What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)

[Schiff for Senate]

Finished The Kill Order. In its place I intend to read (at least a couple of chapters of) A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn.

[Schiff for Senate]

Finished The Kill Order. In its place I intend to read (at least a couple of chapters of) A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn.

I earlier read the chapter, 'The Clinton Presidency', the second last chapter in the book. Right now, I decided to begin by rereading it. It is the sort of text that really reinforces and drives home what Klobmentum says - that the Democrats weren't and aren't really that liberal at all, particularly Bill Clinton. The author's ideology appears to be similar to that of Klobmentum and especially Big Abraham. But the points are very well articulated. Reread half the chapter, and the gist of it is that Clinton was a conciliatory moderate who caved into Republicans on most issues, despite public opinion to the contrary. His 'welfare reform' was basically throwing everyone on welfare under the bus, including the many who genuinely require it. He cut necessary programs helping the poor, the young, the old, the sick and the needy, but, to appease the rich and the defence industry, he neither increased taxes on the rich, nor decreased the military budget or tried to tackle the growing military industrial complex. Under his watch, the United States sponsored and sold weapons to groups and governments with terrible human rights records, for the sake of $$$ and profit. His foreign policy was messed up and the US government committed, or allowed, the murder of many in places like Iraq and Somalia, crises unreported, leading to more agitation and anti-American sentiments in those places. And all that is really the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of shocking information just in this one chapter, and if reading that Bernie Sanders book moved me to the left so much, I can hardly even imagine what reading a few select chapters of this book will do in moving me politically.

[Schiff for Senate]

Now reading the chapter 'The Coming Revolt of the Guards' in Zinn's book. It is very, very well written and I strongly recommend reading it. The chapter vividly reveals how the top 1% have maintained their grip on power and money through dividing the 99% in crafty and artful ways (one instance: the rich themselves evade taxes through loopholes and other forms, but they have the middle class largely help the poor - thus pitting the middle and lower classes against each other, and leaving the real culprits - the ultra-rich - scot free), and by 'uniting' them all by diverting their attention onto imaginary foreign 'enemies' and around patriotic slogans and fervour. These people have divided the 99% such that said 99% are unable to see their common enemy - the top 1% - and instead focus on each other (the poor, racial minorities, women, immigrants, criminals that are a symptom of the way the government has failed the common people) or imaginary forces. Zinn discusses how a national mindset that we need national leaders to rescue/save us (FDR during the Great Depression, Lincoln during the Civil War, etcetera) has been cultivated (Zinn also talks about how mainstream textbooks tend to be excessively deferential to the establishment and to government/state, and too dismissive of revolution, and how his book is a counterforce of sorts inthat it takes the opposite side), but how occasionally people break through that mindset and rebel against a System and an Establishment that exploits them in favour of the 1%. He points to examples of revolt and protest such as the 1960s - but how, inevitably, such protests fade away as our attentions are diverted to other things. He demonstrates how the government has tactically given people just enough for enough of them to be satisfied, and few enough to  be vocally unsatisfied, to keep the government going, and to keep the top 1% as the ruling class.

[Schiff for Senate]

Finished The Kill Order. In its place I intend to read (at least a couple of chapters of) A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn.

I earlier read the chapter, 'The Clinton Presidency', the second last chapter in the book. Right now, I decided to begin by rereading it. It is the sort of text that really reinforces and drives home what Klobmentum says - that the Democrats weren't and aren't really that liberal at all, particularly Bill Clinton. The author's ideology appears to be similar to that of Klobmentum and especially Big Abraham. But the points are very well articulated. Reread half the chapter, and the gist of it is that Clinton was a conciliatory moderate who caved into Republicans on most issues, despite public opinion to the contrary. His 'welfare reform' was basically throwing everyone on welfare under the bus, including the many who genuinely require it. He cut necessary programs helping the poor, the young, the old, the sick and the needy, but, to appease the rich and the defence industry, he neither increased taxes on the rich, nor decreased the military budget or tried to tackle the growing military industrial complex. Under his watch, the United States sponsored and sold weapons to groups and governments with terrible human rights records, for the sake of $$$ and profit. His foreign policy was messed up and the US government committed, or allowed, the murder of many in places like Iraq and Somalia, crises unreported, leading to more agitation and anti-American sentiments in those places. And all that is really the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of shocking information just in this one chapter, and if reading that Bernie Sanders book moved me to the left so much, I can hardly even imagine what reading a few select chapters of this book will do in moving me politically.

