Corruption-Archeology: Arthur Vandenberg, a Case Study

2,569 words

“Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle shape,
And with a virtuous visor hide deep vice.”

William Shakespeare, Richard III

Archeology: “the study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artifacts and other physical remains.”

I think of my professional calling as an “archeologist of human corruption,” excavating the rubble of human affairs searching for evidence of “deceit” stealing “gentile shape” – extensive evidence that confirms the “crooked timber of humanity.”

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” Immanuel Kant.

With deep dives into the dumpster bins of human corruption one finds the buried details of the lies and cover ups by those who pretend to rule over us lawfully: fraud, graft, bribery, breach of trust, perversion, treachery and venality. Poking through and turning over the debris of pretend purity is a melancholy, disillusioning labor, but somebody has to do it.

“Untruth did not begin with us; nor will it end with us.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

“Untruth” – with a virtuous visor hide deep vice” (“Diversity is our strength” with all of its punishing ripple vicious effects) – is jealously guarded by the immaculate, mischief-making parasites of the ruling class. Think of the practice of this kind of “archeology” as philosophically inspired by Thomas Hobbes, Homo homini lupus “Man to man is a wolf.” Or theologically, as in the “total depravity” of Jean Calvin. In either case I find myself affirming the wicked taunt of André Malraux: “What is Man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”

What follows is a piece of “corruption-archeology” that goes back to World War II, a period in which the staggering deceit of America’s ruling class has been given a “gentle shape” and a “virtuous visor” by the propagandists masquerading as journalists and the court historians. Sometimes you just have to turn back and dig through the scrap heaps for the “miserable little pile of secrets” buried within and put them out for careful examination. Doing so exposes how extensively connected is the current regime’s efforts to legitimize its rule under the rubric of “protecting our democracy” with the narrative of FDR’s wartime presidency as the advancement of the cause of “freedom and democracy” for the world. The corruption of the ruling class is manifest in the corruption of the centerpiece in its vocabulary of legitimation, “democracy.” “Democracy” functions abracadabra-like, hypnotically, to put the mask of rectitude on its illegalities and to distract the demos from its undemocratic abuses of power.

The “excavation sites” (White House and Congress), occupied by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the supporting cast of duplicitous mischief-makers that gave us World War II, are rich with the “artifacts” of political corruption and collusion. What they were doing then – “making the world safe for democracy,” a euphemism for “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” This is what has been going on pretty much non-stop since the end of WWII (approximately thirty-five armed interventions around the globe). Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine with threats against China – the ruling class has never ceased to relentlessly propagandize Americans to believe in and support wars everywhere in the world. Call it the “Hitlerization” of foreign policy: behind every foreign menace is alleged a “Hitler” at work, and the only recourse is a just war to crush him in whatever reincarnation and whatever disguise he has assumed. These wars turn out to be against people who pose no threat to Americans, costly wars that make the world worse than before they began.

Most recently:

“The toppling of the Syrian government was sudden, performed by militants with ties to Al Qaeda and ISIS, and looked exactly like another of the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s proxy regime-change wars—which in the past have again and again led to the rape, slaughter, and ethnic cleansing of minorities in nations like Iraq and Libya.”

For exhumation here are some unsavory details that mark the seigniorial reign of Michigan’s Arthur Vandenburg, thirty-three years from 1928 to 1951 in the U.S. Senate. Having grown up in Michigan, I recall that Vandenberg was revered there as a great statesman – the whitewashed, magisterial version of his career is the only one most Michiganders know. A native of Grand Rapids, the second largest city in Michigan after Detroit, Vandenberg’s name was honorifically bestowed on schools, civic centers, concert halls and university buildings all over the state. (A helpful rule of thumb for thinking about dead politicians: the more stuff a politician has named after him, the more corrupt and ruthless was his time in office.)

Inscription on statue near Rosa Parks Circle in Grand Rapids.

From Wikipedia:

In September 2004, a portrait of Vandenberg, along with one of Senator Robert Wagner was unveiled in the Senate Reception Room. The two new portraits joined a group of highly distinguished senators including Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert La Follette, and Robert Taft. Portraits of this group of senators, known as the “Famous Five”, had been unveiled in March 1959.

Time for archeology.

“I’ll strip the ragged follies of their time
Naked, as at their birth.” Ben Johnson.

So, let’s strip Mr. Vandenberg, a star performer of “ragged follies.”

