God's Rasputin - Spiritual Charlatans In The White House

Billy Graham, evangelist and spiritual groupie was seen in every White House for decades.  Presidents, regardless of their religious beliefs used the ambitious Graham as a prop.  He was God's advisor to the powerful, keeping American leaders on an even spiritual keel. 'On your knees, Mr. President', Graham had said to Richard Nixon, 'and ask God for strength and sustenance in your time of need'. 

The President, in tears as he looked into Graham's eyes and saw the truth revealed, knelt with him, joined hands in prayer, and asked the Almighty for strength and resolve.  Graham hinted at 'forgiveness', hoping to exact a solemn confession from the President for Watergate - confession being the first and final step to spiritual renewal - but he was hesitant to overstep the bounds of the advisor-executive relationship.  It was enough to get this man prostrate before the Lord and let his majesty bring the President to spiritual renewal.  

'A moment of weakness', Nixon admitted in his memoirs. 'Getting down on my knees with that carny barker was wallowing in self-pity, and Nixon doesn't do self-pity'; but Graham couldn't keep his big mouth shut and the next day, he stood before a bank of microphones, beaming with pride and sanctimonious satisfaction, telling the people how he had saved the President, and that no matter what the outcome of Watergate, the country was now in the hands of a man of God. 

There was no more shameless, self-righteous, old fool of a windbag than Billy Graham.  The knees on his serge suit were worn thin thanks to his piety, dropping down as he did at every opportune moment - with the Speaker of the House in an unguarded moment, the Senate Majority Leader, and a trail of lesser Washington officialdom. 

'Here he comes again', said one Senator who had been pursued by Graham to 'see the light of the Gospel' and 'bend to his will'.  A royal pain in the ass, the Senator said to those in the cloakroom waiting for a vote on the floor, a buggering fool; but he like just about everyone else in the room deferred to Graham's popularity and very public rectitude. 

All except one Jewish member of the House who said that Graham was full of shit, the biggest charlatan since Brady McCormick, snake oil salesman who had bilked thousands out of credulous Iowans, kept one step ahead of the law and went on to Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois before he was caught.  He tried to bribe his way out of arrest, pulling hundreds of dollars out of his crocheted satchel and stuffing the bills in the pockets of the revenuers; but he had to spend a night in a Kalamazoo jail before being released on nominal bail by a judge who said his gout had been cured by McCormick's elixir of branch water.   

So, the Jewish member was on to Graham like everybody else, but he was the only one with the chutzpah to say it publicly.  Graham was an offensive bully, a tarted up fool, a complete shell game conman, a spiritual quack. 

He was a charlatan, one more publicity-seeking, Bible-thumping huckster in the long tradition of American revivalists, snake-oil salesman, and get-rich-quick carny con men. Burt Lancaster played a perfect Billy Graham in Elmer Gantry, the Sinclair Lewis itinerant preacher out to make a buck, get in Sister Ruth’s pants, and take every rural rube in the country for a ride. Lancaster could have been portraying Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, or a hundred other evangelists who have barnstormed the country since the wagons went west. 

There was no escaping Billy Graham for almost fifty years. He was everywhere and with everyone. He was America’s go-to good person. Being seen with Billy Graham had no downside whatsoever. 

Those few who thought him a sanctimonious publicity hound were too few to matter. Politicians and political wannabees trotted him out even when he was doddering and never sure who had invited him.

It was a win-win game.  Politicos used Graham to pander to their fundamentalist voters, to show the Christian flag, and to stand publicly for morality and righteousness.  And Graham basked in the reflected glory of public figures.  He didn’t seem to care who they were or what they stood for.  He was uninterested in the straightness of their moral spine, the cut of their ethical jib, or the purpose in their hearts.  He would stand, kneel, and sing with anybody.

Billy Graham hobbled to the Oval Office to the very end and his passing signaled the last days of presidential spiritual guidance.  Progressives, while acknowledging the role of religion in American life, found it a bother, a troublesome bit of quackery that slowed the wheels of social reform. Southern evangelists, those of Biblical originalism, creationism, and charismatic faith were the worst - credulous, epiphanic dupes who whooped and hollered for Jesus and let everything ride on his miraculous robes.  

