Immigration, Damon Runyon, And New York City

Immigration, Damon Runyon,

And New York City

by

R.E. Prindle

 

In the 2019 March-April issue of Foreign Affairs devoted to discussion of the idea of New Nationalism, Jill Lepore a Harvard Professor of History opens the discussion with an article entitled:  The New Americanism.  No, she isn’t talking about Pres. Donald Trump.  Her proposition is this:  Why a Nation Needs a National Story.

Apparently Liberals have given up on the idea that there is no such thing as a nation.  Even a social construct needs a reason to exist.  I quote here first two paragraphs:

Quote:

In 1986, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bowtie-wearing Stanford historian Carl Degler delivered something other than the usual pipe-smoking, scotch-on-the-rocks, after-dinner disquisition that had plagued the evening program of the annual meeting of the American Historical Association for nearly all of its centurylong history.  Instead, Degler, a gentle and quietly heroic man, accused his colleagues of nothing short of dereliction of duty: appalled by nationalism, they had abandoned the study of the nation.

“We can write history that implicitly denies or ignores the nation-state, but it would be a history that flew in the face of what people who live in a nation-state require and demand,” Degler said that night in Chicago.  He issued a warning: “If we historians fail to provide a nationally defined history, others less critical and less informed will take over the job for us.”

Unquote.

I empathize with Prof. Degler’s concerns, however ‘nationally defined history’ already exists and has existed for some time, it is called the Immigrant Narrative of American History.  According to it ‘Americans’ are good people, indeed, the very best but only because we have opened our hearts, minds and national home to immigrants from wherever and whatever condition provided only that they be colored, POC (People of Color); that is, not White.  We know by this narrative that Whites have caused all the ills of the world while not deserving to live.

In the nineteenth century, it’s true that after the country became a nation in 1793 the immigrants, much to our shame today, were White, with the exception of African Negroes who were needed for work that White people wouldn’t do.  That immigration would have the direst consequences even though the Negroes are good hearted POC who wouldn’t never do nobody no harm.

The principle port of entry was NYC, first at a facility called Castle Gardens and then the fabled sacred site of the Immigrant Narrative, Ellis Island.  It was there that the ‘wretched refuse’ of ‘Europe’s teeming shore’ as Emma Lazarus’ poem quaintly expressed it and she pasted it on the base of the Statue of Liberty.  Thus the Immigrant National Narrative was enshrined.

They were coming to America as the Jewish poet Neil Diamond sang in the twentieth century from every country in Europe and a great many of them stuck in New York City giving that town its peculiar character.

Immigration was cut off at the knees by Conservative bigots beginning in the 1920s coinciding with that abominable experiment, Prohibition.  This was a license to steal for the immigrants.  Whoo, boy howdy, was that a combination- immigration and prohibition.  A third ingredient was the introduction of women’s suffrage.  The ladies obtained the vote.  And somewhen at this time the Hero of our national narrative also arrived in NYC, Damon Runyon.  He was the redoubtable historian with the national narrative much longed for by Carl Degler.

Damon Runyon sat in his favorite hangout of Mindy’s Deli in the heart of NYC’s Satan’s Square Mile and surveyed the scene.  Of course, his history is fictionalized but no matter it is accurate, playfully accurate.

Some will say his history is too one sided but then so are all national narratives, they’re all fictional too, cut to measure from the whole fabric.  It’s something like Einstein’s ‘fabric of space and time’ which no one has ever seen or touched but is still an article of faith.

For those who don’t know Damon Runyon, perhaps America’s least known historian, who wrote about ninety years ago, you may have seen an even more fictional representation of the work in the movie Guys And Dolls starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, two legendary characters that were once flesh and blood, if you follow them, in 1955 nearly seventy years ago if you’re still too young to remember.

So, Damon Runyon sat studying the immigrant type for that is what he portrays.  The key nationalities that he describes are the Irish, the Sicilians and the Jews.  The main Irish influx arrived in the 1840 and hence were the most assimilated, but only partially so, while the Jews and Sicilians were in the gold rush to America from 1890 to 1914.  Those two groups were all only partially assimilated, the Sicilians least of all.

