Where’s Smedley Now That We Need Him?
Back in 1852, Karl Marx published an essay entitled The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. The genesis for this brief essay was an event which occurred on December 2 1851 when followers of French President Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon's nephew) broke up the Legislative Assembly and established a dictatorship. A year later, Louis Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III.
General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940)
In this minor - though fascinating - work Marx traced how the conflict of different social interests manifests itself in the complex web of political struggles. In other words, as is stated in the Hebrew Bible (Koheleth [Ecclesiastes] 1:9), ““There’s nothing new under the sun.”
Unquestionably, the most famous (though frequently misquoted) statement found in The 18th Brumaire is still regarded as one heck of a truism even during the waning days of the Trump Presidency in 2020: that historical entities appear twice, "the first as tragedy, then as farce." Marx, of course, knew nothing of Donald Trump the man; he did, however, know tons and tons about autocrats like Donald Trump. In the 18th Brumaire, Marx was aiming his pen at - respectively - Napoleon I and then to his nephew Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III).
The haunting truth of Marx’s old chestnut came to mind yesterday, when SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States) gave the shortest of shrifts to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s legal brief (along with amicus briefs from 17 other states’ attorneys general and a majority of Congressional Republicans) to overturn - and thus invalidate - the 2020 presidential election. This legal kick in the privates came just days after the Roberts’ Court took all of one sentence to tell Trump et al to take a long hike on a short pier in their case against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Ever since it has been understood that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and Senator Kamala Harris will be the next President and Vice President of the United States of America, Donald Trump and his [il[legal team have filed more than 4 dozen cases in state and federal courts, seeking to have the 2020 presidential election overturned. Their batting average has been near zero. For this we can offer prayers of thanksgiving to the American judiciary which, for the most part, refuse to be drawn into any conspiratorial coup. Come tomorrow, December 14, the 2020 presidential election will have become part of American history; Donald Trump will be a loser, Joseph Biden a winner and the attempted coup will begin melting into the scummy slag of history.
“So where,” you may well ask, “is the tragedy and the farce?” The farce, to put second things first, is the attempted coup created by Donald Trump, his autocratic billionaire buddies, a gaggle of different Nationalist, Racist, White Supremacist, uber-libertarian and conspiratorial groups; and all those who wish nothing more than to dismantle virtually everything ever done or dreamed by former President Barack Obama and his administration. These coup-masters are a frightening cult made up of folks who disdain Ivy League graduates, progressives, immigrants, scientists, most Jews, environmentalists and feminists; they are, for the most part, made up of all those Second Amendment-loving Americans who seek a return to the days of the Cold War when political correctness was unheard of, Ozzie And Harriet were the typical American family, and moms stayed at home in order to raise a family. It is a “farce,” precisely because it is a misguided dream of yesteryear.
So far as “tragedy” goes, let’s hop into the “Wayback Machine” and alight on the earliest days of the FDR administration. Shortly after his inauguration in March, 1933, a group of the wealthiest men in America started putting together and funding a campaign which they hoped and prayed would punish - and eventually remove from office - the most aristocratic of all American presidents. Their reason? Because, as the most blue-blooded member of the Mayflower-Groton-Harvard-patrician breed, he turned out to be very much on the side of the working middle class; a progressive with deep ties to the Jewish/immigrant/rural community. To his classmates and club mates, he became nothing short of an anathema – a traitor to his class and culture. And that is why that group made up of the richest of the American rich sought to overthrow him through a coup in early 1933. They were also deeply afraid that he might raise their taxes. Although not necessarily widely reported in history texts, this group was at the epicenter of what historians have called either “The Business Plot,” or “The Wall Street Putsch.”
It was a dangerous time in America . . . much like the times we have been living through of late. Then along came FDR who soundly thrashed incumbent President Hoover in the 1932 election and then embarked upon an ambitious legislative program aimed at easing some of the troubles. But he faced vitriolic opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. During FDR’s historic “first hundred days,” West Virginia Republican Senator Henry Hatfield (a member of the “Hatfields v McCoys” clan) worriedly wrote a colleague that: "This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty. The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot. The president has not merely signed the death warrant of capitalism, but has ordained the mutilation of the Constitution, unless the friends of liberty, regardless of party, band themselves together to regain their lost freedom."
Times were extraordinarily tense. According to historian Sally Denton in her excellent 2012 book The Plots Against the President, “. . . fascism, communism, even Nazism seemed like possible solutions to the country's ills. . . . Some people even called for a dictator to pull America out of the Great Depression.” In addition to the bankers who underwrote the “putsch” (one of whom, Brown Brothers/Harriman partner Prescott Bush would eventually become a U.S. Senator from Connecticut and the father of future President George H.W. Bush) thought that they could convince Roosevelt to relinquish power to a basically fascist, military-type government. It was, in the words of historian Denton, “a cockamamie concept.” The conspirators had several million dollars (and this was in 1933!), a stockpile of weapons and had even reached out to a retired Marine general, Smedley Darlington Butler, to lead their forces.
