Category: history

Rubio: US about to throw in the towel on Ukraine

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has put the world on notice: the United States is on the verge of washing its hands of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Yesterday Rubio told reporters:

“We need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable. If it’s not possible, if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen then I think the president is probably at a point where he’s going to say we’re done…”

Rubio echoed the new sentiment in the White House regarding Europe and European wars:

“It’s not our war. We didn’t start it. The United States has been helping Ukraine for the past three years and we want it to end, but it’s not our war…”

And Trump did spend almost three months working on the problem!

“President (Trump) has spent 87 days at the highest level of this government repeatedly taking efforts to bring this war to an end. We are now reaching a point when we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not. Which is why we’re engaging both sides.”

I only hope that Donald Trump is as quick to abandon tariffs if/when tariffs raise prices and harm the US economy.

That said, there is a very real impasse here:

The current Russian government does not want peace. Moscow wants to reabsorb Ukraine, or turn Ukraine into a client state, independent in name only.

This would mean a return to the status quo under both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Ukraine and Russia were the same political entity for about 200 years, from the 1790s through 1991. From the cold lens of geopolitics and history, an independent Ukraine is the exception, not the rule.

This doesn’t mean that I’m in favor of that. But the world is full of groups that want independence—or their land back—who can’t have either. Ask the people of the Lakota Nation what they think about the US government claiming ownership of the Black Hills. Also: when are we going to give Texas, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and California back to Mexico?

The government in Kyiv does not want ‘peace’—or not only peace. The current government in Ukraine wants the Russians to give up all Ukrainian territory that they currently occupy, including the Crimean Peninsula. The Kyiv government wants Russia to acknowledge Ukraine’s 1991 borders, apologize, and submit to a war crimes tribunal. Not even Ukraine’s most zealous western allies believe that that is going to happen.

The Europeans are more bark than bite. Anti-Russian sentiment runs high in most European countries at present, especially in the halls of government. European leaders, from Emmanuel Macron to Kaja Kallas, have talked about sending their own troops into Ukraine…teach the Russians a lesson, once and for all!

The problem is: these same countries are  plagued by aging populations, and a young generation that has little interest in joining the military.

Polls show that most young Germans aren’t interested in joining up. Can one blame them? Since the beginning of the twentieth century, wars haven’t resulted in positive outcomes for Germany.

Sentiments among the Gen Z cohort are similar in France and the UK. The young people in Western Europe want no part of a war started by middle-age men and women who will never put their lives on the line.

And that’s now, while we’re still talking about a hypothetical war. Imagine how gung-ho Europe’s Gen Z will be once the bodybags start coming back from the battlefields of Ukraine.

Farther north and east, there is a little more martial spirit, but martial capability is another matter. Many European countries have not been primary combatants in a major conflict at any time in the modern era.

I occasionally see keyboard warriors from Sweden and Finland, talking tough on social media about whupping the Russians. Do a Wikipedia check, and see when was the last time Sweden or Finland fought a war—much less won one.

This doesn’t mean that Europe can’t rebuild its military infrastructure and culture, of course. But that will take years, and it won’t happen quickly enough to help Ukraine.

***

None of this bodes well for the future of Ukraine as an independent nation. Does anyone really believe that Russia and Ukraine will agree to a peace deal in “a matter of days”? And when the Trump administration does declare that “we’re done”—in Rubio’s words—that will almost certainly mean an end to all military aid.

At that point, Macron, Starmer, and the other European leaders will outdo each other making bold statements. For a while, Ukrainian flags will outnumber the flags of those nations in their respective legislatures and government offices. But none of these leaders is about to launch his nation on a suicidal war with Russia that his population doesn’t support. Europeans are very committed to an independent Ukraine—so long as they don’t have to bleed for it.

Russia will either take over Ukraine, or (more likely) partition Ukraine down to a rump state encompassing Kyiv and everything west of that: about half of Ukraine’s 1991-defined territory.

