Rich Lives Matter More: How Robert Kennedy Got to be U.S. Attorney General

A 19 year old black man hits another man over the head with a bear bottle. He is arrested by cops, charged with assault or even attempted murder. He is convicted and serves 2 years in jail. After that he is a felon, and so can't get a job, and ends up in a life of crime.

That is a believable story in the United States of America. Some variation of it has happened millions of times in our history. It could have been a true story in the 1920s, or 1950s, or in 2015.

Now consider this quote from The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson:

At a bar "Magnuson, happened to be already celebrating his birthday there, and his friends began singing Happy Birthday to him. Infuriated over what he apparently regarded as an intrusion into his celebration, Bob walked up behind Magnuson and hit him over the head with a beer bottle, sending him to the hospital for stitches." This was just an example of a pattern of illegal, criminal, violent behavior. In another fight friends said "Bobby would have killed him if we didn't pull him off."

Now there are many reasons an act of violence does not result in jail time. Much violence is simply hidden, as when the victim can't ID the assailant, or has his or her own reasons to avoid the police.

Anyone who thinks all white men and women carry get out of jail free cards with them, should take a look at prison statistics (there are about 120,000 white males in federal prison on any given day in the USA with about 77,000 black men).

Some times violent men avoid jail because they have good lawyers. Some times that may be a public defender, but more generally for serious violence only a private lawyer will do. As a result, black or white, having money for lawyers is the main prerequisite

Some violent men get off scott free because they are part of a system of corruption. That would include cops, friends of cops and judges and politicians, and other connected people.

The Bob above is better known as Bobby or Robert Kennedy. He is better known for being the brother and United States Attorney General of President John F. Kennedy. Bobby was assassinated and died on June 6, 1968. President Kennedy was assassinated and died on November 22, 1963.

Are you surprised? I am. I thought I knew quite a bit about the Kennedy family. Only recently I read Robert Kennedy's The Enemy Within, which is mostly about his (later successful) attempt to jail Jimmy Hoffa. Robert did not mention that he acted like a psychopath at least as late has his college years.

In this particular case the violent criminal was the son of one of the most powerful men in the world, Joseph Kennedy, a billionaire (when there were only a few in the world) who maximized profits by dancing back and forth over the imaginary line separating business from organized crime. Apparently no charges were every brought against Bobby for anything he did. The American Bar Association found nothing objectionable about his ethics. He joined the Justice Department, then became Joe McCarthy's henchman in his anti-communist crusade. And at last, through nepotism, the highest figure in American law enforcement.

My own, anecdotal experience in life confirms the picture. Mainly I stay away from criminals and crime. I figure being a political dissident in America is dangerous enough. But three friends of mine have been involved in crimes that were slightly more than petty. Two, probably binging on drugs, copied a scene out of Cool Hand Luke and one of them was caught. One friend, a cook, punched the restaurant owner in the face during an argument.

All three were white. The cook was charged with assault, convicted, and spent over a year in jail. One thief, as I said, got away. I later learned he followed Bobby's path, getting a law degree and a job at the Justice Department. The one who was caught was quickly released and only orally reprimanded by a judge. I don't know what he did for a career.

The difference? The cook was poor and had poor parents and a public defender. The thief had rich parents, with connections to the intelligence community, and an expensive lawyer.

I know black and hispanic and Native American Indians all get treated worse by law enforcement and the courts. But being white and poor or working class is no picnic.

One more anecdote comes to mind. If you are going to be a terrorist, it pays to be from a rich, powerful family. Ask Patty Hearst.

Black lives matter. We need to do more to end all forms of racism. But we also need to give the same justice to people who commit crimes regardless of their economic status and ability to hire lawyers of various levels of competency.

An Eye for An Eye: Beheading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

A lot of history, as well as the dilemmas of the current world, can be summed up as part of a conflict within the Christian tradition. The same conflict occurs in other religions, and for atheists; I am choosing the Christian wording because it is as good as any, and most Americans have heard it:

Bible, Leviticus 24:19-20: "As he hath done, so shall it be done to him: Eye for eye, tooth for tooth." That is the supposed word of a god, speaking to Moses.