The kneeling together, holding of hands, bowing of heads, and tearful appeals of the likes of Billy Graham are sheer nonsense, charlatan fol-de-rol, and self-serving fakery. 

'Thank God the old fool is dead', said President Trump who never in his life had gotten down on his knees for anyone or with anyone. 'He was a fucking pain in the ass'.  Trump wanted nothing to do with the smarmy evangelical Protestantism so prevalent in America.  His return to the secular fundamentalism of Jefferson and Adams, itself inspired by the religious sentiments of the Enlightenment, was more than enough to convince voters that he was a man of principle, a believer who never once embraced the hoopla and circus antics of clowns like Graham. 

Graham was not the only Presidential spiritual groupie. The Dalai Lama has been no slouch.  He is as sanctimonious, hungry for the spotlight, and as self-serving and ambitious as the old Bible-thumper himself.  There isn’t a politician in America who doesn’t want a photo op with him.

He has been photographed with rock stars, NBA players, with the well-to-do on Martha's Vineyard golf courses - a shamelessly ambitious man whose every staged photo-op is a ridiculous send up of his supposed Buddhist principles.  The man is a co-opted, television sitcom, Bollywood jester. 

To be sure Trump has been approached by both the Dalai Lama and Graham's son Franklin, a chip off the old block, a sanctimonious windbag like his father but without the political savvy or charisma for the credulous like the old man.  Trump has refused.  He hates to share the limelight and the last thing he would do would be to show up on stage with two of the world's biggest hucksters. 

Joe Biden demurred, and courteously declined requests from the younger Graham.  Progressives were on record saying that Christian evangelism and Biblical truisms were impediments to secular progress so no revival tent preacher would ever show up at the White House. 

Besides that, the progressive canon was all about inclusivity, and although religion might be an obstacle to social reform, America was a diverse country with Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and all the rest; so that the President of a rainbow nation could never be seen favoring one religion. 

So the era of presidential spiritual advisors seems to be over, although both Rubio and Vance are devout Catholics, and if they are elected to the presidency after Trump, spiritual counsel might be in the wings. Anti-papist critics warn that the Oval Office would become a tacky shrine of grottos and statues of the Virgin Mary, but that is just old-fashioned nastiness. 

America is a land of hucksters, charlatans, con men, Ponzi schemes, shell games, and televangelists; and the presence of Billy Graham with just about every President in recent memory only gives credence to the notion.  Graham came out of a long tradition of spiritual tomfoolery.  Revival tents were seen everywhere on the prairie in the old day, and bald-faced tricksters promised salvation for only a pittance; so no one should be surprised by the likes of Billy Graham or his feckless son showing up at official gatherings. 'Hit one for the Lord!', says Elmer Gantry. 

Free Shit - The Resurgence Of Socialism In America

During the Red Scare of the Fifties, Senator Joe McCarthy conducted a witch hunt which unearthed supposed Communists in every corner of America, especially in Hollywood and academia.  'Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?', his voice rang out over the airwaves as millions tuned in to the Army-McCarthy Congressional hearings. 

 

Americans had cause for concern.  Winston Churchill had been right about Stalin and Soviet Communism, and Russia was now a nuclear power, threatening to use it against the armies of the night.  The Cold War was at its height, children were taught 'duck and cover' drills, and the hunt was on for subversives, Russian spies, traitors, and internal enemies. 

However, the anti-Communist campaign was really a pogrom.  Most of the accusations were false.  Most of those under fire were intellectuals united under the banner of Lafollette, Brandeis, and Gompers in the days when socialism meant workers' rights.  Few of those Upper West Side Jews meant any harm, they just wanted assembly line conditions to improve, a modicum of benefits provided for those who labored on them, and a compassionate eye cast on the working man. 

McCarthy and his shills created an atmosphere of fear - Communists were everywhere at work dismantling the very architecture of liberal democracy.  Americans had to be vigilant and pursuing, and if a few innocent men were blacklisted, so be it.  The anti-Communist net had to be cast widely to catch the worst offenders. 

The arms build up in those days was significant, and at the height of the Cold War, enough nuclear missiles were pointed at the United States and the Soviet Union to destroy the world a hundred times over. 

Ironically, or perhaps expectedly, the Cold War period was an era of peace - two equally armed superpowers with their fingers on the trigger assured that neither of them pulled it.  Yet, as far as ordinary Americans were concerned, it was a frightening time. 

