. Town, gown, bank, church, and Crusade were of one mind. Even the Mayor of Knoxville addressed the Crusade, sang in its choir, and acted as counselor to those coming out of the stands, after Billy's sermon, to make their decision for Christ on the rubber turf. He also issued a proclamation to all city employees, telling them to renew their commitment to God. The police chief's daughter told the Crusade why she was an American. A high-school graduating class held its baccalaureate service at the Crusade, in its gowns and mortarboards. If this was not Nixon country, then what is?
But what of the university's own students? Would they join this universal hymn of praise to God and Nixon? The question hardly crossed local people's minds. The U.T. product was well-known—the perfect fraternity man, the perfect sorority girl. Call them Ken and Barbie— they were mainly wardrobe. "The first thing we did to a pledge," one senior remembered for me, "was grab his shirt by the collar and look at his label. London Fog coats, Gant shirts, Canterbury belts, Haggar slacks, a red carnation on one's blazer, three-piece suits— that's what we looked for."
It made a pretty package, whether male or female. Barbie, for instance; Tricia Nixon corn-fed to pleasanter roundnesses—a Tricia with a body, as it were; and with the same fixed smile, the lidless doll-gaze, to proclaim unassuming dutifulness. Barbie is pretty, glib, obedient, glowing—every Big Orange footballer's patriotic wet-dream.
Or Barry—Barry Bozeman. His father, a local politician, was the university's head of student activities as an undergraduate; his mother was editor of the school paper and a Torehbearer (one of the all-round top-seven seniors). Barry had not missed a single home game since he was six years old; he had acted in the university's theatre for children. Easily, with no effort, he became president of his freshman class (in which capacity he led a demonstration in favor of the Vietnam war), president of his fraternity (Phi Sigma Kappa). Pinned for a while to the Phi Sig National Moonlight Girl, he returned to his high-school sweetheart, the storybook ending. Another perfect product, Ken-Barry matching Barbie-Sue, ready to be set up like a trophy in some cushioned Knoxville office. But what happens when Perfection displays a crack or a flaw? Terrible things in Knoxville and that’s what happened with Barry, last fall, while he was working as a booking agent for a rock band, he began to let his hair grow. All his father's friends noticed, and whispered, and his father noticed their whispers. Which led to an ultimatum by Christmas—cut his hair or get out of the house. Barry got out; got arrested with twenty-one others in the January 15 campus disturbance; joined a March Against Repression led by Jerry Rubin, in Nashville; ran—and ran strong— as a radical for Student President this spring. Something bad was happening on campus.
So Barry, once the rah-iest of rah-boys, was there, with two hundred others, on the day before Nixon came, plotting ways to show student disapproval of his coming. It was a small group but influential, containing most of the active politicians on campus. Even the new Student President, a conservative, was there—John Smith. The Student Government Association used to belong to the fraternities, but changes had been taking place across the last four years. John Smith, Barry's Phi Sig brother, barely squeaked in when the school's Left vote split between the "radical" (Barry) and a "liberal" candidate."
You can read the entire excellent article by GARRY WILLS right here
Once you've seen the video and read the GARRY WILLS article you will see that our protest didn't have much effect. Nixon and the media left the impression that Nixon had indeed gone on a major American Campus and was welcomed. But we tried and for our efforts 57 arrest warrents were issued and served for people who dared to take THOU SHALT NOT KILL signs to a religious service. They were charged with DISRUPTING A RELIGIOUS SERVICE. A religious service for only the Republican Right in the Rightwing Republican city of Knoxville. Their convictions were appealed to higher courts until they were eventually overturned.
For me these events represented a final stage in change from my original ambition to serve my father's wishes that I enter politics and run for Governor. Instead I left for Canada on the eve of Nixon's reelection in 72 despite my lucky lottery number because I refused to live in a country that would elect that him twice.
If you happened to be in Knoxville around that time I am collecting the recollections of participants in these events for a website and a book and I would love to hear from you via my FACEBOOK page
If all of this hasn't satisfied your thirst for East Tennessee politics read the Faculty Report on the events involved HERE The Faculty did acknowledge that the confiscation of our THOU SHALT NOT KILL signs was regrettable.
You may also find a few pages of BILLY GRAHAM: A BIOGRAPHY - ON THE NIXON VISIT - interesting:
THIS IS THE SECTION OF THE BILLY GRAHAM BIOGRAPHY INVOLVING THE NIXON VISIT TO THE KNOXVILLE CRUSADE AND THE PROTESTS.
120This diary was a lot of work and I would be most appreciative of your recommendations and comments.