Once again, this isn’t the ideal outcome. But it’s probably the inevitable one.

-ET 

Russia’s ‘Shared Values Visa’: Soviet redux

If you’ve decided that the West is too woke, violent, corrupt, whatever, you can now apply for citizenship in Russia, under a so-called ‘Shared Values Visa’. (Watch the video below for more details.)

The Shared Values Visa is new…but not really. The Kremlin has a long history of rolling out the red carpet for westerners who are disillusioned with life in their home countries.

During the Great Depression, several thousand Americans, Canadians, and Europeans moved to the USSR to escape “capitalist corruption” and live in a “workers’ paradise”. Many of these emigres were among the first folks to go into the gulags during Stalin’s subsequent purges.

Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s assassin, defected to the USSR from 1959 to 1962. Overall, Oswald’s Soviet adventure did not work out. But he returned to the USA with a Russian wife. The rest of Oswald’s story is a tragic one, both for him and the rest of the world.

No, this isn’t where I segue into a conspiracy theory about the JFK assassination. (I have no novel insights on that matter.) My point is: westerners defecting to Russia for one reason or another is nothing new. This has been happening since the earliest days of the USSR, a hundred years now. And it has never really ceased.

(I might also suggest that you watch the movie Reds (1981) if you haven’t seen it.)

Once again, a knowledge of history comes in handy for decoding the present. History often repeats itself, with only a few superficial changes.

And so it is here, with Russia’s ‘Shared Values Visa’. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

-ET

**View books about the history of the Soviet Union on Amazon!

Russia/Ukraine, and political censorship on YouTube

It seems that the YouTube channel of Alexandra Jost, aka Sasha Meets Russia, has once again been removed from that platform. This is the second time this has occurred.

While the removal may have been the act of YouTube’s management, it is far more likely that Ukrainian and pro-Ukraine bots are behind the removal, via a mass flagging campaign.

We hear a lot about “Russian bots” on the Internet. These do exist. But we don’t hear so much about Ukrainian bots; and these exist, too. (We should all remember that both Russia and Ukraine have a legacy in the former USSR and its methods.)

Jost is an American expat who has been residing in Moscow for several years. Her mother is Russian, and she speaks that language fluently. Her YouTube videos were always a mix of human interest stories and commentary.

And yes, that commentary had a distinctive spin. I fully recognize that Ms. Jost is/was engaged in advocacy journalism. Her pro-Russian views are rather transparent; and there are even reports (unsubstantiated though plausible) that she is on the payroll of one of the Russian state media agencies.

But so what? I come from the twentieth century. In those days—which include the Cold War with the USSR—we trusted people to take in information from all sources, and to then make judgements for themselves.

My high school history teacher exposed us to translated versions of Pravda. I read The Communist Manifesto in college. Funny thing—despite all that exposure to “Russian propaganda”, I never became a Soviet agent. I was never converted to Marxism-Leninism. In fact, reading/hearing the Kremlin’s viewpoints usually made me more certain in the beliefs of my own culture.

But those were more open-minded and sophisticated times. In this intellectually simplistic era, it is often Internet mobs and tech bosses who decide which viewpoints will be heard, and which ones will be censored.

This is especially true on social media. On YouTube, for example, it is now virtually impossible to find a YouTube channel on the Russo-Ukrainian War that isn’t pure Ukrainian agitprop.

-ET

China: Apple and Tim Cook should have known better

I’m old enough to remember the heady days when China was “opened” to the West—back in the 1970s. Back then, American corporations believed that if they could just find a way to sell one widget to each of China’s one billion consumers—chop, chop!—riches would be theirs!

Shortly after that, China became a manufacturing base for American companies, thanks to the policies of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, and his special economic zones (经济特区). Under Deng, China became “the workshop of the world”.

Deng broke with Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. He was fond of aphorisms like “To grow rich is glorious,” and “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white. What matters is: does the cat catch mice?”

