So far there have been 44 U.S. presidents, each with their own legacy. Two of these presidents were in office for only a month, so their legacies are short. Generally, the more malevolent a particular president was in office the more the legacy needs to be spun to flatter the subject and keep America’s powerless in the dark so as not to weaken the power elite of America’s corpocracy; namely, its corporate, political, and military leaders, along with the shadow government (e.g., the CIA director), and, in the inner circle, fanatical proponents of America’s manifest destiny to control the world’s resources.
The 42 presidents all had in common two malevolent characteristics that needed the most spinning. One was their psychopathology, a condition of them all that has been substantiated by experts. ((Apparently the psychopathology of U.S. presidents is “normal” if we can believe the findings from a study that relied on some 100 historical experts’ analyses of data on all U.S. presidents. The researchers say they found this personality trait in every U.S. president. See, Howard, J. “Psychopathic Personality Traits Linked With U.S. Presidential Success, Psychologists Suggest,” The Huffington Post, September 13, 2012. And noted psychoanalyst Dr. Justin Frank seems to have found it also when analyzing the backgrounds and behavior of Bush and Obama. See, Frank, J. “Bush on the Couch”, Harper Perennial, 2005. “Obama on the Couch”, Free Press, 2012.)) The other is their unflinching willingness to authorize covert and overt wars that all told and so far have claimed and are continuing to claim countless millions of lives of civilians and those killed in combat. ((See, e.g., Brumback, GB. America’s Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2015, pp. 46-47.)) Currently, we are told that “the US is dropping bombs quicker than it can make them.” ((Snyder, S. The U.S. is Dropping Bombs Quicker Than It Can Make Them. PRITheWorld, April 10, 2016.)) Before continuing reflect for a moment on what that quote really means. It means it’s just another sickening reminder of how heinous America’s power elite are in their endless effort to control the world’s resources.
The purpose of this article is threefold: to shed the slime light on the whitewashing by America’s corpocracy of five of our nation’s truly despicable yet revered presidents; to show how legacy spinning is but a microcosm of the power elites’ broader agenda; and to point out the overall implications of that agenda.
The Real Legacy of President George Washington
As the nation’s first president George Washington also became the nation’s first “warrior-in-chief.” He advocated a “regular and standing” army to “awe the Indians, protect our Trade, prevent the encroachment of our Neighbours of Canada and the Florida’s—[and] establishing arsenals of all kinds of military stores.” ((Wikipedia. George Washington. See also; George Washington, Sentiments on a Peace Establishment. May 2, 1783.)) He relied on that army in the Northwest Indian War that resulted in several thousand casualties and also in quelling the so-called “whiskey rebellion.” ((Wikipedia. Shay’s Rebellion.)) Why should any different behavior have been expected from a man who was an experienced warrior on numerous occasions even before the American Revolution? ((Wikipedia. Military Career of George Washington.))
The Real Legacy of President Abraham Lincoln
“Honest Abe?” As a young man, legend says it’s so. As president, real legend says “absolutely not!” Ordinarily I don’t quote whole paragraphs from other sources, but I am making an exception here:
A president of the United States would never operate outside the law, ignore the U.S. Constitution and the courts, shut down the presses, imprison his domestic adversaries or turn his guns on his own people. Well, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president did of all of that and, curiously, has been turned into a national hero for his troubles. Lincoln ignored his closest advisors and the temper of the times to engage in the bloodiest war in American history, a war that could easily have been avoided. ((DiLorenzo, T. The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. Crown Forum, 2009.))
One of his other books highlights the “dishonest Abe.” ((DiLorenzo, T. Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe. Crown Forum, 2009.)) I have also written in two of my books about Lincoln and the Civil War, but I don’t have Professor DiLorenzo’s credentials. ((Brumback, GB. The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch. Author House, 2011, p. 38; see also, Brumback, 2015, p. 255.)) In doing the research to write the newer of those two books I read twice over Howard Zinn’s enlightening book on American history, and learned that Lincoln was actually a racist. ((Zinn, H. A People’s History of the United States. Harper Perrenial, 2005, p. 188.)) Perhaps more than any other president, Lincoln’s legacy is the most spun.
The Real Legacy of President Thomas Jefferson
“The Monster of Monticello” is a most unflattering, nonfictional account of our third president as being “a creepy, brutal hypocrite.” ((Finkelman, P. “The Monster of Monticello”, New York Times, November 30, 2012.)) He bought, kept, cruelly punished and sold his slaves (at least 85 slaves to pay for wine, art and other luxury goods) and “advocated harsh, almost barbaric, punishments for slaves and free blacks.” ((Finkelman, P. ibid.)) Even his own mistress remained a slave. He also excelled as a warrior-in-chief, presiding over battles with the Native Americans, the Barbary War, and in military battles against Spain.