In Runyon’s stories they are all criminals.  Like, who else hangs around in Satan’s Square Mile?  Runyon really romanticizes these criminal types.  Without knowledge of the situation they were all a bunch of lovable guys and dolls.  Who could not like the Butch of Butch Mind’s The Baby.  The only problem is that Butch is a killer wherein the humor of a thug minding a baby.

I first became acquainted with Runyon’s stories when I was sixteen.  Perhaps my attention was called to him by the movie Guys and Dolls that was released at that time.  Not being familiar with the context I was entranced by Runyon’s undeniable Flash.  I was knocked off my feet and remained so until the last several years.  Over time I reread the stories with a fair amount of regularity, each time gaining in worldly experience and a deepening sense of reality as to the deeper meaning of the stories content.

I still read the stories with some regularity having acquired original copies of the collections and a number of collections from a few stories to omnibus comprehensive collections.  However when I now read it is with a sickening realization of their underlying brutality.  For instance, the story, The Old Doll’s House, that particularly enchanted me, that involves a thug evading a shoot out in the process of which he jumps a wall and seeks refuge in the Old Doll’s house.

The Old Doll, we’re talking Guys and Dolls here and all women are Dolls, is a lady of advanced years.  As she is blind she can’t see the thug waving his gun around and pleased to have company invites him to tea.  Orienting himself the thug sees a clock that reads 12:30 which is the approximately correct hour.  A half hour later it still reads 12:30 and that clues him in to the fact that the Old Doll is blind. Now he won’t have to kill her because she can’t identify him.

The story stops being funny on the third or fourth reading, twenty or thirty years later.

And so with all the stories.  Dream Street Rose for instance.  On a first reading Dream Street has a figurative meaning but in fact, Dream St. is a couple of blocks in Satan’s Square Mile.  When they designate the square mile as Satan’s they aren’t just whistling Dixie either.  That square mile was the criminal sink of NYC, the US, the world and without doubt the universe and beyond.  The Metropole Hotel was there.

If you start researching Runyon’s characters you find people like the Jewish newspaper columnist Walter Winchell.  If you want a fictional portrayal of Walter Winchell view the movie The Sweet Smell Of Success.  And then there is the Jewish criminal mastermind called the Brain by Runyon who was Arnold Rothstein.  The Brain Goes Home is pretty much a true story.  The stories in their own way are real and out of the clothing of ‘poetry’, true.

At this time and experience in my life I find the stories blood curdling, even the Lily of St. Pierre, one of my favorites.  You need a little background to understand Lily.  St. Pierre is an island in the North Atlantic fishing grounds, back when the cod were plentiful.  During Prohibition the Mob moved in and used the island as a way station for booze.  St. Pierre et Miquelon was a French administrative unit.  So, the world was corrupted by Prohibition and ‘American’ immigrant criminals.

Of course, as ‘Americans’, these partially assimilated Immigrants blackened the eye of native Americans who were tarred with the same brush as these ‘American’ criminals.  And in the United States according to the Immigrant National Narrative those natives were styled ‘bigots’ and racists for declining to accept responsibility for what were actually native Europeans activities.

So, Miss Lepore and her hero Carl Degler, the ‘American’ historian may find no national narrative lacking; they’re just not looking in the right place.  The national narrative may not be very attractive but then it’s not very American either.   Immigration has consequences.

Slavery In America

Slavery In America

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Let’s get something straight about the different forms of slavery that have existed in the United States.  In the first place no one has clean hands, just as in Africa, even Negroes had slaves in the US and elsewhere in the New World, even in Haiti.  Whites owned chattels in the South, Northern Whites mined Europe to work in their factories as wage slaves to keep labor costs minimal.

Slavery in the US, other than sex slavery that is still tolerated today, had three forms:  chattel slavery, indentured slavery and wage slavery.

Indentured slavery was part and parcel of US history from its very beginning.  Indentured slavery was White men ‘owning’ White people according to contract.  A person for whatever reason indentured himself for a period of years after which he was supposed to be freed.  There were many ways for his master to increase the period.  During the period of his indenture he was another man’s slave.  At the same time adults and children were shanghaied from the streets of London and England for sale in the colonies.