Many people—me included, to the extent that I was paying attention—believed that China was going to become a much larger version of Japan or South Korea. Once the economic shackles of Marxism were set aside, we reasoned, liberal, Western-style democracy would naturally follow.

Then on June 3-4 1989, the Chinese Communist Party crushed a peaceful student protest in Tiananmen Square with tanks and AK-47s. The Beijing government massacred between 2,000 and 3,000 of its own citizens, many of them university students. I was a university student myself in 1989, so this one struck home. Had the circumstances of my birth been different, that might have been me.

Tiananmen Square should have been our first clue that the China of our wishful thinking was not the China of reality. We could easily have tempered our overly optimistic expectations and moderated our policies then.

But by then, the American business community was all-in on China. Yes, the Chinese government still maintained gulags and whatnot, but so what? Labor costs were cheap over there!

Then China became more militarily powerful, and the leadership changed. Deng Xiaoping, however much he repressed his own people, wanted peaceful relations with the West. But China’s new leadership, of which Xi Jinping is the latest incarnation, sought to apply the same heavy-handedness to foreign policy.

In April 2001, Chinese fighter planes forced a US Navy plane flying in international airspace to land on Hainan Island. The American crew was captured and detained for ten days. That incident got smoothed over, and was soon forgotten in the all-consuming shock and outrage over 9/11, which occurred about five months later. But still, another warning sign.

Then China unilaterally annexed portions of international waters in the South Pacific. This has brought China into near conflict with not only the USA, but also Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and Vietnam.

As if that wasn’t enough, in the 35 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, we’ve had numerous reports of Chinese spying, cyber attacks, and intellectual property theft.

Oh, and then there was COVID-19 in 2020. I’m not going to attempt to untangle that whole ball of bat intestines, but this was yet one more really bad thing that came out of China. At the very least, the Chinese Communist Party’s mishandling of the situation made the pandemic worse. (And that is the most charitable interpretation of the CCP’s role, among all the interpretations out there.)

The COVID-19 pandemic is now five years behind us. Many US, European, and Japanese companies have been “decoupling” from China over the past half-decade.

But not Apple. Over half of all Macs (MacBooks, iMacs, etc.) are still manufactured in China. Some 80% of iPads are made there. And 90 percent—almost all—iPhones are still Chinese-made.

Which brings us to the recent tariff brouhaha. As a former economics major, I’m no fan of tariffs. As a former employee of several Japanese companies, I have nothing against foreign corporations, foreign products, or foreign trade. (I drive a Toyota.) As a lifelong lover of foreign languages and cultures, I’m certainly no xenophobe.

But only a fool of a CEO would approach China nowadays as American executives did 40 years ago. There are scores of reasons why any American company should have long ago begun its decoupling from the People’s Republic.

Yes, that is difficult. But to paraphrase Lance Ito, that’s why Apple CEO Tim Cook and other CEOs make the big bucks. Tim Cook’s annual compensation is now $74 million.

Any B-school student with a few economics classes under his or her belt could come up with the idea of reducing costs by basing manufacturing in a low-cost country like China. The process of decoupling from China is much more difficult, and requires a lot more creativity and innovation—the sort of task for which a CEO might be paid $74 million per year. 

I might also mention that I’m an Apple devotee. I either own, or have owned, all the major Apple product lines. I’ve owned at least three iPods and two iPads. I’m now on my fourth iPhone. I’ve had multiple MacBooks and iMacs.

We have been told that an iPhone made anywhere but China (or a similar low-cost country) will cost $3,500. I call bullshit. Innovate, automate, figure out a way to do it more cheaply. For better or worse, that is now Tim Cook’s job. We’ll see if he can finally earn that $74 million. He should have foreseen this day long ago.

-ET

Anti-DOGE protests: how to downsize the government without causing mass outrage and widespread panic

Over this past weekend I saw several anti-DOGE protests in my neck of the woods. These were admittedly small. But I live in an Ohio county that went for Donald Trump by a 67 percent margin in 2024. This is Trump Country, by any measure.

