American History
Since 1945
The Dark Carnival
First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren’t rare. But there are bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month, school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn’t begun yet. July, well, July’s really fine: there’s no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June’s best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September’s a billion years away.
1962: Something Wicked This Way Comes
2004: Ray Bradbury (b1920) was awarded the National Medal of Arts
Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show
– … What if someone discovers your secret dream … And what if that person suddenly makes your dream come true – before you learn the price you have to pay? …
… finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keeper of the freaks … proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows …
Dealt with an issue which had gone from the American conversation by 1939
Dorothy and mind cure (Frank Baum)
The irony and/or contradiction at the heart of the twentieth-century (violence and utopianism)
A “war to end war”; the League of Nations; the “small world”; the “Star Trek” idea; world brotherhood
But … the conversation about “dark things” was still there
Steven King (b1947), Salem’s Lot (1973); the Stand (1978); you can see the problem in the film version of the Shining (book 1977; movie 1980)
Ok in church but not in public
Peter Straub (b1943), Julia (1975): Ghost Story (1979); Shadowland (1980)
– … Tom left the chair and walked down the aisle toward the empty stage. What was it Collins had said about wizards, in the story about the sparrows? They gave you what you asked for, but they made you pay for it …
Suddenly (in 1982) these concerns reappeared in American politics
1982 (June 8): President Ronald Reagan gave a speech to the House of Commons
We're approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention -- totalitarianism …
If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. We see around us today the marks of our terrible dilemma--predictions of doomsday, antinuclear demonstrations, an arms race in which the West must, for its own protection, be an unwilling participant… What, then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms? Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?
The 1980 election was a referendum on Jimmy Carter
– Gas lines
– Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (part of a general extension of Soviet power after 1974)
– Iranian hostage crisis
– Abolished the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Stagflation: 1978-80; Economic growth – 4.8 to 2.5 to .5; Inflation – 7.5% to 11.3% to 13.5%
Elite opinion thought this decline could not be reversed (the Japanese)
Carter referred to Vietnam as a war of “moral poverty”; pardoned all draft evaders; and lectured about the “inordinate fear of communism”
Among the elites, a general sense of “malaise”
1980: Reagan elected with 50.75% of the vote (Carter held only 5 states and DC)
– Attracted by his optimism
– But there was something else very few people noticed
… I believe we live now at a turning point … We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West but in the home of Marxism- Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then.
November 9, 1989 (about 7 pm)
– Gunter Schabowski
A press conference
“A small mistake”
Reply to an Italian journalist about a draft for procedures to obtain visas to visit the West
No restrictions
– In one night East Germany was swept away (built wall in 1961)
– The “cold war” ended with a party
– The “Party is basically kaput”
So where did this change come from? Was Reagan simply lucky?
The CIA never figured out that the command economy of the Soviet Union didn’t work; as late as 1989, thought the Soviet GNP was 2.8 trillion and growing – larger than Japan and the two Germanys combined; didn’t realize their numbers were literally nonsense
Most “experts” and the foreign policy community thought he was crazy
Reagan came to the Presidency with a very different idea and set of instincts – did not accept the divided world established at Yalta
So, where did this unexpected change come from?
The answer comes in four parts
The Gulag
1974: A book was published in the West and its author was expelled from the Soviet Union
1974-77: The Gulag Archipelago (three volumes)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
Kept off the Voice of America and President Ford’s “schedule” was to busy to see him in the White House; did not want to offend the Soviets
1978 (June 8): Commencement Address at Harvard; “A World Split Apart”
“The Western World has lost its civil courage”
Opened a window
Team B
1976 (Jan): Decision to take another look at the intelligence analysis of the Soviet Union; To critique the CIA; Demonstrated that ten years of analysis could not stand the scrutiny; Team B was fundamentally correct about Soviet behavior – preparing for war (underground cities, first-strike, producing an average of 5 fighter planes, 8 tanks and one ICBM every day)
1977 (Jan): Carter came to the Presidency and dismissed all of this analysis; thought in terms of treaties and arms control
Thought that “… Brezhnev is a man who shares our dreams and aspirations”; The Soviets were told that those who disagreed with the Administration were “dishonest people”; the US should avoid “provoking” the Soviet Union
The bridge between 1976 and 1980 would be the Committee On The Present Danger ( formed in Nov 1976); carried the analysis of Team B forward; the Soviets were violating treaties and preparing for conventional and biological war (had stockpiled hundreds of tons of anthrax, smallpox and plague microorganisms)
The elites and foreign policy experts insisted this could not be happening; had to appreciate and sympathize with Soviet fears
A charter member of the CPD thought their analysis was correct; his name was Ronald Reagan
Footnote: Ford’s Chief of Staff was Dick Cheney and the Secretary of Defense was Donald Rumsfeld
John Paul The Great
Near the end of 1980, the Soviets were getting nervous about Poland; worried about a labor union called Solidarity and the attitude of the Polish Government; massed 15 divisions along the border and prepared to invade
The Pope sent Brezhnev a sharply worded letter and the Soviets backed away
Stalin had asked “how many divisions does the Pope have”; in 1980 the Soviets found out
1978 (16 Oct): Karol Josef Wojtyla becomes Pope (John Paul II); had been Archbishop of Krakow (1963); the first non-Italian since the 16th century
1942: Underground seminary – opposed the Nazis and the Communists; Hans Frank, the German Governor (1939) – “There will never again be Poland”
Frank set up his residence in the old royal residence of Wawel Castle and told his subordinates:
– “I openly admit that some thousands of so-called important Poles will have to pay with their lives, but … every vestige of Polish culture is to be eliminated”
Thousands were killed – Priests, college professors and ordinary people
1940: Katyn Forest; 25,000
1979 (June 2): First trip to Poland which lasted 8 days; 13 million people saw him; the Soviets realized the danger – the Central Committee adopted a plan to oppose the Vatican
1981 (May 13): Attempted assassination; organized by the KGB through the Bulgarian Secret Service
Pope John Paul II had come to believe that the Soviet Union was swimming against the tide – believed that God worked in and through history
Reinforced his understanding of Fatima (July 13, 1917); three Portuguese children had seen the Virgin Mary – three prophecies.