BILLY GRAHAM
To the president, the University of Tennessee seemed a relatively safe place to break out of his relative isolation at the White House. This , after all was not a campus known for its political progressivism or notable for its anger at the war in Vietnam. It is true that following the news of Kent State a large contingent of students, along with a number of professors, had boycotted classes and that some 1,500 protesters had marched to the campus field house that housed the ROTC offices It si also true that student had lowered the flag to half staff in honor of the student slain at Kent State.
Nevertheless there had been no extensive violence. Nixon felt generally comfortable in the South, where his popularity remained relatively stable and where his wartime policies were supported in greater numbers than in any other part of the country
For the 5I-year-old Billy Graham. lean and youthful-looking with side-burns and over-the-collar hair, the Knoxville crusade was another chance to echo the themes he had pursued in other recent meetings — that the youth of America, hungering for identity and sense of family, could rally around a revolution for Christ.
The first days of the crusade in Knoxville featured music legends Johnny Cash, Cart Perkins, and the Carter Family. Although a few pro-testers mingled outside the stadium handing OUT antiwar leaflets, those who attended the crusade were treated to what they had come to hear — a rousing evangelical show, capped by the inimitable Billy Graham Sermon.
On May 27, It all changed. The announcement of President Nixon’s VISIT a day before the event was a last minute surprise, even to Graham. The president decided the crusade would be a perfect way for him to connect to the people at a time of devastating national tension. He would become the first sitting President ever to speak at a Billy Graham Crusade. Excited but apprehensive about the President’s appearance, Graham said to a reporter, There will not be anything political— I hope 0 in this visit. :
The announcement that the President would make the University of Tennessee his coming-out event enraged antiwar protesters on campus. And they reacted quickly. Aided by several university professors, student protesters decided to carry signs printed "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "Peace Now* Knowing that the national media would hone in on the event, the planners decided not to heckle or chant. Fearing that such a demonstration would alienate many from their cause. After all, the crusade was supposed to be a religious event. They decided to join in the throng when Graham called for converts but they would bow their heads and make the two fingered peace sign gesture. It was to be a silent, nonviolent protest.
Susan Nixon, editor of the student newspaper The Daily Beacon, wrote an editorial that began. “Billy Graham’s one-man circus has everthing except an elephant. And now he has one of those.";
The student newspaper announced the planned demonstration and a printed a telegram sent to President Nlxon by organizers that declared. "We are angered by your announced presence on this campus and we are
MIXING POLITICS WITH EVANGELISM 121
outraged that you would capitalize on a religious function, particularly in the South.
May 18, 1970, was unlike any day ever seen at the University of Tennessee. The contrasts were striking, This was a religious gathering Yet, on the stage at the 20-yard line were President Nixon and his wife Pat, Billy Graham, Senator Howard Baker, Congressman John Duncan and Knoxville Mayor Leonard Rogers Among them, only the Reverend and the First Lady held no elected political office.
In the stands were Presidential advisor HR Haldeman, Presidential friend Bebe Rebozo Presidential secretary Rosemary Woods, Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stands, and the Presidents chief foreign policy advisor Henry Kissinger. In the crowd were dozens of protesters, many wearing garments fit for a depiction of Galilee in the time of Christ. Indeed one of the protesters, with a long beard and hair and wearing a white robe with sandals looked as if he were ready to play the lead part. On the field mixing in with the demonstrators were dozens of Knoxville police and members of the secret service from Washington protecting the chief executive from the motley group. Their signs reading THOU SHALT NOT KILL had been confiscated before they had entered the stadium.
As Graham began his introduction of the President, demonstrators chanted "Politics! Politics!"1 When Nixon rose to speak a number of demonstrators began chanting antiwar slogans, only to be drowned out by a roar of pro Nixon boos. When the President began he said that being in the football stadium reminded him of his four years on the bench at Whittier College. Quickly the address began to sound as if the President were running for office Only a few remarks about spirituality invaded his string of political references., His remarks were not as forthright a witness for Christ as I had wished for, Graham later recalled, “but I rationalized that he was extremely tired from carrying many burdens”
Before the actual religious service began, most of the protesters began to file out singing the John Lennon song GIVE PEACE A CHANCE. Some stayed throughout the service and, adhering to the original plan, stood with bowed heads and flashing Peace signs. Photographers milled around the crowd taking pictures of the demonstrators. Police arrested nine and charged the with the crime of disrupting a religious service. A state law that none of the arrested even knew existed.
The following week police made the rounds of the University of Tennessee campus arresting those students and professors whose faces showed up in the photographs. Eventually most of the charges were dismissed when judges agreed with the defendants that Nixon’s speech was not a religious one.
