Welcome

WHEN was America Ever Great?

There surely are visitors to this site who damn me as “unpatriotic” for even asking a question so “easily” answered by them. Truly, I understand their outrage and anger and condemnation. But let me tell all visitors something about me which drives what you find here.

Farm Boy with Many Questions and TRUTH. Although I did not know what “intellectually gifted” was for many years, I was born with a highly analytical brain. As an elementary child, my good and loving mother took me every week to our local Carnegie Library in Shelbyville, Kentucky, with its motto of “Let There Be Light.” I would browse the stacks and leave with a stack piled up on my chest to my chin, to read that week. My father taught me how to work, equally important. He would shout up the stairs at 4:30 a.m., “John, time to get up.” I would go out into the darkness to “wake up the girls” and bring them into the barn. As we heard the sound of the milkers milking, I constantly was peppering him with all kinds of questions about the world. It would be years later that I would realize my father had given me another gift. He treated all my questions with respect, and never “talked down” to me. He might have done what some parents do, and told me to shut up. To be respected in asking questions, however immature, however foolish, is something that encouraged me to ask more questions. Yet there was another great gift I received on the farm.

Farm Laborer in Fields with Mature Black Men. Now my father was no racist, but our white family socialized only with whites. I never heard the word, nigger, growing up. My first exposure with Blacks came as a strong teen, when I hired out to work for other white farm owners in tobacco and hay. Yet I remember when I went to work in a farm across the road. I was a subordinate to a fine mature Black farm manager, Herbert Harris, and took orders from him. Herbert was a professional. Herbert was a distinguished gentleman. Herbert never ever took advantage of bossing a white boy, but treated me with respect, and taught me what I needed to know. When he saw I was there to work, and expected no favors, and did whatever I was told, Herbert liked me. And he called me “Johnnie.” I must tell you, I always had to work at top speed to keep up with Herbert. I always saw him do precisely everything he had to do. No white man could have improved on any of his decisions or work. Herbert was, within the limits of our work relationship, my friend.

We sat in the shade of hay and tobacco wagons at noon–for one strict hour, then back to work. We talked about everything. We were equals except I was a younger boy who could trust anything he told me to do. Looking back, I realize I missed a precious opportunity not to have visited Herbert and his wife “just on a social call.” But I was a teen heavily invested in trumpet playing, and dating, and hardly had time for my own kin (ashamed as I am to admit it). Years later when I studied with some famous scholars at the University of Chicago–some who were arrogant–I remembered Herbert (and another Black farm manager, Julius White). Herbert was my supervisor, and my friend. Herbert had character, integrity, honesty and loyalty to his wife and family. But at the University of Chicago, I knew more than one “scholar” who received sexual favors from PhD students who needed no coaxing if it meant they got an “easier ride” to early graduation. Working in the fields with better men I never forgot, nor will I forget them until the day I die.

A Truthful Boy, a Truth-Seeker Then and Now. When I was growing up, I never remember hearing much about the word, “fact” or “facts.” I knew what they were, but facts never tended to come up in conversations, as such. We read school book “histories” about the Pilgrims, Indians, Daniel Boone, and many people, and were not taught to question whether they were “true” or not. I remember how things were, all the way through school, from K-12. No one every told us it was normal to question everything told to us as “facts and truth.” If I had heard that, I would have thought the speaker was a “radical” in the worst sense. Furthermore, all of us were not “stupid.” We could see–on our local level, in families, in the workplace, and in school–that people “who questioned too much” were called something none of us wanted for a label: troublemakers.

Where I lived was (and still is) called a “Christian community.” Sociologically we would call it a “Southern Bible Belt Christian Subculture.” Many people “attended church” and nearly everyone had a “church membership” somewhere, even if they had not darkened a church door in decades. We were raised to believe that the “people in charge were Christian people.” And Christian people told the truth and never would lie to us. But they never EVER invited anyone to question what they were saying. When Walter Cronkite ended each night’s news with “And THAT’s the way it is,” we believed him. If anyone had told me, or my family, that Walter was a mouthpiece for the power elites, and a regular member of the immoral parties at Bohemian Grove in San Francisco. Presidents of America, corporations, banks, powerful people in media were and are members of that group that paints itself in such happy colors of “men having fun.”

From a Normal Citizen to a PhD HIstorian. How did I learn about such things? How did I move from being an intelligent rural person to the tough-minded PhD historian I am, who has invested decades in the study of violence, first of all “Christian” violence, and then “religious” violence, and then finally, violence in all its forms, which includes the history of propaganda (which Walter Kronkite was paid to promote)?