These Whites usually described as indentured ‘servants’ were slaves in fact.   Many, many indentured ‘servants’ worked cheek by jowl with the Negro chattel slaves in the fields.  In that manner White women bore many Negro children thus diluting the African blood.

Chattel slavery of Negroes was legal in every English colony, there were no exceptions.  In certain States such as Massachusetts and Connecticut chattel slavery was not commercially viable and it fell into disuse.  After 1812 Chattel slavery was discontinued at varying times by the various States.   Chattel slavery existed in Northern States nearly to the beginning of the Civil War.  Nor did the Emancipation Proclamation pertain to any chattel slaves in slave holding States that were not in rebellion.  Thus, only Negro slaves in the deep South were affected by Emancipation.

Now, just as chattel slavery was not viable in States like Massachusetts and Connecticut it did not suit the manufacturing economy of the North otherwise chattel slavery would have existed North of the Mason-Dixon line.

The basis of slavery was providing the producers with labor.  Slavery was a labor problem.  In the agricultural South, especially in the cotton belt, slavery was the best labor mode possible because the laborers were tied to the land and couldn’t migrate.

Providing for the slaves was the Producers responsibility, hence food, clothing and shelter was provided as a cost of doing business.  There were no Negro chattel slaves that went hungry.  Conditions might vary but the slaves had to be cared for.  If you read in the Negro slave narratives, available on the Internet, you will be amazed at what you find.

One ex-slave didn’t regret slavery that much because he said the you never went hungry in those days.  If wanted food you culled a hog from herd, killed it, roasted it and ate it.  Whether that was universal or not the chattel slaves did not go hungry or unclothed.

In the North where producers wanted labor at the lowest possible cost they had to resort to wage slavery.  The industrialists worked their wage slavery.  The industrialists worked their wage slave harder than any chattel slave.  The wage slaves worked in horrible conditions for twelve hour a day seven day a week for a pittance.  The wage slavers provided nothing but that pittance.  Where possible they resorted to using children, young children, and women and paid them even less than a pittance.

The wage slaves then were on their own lookout for food, clothing and shelter.  All those indefensible shanty towns.  In all cases they were less well off than the Agricultural slaves.  The Negroes definitely had it better.

While the chattel slaves were required by law to a certain level of benevolence, the wage slave had no protections whatever.   If in desperation they resisted exploitation by trying to organize they were shot down dead.  They were blacklisted and were unemployable.  Hence a reason for armies of hoboes roaming the land.

The ‘Saints’ from New England, the Holy Abolitionists whose sea captains bought in Africa and sold in the New World, that is North and South America and the Caribbean were also those who sought cheap White labor from European countries.  The principle was to have as many different nationalities and languages as possible in order to make it difficult to combine for better wages and working conditions.  Slavery was slavery and conditions were harsher for wage slaves than for chattel slaves.

Thus Negroes have no more to complain about than Whites.  Slavery was part of the woof and warp of the fabric of American society.

Lincoln freed certain of the slaves in 1860 and then came Henry Ford to ameliorate the conditions of the wage slaves.  Lincoln was murdered for his role in ending chattel slavery and Henry Ford has been a victim of horrible character assassination for his role in ameliorating wage slavery.  Most likely the reason that good men are hard to find.

Foreign Affairs And The CFR Discuss Nationalism

Foreign Affairs

And The CFR Discuss

Nationalism

by

R.E. Prindle

 

The March-April 1919 edition of Foreign Affairs so its cover proclaims, is a discussion of nationalism resulting it hopes in a New Nationalism.  I wasn’t too impressed.  The contributors are one step ahead of high school papers.  The issue might better have been called the New Globalism but put that aside and let us just interpret the image of the cover.  Perhaps subconsciously the CFR indicates its true mission.