In reporting the University of Tennessee debacle much of the national press was kind neither to President Nixon nor to Graham, asserting that the event mixed politics and religion in dangerous ways. Journalist and author GARRY WILLS, for example, wrote a piece for ESQUIRE MAGAZINE entitled “HOW NIXON USED THE MEDIA, BILLY GRAHAM, AND THE GOOD LORD TO RAP TO THE STUDENTS AT TENNESSEE U”
I want to thank Got a Grip for the rescue of my little effort
It's my observation that diaries that register some complaint about KOSSACK behavior seem to get quite a bit of attention and I'm desperate enough to try every trick.
OK that's enough whining about my inability to inspire recommendations. I guess I'm stuck with my own plodding versions of 'substance over style' and the history that a 64 year old considers experience. Now about that Rand Paul and Palin slippery with gulf oil story...... sorry but not yet.
All of this is a long winded way of saying thank you for the recs and comments on part one of this personal history diary and poking fun at myself for being preoccupied with recs and views. I hope you enjoy part two as well since I'm grateful for a place to share it.
40 YEAR FLASHBACK CONTINUED - RELIGION AND POLITICS COLLIDE ON THE 50 YARD LINE AT NEYLAND STADIUM WITH NIXON AND GRAHAM DESTROYING THE OPPOSITION.
In 1969 there was quite a surprise in the election for SGA (Student Government Association) President at the University of Tennessee.
Jimmie Baxter became the first black president of the student body in the heart of Republican East Tennessee, It seemed that the progressives and radicals indeed had a chance to prosper. If it can happen here it can happen anywhere.
Jimmie Baxter's election poster seen in the picture above was silk screened on an aluminum foil background in bright dayglow colors and over the Spring it seems that they adorned most of the dormitory room windows and every phone pole on campus. They became quite the collector's item.
Jimmie Baxter won that 69 election after the first vote was thrown out and there was a second vote when the students knew that Baxter's candidacy had an excellent chance of success.
John R. Long was a fraternity brother and I one of his campaign managers but the following Spring in 1970 I found myself nominated as the Student Power Coalition Candidate to suceed Jimmie Baxter.
Baxter had done a phenomenal job in the wake of the KENT STATE MURDERS helping to organize the student strike while keeping things peaceful and orderly. Jimmie sent me these images from his archives of the time in lieu of writing an addition to these diaries. The NIXON GRAHAM event was after his term expired. Jimmie was in a position to know the degree to which local cops and DA's were willing to go to crush students and make them "examples". These are Jimmie's pictures:
The Republican leadership in Knox County exemplified by Attorney General Ron Webster was itching to use anxious UT and KPD police to bust heads and to make UT protesters into some dangerous communist inspired radical group in the wake of the KENT STATE MURDERS. Baxter helped keep the student strike and protests peaceful and orderly and saved many from clubs and jail cells. Jimmie Baxter is now retired as a US Attorney living in Knoxville. So that's what radical commies end up doing with their lives?
Baxter followed Christopher Whittle as SGA President and you may know that Chris once owned ESQUIRE MAGAZINE and Whittle Communications and was the founder of Channel One News and the EDISON SCHOOLS
You have to read the first 40 YEAR FLASHBACK diary to get the background on the KNOXVILLE 22 and my part in that particular Republican insanity. Three of the KNOXVILLE 22 were nominated to run for president as the SPC candidate and we had the first primary ever held at UT for a nomination. Progressives are so Democratic
We had the only "all indicted for felony" primary field and eventual ticket in SGA election history. Gus Hadorn, Peter Kami, Steve Levine and I were all facing absurd charges for Felony Inciting to Riot for the Knoxville 22 protest of the selection process for the new UT President Ed Boling that were eventually dropped to 'blocking the entrance to a doorway' and a $25 fine except for Peter who had to flea the country. He became the scapegoat 'outside communist agitator'.
There were 7 original candidates that year for SGA president to succeed Jimmie Baxter and that field was eventually reduced to five
Dave Dunaway was the YAF right-wing candidate, Gary Crawford was the Liberal, Bob Migliara was the centrist independent, I was the "RADICAL" and John Smith was my Phi Sig Fraternity brother and eventual winner of the race as the typical mainstream conservative UT fraternity guy. When Gary Crawford and I split the liberal/left vote Smith took the well organized fraternity/sorority vote swelled by mandatory voting from the membership.As a result Smith got to meet with NIXON following the crusade appearance with Billy Graham and he announced that Nixon was "concerned about students and their problems".
Here is what GARRY WILLS had to say about John Smith in his brilliant piece about the NIXON GRAHAM debacle in ESQUIRE Magazine. - JESUS WEPT - BY GARRY WILLS How Nixon Used the Media, Billy Graham, and the Good Lord to Rap with Students at Tennessee U
During final exams we still got a nice sized crowd of 700 to put themselves on the line in front of 90,000 "christians", the Secret Service, and Knoxville cops who were more than happy to bust a few dirty hippie heads. Most of these students were raised in local church going families like mine where my lifelong pastor Dr Charles Trentham had played golf with Graham prior to Nixon's visit that evening.
