OPINION: GROWING UP IN AMERICA

At the age of thirteen, I considered myself a Communist; it coincided with the onslaught of my adolescence. WW2 had recently ended which made me an expert on war as well. One of my jobs during the war was to pick up the New York City, Daily News-and-Mirror, costing two cents a-piece, each day on the evening before its dated Front Page. Both competing papers were loaded with victorious photos which kept the home-front unaware of the slaughter of U.S. American military forces. As it turned out, the genuine patriotic effort by most U.S. publishers, understanding this unified temporary strategy, were as courageous as any in helping to win the (two) wars. I stand in admiration of their honorable wisdom to this day.

In the early days of the war, even the sinking of many merchant vessels off the East Coast by German U-boats was kept hidden from the public. However, the glows of explosions were visible off the New Jersey beaches. Those engaged in two separate wars needed the support of all aspects of munitions manufacture and allegiance that curtailed all auto-manufacturing and public acceptance of the rationing of food and consumer goods. We kids were especially excited to do anything in our power to help in the war effort. During the New York City blackouts, I held my aircraft identification cards close by. I could distinguish between Henkel and Mitsubishi bombers; Stukas, Messerschmitt, and Zero fighters, as well as all our own. We collected metals and paper as well as fat renderings our mothers saved from the kitchen.

        I am sorry for getting off track. I was talking about adolescence and communism. The U.S.S.R. having been our ally against the Axis powers in Europe, concentrating their effort against the Nazis, was considered a friendly nation to most Americans. Once the dust had settled we quickly began to understand their dream of Communist World Destiny; or at least the sane American, grounded in intellectual political knowledge of our unique national historical profile. I of course was an adolescent at the time. My introduction to communism was directly from a neighborhood mentor, an older kid who was in every respect a bookworm. I will call him Billy. He did not look like a classical bookworm since he was on a High School track team as a high jumper. He was seen, often carrying books to and from the public library. He seemed to inhale books written by the likes of Nietzche, Engels, Marks, and many turn-of-the-century American Socialists. He predicted the fall of Nationalist China to the Communist, Mao Tse-Tung long before it happened. Billy’s dream, soon after he would reach the age of twenty-one, was to become a Card-carrying Communist Party member.

        During one of our discussions, Billy described the communist cell structure of how subversive activity was needed to weaken and overtake any country from within. He recited Vladimir Lenin’s enjoyment of “Useful Idiots,” many to be found in the elite societies of cloistered wealth and sanctuary of academia. In another political time, it may have been called The Fifth Column. It entailed small neighborhood groups unknown to other cells, yet controlled by a web of teachers who in turn had little contact with each other. Disgruntled people of various trades were identified, recruited, and tutored in groups of four to six. Billy described how orders would be sent down and sped through the ranks as needed when the Destiny of Communist Opportunity came along. The actions were to be planned in small obscure steps, to infiltrate the social and governing structure of society, utility companies, transportation, and then act on specific targets. Do you recognize the similarity of Islamic World Destiny in operation today?

        While I attempted to read Karl Marks’s economic dreams in his Das Capital, I soon got bored. However, I consumed many novels by American Socialists writing in the first half of the twentieth century. Historical novel reading caused me to stumble upon Kenneth Roberts and novels of early American History. Whamo, it was as if I were struck by lightning. American History, starting in the 1750s made me (the expert) seeing that (world) wars really started back then. Most major powers were allied in global struggles in that decade, that make clear the sequence of how the miracle of the United States really was formed fifteen years later. Once I got my feet wet, I became immersed in the essence of America. I began to see the profiles of the founders, through their arguments using, spoken, written, reason and logic. Most profound was their textbook of What Not to Do regarding the historical lessons from Europe. The genuine errors of Europe’s Monarchial and Theocratic tyrannies became public knowledge and resulted in the American Revolution in 1776 and the ratification of the Constitution, as we know it, in 1788. I read the Constitution, The Federalist Papers, arguments for ratification. This was absorbed into my DNA just before I entered High School. Therefore, you can understand how I was politically preconditioned as I entered adolescence.

        Strangely, I found no American History or any substantial World History, taught in high school. Even though there were history classes, knowledge of its sequential information was avoided. Any reference to current American historical or worldly argument brought strange fear, seen in the eyes of the history teacher. Are you ready folks? You see, we were currently in the theater of the absurd, or should I say the theater of denial. Harry Truman was the President at the time, and in acute-denial when a Senator named McCarthy was courageously exposing the web of Useful Idiots, communist appeasers, or flat-out communists, infiltrated throughout our State Department, indeed in every U.S. Government Department. Senator McCarthy took a lot of heat for his tenacity, and it has become a negative cliché called McCarthyism. I was a close student, as this political era was also featured on the new media, Television. I enjoyed both the persistent effort of Joseph McCarthy and the semi-communists scurrying for Constitutional sanctuary cover, making great theater entertainment. I use the word entertainment with great importance. You see, I was previously tutored in the nuances of Communist mutations of government at the age of thirteen, so whenever I hear this type of elite rhetoric that excludes noble American essence, I can easily say, “I’m On to You.” Looking back, to me, the McCarthy era was the major turning point in American Journalism. Within a few hours, the Investigative Journalistic Hippocratic Oath Industry of Truth, known as the Fourth Estate, became, The Entertainment Industry, as the mainstream media remains to this day. We have entertainers running for president today, one, hardly different from the grifter she started out as, in Arkansas with her master-adolescent. Both are still grifting on stage in the theater of the absurd. Will she become our Commander in Chief-- an American Idol? I’m on to you.