The answer comes from a religious experience. My family was not very religious, not very “Christian,” although my mother surely loved God and had more general virtue than my father. In my case, this highly rationalistic man had an unexpected religious experience which convinced me that there was really a Deity also interested in my little life. So that experience convinced me that I had to begin a search for, in my words then, “the will of God,” wherever that led, and to whatever conclusion.

Jesus said something I liked the first time I read it: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” My parents had taught me to tell the truth, even if it got me in trouble. So the TRUTH always represented to me as the friend of honest people. Jesus said the TRUTH was a good thing and, even more, something would happen to John. I would be set free. Little did I realize that being a Truth-Seeker would lead to a very strange phenomenon throughout my life.

A smaller and smaller circle of friends, who like myself, as we learned more and more in certain things, also taught us how little we knew overall, and the more we learned, and the more ignorant we realized we were, the more difficult it was to talk to people who thought they “knew it all.”

History is written by the “winners.”

I am ashamed to say that Mr. PhD Myself never heard the name of Howard Zinn until years after I earned the PhD in my area at the University of Chicago. But it really was no surprise after all. Howard himself said in one of his interviews that, when his book was published, not one academic journal published a critical review of it. WHY? Because Howard wrote the history from the point of views of people who had suffered in American history. Howard loved all people. He did not write his book to condemn anyone, but to lift up the stories of people like you and me.

Howard was born a poor Jew in New York City. But he was a real patriot. During World War 2 he worked in military shipyards making battleships. He had an exemption from combat and endangering his life. Yet he wanted to fight for America. He told his supervisor he was giving up safety to risk his life for America. He became a bombardier for the U.S. Air Force. He had no questions about the military until the war was all but over and his plane bombed German soldiers sitting down waiting for the official declaration of Peace. From that point of knowing he had murdered men already noncombatants, he began to question the American government. That put him on a new path as a Historian of Only the Truth.

Howard Zinn later was arrested for speaking out against the lies of the U.S. government about Vietnam. He became friends with a man who risked prison to published secret documents holding the TRUTH of what really had been happening for years: Daniel Ellsberg. Howard Zinn is hated by all Republicans, because all Howard’s work told the TRUTH. Not to harm America but, as Jesus said, to make America free by and with the truth.

Present History in America
Still Being Controlled by “Winners” in a Class of BILLIONAIRES

The Epstein Files never will be revealed without black-marker cover-overs. No Trump supporter believes anything negative about someone they love more than Jesus Christ, as is the case with many Evangelical Christians. I wonder what they think Jesus himself will say to them, when they face him on the Day of Judgment, without Trump within arm’s reach (or eternal reach).

Nevertheless, whether you have any religious commitment or not, perhaps you would like to play historian, or play detective. A historian must evaluate facts–which are bits of information–to determine their truthfulness. Then the historian must contextualize them, to compare then, to sequence them, to be fair to the facts themselves. Here is an approach for you to play with.

There are floating around the Internet some names and data alleging to be lawsuits and settlements out of court with children the President allegedly offended in a criminal manner. I do not know if this data is correct or not, but I keep seeing these alleged names, ages, offenses, locations, and alleged settlements.

Michael Parker, age 10 (alleged oral rape at Mar-a-Lago in 1992, payout $3M); Charles Bacon, age 11 (alleged oral and anal intercourse at Trump Tower in 1994, payout $3M); Kelly Feuer, age 12 (alleged forced intercourse at Trump Tower in 1989, payout $1M); Maria Olivera, age 12 (alleged forced intercourse at Mar-a-Lago in 1993, payout $16M); Rebecca Conway, age 13 (alleged forced intercourse and oral sex at Trump Vineyard Estates in 2012, payout $5M). Perhaps you can find more information to substantiate these or not.

If these alleged crimes happened, suits were filed, suits were settled outside of court, and the settlements were sealed. “Sealing” means the parties agreed to “settle” and not share the details of the charges. So no one ought to know the facts except the parties. Perhaps some Visitor to this site has access to facts, which would help ALL interested persons in the Nation and World. I do not have time for this, but perhaps some Visitor can learn if these allegations are true, and Trump settled to keep them quiet. But no one wants to be accused falsely, so play historian or detective!

