April WPA Calendar

WPA/Federal Art Project [NY]
Artist: Richard Halls
Library of Congress

March Read: Fever

WPA/Illinois Art Project, Chicago
Artist: Unknown
Library of Congress

I Am Thinking of My Darling, Vincent McHugh, 1943; Reprint, Yarrow Press, 1991

It's February in 1940s New York. During a spell of strangely warm weather, the city is hit by a mysterious tropical fever.

Instead of making people sick, it makes them happy. Men and women leave their spouses. The average bored employee walks off his or her job, to hop on a boat or go to the movies (the theaters show them free). Bartenders serve free drinks to customers they like and ignore everyone else. Housewives are seen "staggering home under Himalayan burdens of free food and liquor."

Hundreds of thousands are already infected, the epidemic is spreading, and no one knows how it will end. McHugh's narrator, Jim Rowan, is named Acting City Commissioner and placed in charge of coordinating the city's response. After the work day's emergency planning sessions, he travels Manhattan and the buroughs, surveying the extent of what police, fire, and other civic services might face—

We stopped for a free beer on Main Street in Flushing. It looked very much like a small-town Main Street anywhere, except it had the electric feel of the city. The street was packed with families carting home bridge lamps, bed sections, mattresses, toys, and God knows what else. ... One merchant, true to the competitive tradition, had big stickers in his windows offering one free article with each free article taken. The storekeepers who didn't want to give things away had closed up, as they did in other parts of town.

After a stop at the bank—it's giving away money, someone in the crowd has just tipped them off—Rowan's scouting party heads to Brownsville. Before taking in a spontaneous Moroccan street festival, Jim watches—

Crowds around the pushcarts on Belmont Avenue, trading vigorously, though everything was free. Bargaining could be a passion, I thought... It was get-together and schmoozing and making sure you got what your labor was worth in exchange. Racketeering too, but less and less of that. It got monstrous only when it perverted the human relation into omething huge and abstract. This way, without money, it was a purely social as dancing.

Late that night, they drive past a section of Brooklyn that seems quiet, except for—

...a small electric-fixtures plant in Greenpoint ...a picket line was snake-dancing. The owner had just given them the plant.

Among the cultural turnabouts the fever causes: the streets are full of women pursuing men. It's not long before Rowan responds, catching the fever himself. Like others who become infected but love their work, Jim stays on the job, caught up in the race by city administrators and scientists to stop the epidemic's advance.

In the midst of the novel's giddy events, Rowan is also trying to locate his actress wife, Niobe, who caught the fever and went missing at the beginning of the epidemic. Just as Jim works tirelessly at trying to manage the crisis, Niobe is busy with a grand project of her own: to make the whole city her stage. Showing up in all sorts of unexpected places, impersonating women of different ages and classes, Niobe pursues the acting chance of a lifetime—often under her husband's nose, as he realizes a moment after she's made her exit. Niobe evades Jim's pursuit, and counter to the City's efforts to contain the epidemic, she creates her own organization: the Society for the Preservation of Happiness.

In his Introduction to the Yarrow reprint, The New Yorker's Mark Singer writes of McHugh's—

...grasp of the imaginative potential in the conjunction of sexual fantasy and urban planning. ... McHugh fell head-over-heels for the entire New York City five-borough hurly-burly, of which there was plenty not to love but not enough to dampen his rapture. In 1943, when he published I Am Thinking of My Darling... "infrastructure" was decades away from entering common parlance. Nevertheless, McHugh clearly was enthralled by the whole business: tunnels, bridges, subways, public utilities, emergency services, harbor management, health care delivery—also sex.

Singer's biographical notes include some interesting 1930s and '40s background to McHugh's work. There is—

... the remarkable work he did as a writer, editor, and administrator in New York City for the Federal Writers' Project, the New Deal bratty brainchild. No sooner had he gone to work on the Project, in late 1936, than he was given responsibility for the New York City Guide, which at that point totaled an amorphous eight million words. By 1939 he had shaped the manuscript into two publishable volumes and had contributed an introductory essay to one of them ...

