Rebirth of a Realist

Rebirth of a Realist

William Sloan Coffin

Well, Bill finally is at peace. The last time I saw him speak he said he had about six months to live. That was at least a year ago. He would like folks to say that he was a pretty tough guy.
We had our differences about realism and how to apply it. Coffin was an ex CIA agent. He had been a friend of George W.H. Bush since his youth. They both attended Phillips Academy (1942), and he brought Coffin into the exclusive Scull and Bones secrete society at yale. As a CIA agent he spent three years in West Germany recruiting so called anti-Soviet refugees, and bring them to the US and train them on how to undermine Stalin's regime. Some of them were the most ruthless Nazis such as Radislow Ostrowski and Emanual Jasiuk The darlings of the Einsatzgruppen and Major Dimitri Asmowitch the Ruthless Nazi mayor of Smolensk. I could never forgive him for that. The Nazis destroyed my father’s hometown in Byelorussia.
Many left-liberals in the civil rights and anti- war movements never could take Coffin to their hearts knowing about his CIA background.

When I first met him I compared him with Cardinal Spellman of New York.
I often referred to the war in Vietnam as “The Cardinal's War.”Spellman saw the war as a We (Catholics) against the anti Christ Commies and no one had more influence on the Kennedy family than Spellman did. Coffin also put all Communists in the same Anti-Christ, enemy bag.

But like Doctor King,William Sloan Coffin finally grew into a Realist.
It was not easy for him to shed the Yale Seminary anti Communist, anti Christ brain washing, but I think the New Coffin was born when he learned of the C.I.A coup that brought down Mossadegh in Iran and the other clandestine operations that had nothing to do with Christian ethics, but were in fact motivated only by greed.

I used him on two or three occasions once as a keynote speaker at an open air
Anti war demonstration. As an orator he was surpassed only by Doctor King. On another occasion I produced a Public (Then Educational) television program that featured Coffin and the Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh. After the program Bill told me that he was unhappy with his performance. "“Nhat Hanh was talking about love and that’s my business, But I was talking about politics.” The subject was “War and the Church”
I remember the tear gas filled streets of New Haven and Coffin racing around trying to calm the “Crazies”. I remember the long talks in his office about violence and non-violence and the image of man. I also remember the chiding I got for a piece that I wrote titled “The religion of football.”

Yes, he grew into one of the most remarkable Realists I ever met. When I heard him say he only had six months to live I could not help but get very emotional. After the Historic “Freedom Rides,” the many anti- war demonstrations and speeches, the many arrests, are we not at war again? Are our school systems not just as segregated? Are we not just as divided? Rest in Peace Bill.

David Truskoff
Author of Rebirth Of A Realist.