Carroll Bible's beautiful recollection of his personal struggle bears repeating here since it got lost in the previous lengthy episode. If you read this carefully you can feel his internal conflict.
Following the NIXON visit upon learning about the arrest warrants I phoned Dr. Trentham to ask his intervention and help in stopping the arrests. He replied that he didn't think there was anything he could do. Later in life he went to DC to become Jimmie Carter's pastor before resigning from the Southern Baptist Convention and starting what he called a Potter's Church in a tiny chapel we called The Church in the Wildwood. The Nixon Graham event had a profound effect on his life he said. I became a Deacon in his small rural church until he died in an auto accident in Colorado.
That trajectory from First Baptist Knoxville to First Baptist DC to the tiny non-southern Baptist church exemplified what I considered to be the true Christian nature of men like him and jimmy Carter who's religious foundation was rooted in something deeper than the cynical use of belief and faith for political advantage so prevalent in Republican politics.
The head of the UT Theology Department Dr Charles Reynolds was among those arrested for Disrupting A Religious Service for holding up a sigh that read THOU SHALT NOT KILL at the NIXON appearance in the Graham Crusade. The paradox is so dramatic and overwhelming. A 'Christian' Crusade where students opposing the killing in an illegal war are jailed for holding up a Commandment while the 'christian' crowd calls for their heads and cheers their arrests saying that the KENT STATE murder victims deserved their fate.
I spent a long time sitting on the 50 yard line at Neyland Stadium after Graham made 'the call'. He glared over the podium and admonished us for blasphemy because we dared to come down to the field with our hands raised in the Peace Sign. I tried to talk with one of his staff about a Christian duty to oppose that war to no avail. Like Carroll Bible I still carry around that confusion about America and Christianity as I understood it and the antithesis represented by Nixon's war and Graham's complicity. The Republican's were only interested in who to blame and what to fear. They were about punishment and retribution. Jimmy Carter was about forgiveness and helping those less fortunate. It seemed so simple to me then and I've never found any reason in the past 40 years to change that point of view.
With only 64 readers for the first installment in this series perhaps I should retire and accept the verdict that this little slice of history has limited appeal. But then I think that the continuing development of the Republican Theocracy has so permeated the current US political world that these earlier obvious uses of religious events by evil men need remembering. Just as the fundamental decency of men like Jimmy Carter and Dr Charles Trentham need to be held up in comparison.
Tom Robbins in my favorite philosophical work SKINNY LEGS AND ALL expounds on the evil generated when politics mixes with religion. So much of what he offers there is pertinent to this example. For instance
Liberal Progressives are too honest and sympathetic to use religion for a cynical political purpose. Republican's don't see the evil in their ways.
Once the Left Behind believers seeking Armageddon were considered marginal whack jobs but now they constitute the solid center of the Republican Party. This NIXON GRAHAM event was simply a preview of a far more dangerous future of W saying that GOD told him to smite Saddam or the Rapture and Creationism fans who prefer to lay waste to the environment in the name of a Genesis inspired "dominion theory" reinforced by their desire to hasten the Apocalypse and bring on the end of days.
In the face of that threat isn't it better to muse over a Tom Robbins quote than to face the outrage of Sarah and Rand in a bay of oil?
There will be additions to this series as soon as Bruce McCoy, shown here being arrested during the KNOXVILLE 22 protest after serving as a negotiator between the administration and the student protesters.
Chris Caron, a leader of the student protest people and the person most responsible for the campaign posters that helped elect Jimmie Baxter SGA president.
and a couple of other participants get it together to add their reflections and recall to this accurate history of a moment in time some forty years ago. We examine our past to understand our present and hopefully avoid a painful future.
I ended up in Canada with Chris and Bruce in November of 1972 despite a high lottery number and no fear of the draft. Chris was Canadian and Bruce was draft exempt but staying in the US under Nixon didn't seem to be the right thing to do. When Nixon was run out of Washington I felt vindicated.
If nothing else the first installment of this history put me back in touch with a few people who were there and that was with only 64 who viewed the diary. My hope is that this second chapter will yield more participants who can reach me via the comments and our 1970 Protest and Activism at UT Facebook Group
I suppose that this type of situation at Tennessee was repeated across the country at institutions of higher learning from Maine to California and it's the common elements of our collective experience in that incredible time that we share. 40 years have passed and the participants are ending their careers that were just beginning in 1970. This was a part of our beginning and it shaped our lives in many deep and fundamental ways.