It passed of course.  It took a while before the Soviet Union collapsed under its own ponderous, inefficient, autocratic weight and after Ronald Reagan shook his finger at the Soviet Premier and said, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall'. 

After the fall of Communism, Francis Fukuyama, historian and political philosopher proclaimed 'the end of history'.  The nuclear superpower clash over, the world would be at peace, and peace would spread throughout the land. 

He was wrong of course, very wrong, for as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed every man Jack with an AK-47 decided to get what was coming to him, and the world is just as violent now as it was before. 

The Soviet Communist experiment was a dismal failure.  What the West found east of the Dnieper after the fall of the Berlin Wall was an empire in ruins - failed industry and agriculture, poverty, despair, and economic misery.  The regime had been propped up with cant and socialist promise but could not and did not deliver .

Nowhere did Communism succeed.  China after the horrors of Mao gave up on statism and rigid Marxist-Leninism and while retaining the official mantel of communism unleashed the entrepreneurial energies of a billion people, turning it into s world superpower. North Korea and Cuba are failed states.  For all intents and purposes communism and socialism are dead. 

Or are they?  Despite the fact that socialism has never worked, and even democratic socialist states like Sweden and Norway have turned from overbearing, oppressive statism and opened their markets, American socialists are gaining power.  New York's Mayor Zorhan Mamdani is a professed Democratic Socialist who intends - like his Soviet bloc forbears - to take control of the means of production, the foundational principle of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.  In New York's case this means returning finance, real estate, and commerce to government in order to equalize the currently unequal society where the top one percent controls 80 percent of the wealth. 

Wealth redistribution - i.e. taking money earned by some and giving it those who have earned nothing, all in the name of fairness and equity - is at the heart of Mamdani's municipal policies. 

The result? The wealthiest New Yorkers are picking up stakes and moving to states like Florida and Texas which have dismantled the old liberal punitive tax system and welcomed those willing to invest.  Middle class and poor New Yorkers will now have to shoulder the increased tax burden caused by Mamdani's socialist 'reconfiguration'

There is no such thing as a free lunch, but Mamdani and the new self-proclaimed Socialist Mayor of Washington, DC, Janeese Lewis George insist there is.  Mamdami has opened a free supermarket, has promised to make public transit free, and will empty the treasury to assure diversity, equity, and inclusion.  New York will face bankruptcy, will turn to New York State and the federal government for a bailout, Mamdani and his inner circle will be turned out of office, but it will take years to repair the damage. 

So how is it that New Yorkers voted Mamdani into office?  Couldn't they see that socialism has had a sorry history since its inception a hundred years ago?  That it is fundamentally economically unsound.  Its principles sound good - equality, fairness, social justice, compassion, and  community - but the means to these idealistic ends have never had sense or utility.  An interruption of the private market - a fair exchange between buyers and sellers, supply and demand to determine price, value, and inventory - and replacing it by a politically motivated system run by bureaucrats and ideologues has never worked and can never work. 

One New Yorker said that the city is now racially and ethnically diverse, and these  uneducated, politically and economically unsophisticated immigrants see only two things: 1) Mamdani looks like them, a brown-skinned African-Asian mélange; and 2) he is going to make everything free. What's not to like?

As conservative economist Thomas Sowell has noted, government is the only enterprise which can spend money with no accountability.  If it feels good and right to invest in something, then it must be right and good.  Soon to be inaugurated Socialist Mayor of DC is a prime example of feel-good socialist excess.  Washington's black population, no longer the mega-majority it once was but still significant, has been given short shrift in the past, says George, and thousands of families, because of white supremacism and oppression remained mired in poverty.  Crime and anti-social behavior in the ghetto are nothing more than expressions of frustration and anger, and government has a duty to satisfy their needs. 

Already billions have been poured into the public trough by successive DC municipal governments, but because there has been no accountability this money has disappeared.  Not only have socio-economic indicators not improved despite this infusion of public funds, they have gone down. The inner city is worse off than it has ever been. 

Socialist mayors like Janeese George do not want to face facts - equally poor ethnic groups, like the Chinese and the Jews before them, have risen out of poverty to high educational and economic achievement because of culture - an ethos of work, responsibility, individual merit, competition and high expectations.  Money is not the issue.  Culture is. 