What came through in that essay ... was McHugh's highly specific familiarity with the city—its waterways and the vessels that traveled them, its neighborhoods and their occupants, its buildings and their underpinnings. New York was "a state fair grown to magnificence, a Main Street translated into the imperial splendor of Fifth Avenue. ... the place which is not wilderness, the place of light and warmth and the envelopment of the human swarm, the place is which everyone is awake and laughing at three in the morning. These things are not altogether true, of course—but magic does not need to be true."

[Book cover in Library of Congress collection - image found here; large view here.]

At the start of the '40s, McHugh wrote an unpublished nonfiction work, Under New York City. Singer notes that the Writers Project "killed the book on the odd premise that the Nazis or the Japanese might have exploited it for sabotage." As Singer quotes an old colleague of McHugh's, "They were afraid the enemy would figure out how to bomb New York from the sewer up."

Failing to find a commercial publisher, McHugh later used his research to create Darling—

His technological fluency translated nicely from one literary form to the next; in its embryonic stage, the novel lacked only sex (plus the characters to engage in it).

It's a reflection of where we are now that the Writers' Project censorship of Under New York today sounds as absurd as it does familiar. What's less familiar, after decades of right-wing attacks on government, is the likelihood of civic officials being the heroes of a story.

The narrative raises some philosophical questions, on the meaning of happiness and on social order versus rights. During a meeting, a political rival attacks the commissioners' plans as weak. Rowan muses—

We could feel the weight of opinion behind him, in that room and outside. All the people who believed that order was a stamp press, a mold, an Iron Maiden, a double file of troops you were commanded to walk between. The people who couldn't get it through their heads, by God, that order was a ball game ... It was the chance people had to find a way to do the things they wanted to do in common. Not holding down. Bringing out.

Of course, the New Deal was a time of great optimism about civic life—long before the right-wing mind control factories churned out adequate propaganda to make people on Medicare and VA benefits take to the streets against "government-run health care"

McHugh's novel is very much of its era's belief in the value of civic life. That ethos is seen constantly in WPA art, but a jaunty 1936 poster series—History of Civic Services in the City of New York—is particularly in the spirit of McHugh's work. Among the designs in Library of Congress collection, Vera Bock depicts the progression, from the first public well in 1658—

To the 1936 water system—

From the founding of a fire department in 1656—

To the modern department of 1936—

In the midst of the novel's fantastic events, some real people appear, either in cameos, or represented by their work. Leading the small army of medical researchers tackling the epidemic, a college friend of Rowan's gives a lyric recitation of names of the many scientists whose past breakthroughs may hold the clue needed now.

Jim reminisces about his youth as a jazz clarinettist who had chances to play with Bix and some of the greats. During his travels through the city, he ends up at a club in Harlem, where he jams with luminaries like James P. Johnson.

An appreciator of all the arts, Rowan notes some contemporary visual artists and two New Yorker cartoonists. McHugh worked at the magazine in the '40s, and he has fun inventing its response to the subject of spouses catching fever and leaving home—

The New Yorker, lone defender of temperance ... [published] an editorial intimating that polygyny (or polyandry) might be a little cloying if you weren't used to it, which was true, and a cartoon by Alan Dunn showing a man sitting glumly at dinner with his wife. The legend was: "I'm sure some people will stay together, Wilfred."

Gary Cooper arrives at LaGuardia, to be

... buried under a pile of what the Sun called "absolutely shameless cooing women."..."They twisted my ankle," he said. One of the women ... said they'd only been trying to hold him down. "If he hadn't struggled he wouldn't have been hurt"...

I was interested by the passage where Jim finds a clue to Niobe's next public performance. It's a French phrase that he puzzles over, until the meaning hits him—

..."Blind Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters." I seemed to remember that it was a picture.

...I ... called Romana Javitz in the print room at the Forty-Second Street library. She knew everything. All the young artists and cartoonists went to her when they were stuck for ideas.

"That isn't very hard," she said. "The picture is here in the library." She told me just where.

Previously, I had come across the name in biographies of Walker Evans and Joseph Cornell, who had done research in the Picture Library and become friends of Javitz's.

