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Lost Their Way

In spite of fascist aggression in Europe the Republican Party of the 1930’s opposed foreign intervention even in the face of world war.

Staunchly isolationist, Republican members of Congress, particularly Senators William Borah of Idaho and Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, carefully crafted legislation to block aid to democracies under Nazi threat. When World War Two did erupt in 1939 and blitzkrieg shrouded Europe isolationists refused to act. While England stood alone and fearfully vulnerable Franklin Roosevelt sent Churchill what he legally could, but certainly not enough.

Not until December, 1941 did Congress approve a declaration of war, however, not against Germany. The warlords of Japan had launched a direct air assault upon US bases on the island of Oahu, and only then did America rise to the moment.

Ironically, one week after Pearl Harbor it was Hitler who declared war against the US, and that freed FDR to channel significant aid to Great Britain, and to new ally, the Soviet Union.

Four long years of bloody trial and sacrifice finally ceased with the detonation of the Fat Man Bomb over Nagasaki. Hitler was dead, Mussolini was dead, and the Japanese islands quelled.

The war years left in its wake massive changes reshaping America. In point, no group emerged more transformed than the Republican Party. The postwar GOP fully embraced internationalism, no longer obstructing foreign aid, either military or humanitarian.

A fateful change in the aftermath of war was America’s important wartime alliance with the Soviet Union. In an ominous move Josef Stalin did not, and would not withdraw his Red Army dominating Eastern Europe. Any hope of a peaceful postwar world quickly faded. A paranoid despot, Stalin flatly refused aid from the United States for Russia and Eastern Europe, though the entire region had been shattered.

In place of the alliance a perilous atomic arms race, a Cold War, commenced between the two nations.

However, this time around a bipartisan Congress took action.

When Russian expansion threatened Greece and Turkey, President Truman quickly dispatched money and matériels, as did later President Eisenhower, who extended US support to Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

In Congress no group took the fight against Russian aggression more seriously than the Grand Old Party. Chastened Republicans had learned well the lessons of prewar isolation and stepped up aggressively to check Soviet expansion around the globe.

Influenced by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and red baiter, Senator Joe McCarthy, the Republican Party pursued a dogged response to Russian aggression at home and around the globe. Risking a nuclear showdown America went toe to toe with the Soviets from the 1948 Berlin Airlift to Korea, to Vietnam.

American presidents and leaders in Congress kept up the pressure until Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush aided the 1989 fall of Russian and Eastern European Communism, ending the Cold War.

Through all of these episodes and so many others, the GOP stood tall in the fight against all foreign foes threatening the United States.

Where once Dwight Eisenhower faced down the Russians, and Nixon defended America directly with Beijing and the Kremlin, Republicans now kneel before a man who, in Helsinki, privately had unrecorded talks with the current despot of Russia, and publicly took sides with Putin at the cost of American security. Moreover, this same man, a grifter, attempted to extort Ukraine’s new President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy in order to smear his own stateside political rival. After the end of his first term the freeloader stole thousands of sensitive intelligence documents from Washington, wedging American secrets among toilet paper, plungers, and plumbing fixtures.

It’s a bit of a gob smack that older hands, men who lived through the Cold War years, Senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham and Chuck Grassley, among others, excuse and downplay 47’s outrageous, dangerous, and treasonous conduct.

So it’s easy to understand mainstream America’s distress over today’s Republican stances. (Especially Putin’s aggression into the Crimea and the war in Ukraine.)

Welcomed by the GOP, cyber interference from Russia continues to spread misinformation to undermine our elective democratic process. This party and its messiah has opened the inner sanctum of national security inviting thugs into the Capitol, and outsiders to destabilize the United States.

Where once Republicans defended America from all foreign threats they are today passively holding open the door. The party of Eisenhower and Reagan is filled with cold opportunists coddling an overgrown toddler with neofascist leanings.

The Kremlin has not changed, nor have the Chinese. And though symbolized by an elephant this Republican Party has clearly forgotten who they are.

They have lost their way.

Gail Chumbley is the author of River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. Chumbley has also penned two historical plays, Clay and Wolf By The Ears. A third play, Peer Review.

Give And Take

“I should say that the majority of women (happily for society) are not troubled by sexual feelings of any kind,” wrote William Acton in an 1857 medical tract. Some fifteen years later Acton’s evidence-free assumption was echoed by Postal Inspector Anthony Comstock, the founder of The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Comstock’s organization had been formed to monitor and enforce morality in public behavior, emphasizing in particular, the conduct of women. Any discourse on women’s sexual behavior, according to Comstock was “obscene, indecent, lewd, and immoral,” period. (Chauvinism appears to be timeless). Galvanized by his puritanical convictions, Mr. Comstock set about cleansing the moral conduct of the people of New York. (Note the Society’s Seal, above, depicts book burning, as a legitimate means to his ends.)

