Finally, getting to my sort of book report post on The Journal of David Q. Little, by R. Daniel McMichael, which was published in 1967. I’m sure I’ll reference this novel in future posts and to be honest, I’m only halfway through (it’s 557 pages), because I keep jotting notes on post-it flags and sticking them in the book and also writing down notes on paper. I can see how this novel influenced President Ronald Reagan, because it’s a story set in the late 20th century, after a US president signs onto a World Order of Nations (W.O.N.) agreement with the Soviet Union and other nations of the world to avert nuclear war (nuclear blackmail by the Soviet Union).
This W.O.N. agreement sets up a new international organization with vastly more power than the United Nations and it supersedes the US Constitution, even though the people of the United States are led to believe that this is all about world peace and trying to get along with other countries. There’s also a Treaty of Friendship the US signed onto. In reality with the stroke of a pen, an American president signed away American sovereignty to the Soviet Union and the remaking of America and dismantling of American beliefs in freedom and individualism blaze across the nation, as this novel begins.
The nuclear blackmail incident centered on the Soviet Union secretly building a massive nuclear arsenal – “she had a nuclear superiority of about 20,000 megatons capable of rapid delivery, compared with the U.S.A.’s rapid delivery nuclear capability then of only 2000 megatons – down from a previous high some years earlier of about 53,000 megatons.” This suggested to me some previous unilateral downsizing of the US nuclear arsenal, which over the years I’ve heard many liberals advocate.
The story is written as a journal of some average guy, David Q. Little, that is found in the year 2223. Historians keep gathering bits of old Americana from the time the world devolved into tyranny under this W.O.N. one-world system, akin to how historians in our day search for clues to unravel the fall of Rome.
The author wrote this fictional novel with footnotes to fill in background of Little’s journal, which is a very interesting way of plotting a fictional novel. I love reading footnotes and appendices in non-fiction books, so this is my cup of tea. The explanation of the nuclear blackmail comes with Little’s mention of DD-Day in his journal, with this footnote, “Newspapers used this expression in referring to the December 20 “destruction deadline” set by the USSR; the day on which she, presumably, would have exploded nuclear devices over 24 United States cities.”
Obviously, you can see how Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was likely influenced some by this novel.
A couple days ago I mentioned Stella Morabito’s piece from 2016 about this novel and then I followed with an X-thread of mine, so I want to be clear what I meant. Stephen Miller had commented on the above X-post about President Biden making that bizarre speech on September 1, 2022. Here’s a FOX News headline, Biden shocks viewers with ‘hellish red background’ for polarizing speech. He has continually fumed about Americans, who hold right-wing political beliefs, as being “MAGA Extremists,” and that term “MAGA extremist” could be applied to anyone who doesn’t agree with the left’s progressive views and agenda.
In this dystopian novel, David Q. Little comes to realize that anyone who dares question anything about the new rules being implemented can quickly be labelled an “extremist” and end up being tried in televised, staged public hearings, where the crowd has been coached on rallying a mob atmosphere to denounce the extremists, who are smeared as “Mr. X.” The hearings begin with a prayer about “the fulfillment of mankind’s oldest aspiration – peace” and then a new Pledge of Allegiance. The witnesses testifying in these public hearings are co-workers, friends and even family members. Then, if warranted the guilty are turned over to a world court system for trial.
Many of the communist indoctrination methods described in this novel remind me of how the progressive Left in America plays these same type of forcing new words and phrases on the American public and then tries to engage in public-shaming exercises to force people to comply. The intimidation of threatening people’s jobs for failing to comply seems eerily similar too. If Dems could get hate speech laws severely limiting speech passed in America, I feel certain they would avidly criminalize speech they want silenced. In Little’s journal anyone holding to the old ways, like American patriotism, rambling about the Constitution, questioning the new rules, possessing a firearm (guns were confiscated), and the list goes on and on, becomes a target of being labelled an “extremist.” Everything is rationed, travel is restricted, passes are needed for everything and worst of all the people are being forced to spy on each other and report their neighbors, friends, and even family for being extremists or breaking any of these new rules. So much of this sounds like the Great Reset green dreams and COVID social mitigation excesses.