Socialists like Mamdani and George prefer to overlook the underlying causes of poverty and economic disparity and jump to the same idealistic conclusions of their Soviet forbears. 

It is not surprising that young, adolescent Americans have fallen for the blandishments of socialist politicians. Adolescence is too early to become hardened by facts, hemmed in by logic and intellectual discipline.  It is a time for optimism, hope, and idealism, perhaps the only time, so don't waste it; but a mature adult to persist in the belief that a discredited, disavowed, oppressive and impoverishing system can actually work is unthinkable.  Yet, there it is.  Ordinarily reasonable people are turning to a system with no future, no promise, no traction whatsoever. 

Part of the problem is Trump-hatred. The Left has been convinced that Donald Trump is so evil, destructive, arrogant, and mindful only of increasing his wealth and power that only the most radically progressive measures can stop him in his tracks and return America to the path to a utopian future.  Only diametrically contrary policies will work to right the ship.  Socialism is the answer to MAGA, right-wing terror. 

Trump alone cannot account for the febrile thinking that has enabled politicians like Mamdami, George, Bernie Sanders, and others. Idealism, the last refuge of scoundrels, says one commentor, playing on the patriotism meme, is the real issue.  Progressives simply cannot think beyond promise, hope, and some dreamy confection remembered from A Child's Garden of Verse. If it sounds good, it must be good; and doesn't diversity, equity, inclusion, self-esteem, sharing, and compassion sound good?

This resurgence of socialism will peter out once the cracks show and the foundation crumbles.  Mamdani's policies are already under scrutiny and his programs - like the free supermarket in East Harlem - are shown to be hypocritical failures.  Free, yes, but supply and demand - you can't empty the shelves - still operate. 

Yet the American voter's credulousness seems to have no limits.  Millions endorsed progressives' idea of gender fluidity, male motherhood, and a full range of sexual choices.  They cheered the opening of the borders to illegal immigrants despite the unmistakably clear reason for it - these new arrivals, thanks to no voter ID requirements could be 'encouraged' to vote Democratic and their numbers would create enough census pressures to reconfigure electoral districts. Voters saluted higher taxes and unaccountable public spending. 

So it is no surprise that they have endorsed Mamdani and George; and despite Bernie Sanders' personal wealth, three houses, and plutocrat lifestyle, love his compassion. 

Progressives will see the light as every last citizen of the Soviet bloc saw - socialism is nothing but an idealistic sham, a failed philosophy, and a coruscating, destructive force. 

Man Up! - Closed Borders, No Foreign Assistance, And Take Care Of Your Own

Liberals have howled at what they consider the unconscionable razing of USAID and the end to limitless American foreign assistance.  The Editor-in-Chief of The Economist in an interview with Elon Musk, the leader of the charge against America's behemoth bureaucracy, asked him if he realized that by closing USAID, he has the blood of millions of children on his hands?

Musk, characteristically cool, confident, and without anger, said no, he did not.  The charge was spurious and ignorant, politically motivated, superficial and inflammatory.  Channeling Ronald Reagan, Musk said, 'USAID is not the solution.  It is the problem'. 

Anyone who has worked for or with USAID knows that American foreign assistance has been a total, dismal failure.  It has been transparently and overtly political in its choices of 'investment', overlooking fraudulent, corrupt, and hopelessly criminal regimes in exchange for political support, opposition to American enemies, and access to raw materials.  Given this nod to dictators, autocrats, and their oppressive policies, it is no surprise that the Presidents-for-Life up and down the African continent have taken the money, offered thanks and a willingness to reform, and filled Swiss and offshore bank accounts with unearned dollars.  

As part of this intellectually and morally corrupt pas de deux, African governments did nothing to facilitate the development projects included in international loans and grants.  Without government support, these projects rarely got off the ground, and if they did, they foundered and died within a year. 

The donors themselves - USAID and European development agencies - were complicit in this failure to implement projects funded by them.  American projects were hopelessly optimistic in their projections, mired in political cant, and overseen by either rank amateurs, or progressive-minded inclusivists for whom Africa could do no wrong. 