In recent weeks, Elon Musk has eviscerated the federal government, radically downsizing some agencies, while eliminating others.

Musk’s proponents claim that he is performing a necessary surgery on a bloated federal bureaucracy. His detractors argue that he is cutting essential government functions—including some related to national security (!)—in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires.

So which side is correct?

We might start by examining historical precedent. President Trump is not the first POTUS to take pruning shears to the government. Nor is this a purely partisan issue. Major government downsizings occurred under both Reagan (Republican) and Clinton (Democrat).

On the other hand, government payrolls were expanded under Nixon and George W. Bush, both Republicans.

There are various reasons why government downsizing can be necessary—and desirable. The private sector, after all, downsizes, rightsizes, and reorganizes all the time. We can all name private-sector business entities that were thriving twenty years ago, but which don’t exist today. Should a government agency, once created, be sacrosanct?

And then there is our national debt: currently $36.56 trillion. It is no exaggeration to say that the United States faces a debt emergency.

***

But anyway: back to historical precedent. On August 10, 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 into law. The newly elected president was alarmed at the growing federal deficit, which was then a mere $290 billion—a fraction of its current size.

The 1993 omnibus bill included a mix of tax increases and federal spending cuts. It therefore found detractors on both sides of the political continuum. But the Clinton administration took advantage of a Democratic majority in Congress to push the bill through.

Naysayers said that the omnibus bill’s tax increases would be a drag on the economy. There were also complaints about cuts to government services and benefits.

But when Bill Clinton left office in 2001, the economy was booming, and Clinton had transformed the federal deficit into a federal surplus. Unemployment dipped below 4 percent—and that was mostly from a booming private sector.

***

Throughout the spring and summer of 1993, Clinton explained his case to the American people respectfully, with plenty of numbers, and copious charts and graphs. He emphasized the shared pain of his deficit reduction efforts. (Taxes were increased on the wealthiest 1.2 percent of Americans, and certain business deductions—such as deductions for business meals—were scaled back.)

The Trump administration, by contrast, has accompanied the government cuts not with business increases on the wealthy, but with a sweeping set of tariffs that will be paid by consumers. A regressive tax, essentially.

President Trump has entrusted the government cuts to Elon Musk, a tech billionaire who once smoked weed on the Joe Rogan Podcast. Musk claims that he is cutting billions in waste and saving taxpayers trillions of dollars. Perhaps he is. But where is the data? Where is the oversight? Where are the economists and the management experts who might lend the effort some credibility, via third-party corroboration? (Or at the very least, a hint of a sanity check?)

And then there is the tone of the whole thing. Everyone knows seniors who are dependent on Social Security and Medicare. Most of us also know a government employee or two. My grandmother retired from the EPA in 1983, after a decades-long career with what used to be called the “civil service”. One of my former classmates currently works for the IRS. (As of right now, he still has his job.)

To describe these people as “parasites” or “freeloaders”—as has often been done in the rightwing media—is completely the wrong message and completely the wrong tone.

***

We almost certainly do need to make significant cuts to the size of our federal bureaucracy. But these cuts should be better explained, and there should be some sense of checks-and-balances, a public confidence that this involves more than Elon Musk looking at an agency, and giving it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

The cuts should be approached with methodology and seriousness, in other words: the sort of methodology and seriousness that would have accompanied a similar restructuring, under either a Democratic or Republican administration of the past. The sort of methodology and seriousness that would accompany a similar restructuring in any large private-sector enterprise.

Most of all: the process needs to be better explained. No one is sure that Elon Musk is applying any methodology or seriousness at all. Hence the alarm over what is being done, even in some corners of Trump Country.

-ET

Ronald Reagan on tariffs, and the new identities of our two political parties

The debate over tariffs is not a new one. It precedes, and lies in the background of the American Civil War. The British Empire’s policy of mercantilism was a key factor in the lead-up to the American Revolution.