Amazingly, most people in this novel adopt a go along to get along attitude and keep deluding themselves that they aren’t living under communism and rationalizing that making some adjustments to work for world peace is worth it, considering the alternative of nuclear annihilation. The main character, David Q. Little, a rather conformist type guy, begins to wake up to what’s really going on and begins his private journal as the only place he can express his thoughts and feelings openly. His wife is all-in on the “peace” plans. He is a man consumed by guilt, as he got sucked into testifying against other people and pressured to lead a march.
The footnote on the legislation prohibiting possession of firearms explains that law was enacted some years before the Treaty of Friendship “in order to assure greater public safety.” It also states the treaty sought to re-enforce this law.
President Biden and Dems repeating this “MAGA Extremists” public tarring has struck me as so egregious for any American president to try to engage in creating a mob mentality against a segment of society, especially “extremists,” who are so vaguely defined, that the smear can be adjusted at will – just disagree with the left’s agenda and you might be a MAGA extremist, just like anything imaginable now gets labelled as “racist.” I felt disturbed by this MAGA extremist smearing before I even heard of this novel.
I have several books on Ronald Reagan and in another book, I had read he often mentioned a book he read when he was 11, The Printer of Udell’s, as helping shape his moral sense, but I had never heard of this dystopian novel about the US surrendering to USSR nuclear blackmail, under the guise of signing onto a new international order dedicated to peaceful coexistence.
It’s become very trendy among the American right to rant about Marxists and communism these days, but I suspect most of the people doing that labelling have no understanding of the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution and the decades long Cold War era.
I’ve written about the left-wing Marxist-tinged movements, like BLM, the trans movement and the collectivist one-world governance effort being pushed by an assortment of unelected elites at the WEF, UN, international banking, and ultra-wealthy business leaders, in cooperation with many world leaders under the auspices of the UN’s 2030 Agenda and various green energy transformation initiatives and DEI programs.
America’s most determined adversaries assuredly target both political sides in America with efforts to sow divisions, fuel distrust and latch onto any means possible to manipulate Americans via the media. Minority factions have always been key targets by Marxists to exploit divides and ignite anti-American sentiments. Since Dems and the liberal media invested so much effort with the Clinton Trump-Russian collusion dirty trick effort and labelling just about anything “Russian disinformation,” at this point that term is pretty much meaningless, but that doesn’t mean the Russians, Chinese and other foreign actors aren’t busily fueling divides in America via information war and other penetration efforts. For instance see the Confucius Institutes. The Wahhabi movement has been a global movement too and put effort into spreading Wahhabism to American black universities and prisons. There are other international groups dedicated to spreading Marxist ideology too. And there are also melded ideologies of Islamic extremism and Marxism, like The Nation of Islam. The founders of BLM stated they were inspired by Marxist ideology.
I don’t believe Trump is a Russian agent but, I do believe he reveres strong men and authoritarian leaders, in addition to having no respect for following the rules. In fact, one of Trump’s big selling points in 2016 was about how Trump doesn’t follow the rules. He did encourage rally attendees to punch protestors that showed up in 2015-2016. A 78 year-old man got caught up in that “fight back” atmosphere that Trump escalated, when protestors disrupted the rally and the elderly man sucker-punched a protestor. That elderly man ended up getting arrested and charged – while Trump pretended none of that incitement effort was his fault (the same as what he did on J-6). Trump leaves other people facing their legal bills, and until just recently had offered no financial assistance to J-6 attendees facing charges for their legal costs.
Trump followers go to great pains to cherry-pick Trump’s public cover-his-butt line about urging protestors to go to the Capitol and remain peaceful, but I watched that rally and all of the speakers were using incendiary language to rile up that crowd and urging them to “Stop the Steal.” And while I do believe there was serious law enforcement failure that day and the FBI might have had informants in the crowd, Trump set up that rally to pressure Mike Pence to do something he had no constitutional authority to do.
So, we have this mob formation going on not just on the left with all their hate speech dramas and othering people, but on both sides of the partisan aisle in America now.