There's an interesting article here. Javitz initially studied art, then had a distinguished career in developing the New York Public Library Picture Collection. Among other activities, she encouraged Arturo Schomburg in developing archives that became the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Javitz was very active in New Deal arts projects, becoming the driving force behind creation of the Index of American Design, as well as being involved with Farm Security Administration photography and its preservation.

Yarrow reprinted McHugh's novel in 1991. McHugh had died in 1983, as Mark Singer writes—

... about the time a mysterious and malignant virus, the absolute opposite of the one he had concocted more than forty years ealier inside his brain, began to ravage thousands of lives in New York and San Francisco and beyond. ... In Darling, one of his characters says direly, "This is a mass epidemic of good feeling. Joy. Happiness. Whatever you like. Potentially it's as dangerous as a riot or panic or an other disturbance." Today, in the world outside fiction, beyond the dark edge of sexual fantasy, we would weep tears of thanksgiving for peril so benign.

True that only in fiction could a plague be made whimsical. But at the Reagan-era outbreak of AIDs, we didn't exactly have a civic-minded Executive Branch to respond to the crisis. And there was willingness to see the first victims as Other, thus politically useful as objects of fear and hatred.

We also have a modern plague that's an intellectual one, considering the right's grip on public information.

McHugh's novel is an enjoyable piece of time travel. As Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cover blurb has it, "a little like having a 1940s New York City taxicab in your living room, filled with early 1940s characters."

As with most Depression-era reading at this point, I feel the enormous loss in how much the country has been driven in the direction opposite of building "infrastructure"—or doing pretty much anything for the civic good.

Outlandish as McHugh's plot is, it seems that the WPA art programs harnessed some enthusiasm akin to his imaginative flights of urban fantasy.

A couple more items from the Library of Congress WPA collection—posters for organized civic events that seem in the spirit of McHugh's improvisational Manhattan.

Artist: Charles Verschuuren

Artist: Unknown

March: Onward, To Something Sort Of About Health…

Chicago: WPA Federal Art Project, [between 1936 and 1939]
Artist: Unknown
Library of Congress
The non-terrorists [ = white guys], including those on the government dole, have been busy.

With this, outside Congressional offices.
There were plenty of acts committed less publicly, like this, this, and more.

Besides GOP operations continuing to encourage violence, it naturally didn't take long to get a Republican claim of greater victimhood [you only got a measly brick; my office was shot up...]

Equally expected: police deem incident "random gunfire." Alternative expectation would have been to learn this was staged by College Republicans.

As always, says the Party of Responsibility, any threats of violence are the Democrats' fault—in this case, for enacting legislation.

It's only a matter of time before there's serious violence by the unhinged who are being stirred up by the Rethugs. Yet, MoveOn is a bunch of wild-eyed radicals Democratics are willing to attack. And just this week, ACORN announced closure of all offices, in the wake of successful Rethug persecution.

At least Sadly, No had weeks of fun with the right-wing memes, particularly of the "Obama is thrusting his massive package down our throats" kind. Lots of funny, like this. And good take on the "death panels" theme.

While it was great to see the Thugs lose one, there's this.

And this seems on target.

I'm trying to be in the camp that says this is a foot in the door—this "Health Care Reform" that morphed into, as Obama is careful to say, "Health Insurance Reform"... which appears to give the insurers everything they wanted.

This comment is very interesting, and I hope, will also be a foot in the door. It reflects a tiny sample of people, yet it shows some workplace wingnuts—

in favor of the bill passing – after the fact, of course. It's the old "Americans love a winner" effect at work, plus the "26-year old child can get coverage" plank that sold them.

Departure

Connecticut WPA/Federal Theater Project
Artist: Unknown
Library of Congress
It was shocking and so very sad to read this week that "Jon Swift" had died on 2/27: in surgery, after suffering aneurisms while traveling to his father's funeral.

His mother posted the news in the comments page of the last Jon Swift post. Despite the awful circumstances, the real Al Weisel's mother was able to write a celebration of the life he had lived in his 46 years.

Weisel's professional work is here.