Thank you for reading, rec-ing, and your comments as I beg your pardon for my opening remarks concerning rec lists and Kossack behavior. I'm grateful for a place to share my story and point of view.
aurabass shares the experience of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and how that shaped his future path through a 40 YEAR FLASHBACK - NIXON & GRAHAM at TENNESSEE. (Got a Grip)as I try to re-rescue my effort in hopes that 64 more might take the time to read something more. When at first you don't succeed then try a little persistence.
It's my observation that diaries that register some complaint about KOSSACK behavior seem to get quite a bit of attention and I'm desperate enough to try every trick.
OK that's enough whining about my inability to inspire recommendations. I guess I'm stuck with my own plodding versions of 'substance over style' and the history that a 64 year old considers experience. Now about that Rand Paul and Palin slippery with gulf oil story...... sorry but not yet.
All of this is a long winded way of saying thank you for the recs and comments on part one of this personal history diary and poking fun at myself for being preoccupied with recs and views. I hope you enjoy part two as well since I'm grateful for a place to share it.
40 YEAR FLASHBACK CONTINUED - RELIGION AND POLITICS COLLIDE ON THE 50 YARD LINE AT NEYLAND STADIUM WITH NIXON AND GRAHAM DESTROYING THE OPPOSITION.
In 1969 there was quite a surprise in the election for SGA (Student Government Association) President at the University of Tennessee.
Jimmie Baxter became the first black president of the student body in the heart of Republican East Tennessee, It seemed that the progressives and radicals indeed had a chance to prosper. If it can happen here it can happen anywhere. Jimmie Baxter's election poster seen in the picture above was silk screened on an aluminum foil background in bright dayglow colors and over the Spring it seems that they adorned most of the dormitory room windows and every phone pole on campus. They became quite the collector's item.
Jimmie Baxter won that 69 election after the first vote was thrown out and there was a second vote when the students knew that Baxter's candidacy had an excellent chance of success.
John R. Long was a fraternity brother and I one of his campaign managers but the following Spring in 1970 I found myself nominated as the Student Power Coalition Candidate to suceed Jimmie Baxter.
Baxter had done a phenomenal job in the wake of the KENT STATE MURDERS helping to organize the student strike while keeping things peaceful and orderly. Jimmie sent me these images from his archives of the time in lieu of writing an addition to these diaries. The NIXON GRAHAM event was after his term expired. Jimmie was in a position to know the degree to which local cops and DA's were willing to go to crush students and make them "examples". These are Jimmie's pictures:
The Republican leadership in Knox County exemplified by Attorney General Ron Webster was itching to use anxious UT and KPD police to bust heads and to make UT protesters into some dangerous communist inspired radical group in the wake of the KENT STATE MURDERS. Baxter helped keep the student strike and protests peaceful and orderly and saved many from clubs and jail cells. Jimmie Baxter is now retired as a US Attorney living in Knoxville. So that's what radical commies end up doing with their lives?
Baxter followed Christopher Whittle as SGA President and you may know that Chris once owned ESQUIRE MAGAZINE and Whittle Communications and was the founder of Channel One News and the EDISON SCHOOLS
You have to read the first 40 YEAR FLASHBACK diary to get the background on the KNOXVILLE 22 and my part in that particular Republican insanity. Three of the KNOXVILLE 22 were nominated to run for president as the SPC candidate and we had the first primary ever held at UT for a nomination. Progressives are so Democratic
We had the only "all indicted for felony" primary field and eventual ticket in SGA election history. Gus Hadorn, Peter Kami, Steve Levine and I were all facing absurd charges for Felony Inciting to Riot for the Knoxville 22 protest of the selection process for the new UT President Ed Boling that were eventually dropped to 'blocking the entrance to a doorway' and a $25 fine except for Peter who had to flea the country. He became the scapegoat 'outside communist agitator'.
There were 7 original candidates that year for SGA president to succeed Jimmie Baxter and that field was eventually reduced to five
Dave Dunaway was the YAF right-wing candidate, Gary Crawford was the Liberal, Bob Migliara was the centrist independent, I was the "RADICAL" and John Smith was my Phi Sig Fraternity brother and eventual winner of the race as the typical mainstream conservative UT fraternity guy. When Gary Crawford and I split the liberal/left vote Smith took the well organized fraternity/sorority vote swelled by mandatory voting from the membership.As a result Smith got to meet with NIXON following the crusade appearance with Billy Graham and he announced that Nixon was "concerned about students and their problems".