The “isolationist” Republican senator was celebrated as a mid-20th-century giant in the Senate. That is, what Ron Unz might call, the American Pravda version – a man of principled opposition during those years FDR was riding roughshod over the GOP. He had contended for the party’s nomination to run against FDR in 1940. Then, surprise, surprise. Just prior to 1941, Senator Vandenberg experienced a sudden “conversion” from his “isolationist” resistance to American involvement in war-torn Europe to FDR’s interventionism. Doing a political 180, he threw his support to Roosevelt’s Lend Lease program, a violation of FDR’s promise of neutrality in the ongoing European war. Thirteen Democrat Senators had voted against the Lend Lease Act. Vandenberg’s volte-face was a major slip in the slippery slide toward America’s entry into the war. Vandenberg’s admirers to this day portray his sudden switcheroo as “principled embrace of internationalism,” a maturing of his perspective.

1937, Vandenberg right, with fellow “isolationist” Senators, Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, Sen. Bennett Champ Clark of MO with their “neutrality” bill.

“I saw the light. I saw the light. No more darkness, no more night. Now I’m so happy no sorrow in sight. Praise the Lord I saw the light.” Hank Williams, I Saw the Light

Praise God, Arthur had seen “the light.” So much for loyal opposition. It wasn’t the light, however, that Arthur saw: God wasn’t paying much attention to the Senator. That man, he figured, most likely was beyond his reach. Instead of seeing the light, the Senator was staring at the end of his tenure high up in the ruling class regions of The Swamp. The end, that is, if he didn’t join the crew that was beating the war drums. The majority of the American electorate in 1940 was “isolationist.” FDR during that Fall Presidential election season promised to keep the U.S. out of the war in Europe. “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again; your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” Yes, just like Woodrow Wilson had (fingers crossed) promised back in 1916 with the first go-around. (Another helpful rule of thumb for judging politicians: give the promise of a politician the same level of credibility as the email from the Nigerian Prince wanting to send you ten million dollars.) The polls told Roosevelt that he would lose the election if he didn’t make that promise – “again and again” – he knew he was going to break. Secretly, he was conniving with Winston Churchill to get us into it.

Still, he wasn’t, yet, one of those all-powerful dictators like the one across the pond he was yearning to remove. He needed an assist from influential leaders in the opposition party to move things along. “Assist” as in betray their constituents who didn’t want their sons, brothers and husbands getting killed to save Europeans from each other – again. They had seen Act One of Woodrow Wilson’s “war to end all wars” tragedy thirty years ago. “Fool me once, shame on you.” They had no interest in Act Two of making “the world safe for democracy” with Americans playing the lead role on the slaughter house stage. No matter. “Fool me twice” was furtively underway. Franklin got his “good war.” In 1940 American unemployment topped out at 8.1 million. Near the end of 1942, it was at 1.5 million. President Roosevelt had finally put Americans back to work building a vast charnel house. FDR’s toast to his military Joint Chiefs of Staff: “Make love and war.” Post war documentation assembled by contrarians like Justin Raimondo and revisionist historians like Harry Elmer Barnes tell a different story than the sanitized one of America to the rescue. (Rule of thumb number three: always resist the siren call of the politicians to send the young men somewhere far away to fight the “evil ones.” The courageous Eugene Debs did it with a speech in Canton, Ohio, and Woodrow Wilson threw him in prison for a long time.)

The Vandenberg conversion-myth of maturation was just that – a myth, an “invention” to cover the corruption and coercion that moved him to “maturity.” Sex and blackmail, two of Santa’s little helpers, make “naughty” (independent-thinking) politicians into “nice” (obedient) ones.

First, the sex part. Arthur, so it seems. quite fancied the fairer sex, and not from afar. His abundant indulgence in romancing ladies other than Mrs. Vandenberg was not the best kept secret around the town – and beyond, as in around the circles of the British MI6, its Foreign Intelligence Service.

Now, the blackmail. At the time of his road to Damascus conversion, Vandenberg was keeping himself “busy” with a hareem he’d assembled – three fetching ladies with strong ties to British intelligence. One was Betty Thorpe, a femme fatale wife of a dashing British diplomat. From Buenos Aires she was ordered to fly to Washington to arouse the Michigan Senator’s interest. Arousing male “interest” was her assigned responsibility, one for which she was well endowed. Thorpe was a British Mata Hari, her nom d’espionage, “Cynthia.” Mrs. Vandenberg’s husband was very interested.