Finding momentum statewide, Comstock took his crusade to Washington DC, where he convinced the US Postmaster General to battle unacceptable behaviors on a national scale. Soon Congress complied with passage of the Comstock Act in 1873. This law declared that any correspondence touching on women’s birth control, contraception, and abortion were prohibited from the US mail.

Among Comstock’s many opponents, and there were more than a few, reformer and free-thinker, Ezra Heywood defied the law, publishing articles and books supporting women’s rights, and defending female sexual freedom. Mr. Heywood most notorious work, Cupid’s Yoke, insisted marriage an act of equality and balance between a man and a woman, quickly attracting government attention, when he was promptly arrested for his writings. In court, Heywood continued to argue that women were capable of controlling their own lives, and bodies, insisting the Comstock Act was destroying the liberty of conscience. Further, Heywood insisted women ought, and must have a voice in determining the size of their own families. Apparently just expressing such thoughts was enough to prove obscenity, and Heywood headed to jail for his persistence.

In the early 20th Century another movement targeted morals, this time in the film industry. Postmaster General, Will Hays, threatened Hollywood studios either to establish standards in motion picture content or the government would do the job. Known as the Hays Code, the studios prohibited profanity, nudity, violent sexuality, race mixing, and lustful kisses on the screen. In an interesting side note the film that sparked the controversy was 1934’s release of Tarzan. Maureen O’Sullivan’s Jane swimming naked alongside Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan sparked the scandal. Twenty Yale students, for example, stepped in front of a theater screen to halt the movie in New Haven, Connecticut.

Mr. Hay’s code remained in effect from 1934 until 1968, when the Supreme Court ruled films are art, and thus protected by the First Amendment. In place of the code, the Motion Pictures Association instead instituted the rating system we are accustomed to today. 

The specter of the Comstock Law, and the Hays Code still casts a long shadow over American culture. Instead of concentrating on public policy, and other issues; power grids, global warming, gun violence, and infrastructure, (plus many more) politicians push their private notions of morality upon the rest of us.

Women’s sexuality and healthcare are not obscene matters, nor are they open for public debate. A fixture of the 19th, and early 20th centuries was the norm known as coveture. By definition coveture meant the husband acted for his wife in all areas of life. She could not vote, nor own property in her own right, and her children belonged to her husband. She belonged to her husband. No wonder Mr. Comstock and Mr. Hays found such success in their efforts.

Those artifacts of another less enlightened age are over. Exploiting the pendulum of political opportunity, giving and taking rights from women, will no longer wash. The overturning of Roe, the war on medical aid in pregnancy, the patchwork of state reproduction laws, (14 states ban abortions from the moment of fertilization*) implies something deeply sinister. Women cannot be trusted to think for themselves, possess no self-agency like minors, or the severely mentally ill.

Absurd.

Attempting to regulate 50.4%** of the US population, (there are 100 women to every 97 men) has caused irreparable political harm to those behind today’s archaic, and reactionary movement.

See you all at the polls.

*Axios, Dec. 15, 2023

**www.census.gov

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January:Figure Eight.” Chumbley has penned three stage plays, “Clay” about Statesman Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears,” an exploration of slavery and racism, and “Peer Review,” on Presidential character.

The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know. Harry Truman

A Bright Side

Donald Trump, without a doubt has answered the centuries old question of the worst president in American history. His standing as the biggest moron lends Harding, Buchanan, Pierce, and other lackluster presidents a step up from the cellar. 

Is there a bright side to the bedlam unleashed by 45’s insanity? I believe so. Americans have witnessed how not to preside over our democracy in real time. Now that’s a powerful civics lesson. 

Once misunderstood, most American’s were reminded how the Electoral College functions—a big deal demonstrating how a candidate can win the Electoral College, but not the popular vote. From irregularities identified in the 2016 race, shocked citizens across the country wonder if this election procedure has a purpose in the 21st Century. 

The legal tradition of checks and balances took a rough bruising with Congressmen and Senators scurrying to the Oval Office to kiss the ring of their messiah. Two clearly illegal actions by the President; pressing Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to open an inquiry on Hunter Biden, and Trump would offer an invitation to Washington.The second came after the January 6th insurrection using violence to disrupt the ceremonial certification of Electoral College. The House impeached both times, and the Senate refused to convict. The moral of that story? The Executive Branch went rogue and the upper chamber of the Legislative Branch failed in their duty. However, both branches somehow remained intact and horrified voters learned what they didn’t want. 