Here is what GARRY WILLS had to say about John Smith in his brilliant piece about the NIXON GRAHAM debacle in ESQUIRE Magazine. - JESUS WEPT - BY GARRY WILLS How Nixon Used the Media, Billy Graham, and the Good Lord to Rap with Students at Tennessee U
And to cap it all, along came Smith, the Student President. He rode to Air Force One in the same car with Bebe Rebozo (who muttered, darkly, of the demonstrators. "There's only one way to handle them") and H. R. Haldeman's wife. Mrs. Haldeman asked Smith how the university's three-day strike after Kent State had been kept peaceful—he did not answer, what was the truth, that his black predecessor, Jimmie Baxter, kept the lid on, growling at students that they were outgunned by the cops.Remember that this is Tricky Dick Nixon trying to fool the world into thinking he's welcome on any college campus in the wake of the KENT STATE MURDERS and the strikes that hit every campus in America. I guess that Liberty U., Oral Roberts and Bob Jones Universities were too obvious so a Graham Crusade in Neyland Stadium in Republican East Tennessee was the best option for this sham appearance.
On the plane, Nixon asked Smith what troubles the youth of today. Two things, he was answered—they think the war unconstitutional, and they need a higher goal than the merely material things. Smith had just heard both Nixon and Graham say, on the platform, that youth needs a higher goal than the merely material things. This is how the President discovers what is troubling youth. Smith, off the plane photographed, interviewed, sighed with relief that the President does understand and care for the youth. I talked, the day after, with Smith. Short, with a vacant fraternity face, his eyes bleared, he was suffering a political hangover after his bender of publicity. Did he think yesterday's Crusade a religious service or a political meeting? "Political." Was the aim to convince the nation that students would still welcome Nixon? "Yes." Is that a misconception? “Yes” Didn’t you help create that misconception with your telegram of welcome and your praise for Nixon? "Well, I do believe he understands our problems." What about the telegram? I think most of the students here would welcome a chance to see the President." Even under these phony auspices? "Probably." Do you consider that an informed or an informed preference? "Uninformed I suppose." Yet you cater to it? "Well, I just wanted to size up the President for myself. I don't opinions about people I have not met." You satisfied your curiosity: "Look, didn't I get a chance speak out against the war?" About it’s unconstitutionality? "Yes." Don’t you think kids would still oppose the war as immoral even if it was legal? "Sure, but I could denounce the war the same way radicals do and never get a chance to see President. It is a question of sounding off before 23,000 students or giving my views on the war to millions of television viewers." bleared eyes had lit up, last night fuming once more into his brain, an intoxicant. I left with a strong impression I could not, at first, define -- but eventually it came to me, I had been talking to a twenty-year old Nixon.
During final exams we still got a nice sized crowd of 700 to put themselves on the line in front of 90,000 "christians", the Secret Service, and Knoxville cops who were more than happy to bust a few dirty hippie heads. Most of these students were raised in local church going families like mine where my lifelong pastor Dr Charles Trentham had played golf with Graham prior to Nixon's visit that evening.
Carroll Bible's beautiful recollection of his personal struggle bears repeating here since it got lost in the previous lengthy episode. If you read this carefully you can feel his internal conflict.
The Billy Graham Crusade, May 28, 1970, Neyland Stadium, Knoxville, TN
Was it a political or religious event?
For me it was religious.
The robe had been brought to the student government office where people were preparing for the demonstration. It was offered for me to wear, with the suggestion that I needed a robe since I 'looked like Jesus'.
Jesus? I balked inside myself, but decided to wear it anyway. That my zen of intersections should come in the form of a Biblical robe is not surprising. I had spent the past decade on a spiritual quest. In 1961 I had answered a call in Montreat, NC, by missionaries from Brazil to live and travel in Brazil to learn about the church's mission work. After high school graduation I and seven others spent a school year on this quest. My plans after Brazil included a church-centered college and a resolve to return to Brazil to serve as a missionary. I had been prepared for this journey with the mind set of duck-and-cover vigilance against the (Communist) enemy. I had been Cadet Colonel in Jr. ROTC. My father worked for the federal government. I understood Law and Order from the inside out.
The assumptions behind my life plans may have been naive. Some of us were rabbits on the tracks and locomotives were rumbling nearby. Trouble for me began in college when I evaluated my experience in Brazil. I could see that our high standard of living was built on the backs of others' suffering, enforced for corporate gain. I understood the same thing was happening as well in Viet Nam. During this transition the intensity of my private spiritual life remained central, even as religion fell from my conversation and I abandoned the mission plans in exchange for a study of History at UT's graduate school. By the time of the crusade my spiritual life, along with the rest of existence, had become totally focused by the war, its evil nature and lies. Accepting the emerging truth about the nature of Power was destroying the childhood framework that held my world together, creating a vacuum of authority.
Today, distrust of government is taken for granted, not something to shatter one's foundations. But my world then was cracking as I tried to reconcile my Christian faith to my country's role in history. It was a deeper concern for me than the rumble gathering on the tracks, and I sacrificed much for it.