Providing Cynthia an assist with Vandenberg’s “principled conversion” was another seduction specialist, Mitzi Sims with, shall we say, her own interests in the Senator other than the dimensions of his … well … Mitzi just happened to be the wife of Harold Sims, attaché at the British embassy. The aristocratic Mr. Sims also ran the code room at the embassy. Mitzi’s special talents were in the field of espionage.

And, she was employed by guess who? British Naval Intelligence. She was the bait that “honey-trapped” Vandenberg and set him up to be press-ganged into the retinue of Franklin’s warmongering yes-men. The British Office of Naval Intelligence had amassed an impressive file on Vandenberg’s bedroom dalliances with the professional ladies it had dispatched. The story of Vandenberg’s conversion – between the sheets, so to speak – is incomplete without mention of Brit spy-lady number three in the Senator’s handsome harem, Eveline Paterson. Ms. Paterson was quite the charmer and a statuesque blonde for good measure, who practiced her “arousal” ways with Arthur. She was also a professional publicist for the cause of Great Britain. J. Edgar Hoover and columnist Drew Pearson tagged her as a British intelligence operative. They would know. They were in on the set up.

“This could be our last goodnight together We may never pass this way again. Just let me enjoy ’til it’s over or forever. Please don’t tell me how the story ends.” —Ronnie Millsap, Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends

The interminably “aroused” Senator was having himself more than a few “last goodnights together” with the Brit ladies. During which, no doubt, his enjoyment was never in question. His pillow-talking companions would continue to “pass this way” as bloody often as it took to make the Senator … see the light.

So, the powerful and highly esteemed Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg woke up one morning and found himself and his principles in a bind. He had to decide how well his principles were going to hold up against his competing interests. And now we know “how the story ends.” What else could this randy Republican given to pillow-talk with sexy, lady spies do? Those straightlaced, starched-collar Dutch Calvinists from his home town of Grand Rapids would be awfully disappointed to learn about how far their fair-haired boy had wandered off the paths of righteousness. Insiders began to refer to him as the “Senator from Mitzi-gan.” Vandenberg’s vanity, arrogance – and overactive libido – made him an easy take down for the willy FDR and the conniving Brits who wanted American boys once again, “over there” to help them kill those recalcitrant Germans they’d picked a fight with. The Brits, it seems to be long forgotten by many, had declared war on Germany – not the other way around.

“Over there, over there.
Send the word, send the word over there
That the Yanks are coming
The Yanks are coming.
The drums rum-tumming. Everywhere.” George M. Cohen, Over There

A tantalizing, irresistible crew. Well chosen, and they executed their mission of seduction with perfection. The Three Musketeerettes, Mitzi, Cynthia and Eveline, were going to be sending “the word over there.” Thanks gals, for your “rum-tumming” heavy lifting or, should we say, “heavy breathing.” In any case, “the Yanks are coming,” once again.

Vandenberg’s “conversion” remains an illustration of the maxim: power is found behind the scenes – as it was then, as it is now. It was best expressed by Wyndham Lewis in his novel Self Condemned: “You have to look for your criminal among the sinister background figures, and in the pressure-groups pushing the little front-line puppets hither and thither to left or right.” Ah, “pressure groups.” Which raises a troublesome question the posing of which can get you in a lot of trouble: what pressure group is currently pushing our “little front-line puppets” (U.S. congressmen) to pour billions of dollars to “defend democracy and freedom in Ukraine” and complete the ethnic cleansing operation in the Levant? Hint: a group whose members see themselves as very special people. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt can help with the details, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

Vandenberg was reported to have said: “I had no youth. I went to work when I was nine, and I never got a chance to enjoy myself until I came to the Senate.” Candid and so fittingly expressed. The man clearly understood why he was in The Swamp and why The Swamp was so accommodating to his recreational interests. He knew what his priorities should be.

One question about Vandenburg’s tergiversation that still troubles me is this: how much of a conscience did he ever have? Did what he had done ever trouble him? I’m inclined to think that the number of years spent in The Swamp at the pinnacle of the ruling class is inversely proportional to the size of one’s conscience; the more the years, the punier the conscience. At some point it completely vanishes.

Thus, when you survey the goings-on of the octogenarian crew at the apex of the current regime with their poorly disguised decrepitude – have any of them, after the many years of pushing and pulling at the levers of power, ever possessed a molecule of conscience? If so, not a trace remains.