American Insanity (eBook)

Chapter 2

Political Conversion

I grew up in a staunch Catholic Democrat family. My parents, as well as my grandparents, who legally migrated to the United States from Canada, all strongly believed in the Democratic Party as the party of the working people. One of my uncles who served honorably in the Korean War was a Democratic Party official at the state level in North Dakota and strongly advocated for the party’s platform and values. My family were firm believers that elected Democratic officials and the Democratic Party would always do the right thing to preserve our Judeo-Christian values, defend our constitutional republic, and honor their oath to serve and protect the people of this great nation. They were all members of the John F. Kennedy-era Democratic Party and not the Democratic Party that it has evolved into over the past six decades. Sadly, many members of my family have failed to recognize the evolution of their Democratic Party into a profoundly Marxist-Communist-leaning Democratic Party. Should they ever come to realize that the current Democratic Party no longer supports their Christian core values and beliefs they would never maintain their membership in the Democratic Party. They were right in their belief in, and support of the Democratic Party until Lyndon B. Johnson became President of the United Sates. Although America’s shift to the left began with the 1932 Roosevelt administration, with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the inauguration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States was placed on an accelerated path to self-destruction as a result of a Marxist-Communist ideology held by Johnson and his administration. Many Republicans who ascribed to Marxism followed Johnson’s lead and voted with the Democrats on Johnson’s Marxist-Communist legislative proposals, referred to as the “Great New Deal.”

Along with President Johnson’s passage of the “Great New Deal,” President Johnson also injected American military forces into a civil war between a corrupt, inept, democratically elected South Vietnam government and the South Vietnam Communist (VC) guerrilla forces, who were heavily supported by the North Vietnam Communist government of Ho Chi Minh. This support to the South Vietnam guerrillas by North Vietnam was the justification used by the Johnson Administration to send American destroyers into the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 to conduct reconnaissance and to intercept North Vietnamese communications in support of the South Vietnamese civil war efforts.

On August 2, 1964, the United States destroyer USS Maddox was off the coast of North Vietnam in support of a South Vietnam military covert operation in the coastal region of North Vietnam. In response to this operation off their coast, three North Vietnam People’s Navy torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox. There were no United States casualties, and the USS Maddox was unscathed except for a single bullet hole from a Vietnamese machine gun round. President Johnson claimed that this attack on a United States destroyer was unprovoked, even though the destroyer was in that area in direct support of a South Vietnam military operation. President Johnson used this incident to persuade Congress on August 5, 1964, to allow him to greatly escalate the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War with the injection of hundreds of thousands of American military personnel.

President Lyndon Johnson and his administration led the American people to believe that not fighting in South Vietnam with American military forces against Ho Chi Minh’s communist Viet Minh forces would result in a domino effect, leading to the spreading of communism throughout southeast Asia. The domino theory was a Cold War policy that suggested a communist government in one nation would quickly lead to a communist takeover of neighboring countries, each falling like a row of dominos. In Southeast Asia, the United States government used this discredited domino theory to justify our involvement in Vietnam. In fact, America’s failure to prevent a communist victory in Vietnam had much less of an impact than had been assumed by proponents of the domino theory. With the exception of Laos and Cambodia, communism has failed to spread throughout Southeast Asia. The Johnson Administration made a seriously wrong calculation that led to one out of every ten Americans who served in Vietnam becoming a casualty. Out of 2.7 million men and women who served in Vietnam, 58,148 were killed in action (KIA), never to return home to their loved ones, and well over 304,000 were wounded, many so severely that a life without pain, suffering, and nightmares would become a daily mental, emotional, and physical struggle. I was one of those 2.7 million American men who served in Vietnam. For years following my return home and my following the daily news regarding our increasing losses with no end in sight and no reasonable justification for those losses, I began to lose any trust in our Congressional members, Presidents, and their administrations. Their lies, which led to the injection of our country into the concerns of a foreign country’s civil war, has led to a life of suffering from severe anxiety, panic attacks, depression, drug dependency, nightmares, flashbacks, aggression, and high suicide rates for veterans who fought in that and subsequent wars. These problems, later to be diagnosed as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), have led too many combat veterans failing in their relationships with their spouses, families, friends, and tragically, many to commit suicide.

I am a personal testament to the results of our country’s unjustified injection into the civil war of another country. Since my return from Vietnam, my life has been one of many difficult periods, suffering from extreme anxiety, depression, and the failure of two marriages, all as a direct result of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The shadow of combat in Vietnam is a never-ending dominant force within my mind. Forces that have led me to question and challenge government authority and author articles regarding our elected officials and the Washington swamps’ failure to follow the laws and Constitution of our country. This Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder cross that I bear has been the motivation for my activism in politics and to author political articles addressing the egregious acts being perpetuated against the American people by the politicians we have elected to represent us and our Christian values. I author these articles, and now this book, in the hope that I may, in some small way, contribute to informing our citizens of what is truly occurring in the United States. Information which our corrupt Marxist-Communist corporate news media outlets and social medias refuse to report and are suppressing our constitutional right to free speech. I am a political activist attempting to help save our constitutional republic from the increasingly determined attacks on our constitutional republic by Marxist-Communist elements of our federal government and citizenry.

After eighteen years of a childhood growing up in an environment much akin to that of “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” my happy life abruptly ended with my landing on the beaches of Vietnam on June 6th of 1965, at the age of nineteen. This landing occurred after two fantastic years at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base in California, during which time I had made many good friends. Prior to our assault on the beaches of Vietnam, we were gathered on the decks of the ship transporting us to this war-torn world and told that we were going to Vietnam to stop the spread of communism throughout Asia and eventually from coming to America. Unlike children who are going through our current public school system, we were taught about the evils of Communism and the destructive nature of such a governing system. As one would expect of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who feel invincible, we were ready and willing to confront and stop this evil.

I, those who landed with me, and those who were to follow had no idea what the cost would be for a failed ending to America’s involvement in that civil war. I spent twelve traumatic months in Vietnam serving with the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, whose sole mission was to search for and destroy the enemy, which consisted of both South Vietnam Communist guerrillas (VC) and North Vietnam Regular Army units (NVRA). To that end, my battalion fought for months at a very heavy cost of Marine lives, suffering our first Killed-In-Action (KIA) the very next day following our arrival in South Vietnam.

We were able to stop the spread of communism in Europe and Asia but failed miserably in Vietnam. Communist Vietnam defeated the greatest armed force in the world. How could that possibly happen? It happened because a Marxist-Communist Democratic President refused to allow the military to manage the war and do what was necessary to win. Johnson was a Marxist-Communist Democratic President who chose to micromanage the war personally. President Johnson’s belief in his superior knowledge of military strategy and tactics failed miserably. Perhaps he should have allowed his military generals to manage the war and not allowed hippie protesters, Marxist-Communist news medias, and his senior war advisor, news anchor Walter Cronkite, to dictate his strategic decisions. Then, America would have won that war in a relatively brief period of time, with a tenth of the casualties sustained, and maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t be fighting communism here in America today.

The 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, with which I proudly served in Vietnam:

• Endured the Longest Sustained Period of Combat and suffered the...