My memories of earlier times prompted by my 85th birthday seem to have gathered some interest, so I will add a few more.


In the 1950s we were greatly concerned about polio. Everybody knew someone who had been struck. We were familiar with the horror of “iron lungs.”


Nobody understood at first what caused it. Some thought it was carried by flies. I spent long periods on my grandmother’s porch exterminating flies. There sometimes is, rarely, progress in our downhill world. The vaccine came along and polio has almost disappeared, although I knew people who continued to suffer from the effects.


Also, during the 1950s we were obsessed by the Cold War. In school we were taught, stupidly, to get under our desks if there was a bomb attack. We expected that an attack was coming any time. At the same time we were relentlessly propagandized about what a great thing the United Nations is.


Some of my earliest memories revolve around World War II. With my grandmother I listened to the news every day. At about four years old, I picked up a small iron pipe as a rifle and went out to kill Japs or Germans.


All the uncles on both sides were overseas or at sea, as was my father. I remember clearly that I was alone with my grandmother when the telegram came that my Uncle Paul, the third of her five children, had been killed in Europe. I was too young to really understand but you don’t forget things like that.


Later wars did not attract so much attention, and now with a volunteer force, nobody cares at all.


I was in high school when I first learned there was such a thing as an automatic transmission. Every boy worth his salt learned on a stick shift. That’s what the clutch was for.


One summer I worked, incompetently, as a boy in a cotton mill, which was the biggest industry in our town. We turned out vast quantities of denim—worn by farmers and working men. We never dreamed that blue jeans would become a worldwide fashion item.


I mentioned previously that as an undergraduate, friends and I raucously watched “Lone Ranger” on our little TV before supper. We also fervently watched Jesse Helms editorials on the Tobacco Network from Raleigh. That probably explains a lot.


Of course, in those days, he was a Democrat like all good people. The Democrats had not yet driven us out or the Republicans, our blood enemies, cynically taken over the South, for which they never have and never will do anything. My State of Sam Ervin now sometimes votes Blue.


In my early days there were only a handful of Catholics and Jews in town. There was a big competition between Baptists and Methodists for market share. Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans kept to themselves. Now there are mosques and Buddhist places.


The only immigrant I knew was a lad who was a refugee from Latvian Communism. Everybody else, black and white, had American ancestors, including the numerous carpetbaggers.


In my day, North Carolina history was a required subject for the 8th grade. That must have long since disappeared or else changed to a source of shame rather than pride.


Now, my grandfather’s house is inhabited by people from Sierra Leone and my father’s house by Vietnamese. There are foreigners anywhere you go. Hospitals are staffed by Asians and even Jamaicans. Black “leaders” control the government and schools. There is no community and the basic values and continuity of civilisation are missing. Young white people are stateless refugees in their own country.
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Nobody expects Presidents to keep their campaign promises. Since Nixon every single Republican Chief Executive has acted the opposite of what he promised. Democrats at least try and sometimes succeed in serving promises to their anti-American supporters as far as they can.


Republicans are not an opposition party. They are not even really a political party at all. They are an election machine - an organisation concerned with putting reliable mediocrities in office. Their election campaigns have nothing to do with ideas or principles. They take  - their stands on advertising slogans without any real content, made up after careful research by PR men.


The Republican Party operates by gathering voters offended by Democratic leftism while at the same time avoiding any “extremism” that might affect their “respectability.” That means never vigourously opposing anything. The only agenda that party has ever had, since Lincoln, is to protect Big Capital. When Big Capital was industry they supported tariffs at the expense of everybody else. Now that Big Capital is chiefly involved in financial manipulation they declaim for a “free trade” that does not exist.


When has a Republican party in Congress ever opposed a leftist initiative against Heritage Americans? They make moderate noises then after a few years adopt the leftist positions. It has happened over and over again. And we are told over and over again that we must support the Republicans as the “conservative” force. When have Republican majorities or even strong minorities in Congress ever fought to conserve anything?



Presidents never keep their campaign promises, but Trump has proved to be the most blatant liar ever and not even a plausible one. His war on Iran is not only criminal and stupid, it has shredded the last remnants of the Constitution which now has no meaning except in minor procedural matters. And forces are at work even in those matters - efforts to destroy the Electoral College.


Anyone who tells us we must restore the Constitution is either a fool or a fraud. You cannot revive a corpse.


Trump has crushed those who supported him and rewarded his enemies, who are still his enemies except when he obeys them. It is hard to think of any other such egregious betrayal in U.S. history. His lying and bullying has abandoned good faith and honest dealing and made diplomacy impossible in the future.


The only positive thing in all of this is that we have learned never to trust a New York gangster again, no matter how good he speaks.


Have you noted that the Republicans in Congress are almost unanimous in their support of Israeli war crimes. They are doing what they have always been doing. Nobody has told them to do different and they are too party-controlled and cowardly to respond to a changed situation. The only large number of No votes come from Democrats. Of course, their opposition to Zionist doings is in defense of foreigners, not America.


​It has been said that two things are certain in life—death and taxes. But it is starting to look like we are also going to have Lindsay Graham forever. I weep for South Carolina when I remember our last conservative Senator, Fritz Hollings, a Southern Democrat.