Bible, Mathew 5:38-39: "Ye have heard it hath been said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you: That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." That is supposed to be quoting Jesus Christ himself, alleged only son of the one-and-done God.

Well, life is about learning, but when you are dead all your personal learning goes to waste. When I was around twelve my mother was mad at me after mass at Christ the King Church in Jacksonville, Florida. I actually don't remember what I did or said; I may have done something, like missing a beat during some part of the mass. Probably I answered some question of hers in a manner she called "talking back." In any case she slapped me hard on my cheek. It happened to be my left cheek, but in any case I turned the other cheek to her.

She went totally ballistic. Other churchgoers had to restrain her. I was lucky they were there, because my mother had been the only woman marine to actual kill a Japanese soldier in hand-to-hand combat in World War II. Any way, she calmed down, got me, my sister, and my brother (who thought this was terribly funny) into the family car, and drove us home. She did not report the incident to my father, as far as I know, or I would have gotten a second, more measured but more painful beating. My father had been in Marine Corps intelligence [unofficially still was, which is why he was not at Church that Sunday morning with us: he was at his "civilian" job at Sea Land, providing logistical support for the attempt to "recover" Cuba], and knew how to inflict severe pain on people without leaving marks. As he proved many times in domestic life.

So I am basically a turn the other cheek guy, and became a draft dodger and peace protestor during the War in Vietnam, but I can understand anger. I can understand the desire for justice.

The real world is a complicated place. It should not be surprising that after about 3 centuries of post-Jesus pacifism, when the Christian cult had grown large and become the only legal religion within its old enemy, the Roman Empire, turning the cheek began to lose ground. With everyone now a Christian, of course that meant that the criminals were Christians, and businessmen, and power-hungry men. Dial forward to, say 1000 A.D., and Christian armies were fighting Christian armies on a nearly-continuous basis.

There is a split-down-the middle approach that works well in many situations: self defense. When I was older and bigger, age 17, finally when my mother went to slap me I just grabbed her wrist and pushed it back down. Strangely, that was the end of her beating up on me, my older brother (who went on to become a Marine Corps Colonel) and (I believe) my younger sister, though Mother found other ways to try to control us.

Unfortunately often people are unable to defend themselves, even when they try. Or the losses are tragic, as with the Philippines unsuccessful attempt to defend itself against U.S. aggression, or the Vietnamese ultimately successful defensive tragedy, or innumerable other such wars within even just the memories of those currently living. Self-defense requires resources on par with those used by aggressors.

Regarding Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the junior member of the Boston Marathon bombers, I think the ethics of the situation are clear, but complex. This was not an ordinary crime, but was part of the War Against Fundamentalist Islamic Groups Not Aligned With the U.S. [because the nation of Saudi Arabia is very fundamentalist, but is aligned with the U.S., so we don't fight them. And for that matter the government of Syria is not fundamentalist, but it is not aligned with the U.S., so there is no good description, except maybe the Pentagon's War to Justify Its Budget].

Prisoners of War (POWs) are to be treated humanely under International Law. They can be held until the war is over, then they must be released. This can be difficult for soldiers in the heat of battle. One moment a guy is trying to kill you, the next he is a POW with human rights. It is hard to remember the rule is reciprocal: you were trying to kill him, if you were captured you'd be the POW with human rights, that hopefully he would honor.

So is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a POW? I would argue yes. So he should be held in prison until the war is over, which will likely be never.

But International Law also says that militaries purposefully or negligently killing civilians is a war crime (or a crime against humanity if in a non-war context). And Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother did not pick a military target. They purposefully chose a civilian target.

Which is back to eye-for-eye. The United States has never hung any of its own soldiers, much less our Commander in Chief, for killing civilians. And we have killed a lot of them, from American Indian tribes (which admittedly was before modern War Crimes treaties were signed) to Japanese to Vietnamese to Iraqis and Somalis and now Syrians.

Under eye-for-eye, it's okay to behead Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Under war crimes law, it is okay to behead Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Under U.S. law, probably another method of execution would be used.

But any form of execution would create another martyr for the crazy-ass interpretation of Islam. It won't do anything to curb the similarly crazy-ass interpretations of Judaism and Christianity.

It won't do any good at all. The most pragmatic thing to do is to get Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to become a peace worker. Let him tour around telling high school students not to be lured into violent cults, like the U. S. Marine Corps or I.S.I.S. Let him tell them to turn the other cheek whenever possible, and to not make self-defense into an excuse for aggression, as so many people are doing today.

Gabrielle Giffords, Jared Loughner and Political Violence

Against the background of historic and global violence, the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords by Jared Lee Loughner, in which 7 other people were killed, including federal judge John M. Roll, is of significance only because it was unexpected and local. The event will probably be remembered as an embarrassment to ultra-conservative Republicans like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and John Boehner, and to the gun lobby. It probably did not involve an organization, just a confused young man acting on impulse.

It is, nevertheless, an occasion to reflect on violence, both political and social. Representative Giffords was a member of the Democratic Party, a war crimes organization, and the U.S. Congress, a war crimes government. Those labels shock most Americans, but they are factual, not rhetorical. War crimes and crimes against humanity are very clearly defined. Both the U.S. government and the Democratic Party (and the Republican Party, too) have long histories of committing war crimes. They are committing war crimes in Afghanistan as I write.

It is the nature of governments to want a monopoly on violence. In a representative democracy, in theory, this violence is then used to achieve public goals. If the United States is considered to be the test case, in reality a fairly small elite sets most of the goals of government and derives the greatest benefit from the (attempted) monopoly on violence.

I don't know much about Gabrielle Giffords' record. Apparently she consistently voted for money for the war against the people of Afghanistan.

Limited political violence says a lot about the American system, in which the elite rule, but in which there are safety valves to allow the ambitious to better themselves by serving, perhaps even becoming, that elite. There are many ostensibly violent political groups in the United States, but they are all small. Today they are mostly ultra-conservative, but as late as the 1980's there were plenty of ultra-leftist, mainly Leninist groups around. It also says a lot about the police-state strategy in America. Free speech is encouraged, people are watched, and confidential informants developed. It is hard to have a radical political group of any size in the U.S. that does not have an FBI agent or confidential informant as a member. So groups get broken up before they can accomplish much. We have seen that with both right-wing militia groups and Islamic groups of late.

Jared Lee Loughner was under the radar. Apparently he read up on things, mostly on the Internet, but acted alone. Representative Giffords was just a convenient target. If bigger fish had been in town, he might have tried for one of them.

Politics without violence is a good goal, but it creates dilemmas. How can the American people stop war crimes by our government when the money of the corporate security state determines the outcomes of almost all federal elections? The American people apparently voted against the Afghan war both in 2006 and 2008, to no avail. In 2010 they turned their attention to the sorry state of the economy, now resigned to the crookedness of the Democratic Party's continued funding of the war.

The Democratic Party was the creation of the ultra-violent General (later President) Andrew Jackson. Jackson was an-equal opportunity maniac who liked to challenge men less skilled with pistols to duels (he killed several), who once had a volunteer child-soldier under his command shot for not obeying an order, who killed native American Indians, whipped slaves, and even profited from staging dog fights and chicken fights. Not everybody in the Democratic Party has been as evil as its founder, but just joining that party, or running for office under its banner, shows a lack of ethical integrity.

Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party richly deserve destruction, but that won't happen by shooting individual elected officials. When it comes to violence, the corporate security state will come out the winner every time. Difficult as it might be, the only non-violent alternative is to win elections with candidates who show they can be elected without the corrupt machinery of the war-crimes political parties.