President Clinton did raise taxes on the rich, at least those who pay income taxes, which is actually quite a lot of them (or was at that time.) The top rate was increased from 36% to 39.6%

True, and Zinn does in fact concede that, but it was the epitome of incremental progress. And Clinton caved into the business interests on many other matters, at the expense of workers and American people.

[Schiff for Senate]

Reread the final chapter (chapter 25): “The 2000 Election and the War on Terrorism”. Tried to read chapter 10 (“The Other Civil War”) but lost interest and stopped reading. Now will give chapter 12 (“The Empire and the People”) a stab. I think soon enough - maybe another chapter or two - and I’ll put this book away and move down to the next one on the list.

[Schiff for Senate]

Reread the final chapter (chapter 25): “The 2000 Election and the War on Terrorism”. Tried to read chapter 10 (“The Other Civil War”) but lost interest and stopped reading. Now will give chapter 12 (“The Empire and the People”) a stab. I think soon enough - maybe another chapter or two - and I’ll put this book away and move down to the next one on the list.

Read only a few pages of Chapter 12. It is about the 1890s and early 1900s and American imperialism. The gist is this: American manufacturers needed more consumers and wanted to open new doors and open up new markets to sell their produce in, since there was an excess of produce and not enough demand to meet supply. There were thus many military excursions (Hawai'i is an obvious example, but there were also many excursions into South America), supported by the business interests, to "protect American interests", and people like Theodore Roosevelt (particularly bloodthirsty and akin to bloodlust, and a white supremacist and ethnic chauvinist) and Henry Cabot Lodge (Lodge's native Massachusetts had too much supply to meet demand and he wanted to help the manufacturers he represented by giving them more markets) were literally eager for and looking for war. They found the perfect target in Cuba, which was also a popular cause because it had been fighting Spain for independence for three years (and which was of particular interest to white supremacists like Roosevelt, Winston Churchill - an avowed racist and white supremacist - and their ilk because it had a high black population).

EDIT: Going further...they (the government) were actually very worried Cuba would in fact win independence. The Teller Amendment promised that the US would not annex Cuba, but despite this, the US wanted Cuba's markets, and although some business leaders were content with just trading with Cuba without controlling it, others wanted a war and wanted the US to take over Cuba. America did NOT want Cuban independence. Perhaps the American public did, but not the politicians and people in power. They wanted to take Cuba from Spain and have America colonise it instead. Thus, the Cuban rebels themselves were weary of the United States (McKinley when advocating war did not acknowledge the legitimacy of the Cuban rebels), and the American labour movement opposed going to war with Spain over Cuba too. Who supported it? Bloodthirsty politicians like Roosevelt; those eager to tap into Cuba's markets, like Henry Cabot Lodge; those interested in deflecting national attention from labour movements and strikes (unite around the flag effect); and what would today be the military industrial complex - the warfare industry that would make $$$ from a war with Spain. In any case, the sinking of the Maine made the business community more willing/eager for war with Spain, despite the fact that there was no evidence of Spain's guilt. The United States, soon thereafter, approved a war with Spain, whose real aim was not to make Cuba independent, but rather for the United States to take Cuba for itself.

[Schiff for Senate]

Reread the final chapter (chapter 25): “The 2000 Election and the War on Terrorism”. Tried to read chapter 10 (“The Other Civil War”) but lost interest and stopped reading. Now will give chapter 12 (“The Empire and the People”) a stab. I think soon enough - maybe another chapter or two - and I’ll put this book away and move down to the next one on the list.