Today when I hear people interested in the unfolding story of the Epstein Files, I only add two words: NO CONSEQUENCES. If a poor person even molests an underage child, they will do hard time. If a poor person rapes a child and goes to prison, other inmates likely will murder them for harming innocent little people. If the poor person also happens to be Black, or Brown, the courts will “throw the book” at that criminal, and all Hell will break loose when he (or she) goes to prison. You want to say, Make America Great Again! by supporting this President and his entire circle of wealthy friends, even though they are implicated in the most expansive network of child-crimes in the entire history of the West? Maybe, maybe, America might have some kind of small hope to become great, if all these wealthy people were charged, convicted, and then executed as a group all at once, as a warning that “things are forever going to be different from now on.” THE INNOCENT WILL BE PROTECTED, AND THE GUILTY WILL BE PUNISHED.

Make America WHAT? STARTING WHEN?
American Presidents and Executive Criminality 

Now I am neither Democrat nor Republican now. I was raised Democrat. I voted Republican from Ronald Reagan up to George W. Bush, the first time, for “Christian reasons” and later learned I had been duped. But I knew nothing really about American history. My PhD centered on the global History of Christianity and, in particular, the History of Christian Violence. I came to U.S. History late, in preparation to teach undergraduates a survey course. WOW! When I saw all the corrupt elections, right from the beginning, then what Political Parties had done to say in power, I became completely jaded and disgusted with ALL American Political Party corruption, lying to the American People, Bribery, Vote-Rigging, etc. Yet I have amassed considerable American history sources that neither Major Political Party wants public.

Below I have provided for every Visitor to this site a Historical Survey of Criminal Convictions only in the Executive Branch of Presidents from Kennedy to Trump’s first term. There are many criminal convictions in the Legislative and Judicial Branches, omitted here. WHY have I provided this?

The “Make America Great Again” worshipers of Trump are, and have to be, historically ignorant and moved only by Party Propaganda. In the following synopses of Convictions within the INNER CIRCLE of U.S. Presidents, Visitors to this site can see clearly the MAGA Movement is a Manipulative Myth, and the Republican Party Presidents have done FAR WORSE than any Democrat President.

This is NOT my “endorsement” of the Democrat Party, nor my “denunciation” of the Republican Party. These are historical FACTS that show Trump and his group are LYING to the American People, because THEIR PARTY has done more Criminal deeds and been convicted for them than their rival Party. The data was derived from the online “List of Political Scandals in the United States.”