That elections and voting truly matter may be the most profound lesson of the Trump years. The right to vote is power, and denying citizens of that power became the GOP’s endgame. Even now, the far right longs to deprive many of us, especially minorities from exercising that power. The lawsuits are still flying to undermine our most sacred right under the law.

Another teachable moment touched on the Supreme Court. The 2020 death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the retirement of Anthony Kennedy in 2018 shed light on manipulating the Judiciary. Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell lobbed the first volley through the customary practice of filling Supreme Court vacancies. Before 2016 the sitting president had the privilege to put forth judicial nominees. That had been a long tradition. But the sitting President happened to be Barack Obama. So of course McConnell blew that up. Obama’s choice for the court was Merrick Garland, and McConnell would not hear of it.

Following the 2016 election that tradition resumed. Trump put forth Amy Coney Barrett, and later Brett Kavanaugh. Both lied in hearings to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barrett testified she would allow Roe to remain, and Kavanaugh was a reputed date raper. The clause allowing lifetime terms for judges added gravity to Trump and McConnell’s shenanigans. 

Perhaps the Trump fiasco holds a silver lining. Americans have become more aware of the workings of our democracy, what functions under the hood, so to speak. Perhaps democracy is indeed fragile, but our near collapse into tyranny has forced us all to wake up and pay attention.

PS contact your Representative in Congress. Request a hand pamphlet of the Constitution like the one above. They have them in their DC office or their home office. We’ll show ’em.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. Chumbley has written two plays, Clay about 19th Century Statesman Henry Clay, and Wolf By The Ears exploring the genesis of racism and slavery in America.


The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know

Harry Truman

Peer Review #1

Marines manned numerous doorways along the wide hallway, as clusters of tourists wandered through colorful rooms. Upstairs the President listened to the public commotion with satisfaction, not for the house, not for the job, which, in truth, had become tiresome, but for the knowledge he could drop down and set all their bourgeois hearts aflutter. 

After a moment, he made his decision, slipping down an interior stair case, stepping into the Blue Room.

As his hands automatically fluffed his hair, the President sidled up beside a class of wiggly school children snapping cell phone pictures.

“And where are you from?,” the president teased with pleasure, anticipating an excited response. He half closed his eyes, and paused, waiting for the gratifying answer.

But he heard nothing.

Bemused, the President opened one eye, then the other. The chatty children paid him no mind, in fact were moving away, following their guide into the hallway.

“Wait,” he found himself calling. “It’s me, your President. I’m here.”

He repeated, “The President of the United States.”

But the children didn’t hear. He remained alone in the Blue Room, his hair acceptably coiffed.

No further tourists entered, though dozens drifted past the doorway. He didn’t understand and he thought very hard, seeking a rational explanation.

It was at that moment that he heard a voice, quite close, and quite annoyed. 

“Am I to understand you are a New Yorker?” 

The President wheeled around toward the sound. Before him, no more than an arm’s length away stood a mustachioed gentleman, wearing pinz nez spectacles, sporting a shiny top hat. The man’s eyes blazed behind the thick round lenses, and the astonished President detected a trickle of cold sweat trace down the back of his thick neck.

“I say, are you, or are you not, a New Yorker?” The stern man spoke in a nasally, patrician voice.

“Ahh. How did you get in here,” the President stammered. “Where is my secret service protection?”

“Supercilious pup,” the man in the top hat snapped. “They tell me that YOU are from New York, and are president! A common side show huckster, President.”

The President, though alarmed, replied reflexively, “I’m in real estate. I . . .made my fortune in New York real estate.” Only the muffled din of passing tourists kept the President from panic.

“Real Estate!” The man in spectacles scornfully shouted. “I’d say you are just another scoundrel from the wealthy criminal class. In New York, swindlers like you are a dime a dozen. I made a career of exposing rascals like you.” 

The man, attired in a three-piece suit, a watch fob draping his ample waist, bore a deep scowl. “And you found your way into this office of trust. Intolerable.”

Though bewildered, the President, unaccustomed to such personal insults, felt his pique rising. “I was elected President by the largest margin in American Hist . . .”

“Poppycock,” the specter interrupted. “It is my understanding the decision rested upon a mere tilt in the Electoral system, and that outsiders interfered to make certain of your victory.” 

