GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH!
–Patrick Henry
I first read this Patrick Henry quote in one of my oldest sister’s Scholastic Book Club hand-me-down books. My oldest sister is eight years older than I am, so I was the lucky recipient of, not only her hand-me down books, but also the cast-off books of some of her friends. Her name is written in this book, that’s how I know this one was hers. In my last blog post I mentioned listening to podcasts on American history, a topic which has been a passion of mine since around 7th grade, when my US History teacher inspired in me a lifelong love of American history and a Girl Scout trip to Williamsburg, VA, which I mentioned in a long ago 2018 blog post, Falling in love… with America. I vividly recall the tour guide telling us about Patrick Henry and this quote. The acquisition of this book, via my oldest sister’s cast-offs, became part of my overall lifelong habit of not wanting to throw away things that are still useful (especially books), but also a larger curiosity about information, in general, and that’s going to be the road I wander down in this blog post.
Around the time I was 12 yrs. old, my parents, like many parents in America, bought a World Book Encyclopedia set, which came with a large dictionary. With 24/7 access to so much information at my fingertips, my world literally grew by leaps and bounds. When I wrote my last blog post, I already had the outline of another blog post in my head, for which I’ve even written a general outline with ideas and have a title, Encyclopedia Sue Grows Up, but before fleshing out that post, I’ve been thinking about writing a blog post about my how I became interested in words, writing, reading and how information is shared and spread.
Watching the dramatic changes in news media largely becoming part of partisan messaging operations, in the 1990s, led to my conviction that America has a serious national security threat right here at home with the Democrat spin information war, which has now been borrowed and modified into Trump’s hybrid spin war. Trump’s hybrid spin war has expanded on the Dem. spin corruption of using government intel and other assets for partisan political purposes and also abusing many other executive powers. Trump has turned the entire executive branch into a potent partisan spin operation, replete with “Rapid Response” partisan spin efforts, while casting it as “fighting against the Dem spin & Woke liberal media. Since, so much of my blog has been about this domestic spin information war and my entire Twitter posting effort has been, deliberately, geared to verbally trying to defeat partisan spin attacks, this post is going back to my childhood and revisiting my fascination with information.
So, now back to the beginning, not just with my fascination with information, but with the evolution of humanity’s information pursuits. In my early teens, I became curious about the history of the written word, reading and the sharing of information, especially via the written word. I like learning about how ancient peoples communicated. However, I’ve also been interested in information warfare since 1980, when I was stationed in Germany in a Pershing missile battalion, as a 19 year-old young soldier, trying to understand the Cold War.
I was the kid who drove my mother crazy questioning, Why?” and I was the young soldier, who found an antiwar post card in a German store and taped it inside the door of my wall locker, to prod myself, not to be antiwar, but to try to understand more about my mission defending America. I wanted to understand the ” Why war?” issue and became fascinated with reading about military history, especially the Cold War, which I was living in. I tried to explain this to my first sergeant during a room inspection one morning, when he spotted my “Why?” post card. He didn’t understand, but he didn’t make me remove my post card:
My interest in the Dem spin information war, which is what big Clinton political operatives called it (their “spin war”) probably caught my attention so much, because in 1992 we returned to the States after living in Germany for 5 years, without American TV in our leased military quarters. I reacted the same way when I returned to the States after living in Germany in 1981 and my husband told me we were getting cable TV. I binge watched 24-hour news. on cable TV in 1981, because when I had left for Germany, I was still in the CBS, ABC, NBC childhood TV choices world. Returning to the States in 1992, well, the political media landscape looked very different again.
Perhaps, if we had had AFN TV in Germany during those five years the change wouldn’t have been so jarring to me. The Clinton political operatives bragging constantly about their ingenious “spin war” caught my attention. This wasn’t just the usual political messaging, this was an all-out effort to control all political media messaging in America and work to spin right-wing media into a looming threat to America, that needed to be silenced. I started trying to understand how the Dem spin information worked and I’ve written many blog posts about this, like this one: The Pieces of the Media Messaging Puzzle in 2016.
The Dem spin information war has always been a sophisticated, actual information war, more akin to what you see in totalitarian regimes and it is antithetical to American free speech principles. Trump has now borrowed that and turned it into his hybrid spin info war. In 1992, on the right, the only place the right was dominating was on talk-radio and in 1992, Roger Ailes came up with a late-night show starring radio star, Rush Limbaugh, to counter the left’s total control over TV news/commentary in America.