Skippy compiled tributes from all over The Internets.

A lot of people remarked that conservative readers often took Jon Swift posts at face value. It just shows the subtlety of a writer whose straight-faced taglines were, "I am a reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture. Since the media is biased I get all my news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues."

Swift's targets were very well-chosen. Michael Ledeen and Jonah Goldberg remain with us, but Al Weisel left classic examples of taking aim at them and landing comic bulls-eyes.

March WPA Calendar

WPA/Federal Art Project [NY]
Artist: Richard Halls
Library of Congress

A page from the days when FDR chatted by the fireside—to get around the right-wing media of his era.

Now—the White House stages bi-partisan media events.

The respectable media get the chance to portray both parties as—in digby's words—"equally earnest"... In this case, about healthcare reform.

And digby catches this reaction to Rep. Louise Slaughter's constituent who couldn't afford to have dentures fitted—so wore her deceased sister's. The multi-millionaires' message to their followers—

Limbaugh:
"If you don't have any teeth, so what? What's applesauce for?"

Beck:
"I've read the Constitution ... I didn't see that you had a right to teeth"

HTML Mencken at Sadly, No catches more yuks on the subject, from some other recipients of right-wing largesse.

And the previous administration still populates the TV screen.

With their boasting of war crimes.

And their spawn set up with their own pundit gigs.

Harry Shearer has a surprising behind-the-scenes look at Cheney's PR campaign—and his "enhanced persuasion" techniques—on the 2-28 show (starting at 42:36).

It's grotesque beyond words I can muster, but Attaturk says it pithily, about our re-do of the '30s...

February Read: Reporting Old News

Unknown artist, Pennsylvania Art WPA
(Art Institute of Chicago)
Image: Posters for the People

The Plot to Seize the White House, Jules Archer, 1973; 2007 reprint, Skyhorse

War is a Racket, Smedley Butler, 1935

Archer's book is short, yet contains a world of nearly lost history.

It's largely the story of General Smedley Butler. After a long and colorful career, the highly decorated Marine was known and admired by the general public of the 1930s. His fame brought many offers for public speaking, including radio broadcasts, and through these he reached a wide audience.

During his decades of service, Butler had come to question the motives for the foreign interventions in which he had played a role. Eager to warn against the country's being led into more wars, Butler used his public appearances to tell the truth about his Marine career.

Archer describes Butler's first antiwar speech—at a Connecticut American Legion convention—on August 21, 1931. What he had to say "stunned all who heard it or read it in the few papers that dared report it in part"—

I spent 33 years... being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism...

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Bothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street...

In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested... I had... a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions... I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents...

Retiring from the Marines later that year, Butler embarked on extensive speaking tours around the country. He also toured veterans' hospitals, then wrote angrily of broken men who—

...don't even look like human beings. A careful study of their expressions is highly recommended as an aid to understanding the art of war.

In the summer of 1932—after the Senate's rejection of the veterans' bonus bill—Butler was invited by the head of the VFW to address the 20,000 vets still camped in DC. This clip (from an unidentified documentary) has a bit of Butler's speech, at :44 seconds. (A worthwhile PBS documentary about the bonus march can also be seen, in parts 1, 2, and 3.)

After the military assault on the bonus marchers, lifelong Republican Butler campaigned for FDR. Butler publicly ridiculed conservatives for smearing "anyone who utters a progressive thought," and in Archer's words, "He branded Republican warnings that a Democratic victory would turn America socialist an absurd myth."

In one speech Butler called himself "a member of the Hoover for ex-President League because Hoover used gas on unarmed human beings." He also asserted that—

The bonus is an amount of money that the American people owe the soldier, but anybody demanding it is charged with lack of patriotism. During the war nobody charged the officers of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation or any of the other corporations who received enormous bonuses with "raiding the Treasury."

Archer writes—

On November 8 Butler's choice for President won, and the House of Representatives went Democratic by a margin of three to one. A chorus of newspaper fury and frustration reflected the dismay of banking and industrial interests over Roosevelt's election.