A Biblical robe needed its own sign. The preprinted signs read "Thou shall not kill". I wanted a sign that read, "Let our people go", a reference to the Knoxville 22 (arrests) from an earlier protest on campus, and for all the other political prisoners around the country. I changed Moses's quote to 'our' because they were not 'my' people.
Using a quote by Moses was a step away from comparison to Jesus. But Moses didn't fit me any better. He led his people. Communication and interpersonal skills are required of a leader; I was blessed with an abundance of neither. I was better suited to see large patterns in history than to connect effectively with individuals. I know as people grow old they may not remember everything about the past, but I'd be surprised if anyone remembers me as a leader in those protests of 1970. I was the street-theater element -- independent, stamped by my personal quest, not necessarily relevant to the group's plans.
At some point the phone in the office rang. It was a national radio show wanting an interview. Apparently, nobody wanted to talk to them, so I did. I explained the need to oppose Nixon's appearance on campus under the circumstances. The reporter then asked if I didn't fear arrest. I said I didn't see any reason for arrests to be made. I was sincere in that.
I dressed and folded the sign under the robe to secret it past the sentries at the gate.
Once inside the stadium, I fell under a spell of reverence for the enormity of the event. I remember holding the sign up, and wanting to stare a hole through this evil President. It was a contempt spawned by the betrayal of an innocent faith in my country, made worse because the lies were cloaked in patriotism.
The protesters that day exercised free speech during the political parts of the rally, but practiced no violence. The call for violence that I recall came from one of the singers of a spiritual hymn when she expressed a desire to come down and give us a smack. Exactly what effect that was meant to have on an angry crowd of 90,000 hungry Christians who gladly would have fed us to the lions on the spot, only she can say. I was to feel some of its impact soon enough.
A lot of influences led me into Neyland Stadium dressed in a robe. But there was a common prime mover for everyone protesting that day, on both sides. The war was the bullying of all young people by cynical liars. I understood the lies as a student of History. But those who had no choice but to go to war were the greatest victims, regardless of their attitude about their roles. If their parents were sitting in the stadium that day and saw the protesters as a lightening rod to channel their own anger, then I can't hate them for that. They were in the same position as I -- twisted into circumstances they could not control -- we were all small people in the presence of Power.
Everyone present was transfixed by the moment. Everyone was equally human, living from moment to moment in the space they occupied, just as they were called to do. That included Billy Graham. We were on opposite sides of truth that day, but I have nothing but respect for Dr. Graham today.
When Nixon quit talking and the protesters followed suit, I walked from the stands onto the field to listen to Graham. I had come from an intensely religious background and wanted to communicate my faith by clearly, obviously, paying attention to Graham's words. I sat on the ground at midfield and listened intently to the sermon. Likely, no one caught my drift.
When Graham finished speaking I stood up to leave the stadium. As I left the field. I was met by a uniformed officer and arrested. The spell was broken. I began yelling to the nearby spectators, "They're taking political prisoners!" That earned me a club across the knee -- a smack of sorts, set to a hymn no doubt, intended to cause permanent damage I bet. My knee cap, however, hidden by the robe, survived by an inch.
Once in my cell, I asked that Billy Graham pay me a visit. I wanted to hear his rationale for sponsoring Nixon. That doomed request marked my final break with organized religion. As it sank in that he would never come to my cell, the vacuum of authority split apart at the seams. The phantoms of both 'law and order', and the moral authority of the church stood before me in that vacuum, both hollow of soul. After that, I resolved to take my quest for God on the road, to find whatever truth that comes into my life in the future without appeal to church or state.
Less naive after the crusade, I watched as Power's war on its people limped on for more unnecessary, life-crushing years. More souls were torn apart; lives were lost. The unimaginable horror suffered by the Asia people we don't even want to know. Today I am not surprised that in the new century Power has established a permanent war on its people and their civil liberties, with the blessings of the majority.
Looking into my jail cell that night in 1970, any student of the Bible should recognize the Biblical character I really resembled. I hadn't planned it, but I was in the role of an Old Testament prophet -- an outcast, despised for a message that was too harsh to accept, truth that would challenge a certain moral comfort. All of those people in the stands that day hating the protesters were playing their role too, just as it is in the Bible.
Following the NIXON visit upon learning about the arrest warrants I phoned Dr. Trentham to ask his intervention and help in stopping the arrests. He replied that he didn't think there was anything he could do. Later in life he went to DC to become Jimmie Carter's pastor before resigning from the Southern Baptist Convention and starting what he called a Potter's Church in a tiny chapel we called The Church in the Wildwood. The Nixon Graham event had a profound effect on his life he said. I became a Deacon in his small rural church until he died in an auto accident in Colorado.
