Milton Sanford Mayer
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FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER THE ABOVE, REDONE NOW ABOUT THIS PAMPHLET “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER 1908 August 24, Monday, 1908: Milton Sanford Mayer was born in Chicago, a son of Morris Samuel Mayer and Louise Gerson Mayer. He would b e raised as a Reform Jew. He would graduate from Englewood Technical Prep Academy on the South Side of Chicago (this neighborhood would not be “going black” until the ’60s), with a classical education placing an emphasis on Latin and languages. As an adult he would become a Quaker (although not one who would renounce Jewishness). NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Friend Milton Sanford Mayer “Stack of the Artist of HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER 1925 1925: In Jamaica, the Great Depression, the rise of Rastafarianism, and racial fears increased concern over the use of marijuana. The Panama Canal Zone Report concluded that there was no credible evidence that cannabis was habit forming or that it was having any “appreciably deleterious influence” on American soldiers in the Zone, and recommended that no action be taken. However, urban legends that associated horrible crimes with marijuana and Mexicans were given credence in a Surgeon General’s Report. The Cuban Communist party was founded by labor organizers Carlos Baliño, student organizer Julio Antonio Mella, and others. (Opiate of the masses, anyone?) During the era of prohibition, Sanka would be introduced and coffee consumption would reach new highs. By this year, in the United States, a widespread illicit liquor trade had become well established. “Speakeasies” had made their appearance, and consumption had increased particularly among women. A local businessman named Al Capone, none too smart, none too efficient, and not at all charismatic, was able to seize primacy in Chicago’s underworld due to opportunities offered by prohibition of the legal sale of alcoholic beverages. In the midst of all this, a young graduate of Englewood Technical Prep Academy on the South Side of Chicago, Milton Sanford Mayer, matriculated at the University of Chicago. HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE Friend Milton Sanford Mayer “Stack of the Artist of HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER 1928 1928: The 1st National Educational Conference of the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang) determined that the purpose of Chinese education was to develop character, patriotism, and physical vigor. Under German military influence, they would stress military drill in schools rather than athletic games. To placate parents, the chief secretary of the executive council of the Kuomintang, Dr. Chu Min-yi, would promote t’ai chi ch’uan as a method for maintaining fitness, and go on tour demonstrating his big, flowery movements to military, police, and student groups. Milton Mayer left the University of Chicago without taking a degree (he would later confess in the Saturday Evening Post that he had been “placed on permanent probation ... for throwing beer bottles out a dormitory window”). A job with Associated Press would last for a year or two, and then he would work for the Chicago Evening Post and the Chicago Evening American — eventually winding up with his own long-running column in The Progressive magazine founded by Robert Marion LaFollette, Sr. in Madison, Wisconsin. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER 1939 October 7, Saturday, 1939: Milton Sanford Mayer, in a Saturday Evening Post article “I Think I’ll Sit This One Out,” opinioned that since we refused to face the fundamental problem with which we needed to deal (“the animality in man”), the coming world conflagration was inevitably going to render our human situation worse rather than better. WORLD WAR II THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER 1944 1944: Lyndon LaRouche, Jr. had at first during World War II been a “CO” or Conscientious Objector, but at this point he enlisted. He would serve in US Army medical units in India and Burma. At a dinner sponsored by the War Resisters League, Milton Sanford Mayer, although a conscientious objector, denied that this amounted to being a “pacifist.” He would promote the need for a moral revolution of anti- materialism in his regular monthly column in the Progressive, a column he would continue for the remainder of his life. Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s THE STEEP ASCENT. In the war stories told by Joseph R. McCarthy, he had flown 14 bombing runs over enemy territory. Had that been true, that have been so brave. FAKE NEWS UNAMERICANISM MCCARTHYISM THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER 1945 1945: During World War II, it had become the regular custom for American servicemen to wear wedding bands WEDDING BANDS, to remind them of their wives back home waiting for their return. Milton Sanford Mayer, who had been a World War II conscientious objector, and Bertha Tepper Mayer, got divorced (there were two daughters). THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER 1947 1947: In the aftermath of World War II, the United States of America enacted a National Security Act that created a Central Intelligence Agency.1 Milton Sanford Mayer remarried, with Jane “Baby” Scully. 1. Four decades into the future, Bill Moyers would be tracing the advent of secretive and often grossly unethical practices back to this National Security Act of 1947, critiquing it as the federal government’s new improved “apparatus of secret power” and as a threat to the US Constitution. Congressman Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would be absconding annually to a remote location to participate in a “most highly classified program” that would entirely supersede the protocol enacted in our Constitution for presidential succession during a national crisis, diminishing the role of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the federal Congress and developing instead “a secret procedure for putting in place a new ‘President’ and his staff.” Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington DC, Vice President Dick Cheney would routinely be disappearing down a burrow to an “undisclosed location,” and under nominal president George W. Bush, in the name of national security, a shadow government would begin to operate in secrecy out of underground bunkers without any involvement with the legislative and judicial branches of the aboveground apparatus of government. HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER FRIEND MILTON SANFORD MAYER 1950 1950: During the early years of this decade President Harry S Truman would have the interior of the White House gutted and rebuilt on a skeleton of steel beams on a concrete foundation, making the house safe and ensuring its continued use by American presidents. Thank you, Harry. The United States of America adopted the Security Act of 1950, which contained an emergency civilian detention plan that was to remain in effect for more than 20 years.2 General Curtis LeMay, commander of the United States Air Force’s nuclear-capable Strategic Air Command, became concerned about base security. “The Russians didn’t threaten us,” said LeMay. “But I was worried about fifth column activity. Sabotage… And the stupidest people we had in the Air Force were put in the Military Police.” To reduce this perceived systemic risk, this American general adopted an agenda of searching out and publicly dismissing bad examples: incompetent provost marshals, unconcerned wing commanders. The general arranged for his security forces to be designated “Air Police” and took steps to treat the key commanders not as unwanted stepchildren but as key members of his hands-on personal security team. To make sure his Air Police understood how very special they were, he provided a distinctive uniform and arranged for professional instruction in aikido, judo, and karate. The general established an Air Police school at Fort Carson, Colorado that would teach his new Air Police how to rise above the level of gate guards and make of themselves a deadly mixture of military police with nuclear weapon security.3 Meanwhile, there were those who were underimpressed by this uncritical pursuit of safety through power. For instance, in this year Milton Mayer, without renouncing his Jewishness, became a member of the Religious Society of Friends. JUDAISM 2. During the early 1980s in Washington DC, US Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North would help draft secret wartime contingency plans which would provide for “the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA,” and more than two decades later, the Sydney Morning Herald would report that the Bush administration might employ these Reagan-era security initiatives, installing “internment camps and martial law in the United States.” Following 9/11, reports of civilian detention camps and plans to “herd people into sports stadiums” would be punctuated by John Dean’s question: “Could terrorism result in a constitutional dictator?” By late 2005, after President Bush would propose a greater role for the military during natural disasters and the imposition of marshal law should there be an avian flu outbreak, former Reagan cabinet member Paul Craig Roberts would assert “The Police State Is Closer Than You Think.” 3.