See also:

A Brief History of the Democratic Party
A Brief History of the Republican Party

Ambassador James F. Jeffrey on Force Against Opponents

As quoted in the New York Times, December 20, 2010, in "Cleric's Anti-U.S. Forces Poised for Gains in Iraq," by Jack Healy:

“We do not see compelling evidence they have renounced, in practice or in theory, the idea that they can use force against their opponents,” James F. Jeffrey, the United States ambassador to Iraq, told reporters. They in this case are the followers of Moktada al-Sadr.

It must be a common practice in the world for political parties and governments to renounce, in theory or in practice, the idea that they can use force against their opponents.

I must have missed the news that the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the U.S. government have renounced, in theory or in practice, the idea that they can use force against their opponents.

Tell it to the Marines, Ambassador Jeffrey.

Dating a Religion

Suppose you have a woman friend, Ann, who is dating. She meets a guy who is handsome and has money and pays attention to her; he sweet talks her. Let's call him Adam.

But you know Adam's history. You know he has three former girlfriends or wives, abandoned with children, who talk of how cruel a man he was, after those first few sweet dates.

Being a good friend, you decide you have to rat out Adam. You tell Ann about Adam's exes.

You know what happens next. Most of the time Adam gets the girl. Why? Because Ann having already made a decision in favor of Adam, the new information gets rationalized away. Plus Adam is skilled in subjugating women.

You can understand a lot about the spread of religion from understanding this fact of human nature (and it is a gender-neutral fact, as far as I can tell). Once people commit to a religion, for whatever reason, new information seldom causes them to change their minds.

In the United States of America, we know that people change their religious affiliations relatively often compared to other cultures. But the number of conversions is limited. At the end of each generation, so far anyway, most people who are religious are in the same religion they were born in. The overall religious statistics of 2000 are not much different from those of 1900.

History is filled with examples of mass religious conversions. Most were forced by governments, as when most people in the lands around the Mediterranean Sea became Christian Orthodox in the Fourth Century A.D. under advisement from the Roman Emperors. These last couple of days I started reading Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan
by Francis L. Hawks, which looked tedious but so far has turned out to be a delightful travelogue of the Marco Polo sort. This reminded me to look up histories of Sumatra (part of Indonesia) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), as part of my studies for my work-in-progress The U.S. War Against Asia. But the history of changes in religious affiliations on those islands reminded me I have wanted to try writing a Dating a Religion essay. This is the first draft.

When a missionary or local proselytizer dates a potential convert, they don't usual start with a history lesson. In my experience, they don't even know the true history of their own religion. They start with a well-worked-out line. They treat you as if you are important to them. They tell you things that amount to spiritual flattery: you are immortal. Your life will improve if you join our community. They may use the stick, too: convert or go to hell.

The history of Christianity in Japan and of Japanese brands of Buddhism in the U.S informs the story well. The first Christians in Japan were Catholics from Portugal. The Portuguese were major league pirates and imperialists in that era (the 1500's), but the Catholic missionaries did not mention that. They converted quite a few people at first. As the Japanese rulers started worrying about being conquered by the Portuguese, they also learned about other imperialists powers and other versions of the Christian religion. The Catholic missionaries presented their religion as one of peace, but the real world facts did not match that fantasy (see, for instance the Thirty Years' War). That rulers of Japan decided to expel the missionaries and ban Christianity. That goes against our modern, American, tolerate-all-religions and hope they all calm down ethic. But it makes sense if you consider that the Christians were lying. The ruler of Japan were simply excluding a new brand of liars from their kingdom.

Buddhism (which with Shinto, was one of the two major religions of Japan) was known and even admired by some European, and later American, intellectuals, at least as early as the 18th century. But the big invasion of Japanese Buddhist sects into the U.S. started during the 1950s. Americans like Alan Watts and the Beatniks got a lot of people started in Buddhism. Later, specific sects from Japan saw the economic opportunities in setting up churches (usually called centers) in the U.S.