Read only a few pages of Chapter 12. It is about the 1890s and early 1900s and American imperialism. The gist is this: American manufacturers needed more consumers and wanted to open new doors and open up new markets to sell their produce in, since there was an excess of produce and not enough demand to meet supply. There were thus many military excursions (Hawai'i is an obvious example, but there were also many excursions into South America), supported by the business interests, to "protect American interests", and people like Theodore Roosevelt (particularly bloodthirsty and akin to bloodlust, and a white supremacist and ethnic chauvinist) and Henry Cabot Lodge (Lodge's native Massachusetts had too much supply to meet demand and he wanted to help the manufacturers he represented by giving them more markets) were literally eager for and looking for war. They found the perfect target in Cuba, which was also a popular cause because it had been fighting Spain for independence for three years (and which was of particular interest to white supremacists like Roosevelt, Winston Churchill - an avowed racist and white supremacist - and their ilk because it had a high black population).

EDIT: Going further...they (the government) were actually very worried Cuba would in fact win independence. The Teller Amendment promised that the US would not annex Cuba, but despite this, the US wanted Cuba's markets, and although some business leaders were content with just trading with Cuba without controlling it, others wanted a war and wanted the US to take over Cuba. America did NOT want Cuban independence. Perhaps the American public did, but not the politicians and people in power. They wanted to take Cuba from Spain and have America colonise it instead. Thus, the Cuban rebels themselves were weary of the United States (McKinley when advocating war did not acknowledge the legitimacy of the Cuban rebels), and the American labour movement opposed going to war with Spain over Cuba too. Who supported it? Bloodthirsty politicians like Roosevelt; those eager to tap into Cuba's markets, like Henry Cabot Lodge; those interested in deflecting national attention from labour movements and strikes (unite around the flag effect); and what would today be the military industrial complex - the warfare industry that would make $$$ from a war with Spain. In any case, the sinking of the Maine made the business community more willing/eager for war with Spain, despite the fact that there was no evidence of Spain's guilt. The United States, soon thereafter, approved a war with Spain, whose real aim was not to make Cuba independent, but rather for the United States to take Cuba for itself.

My God. I finished reading the chapter last night, and it was simply...mind blowing. The information was revealing, shocking, gruesome and outrageous. Pretty much all of it is worth reading, and though I tried to get only the highlights/lowlights of the chapter and share them here, that's going to be pretty difficult because pretty much the entirety of it from that point on was worth reading.

So first the US soundly defeated Spain, of course. However, upon Spain surrendering, the Cuban rebels were literally left out of the process entirely and not given any consideration. They were told they could not enter the city of Santiago, and that the old Spanish authorities would continue to control Santiago's government, not the Cubans themselves. This prompted an angry letter from Cuban Gen. Calixto Garcia. In any case, American business interests poured in to tap into Cuba's natural economy and resources and start extracting its natural resources and selling them in American markets. Beyond that, America, though it did not directly take over Cuba, continued exerting its influence. It insisted the Cuban Constitutional Convention pass the Platt Amendment, in direct violation of the Teller Amendment, and which said the US had "the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate" for life, property and individual liberty, and that America would get coaling or naval stations at certain locations. Naturally, the CCC overwhelmingly rejected the Amendment and declined to include it in their Constitution. The committee report is absolutely worth reading, and though I won't share all of what I read of it (for fear of making this post way too long-winded), here are some excerpts (that which is in brackets is my shortened paraphrasing; ellipses indicate abridgement):

[Giving America the power to determine when Cuban independence is threatened and when to intervene in Cuba] is equivalent to handing over the keys to our house so that they can enter it at any time, whenever the desire seizes them, day or night, whether with good or evil design.
[...]

The only Cuban governments that would live would be those which count on the support and benevolence of the United States, and the...result...of this situation would be that we would only have feeble and miserable governments...condemned to live more attentive to obtaining the blessings of the United States than to serving and defending the interests of Cuba...