It should therefore be no surprise to learn that tariffs, free trade, protectionism, import quotas, etc….that whole ball of wax…was the subject of debate during the 1980s, too.

At that time, the specific source of concern was the Japanese automotive industry, which was making strong inroads into the American market. American cars, meanwhile, sold poorly in Japan.

There were various reasons for the imbalance. In the 1970s and 1980s, Detroit-made automobiles were plagued by numerous quality problems. (The joke was that you didn’t want to buy a UAW-made car that rolled off the assembly line on a Monday or a Friday.)

Japanese cars, meanwhile, were comparatively cheap, high-quality, and fuel-efficient. The oil crisis eased somewhat during the 1980s, but Americans still had an appetite for vehicles that could go far on a single gallon of gas (which then cost around a dollar).

In those days, it was the Democrats who made the case for tariffs, import quotas, and protectionism. President Reagan and the Republicans resisted. The above video is President Reagan’s April 25, 1987 radio address on that very subject.

The differences between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump are too many to enumerate here. But it’s safe to say that Ronald Reagan would have disagreed with President Trump’s recently unveiled tariff policy.

There is more than one side to the tariff issue, of course. I’ve made the case against tariffs on this blog, based on what I learned as an economics major many years ago. I also raised an important counterpoint: that globalization has exacerbated the widening inequalities between the working class and the managerial class here in the USA.

This debate will continue over the coming weeks and months, as the results of President Trump’s tariff policies become apparent. Trump’s plan may work; but the preponderance of historical and economic data suggests otherwise.

One thing is clear, though: neither the Democrats nor the Republicans represent what they did in the 1980s. For evidence, one need look no further than the current tariff debate.

-ET

Third-term hopes and fears, and the 22nd Amendment 

President Trump has been hinting about running for a third term. This would violate the 22nd Amendment.

The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, states that:

“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

First things first. I suggest that everyone stop worrying about a third Trump term. Donald Trump will be 82 in 2028. Octogenarian status has proven to be a barrier for US presidential candidates, including the frail Joe Biden, and including Bernie Sanders, who is still quite hale and alert at 83. A recent poll showed that only 45 percent of Republicans would welcome a third Trump term, even if it were possible.

But let’s get back to this issue of the 22nd Amendment. The 22nd Amendment was a response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s historic and unprecedented four terms in office. FDR was in the White House from 1933 until his death in 1945. FDR was the only president my maternal grandparents (born in 1921 and 1922) knew during their formative years.

FDR’s long period in office can be attributed to several factors: a weak Republican bench in that era, and the consecutive crises of the Great Depression and World War II. We must also conclude that he was popular and had a certain fan base. My maternal grandparents always spoke fondly of him, and he made them both into lifelong Democrats.

The 22nd Amendment was a mostly Republican project, championed by GOP congressmen like Robert A. Taft and Earl C. Michener. The Republicans of the immediate postwar era feared a second coming of FDR, perhaps. 

But is there any good reason why a popular and successful man or woman should not be able to run for a third—or even fourth—term?

No such limit is placed on members of Congress. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts has been in Congress since 1977. To put that in perspective: I was nine years old and in the fourth grade when Markey began his congressional career. Later this year I will turn 57.

We are comfortable with congresspersons having half-century careers (Ed Markey is not alone in his congressional longevity), but we fear the third presidential term as a sign of looming dictatorship?

If a president can win a third term, then why not? A younger version of Ronald Reagan could easily have won reelection in 1988. Likewise, it is not unreasonable to speculate that Barack Obama could have won reelection to a third term in 2016. For you Democrats out there: Trump squeaked out a narrow Electoral College victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016. How would he have fared against the incumbent President Obama?

In modern times, it is rare for either party to hold the White House for three consecutive terms, even when they run new candidates. It has only happened once in my lifetime: when George H.W. Bush won the White House after serving as Ronald Reagan’s vice president for eight years.