There was a time when I was young that I thought Buddhism was way better than Christianity. But now I realize that I was being fed a Zen pablum specially designed to attract Americans. Like Christian history, Buddhist history is filled with violence. The theology is different, but like Christianity it is a mixture of good observations that can be kept as folk wisdom, and ridiculous metaphysical speculations.

Once the hook is in the fish, the fish starts rationalizing it. I have met serial converters, but most people only change once in their life, perhaps twice. The most common oscillation to note is when those raised without religion decide they need one, and when those raised in a religion decide that rather than switching to another, they will just drop the matter.

I hope the development of a more coherent, reality-based philosophy and system of ethics will supplant the old faiths. In the mean time, the best I can do is urge those who are dating religions to look at their histories.

Histories are better predictors of future behavior that the sweet lies of courtship.

Korea, Buddhism and Violence

I am writing a "book" tentatively titled The U.S. War Against Asia. I have already drafted chapters on that you can read on Japan and the Philippines. I am currently drafting a chapter on Hawaii and other island territories conquered by the United States, but looking down the road I realized I did not know very much about Korean history or U.S. involvement there. After some preliminary research confirming that the U.S. invaded Korea after World War II, against the wishes of the Korean indpendence movement, I decided to buy a book on the subject. I bought A New History of Korea by Ki-baik Lee, used, for a pittance. It is translated by Edward W. Wagner with Edward J. Shultz, published in English by Harvard University Press, and it is a beautifully bound book with exquisite endpapers.

I have read the first few chapters now, plus the bits on the independence movement before and after World War II. I have been rewarded by some information about another area of interest, the relationship of religion to violence and war. I had noted over my years of reading history that Buddhists, and Buddhist sects, had been very involved in violent feuds and in wars. I also suspected that, like Christianity, Buddhism was spread by getting powerful men to adopt it to be enforced upon their subjects as a means of social control. But I have no notes to use to start writing about that.

In the U.S. Buddhism is often portrayed as a peaceful religion, in opposition to Christianity. Educated people in the U.S. tend to know about European history, and hence about religious wars. But we tend to be ignorant of Asian history, and hence of wars associated with asiatic religions.

I don't doubt that many Buddhists, like many Christians, are sincere advocates and practitioners of peace. But our evaluation of Buddhism, overall, should be based on facts, not wishful thinking. I have some problems with Buddhist philosophy which I will take up elsewhere. Here I am just going to note some indicators of Buddhism from Korean history up to about 800 A.D.

In the early 600s the famed Korean Buddhist monk Wongwang laid out five secular injunctions for young men: loyalty to the king; respect for parents; friendship; to never retreat in battle; refrain from wanton killing [Ki-baik Lee p. 55]. The battle-hardened monk was already a phenomena in China; Tibetan monks would terrorize much of Asia from time to time; and in Korea we see little evidence of pacifism. But there were many Buddhist sects, just as there were many Christian ones; maybe some found the practice of war to be against Buddhism.
Buddhism arrived in stages from China, but also evolved inside Korea. But "In all of the Three Kingdoms the principal initative for the acceptance of Buddhism was taken by the royal houses" [Ki-baik Lee p. 59]

The most popular form of Buddhism, Pure Land, was designed as opium for the masses. It said that life is suffering (a Buddhist tenet), it is a "sea of torment" but that simply by chanting the name of Buddha (Nammu Amit'a Pul) daily, after death rebirth would take place in the paradise called Pure Land. Meanwhile the aristocracy was not suffering; they were living very nicely off the labor of the peasants. They had more complex versions of Buddhism to entertain their minds.

It should be noted that the arrival of Buddhism in Korea did not lessen the steady drumbeat of war that existed pre-Buddhism. Nor did it seem to increase it. The states warred when it seemed advantageous, just as they did under the Catholic Church in Europe during the same era.

As I write more on Buddhism I'll centralize links to the essays at my Buddhism page.

See also my Nonviolence and Its Violent Consequences for my views on reducing violence and war.

IIIPublishing.com