The United States did not just go into Cuba, of course. The chapter zooms in with brutal, painful and shocking detail to what America did in the Philippines. As Zinn writes, "Racism, paternalism and money mingled with talk of destiny and civilisation." As Sen. Albert Beveridge (R-IN), a major imperialist, stated in the Senate:

The Philippines are ours forever...And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either...We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world...

  ...China is our natural customer...The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the east.

Followed this a description of the Philippines' lucrative natural resources that could prove of use to America. And then, of course, there was the white supremacist and racist appeal tf invading the Philippines, which Beveridge gave (emphasis mine):

My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed.
   It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel [more on that]. Senators, it has been the reverse...Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.

American soldiers waged a brutal and savage war against Filipino civilians (prompting the Anti-Imperalist League, which had a diverse membership ranging from workers to Harvard professors and Andrew Carnegie), which Zinn went into grisly detail about, so as to (successfully) stoke outrage and disgust. Here is an eye-opening account of what happened by a soldier: "Caloocan was supposed to contain 17,000 inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native." There was racism, as a Washingtonian soldier testified: "Our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill 'ni**ers'....This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting to all pieces." Filipinos were considered to be like blacks, which was, needless to say, problematic at the turn of the twentieth century, when America was very racist and treated African-Americans terribly. But anyway, there was terrible bloodshed, violence and brutality. A newspaper account from the Philadelphia Lodger that Zinn shared in the chapter:

The present war is no bloodless...engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog...Our  soldiers....have taken prisoners people who have held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence...that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.

Despite this, soldiers/majors/generals tried to pretend that the violence was necessary and minimise it (anyone notice any parallels between this and Iraq?). This was belied by the testimony of soldiers themselves. As one major testified,

General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and he said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he would make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller [the major in question] asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied "Everything over ten."

As Mark Twain aptly remarked -

We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages; and turned their widows and orphans out of doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three thousand concubines and other slaves of our business partner....

 And so, by these Providences of God - and the phrase is the government's, not mine - we are a World Power.

The business interests and some in labor supported it it because it helped the military industrial complex, which profited over the sheer savagery and butchery the Americans committed.

Lastly, the chapter discussed the dilemma for African-American soldiers, who were mistreated and treated unfairly back at home and wanted to prove their worth and their patriotism and their love for their country, yet at the same time sympathised with Filipinos because both groups were considered black and were dark skinned and faced abuse. As two black soldiers wrote:

I was struck by a question a little Filipino boy asked me...: "Why does the American N**ro come...to fight us when we are much a friend to him and have not done anything to him. He is all the same as me and all the same as you. Why don't you fight those people in American who burn N**roes, that make a beast of you...?]

Our racial sympathies would naturally be with the Filipinos...But we cannot for the sake of sentiment turn our back upon our own country.

Anyway, those were the highlights/lowlights / main takeaways from the rest of the chapter.

I think at this point I might take a break from the book, having reread two chapters (the final two chapters, Chapters 24-25, "The Clinton Presidency" and "The 2000 Election and the War on Terror"), and read two new ones (Chapter 23: "The Coming Revolt of the Guards;" Chapter 12: "The Empire and the People").

[Schiff for Senate]

So I did decide to put away A People's History of the United States for now. I'll get back to it later, at some point, but the nice thing about it is that the chapters are in many respects independent of each other, so it's okay to just read a few and then leave the rest for later.