The cover is a black and white composograph of a mass of forearms giving the Communist power salute.  You know how symbols go.  The Jews for instance co-opted the Star of David as a symbol of the Jewish nation in the Middle Ages.  As every organization needs a symbol to represent them, in answer to the Jewish symbol the German National Socialists adopted the ancient symbol of the Swastika in the twentieth century.  The National Socialists borrowed the Open Palm stiff armed salute from the Italian Fascists who in turn had borrowed it from the ancient Romans.

This left the Communists with a yellow hammer and sickle on a red flag for a symbol but no hand symbol.  Well, there were clever Communists too and they came up with the clenched fist and bent elbow salute.  Very attractive in a rough and ready way.  So, after, 1917, that salute represented the look out world, we’re taking over, defiant power salute.

Whether consciously or unconsciously the CFR globalists have adopted the aggressive Communist power salute.  That sign basically means get in line or we’ll kill you and this is verified by numerous incredible holocausts.

Above the raised fists emblazoned on the cover are the words:  The New Nationalism.  Communism is a one world universal or global ideology so one is led to think that New Nationalism is globalism under a disguise that, so to speak, leaves unbelievers without a country, or nation without a leg to stand on, outside the pale of Communist civilization and hence disposable.  The threat is palpable.

And then on page 42, one Richard Sopolsky, a Professor of Biology, Neurosurgery and Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University relates this parable under the title of The Biology of Us and Them:

He never stood a chance.  His first mistake was looking for food alone; perhaps things would have turned out differently if he’d been with someone else.  The second, bigger mistake was wandering too far up the valley into a dangerous wooded area.  This was where he risked running into the Others, the ones from the ridge above the valley.  At first, there were two of them, and he tried to fight, but another four crept up behind him and he was surrounded.  They left him there to bleed to death and later returned to mutilate his body.  Eventually, nearly 20 such killings took place, until there was no one left, and the Others took over the whole valley.

The protagonists in this tale of blood and conquest, first told by the primatologist John Mitani, are not people; they are chimpanzees in a national park in Uganda.  Over the course of a decade, the male chimps in one group systematically killed every neighboring male, kidnapped the surviving females, and expanded their territory.  Similar attacks occur in chimp populations elsewhere; a 2014 study found that chimps are about 30 times as likely to kill a chimp from a neighboring group as to kill one of their own.  On average eight males gang up on the victim.

 

If one compares this parable with the cover symbol one might be led to believe that what we have is an instructional tale.  In fact isn’t this what, more or less, the Antifa Fascisti are doing.  Isn’t this what Hillary Clinton was hinting at when she called opponents Deplorables.

As the Red hero, Victor Hugo, said about the Chouans, that they would never accept the Liberal Dispensation and hence they must be destroyed, eliminated, and in fact that’s what the French Revolution did, the French Revolution was the first great modern holocaust.  And then came another and another and yet another.  Is there any reason to imagine that we have reached the end of the great holocausts.  It may be too soon to tell and then…once again.

There is more of interest in the issue so I’ll tackle it a little further in another post.

Immigration, Al Smith And The 1928 Election

Immigration, Al Smith, And The 1928 Election

by

R.E. Prindle

 

People don’t seem to realize that time and changes pass quickly.  What was applicable yesterday will not apply to today or tomorrow.  Nothing changes society more rapidly than immigration.  While attention is applied to race and religion it might better be applied to manners and mores.  Whether you think immigration is good or bad immigration changes reality very quickly while all one’s reactions are predicated on a vanished state of affairs.

The cultural changes, that is manners and mores had been occurring at a rapid rate during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century driven by immigration.  By 1921 and 1924 unlimited indiscriminate immigration had been limited to more or less controllable numbers.  Nevertheless the damage had been done.  While the attempt was made to limit the most different mores and manners by favoring Northern European immigrants it was too late.  The two chief groups of immigrants, the Irish and the Jews had acculturated enough to challenge the traditional  English and Protestant supremacy.