American brain washing

Rebirth of a Realist

HOW THE HELL DID WE GET HERE?
A friend of mine lifted his beer, looked at me and asked, “How the hell could anyone vote for Goopya doopya to be president? How did we get here?”
There is an answer. Shortly after the 1996 elections in Russia, students there were all given new textbooks that re-wrote the country’s history and projected a wonderful new life under a free market system. Today they suffer the same brain numbness that many Americans suffer from.
My friend’s question made me think back to the end of the euphoria enjoyed by all of us after WW2
At a symposium in Cambridge Massachusetts, Harvard Economics professor Dr. Seymor E. Harris said on March 24,1947, “Ruling out the rebound that came with the war economy both England and New England are again suffering from a severe economic slump and unemployment.” On April 11, 1947 Brent Spence the ranking member of the House Banking committee complained, “Prices have gotten out of control.”
The train had jumped to a new track and was speeding in the wrong direction. No one has stopped it yet.
At that time, my parents were stressing the fact that I should forget sports and stay in school and study because hard times are ahead. My father was always critical of the fact that I was “Propagandized in high school” He was always giving me books and magazines to read so I, “will learn the truth.”
Remembering how my politics as a youth were formulated, I checked recently at the local high-school to see what kind of history teen aged students were being taught in this new century.
I found that a book titled “The History Of The United States” was being used in the classroom. I obtained a copy and on Page 629 under the heading of “A Growing Economy,” the writer states that from the end of World War II until 1970, the nation enjoyed its longest period of prosperity. It goes on to describe the many automobiles and the highways to accommodate them that were built in those years and while mentioning,“ Brief recessions” it lists the following facts: “Gross national product grew from $335.2 billion in 1945 to $722.5 billion in 1970.
In the same period per capita income before taxes increased (in 1958 dollars) from $1,870 to $3,050. Americans prospered as they shared the highest per capita income in the world.”
The book also adds that there was “A price that Americans had to pay and that was the inflation of the l960s.”All of this, and the unabashed propaganda of the entire book is to make young chests swell with pride in the American system and to instill the idea that if it were not for the “Commies” we would have continued to be a true peace loving democracy with the best economic system in the wor1d.
I shall always be grateful to my parents who saved me from the brain washing that most young American students are fed. The kind of brain washing that creates the blind-faith mentality that racism, nationalism, and fascism thrives on. No where does this propaganda book mention the fact that the international oil companies like Aramco were, during that same period, selling oil to France at 95 cents a barrel and to other countries for a dollar or less, but was selling the same oil to the United States Navy for $1.23 and therefore getting rich on the backs of the American taxpayer. (Still riding the runaway train today’s price is $70.00 a barrel) That same taxpayer saw his taxes continue to diminish his economic gains. Nor does the book mention the real cost of the so-called prosperity.
While the military industrial complex, that President Eisenhower later identified, made huge profits supplying the ominous and world-threatening web of air and sea bases in Europe and Africa and the country that we had “saved,” Turkey, American men were shipped overseas to man those bases. (To protect American interests) The biggest price of all that the high school text book fails to mention under “A Growing Economy” is the 33,686 Young Americans killed in action fighting the North Koreans, or the over two and a half million Chinese and Korean lives spent to use up the expensive military equipment that was so profitable. Asians and Europeans watched the American living standard become the highest in the world. They knew why. Americans did not.
No mention is made in the high school textbook of 58,000 American deaths and 365,000 American wounded and the two million Vietnamese lives that were cashed in for the same purpose. It would do well for the publishers of the textbook to explain to the helpless students that ‘‘Per Capita’’ means, for each person of the population. (Random House) It does not mean that the Navaho Americans or the Black Americans or millions of the white working poor in those years enjoyed the “unprecedented prosperity.”
During a demonstration against the war in Vietnam, I was called a Communist traitor by a group of hecklers for saying that middle class and upper income Americans must realize that their dollars are tainted with the blood of those who needlessly gave their lives in Korea and Vietnam.
It seems that in the 60s many Americans, including a young draft dodger named Clinton, were almost willing to accept the fact that the domino theory was a plot for profits, but they were unwilling to let go of the media propaganda blitz that shaped their thinking vis-à-vis Korea.
I had one advantage over most of my liberal friends. I had no fear of being called a Communist. Indeed, I had become conditioned to it. I heard it when I was just a pre-teen carrying a sign to stop fascism in Spain or when my mother took me to the docks in New York to demonstrate against the shipping of oil and scrap metal to the Japanese. I often wondered if any of those hecklers died in the war against Japan.
The brain washing of young children in our public schools is a major contributing factor to the bleak future of the next generation, Yet it seems to go unchallenged.