Smedley Darlington who? General Butler (nicknamed “Old Gimlet Eye” due to his feverish, bloodshot eyes) was, in 1933, the most highly decorated Marine in American history - the only one to be awarded the Brevet Medal (awarded for “Extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force”) and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. Following “The Great War,” Butler quickly became a household name in America. People trusted him; his name and fame were right up there with Charles Lindbergh and General John J. Pershing. Butler would meet on quite a few occasions with the principles of this plot - including the aforementioned Prescott Bush, bond salesman extraordinaire Gerald MacGuire, Bob Doyle of the American Legion, members of the DuPont family and Singer Sewing Machine heir Robert Sterling Clark. Their topic was, of course about overthrowing FDR and instituting a Fascist form of government. They then sent Butler out across the country, making speech after speech about the absolute necessity of getting rid of Roosevelt and his band of “communists, socialists, Jewish Marxists and anti-capitalists.” They would eventually coalesce into “The America First” committee
But somewhere along the way, Butler became convinced that these bankers, heirs and white-shoe, blue-blooded Wall Street attorneys represented a vile danger to our form of government. When he finally got around to asking bond-broker MacGuire what specifically was wanted of him from the group, Butler was told he would be the ideal leader of a vast army of veterans, promising him an army of 500,000 men and all but limitless financial backing, so long as he would be willing to lead a march on the White House to displace Roosevelt.
With time, General Butler moved further and further to the political left, and actually became so anti war that he picked up a new nickname: “The Fighting Quaker.” Finally, unable to remain a part of the crowd of conspirators - let alone leading an anti-Democratic, anti-Semitic putsch - Butler decided he had to do something about it. But who, he thought, would ever believe what he had to report? It was such an outlandish plot as to sound like a story-line from Mark Twain at his fabulist best. Increasingly troubled by MacGuire’s plans, Butler knew he would need someone to corroborate his story if he was going to stop the intended coup. Having previously worked as a police captain in Philadelphia, Butler reached out to a reporter from the Philadelphia Record named Paul Comly French, who agreed to meet with MacGuire as well. (French, by the way, had gained fame for covering the Lindbergh baby kidnapping - one of the most sensational stories of the early 1930s). During this meeting, MacGuire told French that he believed a fascist state was the only answer for America, and that Smedley Butler was the “ideal leader” because he “could organize one million men overnight.”
Armed with French’s mutual testimony, Butler appeared before the McCormack-Dickstein congressional committee, also known as the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, to reveal what he knew about the plot to seize the presidency in November 1934. (The committee’s co-chairs were Massachusetts Democrat John McCormick [1891-1980], an Irish Catholic who would serve as Speaker of the House from 1962-1971 and New York Democrat Sam Dickstein [1885-1954], the Lithuanian-born son of an Orthodox rabbi who would eventually serve 9 years as a Justice of the New York Supreme Court. The two men did not get along with one another at all. Whenever McCormack wielded the gavel, Dickstein absented himself; whenever Dickstein led the committee, McCormack was nowhere to be seen.)
Listening to General Butler, along with the testimony of both French, and the erratic MacGuire, the committee began to further investigate the plot. The final reports of the committee sang a different tune, finding that all of Butler’s claims could be corroborated as factual. However, they also stressed that the plot was far from being enacted, and it was not clear if the plans would have ever truly come to fruition.
Quickly becoming known as the “White House Coup” and the “Wall Street Putsch,” many major news sources derided Butler’s claims, as the committee’s final report was not made available publicly. Those implicated, ranging from the DuPont family to Prescott Bush, laughed off Butler’s claims; they believed that they were “above the law.” Evidence of the validity of Butler’s testimony was not released until the 21st century, when the committee’s papers were published in the Public Domain. No one was ever prosecuted in connection with the plot. And yet, without General Butler, there is every reason to believe that some sort of coup would have occurred and likely succeeded. When America needed what today we would refer to as a “whistle blower,” Smedley D. Butler was there, doing what he did best: being a hero. (BTW: General Butler wrote a brief book in 1935 [still in print] that for years, was taught in American public schools: War is a Racket. It is one of the most profound antiwar essays in all American history.
Despite the fact that Donald Trump will no longer be occupying the White House after this coming January 20, (fingers crossed, lucky Dodger socks pulled tight), he is likely not going to be leaving the American political scene. He and his henchmen (which include Ivanka, Jared, Eric and Donald, Jr.) have already amassed more than a quarter-of-a-billion dollars in their own PAC - ostensibly to keep paying their attorney fees for cases they cannot win . . . let alone get on any court’s docket. Mostly, the money will be used to fund the Trump lifestyle as well as keeping him on the campaign circuit supporting those who bow before him and destroying those who have seen through or had the chutzpah to criticize him. He is by no means finished with his task of destroying America while selling the Trump brand and - who knows - creating his own media empire. There are dire consequences for both America and indeed, the world - in having an unhinged, amoral narcissist go unchallenged. The fact that a clear majority of all elected Republicans are either incapable of - or afraid to - stand up like Smedley Butler and tell the truth about this miscreant from Manhattan (actually Queens) is both a curse and a stain on the fabric of civil society.
To all those Senate Republicans who are hinting that they won’t be holding hearings for any of Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees until they are 100% convinced that Trump’s loss wasn’t a case of fraud (i.e. never), I have one thing to say: don’t ever refer to yourself a patriot. You are cultists driven to do whatever your dictatorial master commands - even if it will bring down the American political system. You actually see no danger in declaring the next POTUS illegitimate in the eyes of nearly half the American people. Do you have any idea of how foolish and robotically puerile you look to the rest of the world? Are you that feverishly fearful of Donald Trump that you would eviscerate the body politic in the hopes that he won’t find someone to challenge you in the next Republican primary? Where is your spine?
And so, permit me to issue a call for any and all true American patriots (in the real sense of the word) to step into the shoes of General Smedley D. Butler and tell it like it is.
Goodness knows, we need each and every one of you. NOW!
23 days until the Georgia elections.
38 days until the Biden/Harris administration gets to work.
Here’s wishing our Jewish friends a chag chanukah s’maycha! May your latkes (and/or sufgan’yot be delicious and calorie-free . . . And do remember: this is the season for miracles!
Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone