World War Two Will remain in my mind a long time, after viewing Ken Burn’s “WAR” on PBS! But after that war, which Truman ended by bombing the smithereens out of the Japs with the world’s first atomic bombs, things got a lot better.
Before we go any further, let me point out that even though atomic bombs are terrible, those two saved a million GI lives, and millions of Japanese lives. The Jap army not only were more brutal than just about any army in history, but they simply would not surrender as did the Germans. No matter where we fought them, they held out to the last man, and years after the war was over, hidden away Japs who did no know it was over, still shot at GI’s who happened to be around. American POW’s in Japan were made fun of for not fighting to the end or committing suicide rather than being captured. It took the two atomic bombs to make these stubborn sob’s understand that they had LOST. We would have had to eventually invade the Japanese homeland, and literally tens of millions would have died. Even massive firebombing of Jap cities after their air force had been crushed didn’t make them admit defeat. Harry Truman did the right thing when he ended the war.
Prices were double, thanks to the war and the Marshall Plan. Re-building Japan made things cost even more, but at least we were at peace…for a little while anyway. Governments, their rulers, kings, prime ministers, and associates need power, to keep things rolling economically, and there’s no better way to do this than to get a nation into a war, which “The Buck Stops Here Harry” did in a grand way. Part of the WW II settlement, sort of divided Korea into two segments, which division point was drawn at the 38th parallel. North Korea decided to invade the South, and good old America decided that it was our business. At least Harry Truman and his Democrats decided to make it our business. Off we went. To war again, in a foreign land, and another 50,000 American boys dead. Prices went up again of course, because Korea was paid for with printing press money. As an example of how wars increase debts, compare the national debt for a couple of years. In 1940, before FDR’s WW II began, the national debt was $42 billion, which debt had remained pretty much the same for many years. In 1946, a few months after the war ended, the national debt was $269 billion. Today, it is “officially” at $9 trillion, and increasing by leaps and bounds. The “official” debt of $9 trillion, isn’t true at all, because it doesn’t take into consideration the commitments of government for years ahead of various welfare programs. The actual true national debt is closer to $40 trillion, an amount impossible to comprehend, even for the brightest mathematician. 37,000 American troops are still in Korea, over 50 years later, and of course at huge cost in paper dollars. We have Armed forces in over 100 places around the globe, and it is mind-boggling to even imagine the cost in paper dollars. Is there any reason for us to be in either Iraq or Afghanistan? Any place else other than here? I can think of none.
Harry wasn’t as big a disaster as was FDR, but he seemed to try hard. As an example, under Harry Truman’s Presidency, he formed the CIA (Can’t Identify Anything) in 1947, which was an outgrowth of the National Security Act. If ever there has been a not only useless bureaucracy, but one which has threatened the entire world, it is the CIA. Try to find out its budget or how many employees it has, and you will run into a dead end. Try to find out anything about it, and you are wasting your time. JFK knew this, and vowed to abolish the CIA. JFK also wanted to bring troops home, and even re-establish the gold backed dollar. He was assassinated for his efforts, and I don’t think there is any real doubt but that the CIA did it. What does the CIA cost in paper dollars? Who knows? The CIA built a huge new headquarters in Langley Virginia, costing hundreds of millions, with no permission from the Congress, or even knowledge that it was being built. The CIA answers to no one, does as it pleases, and if any President could live long enough to abolish it, he would be doing this nation a great favor.
Truman also was in office when he urged that the United Nations be formed and joined. Naturally, it was voted upon and placed in New York by his Democrats. At least Woodrow Wilson’s Congress was smart enough not to join the League of Nations. But Harry and his guys thought it would be grand, eliminate wars, and like Wilson thought, “Make the world safe for democracy.” Oh sure, and pigs can fly. The United Nations is an expensive club for cannibals, thugs, and every known “official” crackpot and criminal from every sand patch and swamp in the world. Everyone has an equal vote and the world has witnessed and suffered through just as many wars and conflagrations as would have happened without the UN. More paper dollars to pay for it, and at the same time, a severe headache for New York City, who would just love to move the outfit somewhere else. When Truman was running for office, his theme song was “I’m Just Wild About Harry.” I wasn’t.