The plan was to read Joel P. Trachtman's The Tools of Argument - which I got as a Christmas present in 2020 - next, but then yesterday morning I noticed another book and spontaneously decided to read it first. The book was The House of Death and other Feluda Stories by Satyajit Ray, translated from Bengali by Gopa Majumdar. It was gifted to my brother and I when we still lived in India, but I don't think either of us ever read it (I certainly did not). Basically, it's short stories about a detective, his cousin (the narrator of the stories) and a friend (who writes crime thrillers for a living), and mysteries that they solve, that were originally published in Bengali, separately, in periodicals and the like (the same way Dickens' books were, except they were long and were in multiple instalments, whereas these were, I presume, short enough to fit into a single instalment), from 1965 until the author's death in 1992. Set in India for the most part, obviously. And what this book did was translate 6 of those short stories (by short I'm talking 55-80 pages apiece) into English and then turn it into a book. I read one of those short stories, 'The Acharya Murder Case.' It was all right and had a decent plot. Given that each of these are independent stories, this will probably go the way of its predecessor and now be put away to be read at a later date. We'll see though, I may decide to read one more of the short stories first.

[Schiff for Senate]

Finished Militant Spirit literally one or two minutes after midnight this morning.
It has been replaced by John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer's Authoritarian Nightmare (post-election edition), which takes a look at the psychology and way of thinking of Trump's supporters, and Trump's own authoritarian mindset.

[Schiff for Senate]

Temporarily taken a break from my earlier two readings (Authoritarian Nightmare and The Tools of Argument). In the school library I checked out History of American Presidential Elections: Volume XI, the final volume, detailing presidential elections from 1988-2000, inclusive. I also checked out from my English class library today Woke Racism by John McWhorter (the teacher of my English class is notoriously woke even by my school's/area's standards, as I've documented elsewhere). Started reading the former book just this afternoon, and I think I'll read about the 1988 presidential race first, then decide what to read next after that.

[Schiff for Senate]

Temporarily taken a break from my earlier two readings (Authoritarian Nightmare and The Tools of Argument). In the school library I checked out History of American Presidential Elections: Volume XI, the final volume, detailing presidential elections from 1988-2000, inclusive. I also checked out from my English class library today Woke Racism by John McWhorter (the teacher of my English class is notoriously woke even by my school's/area's standards, as I've documented elsewhere). Started reading the former book just this afternoon, and I think I'll read about the 1988 presidential race first, then decide what to read next after that.

It isn't very good at all. Their profiles of the presidential elections are actually quite brief, and many more pages are taken up with transcripts of the presidential and vice-presidential debates that you can watch online and which are better when watched online. I read their entire profile of the '88 election, and have read through part of their transcript for the first 1988 presidential debate, but I think I'll cut my losses...I'll only read the presidential profiles themselves (which are not that long) for 1992-2000, and then return it to the library. If I want to watch the debates, I'll watch 'em, they're available online. No need to read hundreds of pages of debate transcripts.

[Schiff for Senate]

Finally began reading McWhorter’s Woke Racism. Seems quite promising so far.

[Schiff for Senate]

McWhorter's book is VERY well-written, engaging, interesting, and 100% correct. Recommend that all wokeists and 'politically correct', pro-cancel-culture people (paging the likes of Ferguson, Tchenka, Scarlet, etc), read it and reconsider whether they want to be a part of wokeism or not.

[Schiff for Senate]

Starting/started Jane Eyre for Honours English today. (We were allowed to choose between that and Great Expectations, and I’ve already read the latter). We’re expected to read about 50 pages weekly, so roughly a chapter every weekday (assuming you don’t read on weekends, which I almost certainly will).

[Schiff for Senate]

Last week at the library (I was there to print something out for English) a book on display caught my eye and I spontaneously checked it out. I doubt it’ll have a ton of information I don’t already know (having in this genre also read Michael Bender’s Frankly, We Did Win This Election, Jonathan Karl’s Betrayal, and Bob Woodward’s and Robert Costa’s Peril), but I’ll start reading The Steal, by Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague, today.

