My Thirty Minute Phone Call From Mitch McConnell!

Last night, just as I was falling off to sleep, my telephone rang and I answered. To my ecstatic surprise, it was Mitch McConnell in the flesh, so to speak, since so many million Americans have begun to doubt his existence. I spat, sputtered, regained control of my rapidly beating heart and finally responded, "Mr. Senator, thank you very much for calling me! I'm surprised you remember me since it has been so many years since we last spoke." Mitch rejoined, "Not remember you??? How could I not remember you? We ate pinto beans together at the old Rock House Restaurant at the mouth of Slone Fork between Hindman and Mousie in the summer of 1968 when we were both just young whipper snappers. You were sixteen years old and fresh out of high school at that wonderful old Knott County High School at Pippa Passes on Caney Creek, what an institution! I was a young, wet behind the ears attorney, just twenty-six years young, just graduated from law school the year before, working for Marlowe Cook in his run for the US Senate seat as his college coordinator with all the colleges in the state. We were desperate for every vote we could find so he sent me to see you in Knott County because you were enrolled in Alice Lloyd College after a wonderful academic summer or two in Upward Bound, that reprehensible program which had been such a waste of federal money by Democrats." I was thunderstruck to say the least but I tried to speak, to ask what he could possibly need from me now almost 60 years after that fortuitous bowl of pinto beans. I tried to speak, to question why it was his idea to call me now. "You and that bowl of pinto beans changed my life forever. You actually agreed to be the campus student chair for Marlowe Cook and Richard Nixon, God bless their sainted souls! You worked that job so hard, called me once a week at my office in Louisville and repeatedly told me the truth, that there were no Republican votes on Caney Creek. You taught me how to face the truth with that kind of honesty. You set me on the path to great power, motivated me to become a powerful United States Senator and Senate Majority Leader for a record stretch. I'll never forget you or that wonderful bowl of pinto beans." I said,"Sir, I'm afraid that you have more important calls to make than this one. I hope you don't intend to waste twenty minutes of your valuable time with me as you have with so many of your Republican colleagues! To my utter surprise, Mitch then said with a sly chuckle, "Waste twenty minutes? Oh no, this won't be a waste, and I'm going to give you a full half hour unlike the others. Just relax and listen as I tell you my plans." I agreed to sit quietly and listen as the half hour flew by, or actually just twenty-eight minutes of it. I can't divulge what plans Mitch told me about but they were fantastic, exhilirating, stupendous, supercalifragilisticexpealidoscious, but he swore me to secrecy. Then just as my bedside clock showed the call to have been going on for twenty-seven minutes, I heard a stentorian but heavenly voice in the background of Mitch's call. "Mitch, it's time. Let's go, please!" I heard Mitch respond, "Peter? Saint Peter, NO, it can't be. I have so much to do. I was just telling Roger Hicks how much I have planned from now until the end of my term...". Then,to my utter consternation, the line went dead...and, I suspect, the line did not go dead alone.

"When Even Angels Wept A Story Without A Hero" by Lately Thomas--Book Review

Thomas, Lately 1973 When Even Angels Wept A Story Without A Hero (New York--William Morrow & Co. 1973)

Several months ago, as the Republican primary season was beginning to heat up and Kentucky's Right Wing Radical Republican Senator Rand Paul announced his candidacy for the presidency I began to read every word I could find on the late Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy who is forever linked to his effort to destroy what he believed or claimed was a communist scourge in America.  Instead of destroying communism, McCarthy destroyed the lives of literally thousands of good, decent, patriotic Americans who were not remotely communists.  I have mentioned in this blog before that in my lifetime I have met and learned from four of the people whose lives were greatly damaged by McCarthy.  I saw a similar willingness on the part of Rand Paul to ignore individual constitutional rights on a mission of pure self interest.  What I did not see at the time I began my reading about Joseph McCarthy was that a far greater danger than Rand Paul was lurking on the American horizon, the TRAITOR Donald Trump.  However, my reading about McCarthy was made just as timely and just as important to American Democracy by the sudden ascendancy of TRAITOR Trump on the political scene.

In the same time frame, I began reading as much of the body of dystopian literature as I could consume since I saw a likelihood for politicians like Rand Paul and the TRAITOR Donald Trump to attempt to destroy freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and most other constitutional freedoms which has happened nearly on a daily basis since the TRAITOR Donald Trump managed to consort with Vladimir Putin in order to steal the American election and the White House.  I have written several blog posts here based on that foresight and the body of dystopian literature.  I have read and written about the work of George Orwell and I have also written about the history of the Holocaust and European Resistance to the Nazi's and Russians.   