The strange visitor moved closer. “I’d say that you are a compromised pawn of foreign meddlers, and give not one damn for the American people.”

At this point the President had heard enough, and attempted to move his legs. He wanted very much to escape the Blue Room, but his feet remained rooted. 

“I have important things to do, you need to go,” the President’s voice trembled, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

The apparition narrowed his intense eyes, and took another step toward the unnerved President. 

“I claim more authority to this revered House and Office than your mercenary greed could ever comprehend. You belong with Tweed, Plunkitt, Fisk, Conkling, and the rest of New York’s good-for-nothings. Dishonor has followed you to the Presidency, what, with your womanizing, graft, and unsavory business connections.” The fierce apparition fixed an intense, menacing gaze. “You do not belong here, nor your parade of lackeys and opportunists.

The buzz of foot traffic grew louder, and when the President again glanced toward his unwelcome visitor, he found him gone, the Blue Room empty.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-volume memoir, “River of January” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” both available on Kindle.

Hard copies are available at http://www.river-of-january.com

 

Worth Reading

I submitted this short note to my State Senator. Feel free to copy and send to yours.

This email is in regard to the library controversy. As an educator the notion of deciding what is acceptable portends bad things to follow. Using one incident of a child’s book isn’t a full picture. Not one of us read the same thing, and that is true for children. I shudder to contemplate legal censorship as a slippery slope to authoritarianism. I know the far right is attempting to control our community, and that should be enough of a red flag to stop this bill in its tracks. Our libraries are one of the last institutions that bind us together as Americans and Idahoans. To speak plainly the bill is just a bad idea and isn’t workable. If the titles under scrutiny become public, those books sell like hotcakes. It has been since the days of Lady Chatterly’s Lover, or currently The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexi.

As stated by Isaac Asimov “Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.”

Sincerely,

Gail Chumbley

They Were Wrong

“Slave owners and white racists were afraid that the world they had always known was slipping away from them. Fear was a great motivator—fear of change, fear of losing power, fear being that they were wrong. The roots of white anxiety over threats to enslavement and to legalize white supremacy ran deep.”

John Meacham, And There was Light. Random House, 2022, page 55.

Reading this passage last night stunned me. A myriad of thoughts rushed at once, promptly crystallizing into one central truth; racial dynamics in America have not changed. Not. One. Bit.

Meacham’s book, a biography of Lincoln, focuses on the shaping events that made Lincoln arguably America’s greatest President. However, those same circumstances left the Southern slave power angry, and lethally dangerous. This metastasizing rancor ultimately exploded into Civil War, and to Lincoln’s 1865 murder.

The Missouri Compromise triggered the first alarm below the Mason-Dixon Line. That slavery could be limited through any federal legislative act left slavers touchy and suspicious. Sensitive to any criticism Southern owners  (as Mr. Meacham pointed out), viewed any outside opposition to their standing as a dishonorable insult.

Congressmen and Senators frequently squared off years before soldiers manned battle lines. A Massachusetts Senator suffered a severe beating on the Senate floor for an anti-slavery address. So volatile became the rhetoric that the House chamber finally adopted a “gag rule” prohibiting any mention of slavery in any deliberations.

As Northern abolitionists grew more strident, Southerners grew more militant. A flash of arms became only a matter of time.

Any abolitionists tracts, or books, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin quickly landed in the trash bin, tossed out by local Southern officials.

The politics of race entered houses of worship with church leaders twisting the Bible inside out to oppose or justify slavery. Today the Southern Methodist and Southern Baptists churches are evidence of the war before the war.

After the guns silenced, into the Reconstruction era the newly emancipated found protection only through Yankee bayonets. Outraged and unrepentant Southern whites waged guerrilla warfare with violence and terror. The Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camelia, and the White League galloped through the night spreading fear and intimidation to any black-man who dared claim the blessings of liberty. 

Contrasting the 21st Century to the 19th provides strikingly similar dynamics.

In 2008 Barack Obama became 44th President of the United States, and white power interests again lost their minds.

Though at first it appeared that America had turned a positive corner in race relations, Senator Mitch McConnell quickly reacted decreeing the GOP would not work with the new president. Soon after the Congressional Republicans sunsetted a clause in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, the act protected black voters from discrimination at the polls. McConnell’s handy work placed the onus on the voter to prove they were illegally denied. (Much like the old poll tax and literacy tests days.)

Once again white supremacist perceive their alpha-position slipping away, and they, too, are suspicious and lethally dangerous. The hate group names have changed, but not the mission. Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, neo-Nazi’s, MAGA, and Christian Nationalists gallop now through the internet on the dark web, surfacing to attack as was done on January 6th, 2021.