During my lifetime, the one-term president has been the much more consistent outcome: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Joe Biden all failed to win a second term. (Note: Ford entered the Oval Office in the aftermath of Watergate, and had less than a full term in office. Kamala Harris ran as Joe Biden’s party-appointed proxy.)

His age aside, by 2028, Donald Trump will have been either a president or a presidential candidate for 13 years. Trump fatigue will have set in long before then. (If this business with the tariffs does not go well,  Trump fatigue will afflict the deep-red sectors of the country long before 2028.)

A third Trump term strikes me as highly unlikely, even without the impediment of the 22nd Amendment. But a tenable case can be made for reconsidering the 22nd Amendment, nonetheless.

-ET

James Bond, Helen Mirren, and the decline of male fiction reading

British actress Helen Mirren recently  told a reporter that the long-running James Bond franchise is “born out of profound sexism”.

Oh, I think we know where this is going! Wag those fingers, clutch those pearls!

Let us first acknowledge that Helen Mirren has a point. But the more precise descriptor here would be laddish. If you read any of the James Bond novels (penned by Ian Fleming), you’ll find lots of action, clear lines of good and evil, and lusty femme fatales. It doesn’t get any more laddish than that.

James Bond was created in 1953, at the height of the Cold War. That was also more than 70 years ago. The James Bond novels were never meant to be highbrow, or even middlebrow. This was male escapist fiction, from a time when men still read fiction (more on that shortly). US President John F. Kennedy was a famous fan of the series; but he wasn’t alone. Many Cold War-era men, many of them World War II veterans, read the James Bond novels as a form of fantasy fulfillment.

And what was the stuff of those fantasies? Taking down the bad guys (usually the Soviets, in the context of the Cold War), and being admired by beautiful women half one’s age.

Oh, perish forbid. How is this any different from so-called “curvy girl fiction”, which casts overweight women as the sought-after sex objects of quarterbacks, billionaires, and even princes? Is one form of fantasy fulfillment more unlikely or pernicious than the other? (Isn’t that why it’s called “fantasy fulfillment” and “escapism” to begin with?)

I don’t begrudge the readers of curvy girl fiction their fantasy fulfillment. And I don’t begrudge our Cold War grandfathers their daydreams of saving the world and bedding scores of hot babes along the way. There are far greater injustices in the world, if one wishes to object to something.

I would rather object to the now decades-long trend of men avoiding fiction altogether. No one disputes the basic facts here; it’s been verified by study after study. Men will read nonfiction (though sparingly). Few twenty-first century men read novels. 

I also know this anecdotally. I can’t convince my male friends to read anything more literary than a Tim Ferriss self-help book. (And even then, they’d really prefer the audiobook version!)

This wasn’t always the case. My grandfather, who barely had a high school education, compulsively read western, crime, and adventure paperbacks. I mean…the man read fiction all the time. He kept stacks of paperbacks lying around.

I’m sure that many of my grandfather’s novels were of the male escapist variety, too. Helen Mirren might have described them as “born out of profound sexism”. How feminist do you think the average Zane Grey novel was, after all?

But what she really means by that is: attuned to common male fantasies, relating not just to the opposite sex, but also to the sorts of derring-do that have long excited the male imagination. The kind of adventures that men used to find in novels, but now search for in professional sports and video games.

Why do so few men read fiction nowadays? Maybe it’s because most fiction published nowadays bores most male readers to tears. It isn’t written or published with them in mind, and they know it.

I repeat: my grandfather was an avid fiction reader. So was John F. Kennedy. Have men changed? Or has the publishing industry changed?

-ET

‘The Americans’: is now the time for a sequel?

I don’t evangelize many 21st-century television shows. But I am unabashed in my enthusiasm for The Americans, the period spy drama that originally aired on FX from 2013 to 2018.