• President Kennedy, a Democrat, was murdered by a joint conspiracy by CIA and Pentagon leaders, using Mafia shooters, since he had warned openly he was going to bring down the CIA for attempting to draw him into a war with Russia, and since he publicly had spoken in a speech that there were secret forces seeking to undermine Democracy, and since he privately was having favorable talks with Nikita Khruschev on reducing the Cold War so both Nations could spent their money on their respective People, not a war machine, and all this was intolerable warranting his murder.
• President Johnson, a Democrat, knew in advance he was soon to be in office, prior to the assassination, and he was glad of it, for he hated the Kennedys. Changing subject, Johnson wanted to expand the Vietnam War and by prior planning, the military used the false “Gulf of Tonkin incident” in 1964 to escalate the Vietnam War, which would slay 3.1 Million Vietnamese and 58,281 dead and 303,644 wounded Americans, for vast profits paid out to the military contractors.
• President Nixon, a Republican, illegally sought to control his reelection through the Watergate burglars and other means, which was an unconstitutional abuse of power, yet he never was convicted, imprisoned, fined, and humiliated, or maybe even executed, as all other Americans would have been. However, Nixon’s list of persons criminally convicted in his administration shows his “quality” for later compassion (in alphabetical order): Spiro Agnew, Dwight Chapin, Charles Colson, Bradford Cook, John Dean III, Harry S. Dent, John Erhlichman, Jack Gleason, HR Haldeman, Richard Helms, Herbert Kalmbach, Richard Kleindienst, Egil Krogh, Frederick LaRue, Gordon Liddy, Jeb Magruder, John N. Mitchell, Herbert Porter, Donald Segretti, Maurice Stans, Wendell Wyatt
• President Ford, a Republican, and the underling of Nixon, illegally issued a Presidential Pardon to his former boss who never had been criminally charged, arrested, prosecuted, sentenced, nor ever was being officially punished for his crimes. Ford used the excuse in this illegal act that Nixon “had suffered enough.” The Republicans, and Democrats who cooperated quietly, were relieved that all that “illegal compassion” was swallowed down by Americans who felt–based on facts not emotions–that a top federal criminal was NOT being treated as someone without any wealth or power (or foreknowledge). The rain-shower of “compassion and healing” by Republican-owned news media and pro-Republican clergy helped all skeptical Americans realize they might as well tone it down and move on, as Nixon exited in his “suffering picture frame.”
• President Carter, a Democrat, admitted for Playboy he had “lusted in his heart” and was ridiculed by the Nation, then when Republican-owned Banks and Oil companies destroyed the economy to create unrest for another Republican President, Carter made another grave error by a televised speech telling the TRUTH about American consumerism, selfishness, and need to take care of each other and the environment, mocked as weak and ineffective for this most unusual truth-telling. 
• President Reagan, a Republican tied deeply to Wealth and Power in California, but portrayed as a great Patriot and Elder “Statesman”–had an administration loaded with criminal convictions of the following (in alphabetical order): Elliott Abrams, Mario Biaggi, Silvio DeBartolomeis, Carl Channel, Duane Clarridge, Thomas G. Clines, Victor Cohen, Deborah G. Dean, Michael Deaver, Thomas Demery, Joseph Fernandez, Alan Fiers, James E. Gaines, Robert Garcia, Claire George, Albert Hakim, Rita Lavelle, Robert McFarlane, Richard R. Miller, Lyn Nofziger, Oliver North, Melvin Paisley, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Joseph A. Strauss, Richard Thornburgh, James Watt, Caspar Weinberger, Phillip Winn
• President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, lied to the American People during his election campaign saying he “knew nothing” about the Iran-Contra Affair when VP with Reagan, but admitted in his personal diary at the time “I’m one of the few people that know fully all the details,” and lied consistently to federal investigators during the investigation, and aside from the one conviction of Catalina Villalpando, Bush was the “PARDON PRESIDENT” to the following Republicans convicted during his Republican predecessor, Ronald Reagan (alphabetical): Elliott Abrams, Duane Clarridge, Alan Fiers, Claire George, Robert McFarlane, Caspar Weinberger
• President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice lying under oath (regarding sex with Lewinsky), had two criminal convictions in his administration (alphabetical): Ronald Blackley and Darleen Druyan
• President George W. Bush, a Republican, was infamous for [1] MANUFACTURING FALSE INFORMATION publicly stated to the American People about “Yellowcake” as false “reason for war against Iraq,” leading to the Second Iraq War and 4600 U.S. dead and 210,000 Iraqi dead, [both “managed” numbers]; [2] MINIMIZING PUBLIC INFORMATION publicly known about “Abu Grahib Torture” as “minimal”;  [3] secretly ordering a National Security Agency “warrant-less surveillance” program on ALL U.S. citizens, ruled later illegal by a U.S. judge; [4] the “FIRING PRESIDENT” of eleven U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors allegedly for “prosecuting Republicans not Democrats”; [5] being the “MISSING EMAILS PRESIDENT” whose administration “lost” millions of emails to and from 58 persons under investigation; and he had many “resignations prior to charges” (including Karl Rove) and several criminal convictions in his administration (alphabetical): Jack Abramoff, Claude Allen, Scott Bloch, Elliott Broidy, Jared Carpenter, Robert Coughlin, Lester Crawford, Darleen Druyun, Italia Federici, Kyle Foggo, J. Steven Griles, Bernard Kerik, John Korsmo, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Jerry Pierce-Santos, David Safavian, Felipe Sixto, Courtney Stadd, Roger Stillwell, Mark Zachares. A NECESSARY ADDENDUM: An added note on the G.W. Bush administration, we know from testimony from Paul O’Neill, that ten days after Bush was inaugurated on January 30, 2001, at the first National Security Council meeting, the FIRST TOPIC was not general concerns and overview, but “Mideast Policy.” Bush–not the brains of the operation–informed the group they were going to “…tilt it back toward Israel….” Then Rice, Tenet, Cheney and others already were charged up with “advance concerns” including “photos.” See Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George H. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill (Simon and Schuster: NY, 2004), pp. 70-82. The second NSC meeting was February 1, and the agenda was printed in that book. There are MANY discussions on preparations for the Invasion of Iraq before September 11, 2001, strangely fully developed. My own investigations began a few days after 9-11, when–working for the Commonwealth of Kentucky as an enforcement officer of U.S. Civil Rights statutes—I immediately began to research Osama bin Laden’s published writings (after his name was mentioned), and immediately the Bush Administration was scapegoating him. His own writings showed he was upset with the West and the U.S. for exploiting ALL Muslim people around the world. Yet he surely was NOT a “fanatic madman.” On 9-11 itself, I observed other problems with the video footage, which shows explosions going off, floor by floor. I encourage readers to find a different scientific approach. Find and read Dr. Judy Wood (B.S., M.S., Ph.D), Where Did the Towers Go? Evidence of Directed Free-Energy Technology on 9/11 (The New Investigation, 2005; 2010 reprint), which is a brilliant and brave Patriotic Scientist’s irrefutable questions, which all courts have refused to consider.
• President Barack Obama, a Democrat, like G.W. Bush before learned that “resignation before charges” was a preferred option, and during his two terms, only had one person with a criminal conviction, William Mendoza, who was given a 90 day suspended sentence
• President Donald Trump, a Republican [FIRST administration] Two Impeachments, impeached FIRST on two counts [1] “Obstruction of Congress” and [2] “Abuse of Power”; impeached SECOND on “Incitement to Insurrection”; CHARGED and found GUILTY of “Sexual Assault” (against E. Jean Carroll), and she was awarded $5 Million in damages; CHARGED and found GUILTY of “Defamation” (against E. Jean Carroll), and she was awarded $83.3 Million in damages; CHARGED and found GUILTY of 34 counts of “Falsifying Business Records” (hiding payments to porn player Stormy Daniels); CHARGED and found GUILTY (among others) on “False Statements of Net Worth” and fined $355 Million and BANNED for 3 years from “serving as an officer or director of a NY company”; and Trump’s Cabinet and Associates had many “resignations before charges” and many “firings before charges” and the following convictions (alphabetical): Steve Bannon, Elliott Broidy, Kenneth Chesebro, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Rudy Guiliani, Albert Kelly, Paul Manafort, Peter Navarro, George Papadopoulos, Sidney Powell, Allen Weisellberg
• President Joe Biden, a Democrat, had a few resignations, and one criminal conviction in his executive circle: Alejandro Mayorkas