In one infamous project where a USAID-sponsored non-profit agency got a supplemental grant from a private foundation to 'save newborn lives'.  While the funds could easily have been invested in wide-coverage tetanus vaccination campaigns which would have dramatically reduced the disease immediately, the agency refused such a 'top-down, siloed' approach and preferred a more participatory, community based one which would focus on maternal intimacy, warming, and love.  Needless to say, deaths from tetanus remained at their high levels. 

Because of a politically-motivated campaign for exclusive breastfeeding, mothers who chose to work outside the home, but could only do so if they relied on bottle feeding, were refused inclusion in the campaign.  The American women who had made exclusive breastfeeding a progressive cause celebre denied women of promise and enterprise the information necessary to properly bottle feed their infants. 

AIDS prevention campaigns which refused  because of 'cultural sensitivity' to recognize the dangerously promiscuous behavior of both African men and women and come down hard on the serial and multiple sexual partnerships lost the opportunity to inject the key component in prevention - moral responsibility. 

When George Bush instituted PEPFAR, a program which aimed at the rapid production and distribution of anti-retroviral drugs which could dramatically reduce mortality from AIDS, there was initial resistance from the anti-top-down advocates; but when Bush insisted, said that traditional behavior change campaigns were not working, the drugs went international and AIDS mortality dropped significantly. 

'By closing down USAID [and PEPFAR]', the Economist editor went on, you were consigning millions of people to unnecessary suffering and death'; but Musk replied that it was African governments' responsibility to rationalize their profligate spending, stop the corruption which robbed the people of billions in financial resources, and negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for favorable arrangements; and up to private foundations and non-profit agencies to take up the slack.  

Continuing to pour money into corrupt regimes, whatever the short term benefits, only perpetuates the corruption. 

The Scandinavian donors, hoping to promote in Africa the same 'democratic socialism' they had in their own countries, poured hundreds of millions of foreign exchange into Tanzania where President Julius Nyerere and his socialist nationalism party promised universal reform and rapid development.  Of course nothing of the like happened, and Tanzania remained poor, undeveloped, and dependent on foreign aid. 

'Pull the plug', said a development economist of the Rand Corporation. 'It is time cut off these dependent, corrupt, manipulative African 'leaders' completely from foreign assistance and force them to borrow on international capital markets.  Let the World Bank return to its original role of lender of last resort.' 

The Bank played an important development role in the past as this specialized lender.  Governments went to Chase, Dresdner, Citibank and others for loans, and if refused but having put together a reasonable and creditable proposal, the World Bank would step in. 

Once Robert McNamara took over the Bank presidency in hopes of restoring his credibility after a disastrous tour as Secretary of Defense prosecuting the failed American military adventure in Vietnam, the Bank hemorrhaged money.  'Poverty reduction' was the refrain, and the Bank began down the same failed road as USAID. 

 

The Chinese have gone one step farther.  Forget 'development' and simply conclude favorable bilateral contracts. Guarantee us oil at a fixed, below-market rate, and we will rebuild your transportation infrastructure, no strings attached.

'Development' - the traditional 'cooperative, community-based, participatory, inclusive programs in which the means are more important than the ends - is finished, and Elon Musk knows it. 

The illegal immigration crisis has two damaging effects - first and foremost it is causing disruption and social chaos in those European countries which, seduced by the progressive notion of 'inclusivity' let in all comers across their borders. These migrants, by and large Muslim have taken the charity of their recipient countries and given nothing in return.  France in particular is home to nests of radical Islamists who adamantly refuse integration and assimilation.  Finally conservative leaders throughout Europe have said basta! and are likely to win the next elections. 

Refusing illegal immigration has a second benefit, forcing corrupt and inefficient governments to address the needs of those citizens who flee and those who would like to.  Popular revolt is likely and welcome. 

Only those who have lost their jobs at USAID are shedding tears.  The rest of the country, thanks to the exposes of Musk, Rand, the Trump Administration, conservative journals and thinktanks, is finally seeing the phenomenal waste of dollars and resources because of in intellectually corrupt and practically inefficient program. 

Millions of deaths? Hardly.  A reform of foreign assistance according to conservative principles will be an important step in forcing recalcitrant, entrenched autocrats to react or to incite their governed to revolt.  In either case, the demise of international aid can only be a long term benefit.