Back in the Cold War days there was a term, “useful idiot,” used to describe a person who unwittingly aided Soviet propaganda efforts. I don’t believe Trump is a Russian agent, but he’s one of the most useful idiots for Putin. Trump basked in Putin’s praise, Trump also trashed NATO constantly and talked about wanting to pull the US out of NATO. The US pulling out of NATO would be a huge victory for Putin and President Xi of China. That move would be surrendering America’s position as a world leader, without our adversaries having to exert any military or economic effort. Trump also refers to President Xi, another dictator, as a friend and he loved yucking it up with Kim Jong Un, the leader of one of the most repressive regimes in the world and for very little in return – North Korea didn’t stop any of their weapons procurement or alter their long-range objectives.
What America’s adversaries got was the sight of America’s military leaders having fits over the stupidity of frittering away the prestige of a presidential meeting with no real strategic gains. Trump’s followers believe he’s the greatest dealmaker in the world, but if you don’t even understand the foreign policy stakes for America- in detail – and believe a photo-op with you is winning, then how on earth can you negotiate a deal that’s to America’s advantage? Communist regimes are the most devious and deceptive regimes to work on deals with, because they play endless word games and have turned strategic ambiguity into an art form.
On the left we have a Democratic Party consumed by radical one-world collectivist dreams that reek of stale Marxist ideology. That ideology has literally captured academia in America and many American K-12 public schools and they’re working on turning our American military into a far-left institution too.
Our American political and public institutions really are being hit by both sides and I had hoped the communist threat was over in 1989.
In the author’s notes to this dystopian novel, McMichael, explains how the Soviets were trying to find a way to take down Czechoslovakia, the last remaining democracy, which fell in 1948. The Soviets were trying to sell their international image as working toward world peace and were trying to persuade the Americans to give up their nuclear weapons, so tanks rolling into Prague would have demolished that image. McMichael writes, “A way was found quite in keeping with the enigmas of the Marxist-Leninist world of dialectics. For the Czech problem: just turn everything upside down. Keep the military on the sidelines, stationed in other Bloc satellites but close enough to pose a frightening threat. Then, activate a concerted effort to break the will of the non-communist Czechs against a peaceful solution, this through the arts of propaganda, subversion and intimidation – components of which included: use of popular fronts, protest committees, disinformation, discrediting and decapitating non-communist leadership – all designed to generate loss of national confidence to resist the “inevitability of history and the will of the people.”
McMichael, went on, “The means employed was the continuing use of the strategy of “pressure from above, pressure from below” projects and the application of the “salami” technique to isolate leadership and institutions (such as bankers and banks) from lay public support. Targets involved leadership penetration of parliament, civil service, police, judiciary, as well as the electorate.”
This blitz started in 1946 McMichael states and Czechoslovakia fell in 1948.
I’ve been pondering the chaos going on in America for the past 20 years and in recent years it’s escalated dramatically, which has left me concerned that now both sides of America are dangerously polarized and unstable. This culture war, largely fueled by a relentless 24/7 spin information war, has played an outsized role in the culture war, I’ve believed since the late 1990s. I write about my thoughts about the spin information war on my blog and I’ve tweeted about it, but I stopped mentioning my ideas to my family members who are interested in foreign policy, because they just dismiss me as if I’m saying something ridiculous. Unless someone in the news says it – they don’t believe it. I have a high school education and when I first started trying to understand this spin information war, no one was talking about these repetitive messaging attacks that the liberal media and Dems launch (now in the right they produce clever videos, like that video of 3.4% fatality that kicked off COVID hysteria)- all the talk was about right-wingers complaining about “media bias.” I don’t care if anyone agrees with me, because I pay for my blog here and as long as I can get blog posts published, which is difficult with that autosaving problem, I mentioned, I’m going to keep writing. I usually end up having to do more background reading to even understand a lot of the issues and terminology I run into, as I wade through books and information online.
I’m going to continue to be a lone voice in the wilderness and I’ll keep reading through stacks of books and online searching trying to dig for information and hopefully find some answers. I highly recommend this dystopian novel, because while it’s very easy to invoke Orwell’s 1984, which I reread last year, I think this novel offers much more relevant food for thought about the culture war in America and the political chaos.
If you’re reading my blog, I sincerely thank you for your time.
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