Less than three weeks before the President-elect's inauguration, an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate him at Miami. Could the assassin's bullet possibly have been negotiated for, Butler speculated, by a big-business cabal that hated Roosevelt and dreaded a New Deal?

The day after his March 4 inauguration, Roosevelt declared a bank holiday and embargoed exportation of gold. During the "Hundred Days Congress" special session called by FDR, the main New Deal policies were enacted. Archer observes that

As the American people stirred with new hope that at last the government was beginning to fight the nightmare Depression, Butler noted with satisfaction that the bankers and industrialists of the nation were horrified.

Despite his outspokenness against corporate war profiteers and his support for Roosevelt, Butler's public stature and popularity with soldiers led to his being approached in July by Jerry MacGuire, a bond salesman for the Wall Street firm of Grayson M.-P. Murphy and Company. In numerous visits over several months, MacGuire tried to persuade Butler to front for a group of wealthy backers with ambitious plans for the country.

Early on, MacGuire tried to enlist Butler in delivering an American Legion convention speech calling for a return to the gold-standard. Under questioning, MacGuire revealed that a chief backer was his employer Murphy, a wealthy former colonel on the boards of directors of a Morgan bank, mining, tire and steel corporations, and a founder of the Legion. Murphy had underwritten that organization in 1919 for $125,000, out of a supposed desire to see soldiers "cared for"—

That was too much for Butler, who sardonically pointed out that the wealthy men had been using the Legion ever since to break strikes.

...When Butler questioned Murphy's motive in wanting the gold-standard speech made at the convention, MacGuire explained that he and the other backers simply wanted to be sure that the veterans would be paid their bonus in sound gold-backed currency, not in "rubber money."

Archer details the multiple visits—and the amounts of money MacGuire waved around. Butler was in Newark to address a Legion convention when MacGuire showed up at the general's hotel to demand his decision. When Butler tried to call MacGuire's bluff, the visitor pulled 18 thousand dollar bills from his pocket, tossing them on the bed for Butler to count.

A startled Butler played for time, telling MacGuire he would negotiate only with principals. This led to a meeting with banker Robert S. Clark, whom Butler had known during the Boxer campaign in China—when Clark was nicknamed, "the millionaire lieutenant." After some probing, Clark admitted he was so worried about losing his 30 million dollar fortune, that he was willing to spend half to save the remainder—so terrified was he of Roosevelt's policies and so convinced that FDR could be made to realize his duties to his own social class.

After rejecting Clark's offer, Butler was bemused to read that a gold-standard resolution had indeed been introduced and passed at the Legion's Chicago convention. And despite all rebuffs, MacGuire continued pursuing him, until a few months' break beginning that December, as MacGuire left for Europe on behalf of his backers.

Butler stayed busy, touring the country with James Van Zandt, head of the VFW. That organization called for immediate payment of the promised bonus, plus disabled vets' compensation and widows' pensions. Butler told reporters—

So many former soldiers came to me with their pathetic stories that I bounced out of retirement. All we soldiers are asking is that the nation give us the same break that is being given the manufacturers, the bankers, the industrialists... Jimmie and I are going around the country trying to educate the soldiers out of the sucker class.

In Atlanta, Butler made headlines for attacking bankers, as he told vets that war was "largely a matter of money. Bankers lend money to foreign countries and when they cannot repay the President sends Marines to get it... we can help get rid of [war] when we conscript capital along with men." Archer adds —

Ex-servicemen were made the butt of an Economy Act passed by Congress, Butler charged, because "the principle of taking care of soldiers is nothing at all but an old-age pension to which the nation eventually will come, and the bankers don't want it... If Charles Dawes got ninety million dollars for a sick bank, soldiers ought to get it for sick comrades."

Butler pointed to the power of twenty million votes that veterans and their families represented, and warned them against believing "the propaganda capital circulates." He condemned the press as mostly controlled by capital, noting, "The paper that takes the part of the soldier loses advertising."