I am always a “try to start at the beginning person” and that’s why I keep going down rabbits holes on the “history of” topics, as in my fascinations with the “history of words and reading,” then information warfare, recently led me to purchase two books on communications systems, even though I am severely technology-challenged (a total dunce). I often take detours down rabbit holes, as you can see, below, by a few of my books I pulled out (there are plenty more):
Since the advent of the internet age, it’s become a trend to try to “profile” people by what words they enter in search engines and what books they read, to draw sweeping conclusions about people, especially when profiling people deemed “national security threats” and I believe that’s a pretty lazy way to do a threat assessment. If you use the formula: Threat = capability X intention, which I think is a good one, if you rely on all second-hand information and/or draw sweeping conclusions from Google searches, your assessment is based on very little information about that person’s actual life and beliefs. Where the Dem spin operatives, with their abuse of US intel, have melded over and over again is they seek out only sources that bolster their desired spin narrative, while waging ruthless media character assassination attacks on Republicans (see Bret Kavanaugh & endless scorched earth attacks on Trump). The Dem spin info war operatives only seek out negative information on their targets to exploit and ruthlessly smear them.
My reading list and Google searches could easily be spun into a “dangerous, domestic terrorist,” by lazy spin clowns, however I have always been a loyal American citizen, believe in working hard to be a good citizen and good neighbor, try to be kind to everyone, love needlework and growing flowers and have always been afraid of guns, despite having to learn to handle firearms in the Army and my interest in military strategy and military history. I have never wished harm on anyone. And above all that, I love America and believe in protecting and respecting the rights (especially the liberties) of all Americans.
What got me thinking about this pigeonholing people was something that happened to me last year, which I won’t get into in this post, but it made me really think about what does freedom in America really mean and this You Tube video I shared recently hits on the key question – When would you speak up against injustice and for how long would you speak up against epic abuse of government power?
Since I am proud America has made it to its 250th anniversary, well, I’ve read a good bit about the Revolutionary War and Washington commanding the Continental Army, so this year, I want to dig into a two-volume set about The Pamphlet Wars and Thomas Paine. I have a book on Paine I want to read thoroughly because I only skimmed it when I first got it:
With spending so many years trying to dissect and understand the Dem spin information war and now Trump’s hybrid spin information war, this year I want to read more of this Library of America 2-volume set on the Pamphlet Wars, I bought in 2015 and have only read bits and pieces.:
I keep two books on the little table next to my recliner, and no, neither is the Bible, of which I have several, but I keep the Bible I use regularly on a little book cart I bought recently with this new “analog doom scrolling” effort, that I’ve been trying after seeing young people on social media talking about how they’re working on spending more time reading, to break their online doom scrolling habit. I was doing “analog doom scrolling” since I first learned to read, LOL. This little book cart is handy and I have my Bible and an assortment of books on it, everything from adult coloring books, daily devotional books to I started on the Forrest C. Pogue biography series of George C. Marshall to Atomic Habits, and crafting books. Here’s the book cart I purchased on Amazon. I already let myself get carried away on purchasing a 3-tiered craft cart, after watching a lot of crafting videos on YouTube, early last year, so it wasn’t really surprising I talked myself into buying this book cart too. I love having both of them, honestly. Sorry for rambling a bit there, but here are the two books I keep next to my recliner:
Truly, if I had a message that speaks to my heart, it’s the little wooden plaque I have hanging here on the hutch of my computer desk:
My poor, long-suffering, late husband lived with my love of cute and pretty things. I immediately decided our foyer was going to be the “I love America room,” when we bought our house in 1994, but then for a couple years we went back and forth over the dining room, which I wanted to use as a home library and then later it became our computer room. We both agreed we liked eating at the table in our large country kitchen and didn’t want or need a dining room. Speaking of going down rabbit holes, once this room turned into a sort of home library I told him with decorating, I was going to make it my Bunny Room and luckily for him I didn’t go overboard on the “bunny theme,” but there are some bunny figurines and a few bunny pictures still on the walls.
I resurrected this bunny, which had been in my Bunny Room, from the garage last year while decluttering and have it on the chest of drawers in my bedroom now. It’s a greeting card I bought at Walmart in the early 2000s and framed – it still gives me hope:
Have a nice day!
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