The Real Legacy of President Harry Truman
Not much more truth needs to be revealed about the first inhuman being in the world to order the unnecessary dropping of atomic bombs on two populous cities, killing and maiming millions. Here is one survivor’s account of what happened to some of her schoolmates not so lucky as her:
Some fell to the ground and their stomachs already expanded full, burst and organs fell out. Others had skin falling off them and others still were carrying limbs. And one in particular was carrying their eyeballs in their hand. ((Todhunter, C. “Power and the Nuclear Bomb: Conducting Foreign Policy with the Threat of Mass Murder”, Global Research, July 21, 2016.))
The bombs didn’t need to be dropped. ((Alperwitz, G. “We Didn’t Need to Drop the Bomb-and Even Our WWII Military Icons Knew It”, Salon, May 11, 2016. See also; Stone, O. and Kuznik, P. The Untold History of the United States. Gallery Books, 2012.)) Japan was prepared to surrender, but not on Truman’s unreasonable conditions. Six of America’s seven five star WWII admirals and generals said the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary or morally reprehensible or both. ((Alperwitz, ibid.)) Unfortunately, they did not override their president. He fiendishly dropped the bombs to scare the Soviet Union which, as everyone ought to know, escalated into the military budget busting, nation wide scare (e.g. the mania for bomb shelters) and saber rattling Cold War. Not to be outdone by himself, he sent over 36,000 UA military to their graves during the Korean War.
The Real Legacy of President Dwight Eisenhower
Notable figures, including America’s presidents, begin to think about and start fashioning their legacies while they are still alive. In his farewell address to the Nation warning about its military/industrial complex, Ike masterfully implanted his legacy in the minds of the gullible and unthinking public. It is probably the most duplicitous, dishonest, disingenuous, hypocritical speech a national leader has ever made. Here, after all, was the very man who presided over that very complex. What else can we discredit him for as a warrior-in-chief? Ike rained havoc and death, with the goading of his sinister Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, in Iran, Guatemala, Laos, and the Congo where, on Ike’s orders, the democratically elected governments of those sovereign countries were toppled by the CIA, countless lives were lost, and to this day bloodshed continues. And, along with Dulles, Ike introduced the world to the doctrine of massive retaliation, bringing America to the brink of nuclear war with China. ((Chuckman, J. Some Rarely Discussed Truths Shaping Contemporary American Democracy: The CIA and America’s Presidents. Counterpunch, March 13-15, 2015. See also; Davies, NJS. “America’s Coup Machine: Destroying Democracy Since 1953”, Alternet, April 8, 2014; and Blum, W. Killing Hope: U.S. Military Interventions Since WWII. Common Courage Press, 1995.)) To Ike’s credit, he was one of the generals objecting to the nuclear bombing.
There you have it. The spun legacies of five admired US presidents who were in reality five psychopathic, surrogate murderers (Einstein called war an act of murder). But not just five. The other 37 are simply replicas in their own time.
Beyond Spinning to National and International Control
Power can be thought of as the capacity to control natural resources such as people, oil, gold; and unnatural resources such as deadly weapons. Obviously, the power elite have the most of that capacity in America, if not also in the world. Less obvious, America’s presidents have constrained power. It is not constrained as it should be by the Constitution and the American people but by the rest of the power elite and not in a positive way.
It is deliberate not ironic that so much spinning is done on the presidents’ legacies when the rest of the power elite are probably as much to blame for America’s imperialistic and avaricious and deadly behavior past and present. I made that perfectly clear in one of my books. ((Brumback, op cit., 2015, pp. 73-90.))
But façade maintenance, or spinning, is hardly the only means for the power elite to maintain control over 325 million powerless Americans and to progress further toward the elite’s overall goal of controlling resources everywhere. The later form of control is the sine qua non of American imperialism, which has motivated her power elite ever since the birth of our nation. ((Brumback, op. cit., 2015, pp. 32-36.))
There are at least six ways in which the corpocracy’s power elite maintain control over America’s powerless and, through the sixth way to varying degrees of success over foreign nations where their rulers, ousted by U.S. conniving and military might, had opposed American hegemony. Let’s briefly review those ways. Note that only a few include the spinning of presidential legacies.