In April 1934 a Senate investigation into WWI arms profiteering began. Archer describes how

The Nye Committee produced shock waves by exposing the pressures exerted by the armament industry on the government to take America into that war. Oswald Garrison Villard, editor-publisher of The Nation, wrote, "I never dreamed that I should live to see the time when public opinion in the United States would be practically united in recognized that we were lied to and deceived into going to war... and when Congress would actually put a stop to those processes by which Wilson, House, Lansing, and J.P. Morgan and Company brought us into the war."

...

Following the hearings closely, Butler was tremendously impressed and influenced by their disclosures. They also confirmed his suspicions that big business—Standard Oil, United Fruit, the sugar trust, the big banks—had been behind most of the military interventions he had been ordered to lead. In a broadcast over Philadelphia radio station WCAU he described his experiences in "the raping of little nations to collect money for the big industries" that had large foreign investments.

Particularly striking was the testimony of the president of Bethlehem Steel, Eugene G. Grace, who

... admitted that his corporation had received almost three million dollars in bonuses during World War I. He nervously expressed concern that such a revelation might "leave a bad taste" in the mouths of veterans who had served their country for a dollar a day, but nevertheless labeled their bonus movement an "unfortunate enterprise."

"Bethlehem Steel made ten times as much money during the war as before," Butler roared over WCAU, "and this band of pirates calls the soldier Treasury raiders!"

Archer writes of

... a steadily rising chorus of hatred for "that cripple in the White House" by big-business leaders. It was reflected in the anti-Roosevelt slant of both news and editorials...

...Demagogues with apparently inexhausible funds for propaganda and agitation led "patriotic" crusades against Communists, Jews, and "Jewish bankers," who were alleged to be behind the New Deal.

That June [1934] Roosevelt further inflamed big business by a whole new series of New Deal acts that crippled stock speculation, set up watchdog agencies over the telephone, telegraph, and radio industries, stopped farm foreclosures, prevented employers from hindering unionization and compelled them to accept collective bargaining. As an epidemic of turbulent strikes broke out, the orchestration of Roosevelt hatred in the nation's press rose to a fresh crescendo.

...Butler was intrigued by the July, 1934, issue of Fortune... which devoted a whole edition to glorifying Italian fascism...

Back from Europe that August, MacGuire insisted on meeting Butler, whom he now openly asked to lead a fascist group. MacGuire had spent months observing how veterans' groups had brought European fascists to power. In response to his findings, he said, his backers created a "superorganization," to be made public in a couple of weeks—

In September, 1934, the press announced the formation of a new organization, the American Liberty League, by discontented captains of industry and finance. They announced their objectives as "to combat radicalism, to teach the necessity of repect for the rights of persons and property, and generally to foster free enterprise."

Denouncing the New Deal, they attacked Roosevelt for "fomenting class hatred" by using such terms as "unscrupulous money changers," "economic royalists," and "the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties."

The officers and financiers included Grayson Murphy, Robert Clark, and the Morgan attorney whom MacGuire had named to Butler as the author of the gold-standard speech. Others involved included Mellons, Rockefellers, the Pew family (who would later finance the John Birch society and many other ultra-right causes). And two influential Democrats—Al Smith, and former party chair, John J. Raskob.

Butler now approached a friendly editor at the Philadelphia Record, who assigned his star reporter, Paul Comly French, to "set about determining whether MacGuire and his group were operating some kind of racket to extort money out of the rich by selling them political gold bricks, or whether a cabal of rich men... was putting up big money to overthrow F.D.R. with a putsch."

And "gossip" going around DC was that the American Legion would "provide the nucleus of a Fascist Army that would seize the capital." John Spivak, a reporter expert in exposing American fascists, began his own investigation.

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was the original House Un-American Activities Committee, and was then scrutinizing both fascist and communist activities. An investigator contacted Butler, who would, in a secret executive committee, testify to MacGuire's visits—and to being urged more than forty times to front a coup.

Reporter French appeared next, corroborating Butler, and adding much more. His investigation had included a two-hour meeting at the Grayson and Co. premises, during which MacGuire had openly told French, "We need a Fascist government in this country... to save the Nation from Communists who want to tear it down..."