That trajectory from First Baptist Knoxville to First Baptist DC to the tiny non-southern Baptist church exemplified what I considered to be the true Christian nature of men like him and jimmy Carter who's religious foundation was rooted in something deeper than the cynical use of belief and faith for political advantage so prevalent in Republican politics.
The head of the UT Theology Department Dr Charles Reynolds was among those arrested for Disrupting A Religious Service for holding up a sigh that read THOU SHALT NOT KILL at the NIXON appearance in the Graham Crusade. The paradox is so dramatic and overwhelming. A 'Christian' Crusade where students opposing the killing in an illegal war are jailed for holding up a Commandment while the 'christian' crowd calls for their heads and cheers their arrests saying that the KENT STATE murder victims deserved their fate.
I spent a long time sitting on the 50 yard line at Neyland Stadium after Graham made 'the call'. He glared over the podium and admonished us for blasphemy because we dared to come down to the field with our hands raised in the Peace Sign. I tried to talk with one of his staff about a Christian duty to oppose that war to no avail. Like Carroll Bible I still carry around that confusion about America and Christianity as I understood it and the antithesis represented by Nixon's war and Graham's complicity. The Republican's were only interested in who to blame and what to fear. They were about punishment and retribution. Jimmy Carter was about forgiveness and helping those less fortunate. It seemed so simple to me then and I've never found any reason in the past 40 years to change that point of view.
With only 64 readers for the first installment in this series perhaps I should retire and accept the verdict that this little slice of history has limited appeal. But then I think that the continuing development of the Republican Theocracy has so permeated the current US political world that these earlier obvious uses of religious events by evil men need remembering. Just as the fundamental decency of men like Jimmy Carter and Dr Charles Trentham need to be held up in comparison.
Tom Robbins in my favorite philosophical work SKINNY LEGS AND ALL expounds on the evil generated when politics mixes with religion. So much of what he offers there is pertinent to this example. For instance
"The Divine was expansive, but religion was reductive. Religion attempted to reduce the Divine to a knowable quantity with which mortals might efficiently deal, to pigeonhole it once and for all so that we never had to reevaluate it. With hammers of cant and spikes of dogma, we crucified and crucified again, trying to nail to our stationary altars the migratory light of the world. Thus, since religion bore false witness to the Divine, religion was blasphemy. And once it entered into its unholy alliance with politics, it became the most dangerous and repressive force that the world has ever known." or "Conservatives understand Halloween, liberals only understand Christmas. If you want to control a population, don't give it social services, give it a scary adversary."
"Religion isn't the opium of the masses - it's the cyanide."
and "To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line."
Liberal Progressives are too honest and sympathetic to use religion for a cynical political purpose. Republican's don't see the evil in their ways.
Once the Left Behind believers seeking Armageddon were considered marginal whack jobs but now they constitute the solid center of the Republican Party. This NIXON GRAHAM event was simply a preview of a far more dangerous future of W saying that GOD told him to smite Saddam or the Rapture and Creationism fans who prefer to lay waste to the environment in the name of a Genesis inspired "dominion theory" reinforced by their desire to hasten the Apocalypse and bring on the end of days.
In the face of that threat isn't it better to muse over a Tom Robbins quote than to face the outrage of Sarah and Rand in a bay of oil?
There will be additions to this series as soon as Bruce McCoy, shown here being arrested during the KNOXVILLE 22 protest after serving as a negotiator between the administration and the student protesters.
Chris Caron, a leader of the student protest people and the person most responsible for the campaign posters that helped elect Jimmie Baxter SGA president.
and a couple of other participants get it together to add their reflections and recall to this accurate history of a moment in time some forty years ago. We examine our past to understand our present and hopefully avoid a painful future.
I ended up in Canada with Chris and Bruce in November of 1972 despite a high lottery number and no fear of the draft. Chris was Canadian and Bruce was draft exempt but staying in the US under Nixon didn't seem to be the right thing to do. When Nixon was run out of Washington I felt vindicated.
If nothing else the first installment of this history put me back in touch with a few people who were there and that was with only 64 who viewed the diary. My hope is that this second chapter will yield more participants who can reach me via the comments and our 1970 Protest and Activism at UT Facebook Group
I suppose that this type of situation at Tennessee was repeated across the country at institutions of higher learning from Maine to California and it's the common elements of our collective experience in that incredible time that we share. 40 years have passed and the participants are ending their careers that were just beginning in 1970. This was a part of our beginning and it shaped our lives in many deep and fundamental ways.
Thank you for reading, rec-ing, and your comments as I beg your pardon for my opening remarks concerning rec lists and Kossack behavior. I'm grateful for a place to share my story and point of view.
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