The Americans is about big events of the final decade of the Cold War. But it is also a family drama: about Philip and Elizabeth Jennings and their two children. The Jenningses are deep-cover Soviet KGB operatives. Philip and Elizabeth do all the bad things you would expect KGB agents to do. But they also cope with the pressures of maintaining their cover, and keeping their secret from their two children, who were born in the USA.

The series finale was set at the end of 1987/early 1988, just as Cold War tensions were easing. No spoilers here, except to say the series ended in a way that was satisfying, while simultaneously leaving the door open for sequels.

And it’s easy to imagine any number of sequels, based on a myriad of post-1988 plot lines. So much was yet to happen: the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan (1989), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and the collapse of the USSR (1991).

And what about the post-Soviet, Yeltsin and Putin eras? The possibilities are endless.

In a March 11, 2023 interview on The Rich Eisen Show, series star Matthew Rhys hinted at the possibility of The Americans continuing in some form.

That was almost two years ago. I remain cautiously hopeful. But I am also realistic about these things. Despite the high quality of the show’s concept and execution, a revived version of The Americans would face certain obstacles.

To begin with, young audiences may have difficulty relating to the subject matter. I am in my 50s and I remember the 1980s as if that decade ended last year. Viewers under 40, who lack such a perspective (and who have suffered the intellectual depredations of American public education) may struggle to get a foothold as they begin a show that involves Cold War-era history.

The Americans premiered in a crowded 2010s TV arena, filled with more accessible shows involving dragons, superheroes, and teenagers performing magic. The Americans was always a critical success, but it never got the viewership it deserved.

That may also have been an issue of timing. Between 2013 and 2018, the US public was focused on economic recovery, ISIS, Islamic terrorism, and the 2016 presidential election. The Cold War and Russia seemed far, far away.

That faraway perception of Russia may have changed, however, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and talk of a Cold War II from all quarters.

Now may be the perfect time to revive The Americans, in fact. A post-Soviet storyline would make the most sense. But there is plenty of material surrounding the fall of the USSR, too.

Even if The Americans zoomed forward to the present era, it could be made to work. All of the main characters, though much older, could plausibly still be alive.

I’m crossing my fingers for a sequel to my all-time favorite television show. As the above interview with Matthew Rhys suggests, I’m not alone in hoping for more seasons of The Americans.

-ET

Audrey Hepburn’s languages

I study multiple languages, and I worked for many years as a professional translator. I love foreign languages, and I love learning them.

Nevertheless, I don’t have much interest in the online “polyglot” community, as it has come to exist on social media platforms like YouTube. 

Nor will I ever create one of those cringeworthy YouTube videos in which a language learner displays his or her various languages for the virtual claps of fellow language learners.

(On that note: I am particularly dismayed by the “polyglot” YouTuber who employs randomly chosen native speakers as unwitting”props” in public spaces.)

I am far more impressed with people who combine multilingualism with a full slate of personal and professional interests. Foreign language study should be a part of every well-rounded, well-educated life. But not the sole focus of it…and certainly not an excuse to engage in constant public preening.

This is why I’m genuinely impressed by the linguistic achievements of the late Audrey Hepburn (1929 – 1993). Her first language was Dutch. She also spoke fluent French, English, and Italian. She was proficient in Spanish and German. 

Watch the above video, and you’ll see what a natural multilingual she was. You’ll also note that, unlike so many of today’s YouTube polyglots, she did not make a big deal of her attainments. She did not say, “Hey, watch me speak X language now!” Rather, she used the languages she had learned in a situationally appropriate and unpretentious manner.

-ET

Iron Maiden: what was cool about ‘The Trooper’

“The Trooper” appeared on Iron Maiden’s 1983 album, Piece of Mind. Both the song and the MTV video are now regarded as classics.

But when I first saw and heard this, it was just another new song in the MTV lineup.

Not to me, though. I immediately recognized something special about “The Trooper”. I can’t say I predicted that it would become a timeless classic. But I’m not exactly surprised, either.