Thus, led by Al Smith, a Catholic Irishman who surrounded himself with Jews the two nationalities were ready to challenge the Anglo-Protestant majority.  Note that the Jews are considered a distinct nationality with their own manners and mores acting in their own interests. He, Al, or they chose the inappropriate moment to challenge the Anglo-Protestant majority as the country was in a period of roaring prosperity, had two presidents, Harding and Coolidge and were to be followed by Herbert Hoover who in the circumstances there was no chance of defeating.  And so it was that Herbert Hoover became the last ‘American’ president.  Hoover was followed by Roosevelt to whom the Jews transferred their alliance while the Irish were forgotten.  Thus the Liberal  and Jewish combination have written all histories and distorted the old American contribution to founding the US.

Now, in the 1928 election the Jewish-Irish faction could not accept their loss on any other grounds than the bigotry of Anglo-American voters.  In fact, Al Smith was merely a New York City machine politician who, used to campaigning in New York chose as his theme song ‘The Streets of New York’ and spoke with a heavy New York City accent.  His manners and mores were those of his home town.  To the rest of the country those manners and mores were humorous.

The New York accent alone would have made him unpalatable to the rest of Americans who thought that NYC had an economic stranglehold on America.  And then the to thrust The Streets of New York into their faces was sheer folly.

Being Catholic, of course, didn’t help Al with the Protestants but it surely was a charm for the Catholics who were the largest religious denomination in America.  But there appears to have been no block voting along religious lines.  The Economy ruled.

Whether Al’s Irish background swung the electorate against him is open to conjecture but I would put more weight behind that than the religion.  At that point, 1928, there was still a strong antipathy between the Anglos and the Irish.  Even in 1956 in my home town the antipathy was noticeable.  Apart from Jack Kennedy’s being a Democrat and offensive because of his father’s criminal background his Catholicism and nationality was a factor in my voting against him in 1960.  The Irish came over to what they call the New Island in large numbers during the potato famine in Ireland in the eighteen forties and beyond.  There was immediately a huge conflict between them and the Anglos in which bloody battles were fought largely aggravated by the Irish.  Thus the Irish-English conflict was carried to American shores.

With the Irish came the notion that immigrants rights were superior to nativist rights.  Hence the political organization known as the Know Nothing Party that arose to oppose Irish violence was demonized out of existence for its efforts to protect American manners and mores and some kind of control of their destiny.  They lost that control as the Irish formed a sort of competing government called Tammany that seized control of NYC and retained it until Jimmy Walker the last Tammany mayor was booted out of the country in the early thirties.  It was as though the Irish had control of London.

The Irish were then replaced by the Jews who seized both NYC and New York State.  As an immigrant group, the Jews, although the smallest national supplier of immigrants also came as the highest percentage of their nation and thus had equality of numbers with the other national immigrants.  There were more Jews in NYC than in any other city of the world.  The only place with a higher number was the Russian Pale of the Settlement that covered millions of square acres. 

The vast majority of Jews arrived from 1890 to 1914.  Like the Irish the Jews created a national enclave, or colony, in NYC.  By 1913 they were able to effect a socialist revolution by electing Woodrow Wilson as presidient.  This revolution, for such it was, has been unrecognized by Jewish and Liberal historians but the Wilson Administration, turned out in 1920, after a hiatus of the twelve years of the Republican Interregnum would morph into the fully fledged socialist presidency of Franklin Roosevelt beginning in 1932 and ending only with his death in 1945.  Thus Roosevelt was the undeclared president for life.

So, Al Smith represented the end of Irish dominance in the affairs of NY and the hope of national dominance in a Jewish-Irish coalition.  If that attempt had succeeded immigrants would have seized control of the United States of America.  An entire new set of manners and mores would have replaced those of the original settlers.  Immigration has adverse consequences like it or not.

While there was a conflict then between the Catholic and Protestant religions and between the English and Irish and Jewish nationalities the election itself was determined on the basis of extreme economic prosperity that Republicans could claim as their own and, indeed, it was called the Coolidge Prosperity after the middle Republican president of the Interregnum- Harding, Coolidge, Hoover.

Then came the deluge.  Collectivism replaced Individualism and Socialism replaced Laissez-faire, which had been the system of the nineteenth century Gilded Age.  A new set of manners and mores appeared based on an immigrant ideal with its symbol of Ellis Island.

A similar transition is occurring today.