1980: the Founding of Solidarity in the Gdansk shipyards; Lech Walesa; wanted a free trade union
1980-88: Becomes an underground movement; helped by the new American President and Pope John Paul II
1982: Time’s Man of the Year
1988: Strikes across the country
August 1989: Would support a coalition government; The first non-Communist government in eastern Europe since 1945
By Christmas: the Republic of Poland had risen from the grave
The Battle of Burbank
After the war ended, Reagan said he was “blindly and busily joining every organization I could find that would guarantee to save the world”; he was a New Deal liberal (his father) and thought the communists were simply liberals
Involved with the Screen Actors Guild (President 1946-47)
1945 (Oct): Became involved in what appeared to be only a labor dispute between the AFL and the CSU (Conference of Studio Unions); the CSU however was openly affiliated with communist organizations and pressed a strike against Warner Brothers with very little support; provoked violence (the Battle of Burbank)
Heard that the CSU was meeting at Ida Lupino’s house to try and convince SAG members to support them before the general meeting; Reagan went to the house; listened patiently and kept his temper; then spoke for forty minutes; Sterling Hayden – “Reagan showed up and took over and ground you into a pulp … he dominated the whole thing”
1946 (June): Asked to become a Board Member of the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (HICCASP); Said he was delighted but the organization needed to reassure the public it wasn’t a front organization; he was denounced as a “fascist, a red baiter and witch hunter”; one member declared that “if there was ever a war between the United States and Russia, he would volunteer for Russia
Reagan also suggested the group should use secret ballots; he was told “ … a two party system is in no way necessary or even desirable for democracy …” and “the membership wasn’t sophisticated enough to make this decision …”; instead, the group needed to focus its efforts on combating “incipient native fascism”
Lawson: “This organization will never adopt a statement which endorses free enterprise and repudiates communism …”
Received threatening phone calls and obtained a gun permit; if he continued to oppose the strike his face would be “disfigured with acid”
He opposed the blacklist and worked to help actors affected by it but he was adamant about the politics of a “fifth column”.
As a result, Reagan and his friends left the group as did James Roosevelt (who had become the National Director in 1946)
Reagan’s ideas and instincts about the Soviet Union were clarified during this period; he had experience of their methods and ideas up close; understood them from the inside – determined they would not prevail
In the first term:
– Got the economy straightened out; Paul Volker and hard money; tax cuts; emphasis not on regulation and control but focused on the market and incentives for success
Took the recommendations of Team B seriously
He pursued a measured and careful strategy to modernize conventional forces; opposed “pseudo-arms control”; and began a resource competition
He spoke softly because there was a recognition that the Cold War had entered a dangerous phase
Yuri Andropov came to power; he was a hardened Stalinist and deeply ignorant of the West
Andropov was haunted by apocalyptic visions (died in Feb 1984); 1983 – a Soviet Satellite went defective (the most dangerous moment)
Reagan also waged economic warfare against the Soviet Union; realized the Soviets were financing through loans from the West; becomes a national security issue
1981: Realized that the declaration of martial law in Poland would allow an embargo of Western money and technology; tasked William Clark (NSC until 1983) to set a course which would lead to Soviet economic collapse
1981: The French discovered Line X (“Farewell”); briefed Reagan; two hundred Soviet spies and officials; dealing with a “pirate” state
Similar to “Super Lend-Lease” (1940s); the CIA denied this was going on; allowed Reagan to understand exactly where the Soviets were behind
William Casey (CIA) set up the Technology Transfer Intelligence Center; in 1982 (Jan), Weiss was instructed to begin a “sting” transfer of “bad” product
1983 (March): Announced SDI
1984: Announced some conciliatory gestures and defined a way out for the Soviets a year before Gorbachev came to power
– Gorbachev was determined to prevail; kept the spending levels and increased the germ warfare program but slowly the Politburo came to realize that they could not compete (military, agriculture, economic production and R&D)
The CIA and the elites never understood any of this – the Soviet economy was a wreck; an “irrational” economy
Second term: