Silent Coup, by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin

I was reading about Silent Coup in other books that I was reading for My Year (or More) of Nixon, and its thesis intrigued me.  I already owned the book, since I had picked it up at a local Goodwill store some time ago.  So I figured that I might as well read it!

I probably should read John Dean’s books in addition to Silent Coup, since Dean sued the authors of Silent Coup for libel.    But I probably won’t read Dean’s books for My Year (or More) of Nixon.  Maybe I’ll read them some other time in the future.  January will be over before you know it.  February is coming up, and I have a couple of books to read and blog about for Black History Month (which is in February).  My Year (or More) of Nixon has to come to an end sometime, and January 31, 2014 is an appropriate date to draw it to a close.  Plus, as much as I have grown accustomed to reading books by and about Nixon—-after all, I’ve been doing so for over a year—-I would like to move on to something else.  Some books I will have to save for another time—-such as John Dean’s works.

So what did I think about Silent Coup?  It was all right, I guess.  I don’t know enough to critique its theses.  Moreover, because the book was rather heavy and detailed, it would take me a long time to evaluate each and every paragraph for accuracy, and I don’t want to devote years of my life to unpacking Silent Coup.  I was looking through some other books about Nixon that I have read, and more than one of them criticizes Silent Coup for making leaps in logic.  Maybe it does, but, to me, as a reader, it did come across as fairly well-documented.  It relied on interviews and documents.  It noted contradictions in people’s testimonies, and between what people said and what the record showed (i.e., someone saying there was such-and-such a meeting, when actually there was not such-and-such a meeting on record).  Maybe there were times when the authors of Silent Coup went a bit beyond the evidence to make certain people look more sinister than they actually were.  Still, they ask good questions.

The main villains of the book are Alexander Haig and John Dean.  Haig, according to Colodny and Gettlin, was sabotaging Nixon’s Administration as White House Chief of Staff.  In the story that Silent Coup lays out, Haig was behind leaks, and he himself was the mysterious Deep Throat who was leaking information to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  Colodny and Gettlin even argue that Haig and Woodward had a prior relationship, that Woodward as a Navy man briefed Haig.  Colodny and Gettlin do not buy into Woodward’s portrayal of himself as a political outsider, for they maintain that he was long a part of the establishment.  Why were there forces seeking to sabotage Nixon’s Administration, according to Colodny and Gettlin?  Because there were elements of the military who did not like Nixon’s policies of rapprochement with the Soviet Union and Red China, as well as arms control.

Colodny and Gettlin assert that The Final Days, by Woodward and Bernstein, is essentially Haig’s side of the story—-the propaganda that Haig is behind.  I don’t know.  Granted, Haig wasn’t portrayed too badly in The Final Days: he was loyal to Nixon, yet not blindly loyal.  But The Final Days did include some bad things that Haig did, such as talking badly about Kissinger to Nixon, and about Nixon to Kissinger.  The Final Days also quotes someone who was warning Gerald Ford about Haig, essentially saying that Haig was out for himself.  I don’t think that The Final Days is a complete whitewash of Haig.  But perhaps detractors would argue that The Final Days would have to include some bad details about Haig to look like a credible piece of journalism rather than a whitewash.

On Dean, I have read in other books that Silent Coup‘s thesis is that Dean ordered the Watergate break-in to conceal information there that his girlfriend was associated with a call-girl ring.  That’s certainly a major part of the break-in, according to Silent Coup.  The thing is, though, Dean in Silent Coup does not come across as particularly chivalrous, but rather as ambitious and selfish.  According to Colodny and Gettlin, Dean wanted to work on intelligence to advance himself within the White House ranks; he would look at people’s desks and take credit for their ideas; he broke up with his girlfriend, then decided to marry her because then she couldn’t testify against him.  Silent Coup‘s notorious and controversial thesis was actually the most puzzling and nebulous to me, in light of its portrayal of Dean.

I was looking at David Greenberg’s Nixon’s Shadow, and he says that Nixon in Silent Coup appears “hapless” and “guileless” (page 225).  That’s why he’s so puzzled that Roger Morris supported the book (Morris actually wrote the Foreword to Silent Coup): How could Morris portray Nixon as so manipulative and shady in Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician, only to endorse a book that presented Nixon as a victim of Watergate?  But I didn’t think that Nixon came across as “hapless” and “guileless” in Silent Coup.  Granted, Silent Coup does portray him as a victim of Haig and Dean, but it does not depict Nixon as thoroughly innocent, but rather as one who was involved in a cover-up.

This book would probably be a good read for people who are interested in Watergate.  But I also found it to be rather interesting when it came to the human element—-how the characters were depicted: how one could be an insider yet portray himself as an outsider; how people try to rise in the ranks and impress others; and how one may be on the social margins of the elite and yet be able to seduce women by appealing to his contacts (there was one character like that in the book).

Book Write-Up: A Theology of Liberation, by Gustavo Gutierrez

Gustavo Gutierrez.  A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation.  Translated and edited by Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson.  Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973.

I first heard of Gustavo Gutierrez and this book when I was an undergraduate in college.  I was taking a class on “Images of Jesus,” and one of the units was on liberation theology.  Now, I had heard of liberation theology before I took that class, even if I was not familiar with the name Gustavo Gutierrez.  In the right-wing literature that I had read, liberation theology was criticized as being pro-Communist, and for focusing on the political rather than the spiritual (i.e., people receiving Jesus Christ as their personal savior so that he could transform them into a new creation).

When I took that undergraduate class on “Images of Jesus,” some of what was said about liberation theology made sense to me, even though I was arguing against it in class.  One student was asking if she shouldn’t have stuff, and the professor replied that it wasn’t so much that she shouldn’t have stuff, but that we should remember that God’s creation should be for people in need, too, and that it is a problem if there are people who are going hungry.  One of the students giving her presentation on liberation theology told us about poor people in Latin America who were so hungry that they wanted communion wafers to eat.

Questions lingered in my mind about liberation theology.  While one of the advocates of liberation theology in my class was making the point that the Kingdom of God is supposed to be a present reality, I wondered how exactly proponents of liberation theology planned for their just new society to come about.  Would it be through violent revolution?  This question would re-enter my mind years later, when I was taking a class taught by Harvey Cox on “Contemporary Images of Jesus.”  Cox showed us a slide of a peasant Jesus with a machine gun on his back.  “Imagine that!”, I thought, “The Prince of Peace with a machine gun on his back!”

I suppose that, if anything, I found liberation theology to be wrongheaded and overly idealistic.  I believed that capitalism could lift poor Latin Americans out of poverty.  I was also skeptical about political attempts to create a new society.  Human nature being what it is (namely, sinful), I cautioned that we should remember that those leftists who take power could end up being just as bad (maybe even worse than) the oppressors they were replacing.  Human nature could only be changed through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as God gave believers a new nature, I thought.

So here I am, in 2014.  I have just finished Gustavo Gutierrez’s A Theology of Liberation.  What do I think?  Is my impression of liberation theology now different?  Have my questions about liberation theology been answered?

I was expecting to like Gutierrez’s book much more than I did, since I now lean more to the left, even though I believe that even the left has its own share of problems.  I was expecting vivid descriptions of poverty and passionate appeals for justice.  I was also hoping for interaction with the question of whether violent revolution is justified, or if the oppressed should pursue peaceful approaches in attempting to create a new, just society.

Instead, I found the book to be rather dry.  I think that Gutierrez in this book may have been trying to appeal to academic theologians to accept liberation theology, for his book has virtually no anecdotes, but it has economic commentary and lots of interaction with the thoughts of theologians (i.e., Thomas Aquinas, Karl Rahner, Jurgen Moltmann, etc.).  The economic commentary could have been more detailed than it was: Gutierrez was contending that capitalism reduced many in Latin America to a state of dependence, and that mere reform was not enough, for what was needed was a new socialistic society in which the people owned the means of production.  But I wish that he had explained in more detail the dynamics of how capitalism reduced many people to dependence.

I found his interaction with theologians to be rather interesting.  Gutierrez is arguing for a political sort of Gospel, and he draws on the thoughts of theologians to make his case.  For example, he appeals to Rahner’s concept of the anonymous Christian, the person who does not believe in Christianity yet is still experiencing God’s grace.  (And, on a side note, Gutierrez in an endnote quotes a sermon by the fourth century Christian thinker Gregory of Nazianzus of in which Gregory implied that his father was a Christian before actually embracing Christianity.)  Gutierrez appeals to this in arguing that Christians and non-Christians can join hands to create a just society, and that this is the will of God.

How does Gutierrez believe that the just society is to be created?  Well, he refers to Jesus speaking out against the powers-that-be in his day.  Gutierrez does not go so far as to accept that Jesus was a Zealot, for he contends that Jesus departed from Zealot nationalism in his openness to the Samaritans.  But Gutierrez does maintain that Jesus’ message and ministry had some political, here-and-now ramifications—-that Jesus was not just exhorting the poor to wait patiently for God to intervene dramatically, but was bringing the Kingdom to them at that time, on some level.  Gutierrez also suggests that the church be poor in solidarity with the poor.  Is Gutierrez open to violent revolution?  To be honest, I cannot tell.  He refers to people who think that violent revolution is the only way to bring about a new society.  He also favorably quotes Che Guevera a couple of times, and Che was certainly willing to use violence!  But I could not determine what Gutierrez’s stance on violence was.

Gutierrez did make a decent case for caring about the poor, however.  He appealed to the biblical commands to love one’s neighbor, the early church’s holding all things in common, and the Hebrew Bible’s opposition to poverty and oppression.  It is indeed problematic when you have rich Christians and poor Christians, and the rich Christians are participating in a system that exploits or oppresses the poor Christians.  For Gutierrez, that sort of set-up is not benefiting the rich Christians, either, for it is encouraging them to be heartless.

But would revolution and setting up a new society solve anything, if human nature is sinful?  Gutierrez acknowledges that any new society would not be perfect, but he is hopeful that having a new society built on a new foundation—-one of concern for others—-would be better in terms of human nature.

Speaking for myself, I do not believe in using “sinful human nature” as an excuse not to pursue political reform.  There are human beings all over the world, and some of them have managed to create systems that are fairly just and compassionate.  I would not go as far as Gutierrez in terms of his vision for society, for I am open to a possibility that some form of capitalism, tempered with a bit of socialism, could lead to a society in which people do not go hungry.  What I support is opportunities being out there for people to support themselves, and a social safety net being there (in the form of government and private charities) so that people do not fall through the cracks.

Kennedy & Nixon 12

On page 345 of Kennedy & Nixon, Chris Matthews states the following:

“At his death, Nixon made the cover of Time for the fifty-sixth time, a record…Yet within the month, the Nixon funeral dirge was overtaken by the classic, spritely tones of Mozart.  When his rival’s widow succumbed to her illness just weeks later, there was a stirring in the national air, a momentary glimpse back to the magic of Camelot.”

More than once in this book, Matthews uses the rivalry between Mozart and Salieri as a metaphor for that between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.  The legend is that Mozart had inborn talent, whereas Salieri was a composer who worked hard yet never attained the level of artistry that was so effortless for Mozart.  Similarly, Kennedy was naturally charming and charismatic, whereas Nixon was one who worked hard at politics yet could not attain the adoration and glamor that belonged to John F. Kennedy.

Matthews says in the passage that I just quoted that Jackie Kennedy’s death upstaged that of Richard Nixon, as Jackie’s death reminded Americans of Camelot.  The thing is, though, I remember Richard Nixon’s death, whereas  I do not remember Jackie Kennedy’s.  More than once, when I have seen something about Jackie Kennedy on television, I have had to consult wikipedia to see when exactly she died, for I rarely remember.  But I do recall when Nixon died.

Why is that?  Perhaps it’s because, even back in 1994, when I was still in high school, I was drawn to the notion that a person who did something wrong still had some good within him and the capacity to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the public.  That was not a time when I was all that deep, and I did not really think about what made people and characters tick.  I was just interested in promoting my ideology, doing well in school, my resentments, and religion.  I saw things in black and white terms.  But maybe Nixon’s death stood out to me because there was a part of me, even then, that acknowledged and appreciated the complexity of human beings.

Abraham's Seed and Generosity

I went to the second session of my church’s Bible study.  We’re going through The Unbreakable Promise: God’s Covenants with Abraham, Moses, and David With Michael Rydelnik.  I have two items: Abraham’s seed, and generosity being motivated by faith that God will work things out.

1.  Paul says in Galatians 3:16: ” Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.”

I said in the group that I thought Paul’s reasoning here was pretty poor.  Michael Rydelnik on the DVD employed similar argumentation.  What I recall Rydelnik saying is that there is a shift to the singular in the Hebrew of Genesis 22:17.  Genesis 22:17 states: “That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies” (Genesis 22:17).  According to Rydelnik, the seed that will possess the gate of his enemies is Christ.  The thing is, though, I’m not sure where exactly Rydelnik believes the shift to the singular is, for the Hebrew word for seed, zera, is singular throughout Genesis 22:17.  Zera often is a collective noun: it is singular, yet it is collective, like the words “nation,” or “community.”  Even if zera is in the singular, it can still refer to a group of people rather than a single individual.

One person in the group, whom I will call “Joe,” responded that we have to look at the context: when the passage is talking about Abraham’s seed being more numerous than the stars of heaven, or Abraham’s seed possessing the land of Canaan, then the seed there is collective and applies to the nation of Israel; when it says that all the nations will be blessed through Abraham’s seed, however, then the seed there is Christ, for the only time when all the nations were blessed through Abraham’s seed was when they received salvation through faith in Christ.

I did not find Joe’s argument to be entirely convincing (though I let him have the last word), for he seemed to be assuming Christianity to argue for Christianity.  Where does Genesis ever say that Abraham’s seed blessing the nations will entail people becoming saved and going to heaven after they die because they accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior?  Are there other ways to understand the blessing that Abraham’s seed brings to the nations, ways that are more faithful to themes within the Hebrew Bible itself: Jacob bringing blessing to Laban when he was working for him, Joseph bringing blessing to the nations amidst famine as vizier of Egypt, or Israel bringing the nations knowledge of the one true God, in its history or in its time of eschatological restoration?  Even Michael Rydelnik seemed to acknowledge some multifaceted application to God’s promises to Abraham.

And yet, Joe’s comments made me think: Does “seed” always mean a collective?  Could it ever refer to a single individual?  Someone else in the group made that sort of point: a person has offspring, and the offspring has offspring, etc.  I did a search after I came home, and it appears that zera can sometimes refer to a particular person.  In Genesis 4:25, after Eve gives birth to Seth, Adam says that God has given him seed in place of Abel.  Seth is a zera.

But maybe the singular and the collective can overlap, on some level.  Seth is a zera, and yet he will also produce a line.  Even within the New Testament, Paul acknowledges that Abraham’s seed is collective.  Granted, Paul believes that Abraham’s seed was Jesus Christ, yet Paul also argues that those who have faith are Abraham’s seed (i.e., Galatians 3:29).

I may have overstated my case in the group by arguing that zera is always collective.  I still don’t think that Paul’s argument in Galatians 3:16 is very good, at least in terms of supporting his interpretation of Genesis.  One can say that Paul was following rabbinic methods of interpretation, or that Paul was speaking to insiders to the Christian community rather than trying to convince outsiders.  Perhaps, but I would have to hear more before those proposals sit well with me.

2.  In Genesis 13, Abraham lets Lot have the land of his choice after their herdsmen dispute due to lack of room.  Michael Rydelnik contends that Abraham could be so generous because he realized that God would eventually give all of the land to him (or at least his offspring), anyway.  In my opinion, that made Abraham’s generosity sound less than generous, for Abraham is still thinking about what’s in it for him.  At the same time, I do appreciate the theme that I am more likely to give to others when I firmly believe that God loves me and will work things out for my good.  Attaining that sort of faith and then maintaining it can be rather difficult, however.

Kennedy & Nixon 11

On page 342 of Kennedy & Nixon, Chris Matthews talks about Ted Kennedy’s meandering (and, for him, politically disastrous) response to the question of why he wanted to be President.  Matthews states: “It took seventy-one words to reach the secret password, ‘restoration.’  But its power was dissipated.”

How can one make a point effectively?  Some of it is probably a matter of identifying what people need or want to hear, and catering to that.  That can be a bad thing, but it isn’t always, since we all have needs that we want people to care about, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  In this case, Kennedy needed to speak to the nation’s desire for healing and restoration.  On some level, he did, but the impact was dissipated through all of that meandering.  There needs to be clarity.  Clarity does not have to mean being succinct or blunt, since I think that many people also like informed eloquence: a sense that the candidate knows the ins-and-outs of an issue.  But there needs to be a point, a central message.

Kennedy & Nixon 10

On page 320 of Kennedy & Nixon, Chris Matthews characterizes Richard Nixon’s response to his sweeping victory in the 1972 Presidential election as follows:

“Old campaign hand Herb Klein was not alone in registering [Nixon's] strange hibernation as evidence his boss’s resentments had returned.  It was as if victory were not an occasion for reconciliation but an opportunity to revisit old wounds.  Instead of celebrating in the bright light of fellowship, Nixon sat through the dark morning hours savoring with operatives Haldeman and Ehrlichman the state-by-state salute of his country that carried with it a decisive rebuke of his enemies.”

How one handles victory is as important as how one handles defeat.  According to Chris Matthews’ narration, Nixon handled his 1972 victory by continuing his resentments against his enemies.  Matthews narrates that Elliott Richardson tried to show Nixon that there was no “they” out to get Nixon, that Nixon won the 1972 election overwhelmingly and was now President of all of the people in the United States.  But Matthews goes on to state, on page 326: “Not only was the Orthogonian Nixon unlikely to accept the counsel of a Franklin, even one he employed, but events would soon prove that there were any number of people out to get Richard Nixon.”

Whether or not that is the whole story, I don’t know, but I can see myself handling my victories and successes in a similar manner: as a way to show my detractors that I am just as good as they are, as a way to reinforce my resentments rather than an opportunity for me to be the bigger person.

As I read Matthews’ narration here, I thought back to something I heard a Bible study group leader say about a story in Luke 10.  In Luke 10, Jesus sends out his disciples to preach the Gospel, to heal the sick, and to cast out demons.  When they return to Jesus, all excited that the demons have submitted to them in the name of Jesus, Jesus tells them not to rejoice that the demons submit to them, but rather to rejoice that their names are written in the Book of Life.  Jesus then praises God for revealing God’s truths to little children rather than the wise.

The group leader said that Jesus appeared to be spoiling the disciples’ excitement: Why can’t Jesus just let them be happy, rather than throwing a damp towel over their joy?  But the leader concluded from this story that we should pray in the heart of our success.  It’s easy for people to handle success badly.  One could become arrogant, or use success as a way to give one a sense of self-worth, or use it as an opportunity to reinforce resentments.  Praying in the heart of one’s success can hopefully temper these tendencies.  As people remind themselves that there is one who is above them, and that they have worth in his eyes, perhaps they will be less likely to idolize success, both when they have it, and when they don’t.  At least one would hope!

The Last Ounce of Courage

I watched the 2012 Christian movie, The Last Ounce of Courage.  Some people in my Bible study group were recommending it, and, after coming home and reading what it was about, I was expecting not to like it.  Well, I recently watched it, and I didn’t like it.

The movie is about a crusty mayor and pharmacist named Bob Revere.  Bob’s son has recently died in battle, and the family is recovering from that tragedy.  But the movie is largely about Bob’s fight against an ACLU-type lawyer for the right of his town to celebrate Christmas, a crusade that Bob believes is faithful to the freedom that his son fought to protect.  Bob wants to display Christmas objects in public places, and the cigar-smoking ACLU-type lawyer believes this violates civil liberties and the separation of church and state.  Meanwhile, some Christian kids at the local public school are conspiring to convert the school’s secular, sci-fi  Christmas play into an actual Christmas pageant, nativity scene and all.

Did the movie display any grasp of nuance?  Well, on some level, it did.  When Bob’s grandson is threatened with suspension for bringing a Bible to school, the school’s janitor remarks that bringing a Bible to school is not against the law, in response to Bob’s comment that “When they took prayer out of the schools, they also took out the Bible.”  The principal was banning the Bible from schools not because of any law, but rather out of a desire to maintain peace on the campus.  Bob himself, when he is launching his crusade to bring back Christmas to his town, says that the law allows him to put Christmas objects in public places, so long as other faiths are allowed to have tokens of their religion there, as well.

A lot of this regard for legal nuance got muddled in Bob’s crusade for Christmas, however.  The footage of Bill O’Reilly attacking the alleged war on Christmas did not exactly help matters.  Although the ACLU-type attorney was expressing his opinion in the movie, he came across as a bully, rather than as someone with legitimate arguments and concerns.  While Bob and others were acting as if there was a ban on Christmas in the town, the fact is that the ACLU supports nothing of the sort.  People can put nativity scenes in their own lawns, or in their churches’ lawns.  But the government is required to be neutral and not to prefer one religion over the other.  Moreover, stores, in their desire to be inclusive to all people, opt to say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.”

I can understand the sentiments of conservative Christians who wonder why a cross should be removed out of a public place just because an atheist gets offended: Shouldn’t the atheist exercise tolerance, in that case?  But I don’t want to go back to the days when my Mom was a child and her public school put on an actual Easter pageant, to the discomfort of some of the Jewish students.  I don’t want to go back to the time when those who didn’t want to say the school’s prayer were sent into the hall, like they were criminals, and sometimes even put up with bullying from their classmates because they were different.  I can’t expect too much from a conservative Christian movie, but the movie would have been much more powerful had it gone into different perspectives, seeking to understand why people feel the way that they do.

A conservative Christian story about church-state issues that I liked much better was an episode of Adventures in Odyssey, which is produced by Focus on the Family.  It was called “The Graduate.”  In this episode, Connie is graduating from school, and she is to be the valedictorian.  Her principal forbids her to say a prayer at the ceremony, but Connie’s teachers and others are organizing to back Connie up if she decides to say a prayer.  Connie ultimately decides to say no prayer, out of respect for the authorities and for the sacred nature of prayer itself.  This particular episode did not display a grasp of the nuances of church-state debates, and yet I liked it because it went beyond the usual rhetoric of the culture wars.  Out of respect for God and the authorities, Connie decided that losing a battle in the culture war was the right thing to do.