Yes, of course, there is the hard-driving beat. Also, the juxtaposition of old movie footage with studio clips of the band in the video. (This would become a signature technique for Iron Maiden music videos.)

Even more than all that: this is a heavy metal song about the Crimean War, inspired by Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1854 narrative poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”.

In the early 1980s, heavy metal bands like the Scorpions and AC/DC were singing about the usual, tired topics: sex, parties, and rock-n-roll. Iron Maiden was writing songs about 19th century warfare. And the musical results were pleasing to the ear.

Now, if you don’t think that’s cool, well, I don’t know what to tell you. This is why I’ve been an Iron Maiden fan for over 40 years.

-ET

**Shop for Iron Maiden merchandise on Amazon**

Pearl Harbor Day 2024: and then no one remembered

World War II ended twenty-three years before I was born. But since I grew up hearing about it, World War II was almost living history for me.

All four of my grandparents could tell you exactly where they were, and what they were doing, when they heard the news about Pearl Harbor.

My maternal grandfather, then 19 years old, enlisted in the US Navy the following week. His enlistment led to many combat experiences in the Atlantic. These were stories I grew up with.

My grandfather in the Atlantic Ocean, 1943

In 2024, the ranks of living Americans who can remember December 7, 1941 are growing thin. It was 83 years ago, after all.

In one sense, this is perfectly natural and unremarkable. None of my grandparents could remember the assassination of President Lincoln, or the Battle of Antietam. History moves on, and each new generation has fresh tragedies to remember.

This process of generational forgetting seems to happen more quickly as one grows older. I am sometimes shocked to meet young adults who do not remember 9/11. And then I do the math.

I would like to say that I will remember Pearl Harbor Day in honor of the Americans who died on December 7, 1941. That would be the correct and most patriotic way to put it.

But if I’m being honest, I’ll remember Pearl Harbor Day because it traumatized and moved my grandparents, who told me about it.

Pearl Harbor forever changed the life of my maternal grandfather, in particular. I heard about the war from him. And because of him, World War II will always be living—and secondhand—history for me.

-ET

The Beatles in Hamburg, and ‘The Cairo Deception’

As many of you will know, I recently wrapped up The Cairo Deception, my 5-book World War II series.

One of the final chapters of the book depicts the Beatles performing in Hamburg, West Germany in December 1962. (I won’t go into more story detail than that, so as to avoid spoilers.)

This is actually true. When I discovered this lesser known piece of rock music history, I just couldn’t resist putting it in the book, as an Easter egg for Beatles fans.

The Beatles both resided and performed in Hamburg from August 1960 to December 1962. The Beatles’ Hamburg residence took place shortly before they became a global phenomenon. The band also performed at a music venue in Hamburg called The Star-Club, as described in Postwar: Book 5 of The Cairo Deception. 

The Beatles of the Hamburg period involved a slightly different lineup of the band: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best. After the group returned to England at the end of 1962, Sutcliffe and Best left the band, and Ringo Starr was hired on as the new drummer.

Click here to view THE CAIRO DECEPTION series on Amazon

Reading about the Iran Hostage Crisis of ’79

The Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 is one of the first major global events that I remember.

I was 11 years old on November 4, 1979, when Iran’s revolution came to a head, and a mob of student militants overran the US Embassy in Tehran. The student militants took 66 American hostages. 52 of these hostages would remain in Iran until January, 1981.

American hostages in Tehran, Iran in 1979

I followed the 444-day crisis on the news. But being 11 years old, I was sketchy on most of the historical background. 

I’ve read a lot more about the crisis since then. I’m presently finishing up the above book, Guests of the Ayatollah: the First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam, by Mark Bowden.

Bowden’s book includes not only the overarching historical details, but also many individual stories: of the hostages, and others whose lives were impacted. 

Definitely worth a read if this is a subject that interests you!

-ET

**View Guests of the Ayatollah: the First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam, by Mark Bowden on Amazon***