[Schiff for Senate]

From The Steal, to describe a first-time Trump voter in Pima County, AZ, who didn't understand how spoiled ballots were recorded/tracked, and became suspicious of the country's election results, LMAO:

When the votes were all in, something caught her eye about that "duplicated" column [referring to spoilt ballots that were then replaced by correctly-filled in ballots] that chilled her. The total of "duplicated" ballots countywide was 6,660. The number 666 is, in the Book of Revelation, the "sign of the beast," the mark of the Antichrist. Stone followed QAnon, a conspiracy theory that posited an international group of Satanic pedophilic sex traffickers as the secret power behind forces fighting Trump. And here was Satan's signature, right there in the county's spreadsheet! The Pima County vote was not just fraudulent, but evil.

Just LMAO. Good luck trying logic on this one.

[Schiff for Senate]

From The Steal, to describe a first-time Trump voter in Pima County, AZ, who didn't understand how spoiled ballots were recorded/tracked, and became suspicious of the country's election results, LMAO:

When the votes were all in, something caught her eye about that "duplicated" column [referring to spoilt ballots that were then replaced by correctly-filled in ballots] that chilled her. The total of "duplicated" ballots countywide was 6,660. The number 666 is, in the Book of Revelation, the "sign of the beast," the mark of the Antichrist. Stone followed QAnon, a conspiracy theory that posited an international group of Satanic pedophilic sex traffickers as the secret power behind forces fighting Trump. And here was Satan's signature, right there in the county's spreadsheet! The Pima County vote was not just fraudulent, but evil.

Just LMAO. Good luck trying logic on this one.

Speaking of off the rails loony far-rightists believing Satanist conspiracy theories: Just came across this page on a far-right, totally lunatic and extremist website that I found. Not sure if it's satire or not, but I don't think that it is.

https://welovetrump.com/2022/09/28/share-this-democrat-john-fetterman-hiding-satanic-arm-tattoo-he-doesnt-want-you-to-see/

(The comments section is just as insane)

[Schiff for Senate]

The Steal is honestly quite good, and thoroughly debunks various tenets and conspiracy theories of the Big Lie. Would recommend that Fuzzy, FairBol, et. al., do themselves a favor and read it.

[Schiff for Senate]

Haven't posted here in a while. I'll keep it brief: In the last few weeks, I concluded both Romeo & Juliet and Jane Eyre, both of which I read for my English 9th grade honours class.

[Schiff for Senate]

Soon enough I plan to begin reading Agnes Grey. I've already read books by the other two Bronte sisters, Charlotte (Jane Eyre, which I read for school and concluded about a month back) and Emily (Wuthering Heights, which I read during the summer after seeing it referenced on a standardised test for English).

Also, while not exactly a "book," I've revisited the "Tintin" series by Herge. I've read all 23 (I don't count that very last one), and had about half of them at home, but figured I wanted to a.) reread some of them and b.) complete the home collection. I got four of the books as my Christmas presents (Tintin and the Picaros, Flight 714 to Sydney, The Seven Crystal Balls, and Prisoners of the Sun). I've reread two of them (the first two named) since then.

[Schiff for Senate]

Let's see...It's been a while since I posted here...

Currently reading Lord of the Flies for English honours. On Chapter 8. Plan is to finish by the 30th of this month (the teacher's making us read a chapter a day).
Also well on my way in Agnes Grey.
And lastly, I started reading Steven Brill's America's Bitter Pill, about Obamacare and healthcare politics more generally. Sadly, I doubt I'm going to get too far with this book, since I checked it out like a month ago and am still only on chapter two. It's quite thick, at 455 pages, and I am still on page 20.

[Schiff for Senate]

Just finished John Ferling's Adams vs Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800. Truly captivating and spectacular.

Coming in, I had some misconceptions/confusions regarding 1800, but this book shed light on all that transpired in an engaging manner and provided good background knowledge of historical events during the 1790s.

Nor did Ferling display much bias towards one side or another. The only thing pointing toward any kind of bias is that it's really made me think less of Alexander Hamilton...certainly he's portrayed far less favorably than he is by Lin Manuel-Miranda 

[Schiff for Senate]

Thomas Barfield's Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (inspired to read it after reading Khaled Hosseini's mind blowing A Thousand Splendid Suns for my English class)