By Tim Wood
“I used to be a pacifist!”
That is a quote from a friend as we were speculating our end game plans for the Trump Administration. We saw no sensible, peaceful path; We just knew it would end bitterly, perhaps violently, with nobody really winning.
As we talked about political violence, (or the very least, anarchy) we recalled the Jan. 6 attack on our Capital. I guess what my friend and I were agreeing on is that we would fight in whatever form was needed to protect our Democracy, and that got me thinking …
I should have been a junior at Kent State when the demonstration of May 4, 1970 happened; when our National Guard killed four Kent students. I had pretty much become a pacifist myself when I had first been accepted at Kent; I think mainly because I was so relieved at not being drafted into Vietnam because of my high lottery number.
By that time, I was very negative and fed up with all the 1960’s upheavals in this wonderful country. I dropped out and hit the road with my dog instead, working my way around the U.S. in my VW bug with Quin in tow. I never did find “The New Society,” even when living within a New Jersey commune. Then “Tricky Dick” happened, followed by the smothering of Jimmy Carter. I had become solidly apolitical by then.
By the time of the “Emancipation”… (I’m being sarcastic) … of the Reagan years, I was embedded as apolitical …until the Obama campaigns: Finally, a ray of hope for our country. As I look back now, from 1974 until around 2015 I was simply focused on our family with my wife Kristy; no time or money for much else other than work, family and saving for some sort of retirement. After all these years, am I now being radicalized? At 75!? I think maybe I am.
Part of my youth’s apoliticalness was due the fact that my mother went from being a decent liberal to an extreme, hard-line right-winger due to losing our family wealth in the Cuban revolution. We got thrown out of Cuba in early 1960 (under threat of prison) having lost mom’s complete inherited investments deposited into 1956 Cuba.
That is a whole different saga: The point I want to make here is that no one that I’ve ever known has hated Socialism/Communism more than my mother (I’ll give you her book if you ask). She nursed her “Organization to Fight Communism/O.F.C.” for a number of years, exposing card-carrying “communists = socialists.” My eldest brother Chip joined in as well … He became a high position executive with the John Birch Society around 1962 after abandoning his Ivy League education.
I was 10 years old in 1960 … I came of age listening to Dylan and reading Hesse; I think my blue-blood-birth liberalism rose to the top. We ended up back in Cleveland, where my 1954 deceased father had made his wealth in precious metal and stocks which in turn went to Cuba with us. For rich, white Americans, it was paradise for awhile.
Chip died last year; I think he had become a cross between a Federalist and a Libertarian. He had become fairly wealthy publishing right-wing propaganda … Anyone remember “None Dare Call it Treason?” How about “Teddy Bare?”
Mom was intimately acquainted with folks like J.Edgar Hoover, Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, Barry Goldwater … basically, all of the top 10 neo-conservatives of the era … The C.I.A. even gave my mom a small mission back into Communist Cuba which became harrowing; she barely got back into the U.S.; I’ve had a complicated youth through exposure, from 1954 through 1968, when I turned 18.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991 helped to confirm our country’s own united trust in conservative-capitalism-geopolitics. Then Reagan convinced the country that trickle down economics was exactly what America needed, as well as less government.
Then something spectacular happened. The Russian power brokers and their like-minded cronies started lapping up and privatizing all the previously socialized, infrastructural products and services as well as the country’s resources. Russia, within a few years, became a weird mix of dictatorship, oligarchy, autocracy and finally plutocracy.
My research tells me that there are over 40 forms of government in this modern world and I’m personally convinced that Vladimir Putin is the bastard child from genes of the above mix. Is it any wonder that Trump admires this man and his ilk?
Putin and Xi Jinping have both finally figured out that they don’t need socialism nor communism any longer for wealth or power. Their countries presently have a distorted form of capitalism. Real, modern power lies in wealth … most importantly, personal wealth distributed within close power circles. Wealth primarily from infrastructure and rare earth resources … so one may now add kleptocracy to this witch’s brew. That’s what all the latest hoopla’s about concerning Africa and Trump’s push on Zelensky’s rare minerals “deal.” The U.S., Russia and China seem to applying their efforts to milk Africa and other parts of the world of their resources for their own power circles. And now we would be remiss not to add technocracy into the broth, especially with the sophistication of AI generated propaganda.
This is my personal opinion following my logical interpretations from world events since the start of the Russia/Ukrainian war. What I’m asking of you, dear reader, is that you personally confirm the true meaning of all these “.cracy’s” and “.chy’s”; try and connect the dots of the logic for yourselves by learning about these forms of governing.
We are presently experiencing an unprecedented history since 1930. We are all now sitting around talking to each other, I’m sure, much like the Jewish, Christian and Secular citizens of Berlin in 1930. The huge difference being: We are dealing with a worldwide group of diverse, narcissistic ego-maniacs that happen to be billionaires. The 0.5% of the world’s wealthiest elitists, not any individual Hitler, even though the parallels of Hitler and Trump’s second presidency are unnerving.
Now, when you’ve caught up, add corpocracy to our poison, a growing problem in the United States of America. To use an old expression I heard shouted from the rooftops in the sixties: “Power to the People;” just in case we need the only antidote that may save us.
Part II in the works.
Tim and Kristy Wood moved to Beaufort in 1974. He worked as a carpenter in both restoration and new home construction, as well as operating a shop specializing in custom woodwork, Wood on Wood Specs. He is semi-retired, involved with fine woodworking and formerly sat on the City of Beaufort Zoning Board of Appeals.