Rebirth of a Realist

Rebirth of a Realist
Today (4/9/06) I went to my local feed store to buy bird feed. The owner gave me a cap with the store logo on it. It was very nice and remembering the old adage of never looking a gift horse in the mouth, I waited until I got home to read the label. Yes, it was made in China. I always read labels. It tells me a lot about my country and the world.
In 1996, I was invited to attend a symposium at Moscow University. The university itself is amazingly conservative. Perhaps I should use a better word, for in Moscow the media has confused the public by using the word conservative to describe those on the left.
A great many students there are sent by corporations of other countries to study economics. The host for the gathering was a professor in the economics department. The subject was the future of Socialism and how can it democratically be achieved.
While there, I was asked to speak to a young group of students with Communist backgrounds trying to adjust to the new Yeltsin Capitalism. (I noticed some of them wearing beepers and carrying cell phones) What they wanted me to speak about was the question; "What has happened to the political left in America? Why is it having so little influence in the Government?” I was reluctant at first. How can I do this without criticizing my country while a guest in another country? Remember my patriotism was forged steel hard during the years of World War II and my mission in life is to make that country better, but here is part of what I finally said. As I spoke, I was pretending that I was speaking to liberal America.
I spoke of subjects that no one wants to mention at home. Neither the conformists nor the radicals can find platform for saying what is really the cause of the root rot of liberalism in America.
MOSCOW 6/96
“Standing in front of you is living proof that you can not always believe what you see about Russians on American television. I am wearing a dark suit because you rarely see a “new Russian” on our television who is not wearing a suit and tie. Of course, we only see the “New Russian.” I was beginning to believe that such people wear their suits to bed. I was also led to believe that everyone at Moscow University wears suits and ties every day.
There is a point and a message that I want to present about the way that I am dressed. You see, I am not a rich man. I do not have my clothes custom made, so I buy them off the rack, as the expression goes, from the department store, as most Americans do.
Therefore, my shoes are made in Mexico. My suit carries an expensive American label, but it is made in Bulgaria. My shirt was made in the Philippines, My tie in Italy, Even my socks and underwear were not made in America.
Before I left home, my wife and I had some fun looking about the house for things made in America. We found very few. I have two or more television sets made by Mitsubishi in Japan. I drive a new GT Legacy station wagon made by Subaru, a Japanese company making cars in America. My camera is Japanese. Even the lawn mower that I use to cut the grass around my home was made in Japan. This morning I discovered that the luggage that I brought with me was not made in America.
I buy the best product that I can get for my money. It is not easy for me to admit to all of this, because my mother was an organizer for the International ladies Garment Workers union: My father a charter member of the C.I.O. My brother an organizer for the dockworkers, and I was a local organizer for the National Association of Broadcasters and Engineers. I am union from the tips of my skinny hair to the tips of my toes, but the American labor leaders must bear the brunt of the responsibility for all of the American Jobs lost. I feel they have let the workers down. To me that is the beginning of the liberal malaise in America.
The most explosive subject, of course is the demise of Jewish liberalism. Using the tried and true fear tactic right wing Zionism has made many Jews feel guilty about being liberal. Liberal Jews have not found the door that leads them away from the oppressive Zionists and back to their own beautiful Jewish traditions.
Now what is the point of all this? The point is that Young Americans, at one time accepted the myth of the “Great American Know How.” It was a phrase that we all heard many times. We knew that it was a myth because the only great American expertise was perhaps how the Indian Chief Sitting Bull made his bow and arrows. The rest of the work building America was done buy Italian Americans; Irish Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans, Russian Americans, and so on. Today, as more jobs are sent abroad many young Americans have lost their national pride. Korea, Vietnam and other military fiascoes have taken their toll. They have demonstrated, marched, committed civil disobedience, and they have been sent to jail and nothing seems to change. There is a feeling of helplessness. It is my belief that the same thing has happened here. It is one thing to wave a flag and pretend, but when the youth of a nation does not have genuine pride in their country, or the actions taken by their country in their name, then that Nation is in serious trouble. It is my belief that Americans and Russians suffer from the same malaise which comes from the mixture of lack of pride and feeling of helplessness.”

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“Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.”
“This President( GW Bush) is the worst President of my lifetime.”
Lowell Weicker Ex Republican US Senator and Governor of Connecticut
For Realists the time has come again to see the future of the Republicrate system in terms of what it has created. The misery of the people in Bosnia, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti, the Philippines, and most of Eastern Europe is due mainly to answer our gathering instincts. Or to put it in Realist terms, our greed.
In our own cities the killing continues. Police are being arrested, and in my own state of Connecticut, millionaires, Priests, teachers, Mayors, State Legislatures and perhaps even Governors are being indicted. There is very little left for our young people to believe in.
It is obvious that what is needed is a new political movement that will reach back and gather the thoughts of Roosevelt and Wallace, refuel them and re-shape them to fit the present day world. It may require the development of new tactics and new methods of presentation but a political philosophy based on international equal justice, which is as relevant today as it was in the forties, needs no changing. All it needs is people with the courage to pursue it. When an idea like that has found its time no military power on earth can stop it. It is time for real patriots to step forward and save the country