MacGuire had described his fact-finding tour of Europe, saying he had seen both the role of veterans and the "solution" to unemployment. French testified—

He said that Roosevelt had muffed it terrifically, but that he had the plan. He had seen it in Europe. It was a plan that Hitler had used in putting all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks—enforced labor. That would solve it overnight, and he said that when they got into power, that is what they would do...

French also testified that MacGuire had implicated the Du Ponts as prepared to lend credit for arms and equipment. French's further statement—that MacGuire had named connections at Morgan and National City Bank as potential funders—would be censored from the official transcript.

Later the same day, MacGuire appeared before the Committee, denying the charges by Butler and French, and evading questions. Afterward, he told reporters that Butler's charges were a play for publicity, and "a pacifist stunt."

A New York Times article reported Butler's charges—then devoted most of the space to denials—and ridicule of Butler—by the powerful people he had implicated.

McCormack and Dickstein both announced plans for a thorough investigation, to include subpoenaing all persons Butler and French had named.

MacGuire was questioned a second, then a third time in September 1934. When the bank records ordered were produced, they corroborated Butler, although MacGuire perjured himself to deny it.

Near the end of November 1934 the Committee issued its report, supporting Butler's charges. No action was taken against MacGuire. His backers—whose names had been removed from the public transcript—were not called to testify. Most of the press ignored, distorted, or ridiculed the findings. The plot was portrayed as a laughable fantasy, and Butler as a nut.

In January 1935 reporter Spivak discovered a complete transcript, including all names implicated but later removed.

Butler railed on WCAU against suppression of the "most important" parts of his testimony, charging the Committee "stopped dead in its tracks when it got near the top."

Later that year, Butler would publish his brief book. He blasted the previous war's profiteers, both large and small—

Undershirts for soldiers cost 14c to make and Uncle Sam paid 30c to 40c each for them—a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers—all got theirs.

Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment—knapsacks and the things that go to fill them—crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them—and they will do it all over again the next time.

In the decades since, our profiteers and their political allies have come up with newer and better schemes. Instead of a pesky Smedley Butler speaking out, we have TV-pundit retired military brass, promoting wars in which they have financial interests.

And this is who has been sold as our most respected military man.

Our culture can't make the connection between our own history and where we now are as a society, much less how our history of foreign intervention has affected other parts of the world. Archer quotes Butler's observation that "We supervised elections in Haiti, and wherever we supervised them our candidate won." The U.S. is very much a force in the background to the ongoing devastation there. The history goes back before, during and since Smedley Butler's time; for example, this, this, and this.

The Republican press mocked Butler when he turned against foreign intervention. Although he faced increased censorship the more outspoken he became, there were other outlets for his voice. As he told the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, he had tried to alert the public because, "I have had so many invitations to head societies and to join societies, all of them with a camouflaged patriotic intent. They are rackets, all of them."

Our current rackets are everywhere, from a current version of the American Liberty League and its methods, to the vast platform provided to "populist" demagogues.

It's all the same scam, whether it's organizing 1930s veterans to rally for the gold-standard, or 2010 Medicare recipients to demonstrate against health care.

There were no consequences for the coup planners in 1935, which seems to have set the precedent for Democrats' silence about Republican treachery—for "the good of the country," and as cover for involvement of some elements of their own party. Ultimately, Democratic cover-up of Republican treason became completely entrenched, from Johnson to Clinton to Obama.

And in a particularly sickening way, we've come full circle here. In response to the New Deal, right-wing money began funding an echo chamber that is by now unchallenged enough to push a "liberals = fascists" story line against Democrats. Insane it may be—especially when one could wish more Dems were so much as "liberals." But it's when their targets don't stand up to them that bullies win.

WPA February

Library of Congress
Artist: Ben Kaplan

At least it's a short one, allowing two or three days' less bloviation than your usual month.

It's already off to this start: more sweeping of torture under the rug, as the DOJ prepares to clear Bush's memo-writing go-to guys.

On the positive side, Clever Sister spots an ad for an area flea market. Among the items and quantities available—

Cock Rings 19
Whips 11
Ham Restaurants 1
Scorpions 14
Avon Distributor 1

...and with so much more here—surely the local economy is saved!