(a) Dumbing Down, Entertaining and Deceiving the Powerless
Journalist Charles Pierce calls us an “idiot America” where stupidity or ignorance is glorified. ((Pierce, CP. Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. Doubleday, 2009.)) The power elite can’t risk a smarter America so they dumb her down. ((Iserbyt, CT. The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, Conscience Press, Revised and Enlarged Edition, 2011.)) They started this process by launching public education not to educate but to standardize human robots for the Industrial Revolution and later to help America get ready for WW1. ((Brumback, op. cit., 2015, p. 143.)) The power elite took a page from religion, the standard for filling young, formative minds with doctrines, leaving little room left for critical reasoning to question those doctrines, including learning how to discover and distinguish real knowledge from beliefs, myths and propaganda.
The entertainment and mass media branches of the corpocracy are a perfect source for dumbing down the powerless. Hollywood, for instance, has had a “reel” interest in Washington’s wars and foreign policy affairs ever since it made training and propaganda films for President Woodrow Wilson’s administration in support of WWI and has typically portrayed U.S. Presidents idealistically. ((Brumback, op. cit., 2015, pp. 158-160. See also; Morgan, I. “Reel Presidents: Hollywood Depictions of U.S. Presidents”, E-International Relations, October 24, 2013.)) Needless to say, mass media coupled with government mouthpieces, are even more influential because of their propagandized treatment of America’s past and present and, because the powerless, being much less knowledgeable, are easily deceived. ((Brumback, op cit., 2015, pp. 151-156.))
(b) Keeping the Powerless Impoverished
Curiosity, or the need to know, as in the need to know the truth about America’s presidents, is one of the human needs at the top rung of the late psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, a level the powerless rarely reach, and the powerful are determined to keep it that way. ((Maslow, A. Motivation and Personality, NY: Harper and Row Publishers, 1970. See also, Maslow, A. Toward a Psychology of Being, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, 1999.)) Struggling to reach or stay on top of the poverty level, a level that about 50 million Americans are below, the impoverished don’t have the time or even the energy to be curious about real history or even current events for that matter. ((Clyne, M. “Americans Living Below Poverty Level Line Hits Record Under Obama”, Newsmax, July 29, 2016.))
(c) Giving the Powerless Simulacrums, Holidays and Patriotic Props
Presidential images on money; presidential statues; presidential monuments; presidential names for States, cities, streets, and airports; and presidential holidays are all comparable ways of ensuring that the powerless remember and honor their past presidents, not dishonor them. Over the years, for example, millions of visitors have visited and been in awe over the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and Mt. Rushmore.
Flag waving, flag day, National Anthem, Pledge of Allegiance, honor guards, are all props of the power elite to ensure a sufficient level of patriotic obedience. The operative word there is obedience. True patriotism means declaring “my country, do right and no wrong.” Obedient, or jingoistic patriotism, on the other hand means “my country right or wrong.”
(d) Giving the Powerless Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning is a trick of the trade for psychologists who started it and for the power elite who have borrowed it. It involves continuously pairing something that is liked with something that is otherwise ignored or perhaps disliked so that the latter becomes liked also or at least tolerated. This trick comes in very handy for the power elite, making the spinning of legacies and the perpetuation of warriors-in-chiefs and their endless wars much easier. Think, for example, of the flyover of Air Force jets during a national holiday televised sporting event.
(e) Terrorizing and Spying on the Powerless
The few thousand power elite know only too well that their privileged status would end if the majority of Americans decided in unity to end that status. The power elite have most of the wealth, perks and might of the land and thus the most to lose in any confrontation with the determined will of the people. In its self defense, we might say, the power elite resort to all sorts of tactics to terrorize and spy on America’s law abiding citizens. The following are just some of the tactics used: militarization of local police; arrests of peaceful protestors; monitoring of millions of Americans; warrantless searches; and detention without trial. We live in the land of the fearful and subjugated, not the ballyhooed “land of the free.”
(f) Waging Endless Covert and Overt Wars
America’s power elite were born in the womb of war and have been addicted to it ever since as the most expedient means to acquire more territory, to acquire more wealth, to change other nations’ regimes to more subservient ones, and simply to remain the most powerful, uncontested nation the world has ever known and will ever see. Dropping bombs quicker than can be made says it all about the power elites’ posture toward the rest of the world.
Implications: The Tale of Ovid
America’s power elite remind me of the Greek poet’s tale about Erisychthon, a mythological character who, because he was so greedy, was cursed to eat everything in sight including him self after all else had been consumed. ((Zohar, D. and Marshall, I. Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By, Berrett-Koehler, 2004.)) He symbolizes for me America’s power elite and raises the question, “when will they consume themselves and the rest of the world with them”?
There is, however, a far more pressing question, “what must be done to make America the land for the common good and a peaceful global neighbor and to stave off doomsday?” The literature, including my own works, is replete with answers. None has worked so far. It is obviously imperative that the right answer be found before it’s too late.