As a part of this multifaceted study of literature, I read "When Even Angels Wept A Story Without  A Hero" by Lately Thomas.  The book is a bit long in the tooth having been published in 1973.  But there is not a more timely book for every American to read than this one in light of the ongoing attempts by TRAITOR Trump to destroy freedom of the press and individual constitutional freedoms in America. I actually finished the book a few weeks ago but did not have the time to write about it sooner.  In the interim, TRAITOR Trump has unceremoniously, injudiciously, and self-destructively fired FBI Director James Comey and Director Comey has now testified before the US Senate about the circumstances leading to his firing.  Comey's testimony has contributed significantly to the case against TRAITOR Trump in his association with Vladimir Putin in the hijacking of the presidential election.  More will come of all this in the next few weeks.  It is also significant that the top federal criminal prosecutor, Deputy Solicitor General  Michael Dreeben, has joined the staff of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller in the ongoing investigation of the Russian conspiracy which has led to the seizure of the White House by TRAITOR Trump and his criminal syndicate.  There is no better time for American citizens to read and study Lately Thomas' book about Joseph McCarthy, who until this year was the greatest political criminal the USA had ever seen.

Lately Thomas takes an interesting position about Joseph McCarthy and his actions. Thomas concludes and states in his introduction to the book that Joseph McCarthy was "a pirate".

"...Joseph McCarthy was a pirate, and one does not, one cannot, pass valid moral judgments on pirates...The distinction which sets the freebooter apart from the violent revolutionary, for example, or from the man who wages a war for some purpose other than plunder, appears in McCarthy, [and in TRAITOR Trump] the essence of this distinction being that the pirate is not amenable to moral laws because he recognizes none. By the very act of becoming a pirate he has forced the moral code, which is binding on other men, to walk the plank.  A man cannot be held morally answerable to laws of which he is incognizant; hence the pirate, entertaining no scruples, whatsoever, is freed of their encumbrance...Whether we are aware of the fact or not, we do not pass moral judgments upon pirates, either the best or the worst of them...because intuitively we grasp that their ways of standards and conduct lie outside the confines of conventional morality.  Ways deplorable, doubtless, antisocial, and even horrible, yet, when regarded impersonally and from behind a buffer of distance, often fascinating.  Moral conformity is not the pirates concern.  For him, rapine is no more reprehensible than is preaching to a parson or lending money at interest to a banker.  We may, if we are strong enough, hold the pirate accountable under statute law; we may even stretch his neck; but morally he will not be answerable to us."  "When Even Angels Wept A Story Without A Hero" pp. 1-2

Contained in that quotation from Thomas' book are several truths which were valid assessments of Senator Joseph McCarthy when the book was written; and those truths are equally valid  assessments of the TRAITOR Donald Trump and the political disaster which he and his criminal syndicate are bringing about in America today.  The TRAITOR Donald Trump is just as much a pirate as Joseph McCarthy and has "forced the moral code...to walk the plank".  His past actions over the last fifty to sixty-five years show a consistent pattern of disrespect for everyone, everything, and every social restriction which society has attempted to place upon him. This recent article discusses his antisocial and violent behaviors even as a child.  It has been necessary for more than 3,500 innocent victims of TRAITOR Trump's business crimes to sue him in order to seek payment of just debts.  According to the article cited in the preceding link, these criminal behaviors are continuing today even as this career criminal and his criminal syndicate illegally occupy the White House.  In many ways, Lately Thomas' book might well have been written about the TRAITOR Donald Trump.

"When Even Angels Wept..." reads at times like a Shakespearean tragedy.  Joseph McCarthy was a poor Irish Catholic Wisconsin farm boy who grew up poor and rose to great power before his gargantuan psychological and moral flaws hamstrung him and brought him down just as permanently as that single unwashed tendon brought an end to Achilles.  McCarthy attended high school as an older student and finished in what was affirmed to be record time while supporting himself by selling eggs to grocers in Milwaukee.  He sailed through law school at Marquette University, was elected to a local judgeship, and joined the Marines when WWII broke out.  However, the record shows, as detailed by Thomas, that while in the Marines, McCarthy deftly finagled his way out of combat situations, managed to describe a common accident as a medal worthy combat wound, and set himself up to run for the US Senate from Wisconsin.  He was living the life of a pirate every day of his life and when he got to Washington that life became magnified, aggrandized, and blown out of all proportion to his actual qualifications and achievements.  Joseph McCarthy was a self-serving freebooter who went about gaining the chairmanship of a relatively minor committee in the senate.  Then he managed, by his criminal interference in the lives of the innocent, to turn that committee into the most publicly notorious arm of the federal government. In just a handful of years, McCarthy destroyed the lives of thousands of innocent victims in order to paint himself as a leader who was worthy of public office. 

However, the book reveals that McCarthy's vast, self-destructive psychological flaws led to his demise along with his alcoholism which was simultaneously destroying his health.  Joseph McCarthy died a premature death at 49 after having been brought into check by his senate colleagues who censured him due to his freebooter ways in the conduct of his investigations.  He was brought up short at the end of his chain much like an ill tempered dog.  There is a great deal to be learned by the average reader and voter by reading any available literature about the life of McCarthy and this book is a great place to start.  Read it with a jaundiced eye due to the somewhat overly positive portrayal which is provided by Lately Thomas at times.  Read it with an eye to the current ongoing political disaster in Washington.  Read it with the intent to find tools to be used in the political resistance necessary to protect our democracy and constitutional rights.