Now to all those millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump, the Second Time, with his first record noted above, and also with the records of ALL REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS’ Executive Convictions, WHY would any sane American swallow down the fecal matter either of Trump or his Republican Party?

I have not voted in any Presidential Election since Barack Obama, the FIRST time, when he not only broke ALL his promises but then began to BOMB more than Bush. Did I do what many said, “throw away my vote”? No, because American soldiers died to give me the freedom not to lower my morality by voting for lying traitors.

Final Word Before Turning You Loose!

The pages sitting underneath this tab, and then, the pages that follow in this website, give you information and ammunition to decide “Who am I and WHAT am I willing to do at this time in history?“

This website is my gift to you to help you BEGIN to answer that question! But I want you to remember that you are reading the work and research of a dairyman’s son who knew nothing at one time.

It was a real living God who set me on the path to learning truth, because I wanted the Truth. Along the way, the TRUTH has led me to reject and abandon all kinds of FALSE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. But I found when I was in Christian ministry that religious people do not want truth but only reassurance that what they have been taught is true. They are unwilling, in general with few exceptions, to LEAVE the “easy path of salvation” or the “familiar path of religion” to walk every day a fresh path of TRUTH holding God’s hand wherever the TRUTH leads.

One truth I firmly believe that most religious people do not, who “have their religion.”

I believe that God is God, and God knows every heart, every intention, every false thought. And the God in whom I believe KNOWS that many atheists have good reasons for being atheists. Whatever those reasons are. And the God in whim I believe prefers a moral atheist who will not lie, cheat, steal, judge, or live a false life over ANY religious person who does lie, cheat, steal, judge, live falsely, etc.

The world needs more Love. The world needs more Ethical Values. The world needs more Ethical Thinking and Planning. The world needs more Moral Speech that builds up, not tears down. The world needs more Moral Action that demonstrates behaviors making others want to follow our leadership.  The world needs ME. The world needs YOU.

There are people talking about more wars, even uses of nuclear weapons. Join with me in becoming more peaceful professionals, able to lead others into more peaceful relationships, and more productive careers. Learn how to have Peace within, and to Share that with everyone you meet, at Home, at Work, at Play! “Blessed are the peacemakers….” (Matthew 5:9).

Encouraging You,

jwillis@leadershipethicsonline.com