After Truman, we had Ike. Eisenhower, the WW II general who was responsible for the June 6th invasion of France, which was history’s largest invasion, and has not been equaled since. “D Day, Sixth of June,” has become a phrase everyone knows, even 60 years after the fact. It seemed a natural for Ike to become the Republican nominee, and he won handily. Was he a fiscal conservative? Did he watch the spending to keep the dollar strong? Uh Uh. Eisenhower started the Interstate highway system at huge cost, both in dollars and lost businesses and jobs. Before the interstates, people used public transport to get to work, but the interstates, which were supposed to go to the cities, but not through them, did just that. They went through them, and were partly responsible for “urban sprawl,” which caused people to abandon the cities because they could drive to work easily, and live in the country. It didn’t happen that way, as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington D.C., and every major city well knows. With the so called ’freeways’ came the huge gasoline consumption and putrid air we now have hanging over the cities.
Racism began under Eisenhower. The two civil rights acts of 1957 and 1960 were passed and signed by him. With these acts of the federal government, came the riots, destruction of neighborhoods, white flight, and opportunist Martin Luther King, who cheated on his wife, doctorate thesis, and every other thing imaginable. He was a good speaker, like Castro and Hitler, and he moved people to action, that’s for sure, but the ’actions’ didn’t help the cities much, and especially in the South. I remember driving through Little Rock Arkansas and reading the bumper strips reading “Resident of occupied Little Rock.” The federal government, under Eisenhower, decided that the Tenth Amendment was wrong, and the individual states were not allowed to govern themselves as the Founders had writ. The civil rights thing went from bad to worse, and then came “Brown vs. Board of Education.” This was a guarantee of billions of gallons of gasoline used for new, expensive school busses, removing schools from local control, establishing hundreds of private schools, riots, fist fights, outrages, and pillage beyond all counting. As usual, government and politicians were frenzied in their espousal of self righteous causes, which they conveniently avoided participating in themselves, if at all possible. In other words, politicians in D.C. sent their kids to private schools such as Sidwell Friends, Landon, Georgetown Prep or St. Albans. Even the liberal Clintons had their daughter sent to Sidwell Friends, where I went long before.
To make matters even worse, Eisenhower appointed as chief justice of the Supreme Court, a man who had never had any judicial experience, and whose votes and philosophy were responsible for the race problems of the 1960’s. He was Earl Warren, a professional humanitarian and handwringer from California. An judicial fakement, whose desicions caused rabble rousing, calamity, dissension, doom and disaster, it seemed to this scribe. I lived through it. The pious bleats of the liberals used to, and still do, make me ill. Under Eisenhower, we also had a few more bureaucracies which further destroyed the dollar and made D.C. increasingly the enemy of the productive, working classes. Added to the Social Security fraud under Eisenhower, was the unemployment benefits section. In other words, if you were unemployed or lost your job, you would henceforth be paid for not working. The presses rolled ever onward. The Ruskies deployed Sputnick in 1957, so the space race was on, further decapitating the dollar. He did get a truce at Korea, but never really did end the war, which still hasn’t officially ended. Ike got the ’cold war’ started, which cost hundreds of billions each year, till the Russians went broke first, thereby ending it.
From the end of WW II, through the next two Presidencies; those of Truman and Eisenhower, the presses continued to roll, the dollar lost value, prices crept up, America was full of violence, war, race hatred, ever more welfare, urban sprawl and destruction, plus the FHA, which delighted in destroying cities by granting low interest, no down-payment, no qualifying loans, so anyone could buy any home anywhere. Being black seemed to be a qualifier. The interstates had thrust themselves into the cities, rather than around them as had originally been postulated, and with the FHA and interstates, the destruction was un-stoppable. More Friday. When will this end? I have no idea.