Thoughts On Mr. Bezos Pecker Problem

Thoughts On Mr. Bezos’ Pecker Problem

by

R.E. Prindle

https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f

Let’s keep the ball rolling on this issue that Mr. Bezos has brought to our attention.   We have little idea of the behind the senses activity so we can only deal with what is public.

It seems that the Mr. Bezos owned Washington Post has been attacking Mr. David Pecker’s publication the National Enquirer, itself owned by a corporation calling itself AMI.

The sin of the NE as identified  by Mr. Bezos is being in contact with Saudi Arabia.  This seems strange as the Saudis are publicized as one of our stalwart allies, second only to Israel.  It is difficult to see the offence  even if it relates somehow to Pres. Trump.  Yet this seems to be the basis of Mr. Bezos’ and the WP’s complaint.

There does seem to be some involvement with government investigators between Mr. Bezos, the WP and the Mueller outfit.

Mr. Bezos make this incomprehensible statement:

Quote:

Federal investigators and legitimate media…suspected and proved that Mr. Pecker has used the Enquirer and AMI for political reasons.

Unquote:

I have always held Mr. Bezos in high regard for his unbelievable commercial success but here he makes the incomprehensible statement that it is wrong that newspapers have political reasons in publishing.  Has Mr. Bezos never heard of the Editorial page?  Are not stories and their characterizations used for political purposes?  Do not newspapers endorse and recommend their favorite candidates?  Good Lord, doesn’t Mr. Bezos own the Washington Post and use it for defaming Pres. Trump.

Actually, he does know it.  (One wonders if Mr. Bezos doesn’t also own the Medium site,  the site on which he chooses to expose himself.)  Mr. Bezos calls his ownership of the WP a ‘complexifier’.  In other words it compromises him.

Quote:

Even though the Post is a complexifier for me, I do not regret my investment.  (The Post loses tens of millions of dollars a year; some investment.  More a vanity and/or political project.)

The Post is a critical institution with a critical mission.  My stewardship (note the word) of the Post and my support of its mission, which will be unswerving (and) remain unswerving…

Unquote.

Very well, but can’t Mr. Pecker say the same about his relationship with the National Enquirer.  Is the NE really any less legitimate than the WP?  Is Mr. Bezos mouthpiece any less reprehensible in its political ‘mission’ to discredit Pres. Trump?

Mr. Bezos then says:

Quote:

Back to the story:  Several days ago, an AMI leader, (Editor I presume Mr. Bezos means) advised us (us being whom?) that Mr. Pecker went  “apoplectic” about our investigation.  For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to be a particularly sensitive nerve.

Unquote.

Why should it?  Didn’t Pres. Obama make an obsequious bow from the hip while place his hand in the Saudi king’s hand as a sign of fealty?

There we have the crux of the matter.  Mr. Pecker’s counter attack.  Apparently fighting back is not kosher to Mr. Bezos.

After having been married to a lovely lady for twenty-five years, and building the most successful gigantic business on the planet Mr. Bezos decided he needs a hot babe and so he went out and bought one (for lack of a better word) not only that he bought a married one.

In this romance Mr. Bezos, who is perhaps one of the top ten tech wizards in the world inexplicably sent and exchanged pornographic photos with his Hot Tamale.  These emails and photos were then given or sold to the NE.

Mr. Bezos believes that the Pres. somehow hacked them.  Where they came from is beside the point but the NE categorically denies they got them by hacking.  Using Occam’s Razor the most obvious suspect is the Hot Tamale.  After all if you had bagged a guy worth 150 billion dollars wouldn’t you want the world to know?  What Hot Tamale wouldn’t?  Anent that we have heard no objections from the husband and no filing for divorce.

In frustration the NE tried to negotiate with  Mr. Bezos offering to squelch publication if he gave up his unwarranted persecution of them on the WP.

Mr. Bezos chooses to call this offer extortion and blackmail.  Mr. Bezos will hopefully pardon a knowing smile on our part.

One wonders at what strategic moment Mr. Bezos will choose to announce his candidacy for President of the United States.  I think you just killed your chances, Sir.