The signs are all there, fear of a changing America, fear of being wrong, and fearful of losing control.

Those who witnessed the dissolution of the Union believed their blood-soaked sacrifice had settled for all time the issue of race in America. But that is clearly false.

But then is now. Now is then. Eras are intricately and forever intertwined. This nation has remembered nothing and again defaulted to the same old norms of hate and boastful ignorance.

And though those same feelings run deep, and they are still wrong.

The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know. Harry Truman

Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. She has penned two stage plays, “Clay,” exploring the life of Henry Clay, “Wolf By the Ears,” a study of racism in America, and “Peer Review,” where 47 is confronted by four past presidents.

A Letter

In my home state, Idaho, the legislature is considering a bill to approve vouchers for education. As a teacher, and student of history, I composed this letter of opposition to my state senator.

Dear Senator,

Abraham Lincoln struggled through a difficult childhood of hard physical labor and poverty. As a boy in Indiana, school was barely an option. There were ABC schools where Lincoln and other children learned rudimentary literacy. Sadly the teachers knew very little themselves making a real education a forlorn hope.

Childhood friends later reported that Abe’s head was always in a book. If he knew of other available books he would walk for miles to borrow from the community. Unfortunately Lincoln’s father, Thomas Lincoln, viewed reading as laziness, though his stepmother had sympathy for the boy’s self improvement.

As President, Lincoln promoted the Morrill Land Grant Act. This measure authorized establishing universities across the nation. The U of I is one such institution. 

And though he never lived to see the Act materialize, he firmly placed his imprint on American Education.

May we all commit to preserve our public schools and invest in Idaho’s future. 

Sincerely,

Gail Chumbley

“The philosophy of the in schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”  Abraham Lincoln.

Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, River of January and River of January: Figure Eight. She also has written two stage plays, Clay on the life of Henry Clay and Wold By The Ears examining racism and slavery.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know. Harry Truman

A Mandate

Theodore Roosevelt endured a childhood haunted by ill health. Orphaned by age 15, Andrew Jackson struggled for survival in the Carolina back country. Born the first son of a second marriage, George Washington aspired to rise above his inferior social rank. Abraham Lincoln, a child of the frontier, transformed himself through sheer hard work, and perseverance.

Before they were men these four presidents encountered enormous obstacles in order to reach America’s highest office.

This is the topic of four programs I’m presenting this spring. The idea of exploring future presidents childhoods seemed an interesting approach to understanding the past. What I didn’t expect was the anxiety churned up researching Andrew Jackson. 

Rereading Chernow’s Washington A Life proved an enjoyable review. Washington was not perfect, and certainly a man of his time. But that he overcame his avarice and ambition makes Washington an affirming subject.

On Lincoln, Douglas Wilson’s Honor’s Voice did no less. The man’s goodness, compassion, and intelligence came directly from overcoming his rustic beginnings. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Wilson, plumbs the depths of Roosevelt’s chronic childhood illnesses, and the directive from his father to overcome his frail body through exercise and sports. 

Then there is Andrew Jackson. 

HW Brands work, Andrew Jackson His Life and Times, is an oldie but goody; a book I enjoyed a lot. But that was before Donald Trump. Picking up Andrew Jackson, American Lion has been an ordeal. Jon Meacham describes a man who honestly believed he alone could save America by consolidating all power in the White House. Only Jackson spoke for the people, not Congress and certainly not the Courts. And the most distressing element? The Seventh President got away with his autocratic coup because voters let him. 

How does his childhood figure into his administration? Jackson never had limits. The early demise of his family, left the boy unsupervised in the backcountry, shuttled from one relative to the next. Somehow his rootless beginnings left in Jackson a volatile temperament of him against the world. 

The General murdered scores of Native Americans, and brought home a Creek boy he’d made an orphan. Brutality and tenderness, compassion and racism, love or hate. 

For Jackson all issues of state were personal, and loyalty the foundation of all his relationships. In that vein Trump resembles Jackson, plus the vile racism. 

What separates Andrew Jackson from Trump is a numbers game. President Jackson, for better or worse did win 55.5% of the popular vote in 1828, 54.2% in 1832. (Each election included four or more candidates) Our seventh President did earn an actual mandate from the people. 

Trump did not, and loses more ground every day

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Chumbley has written two plays, “Clay” about the life of Henry Clay, and Wolf By The Ears, an examination of slavery and racism.