Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and The Drug Company That Addicted America Review

Below is my review as submitted to the editor for the December issue of the Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine

Please note, since the review, much has come out about how much management knew about the addictive nature of what they were selling and it is not to managements credit.

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and The Drug Company That Addicted America

By Beth Macy

By now, few have not heard about the opioid crisis.  Governor, Charlie Baker, has recently signed his second piece of legislation to deal with the problem.  It is not new here in Sturbridge Country as several years ago a local doctor closed his practice due to prescription irregularities.

In an episode of his cable TV show, Anthony Bourdain spotlighted the problem, mostly in the old Massachusetts town of Greenfield.  The segment was well done in discussing what seems an epidemic.

However problematic Opioid addiction may be here in the Commonwealth, we are not the epicenter.

Beth Macy may not have found “ground zero,” but the Appalachian region she writes about should not be discounted in consideration for the dubious honor.

Macy has written Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and The Drug Company That Addicted America.  She chronicles the Opioid explosion that has ravaged not an inner city but the coal country that had already been blighted by economic hard times.

Actually, she might have discovered ground zero, not in the old mill towns of the Bay State or lumber camps of rural Maine or her Appalachian home region she has obvious affection for.  The subtitle, The Drug Company That Addicted America, pinpoints a successful pharmaceutical company as the origin of the plague. 

The Sackler family had built Purdue Pharma from a tiny company when they purchased it in 1952 into a powerhouse.  The company developed OxyContin and had gotten Food and Drug Administration approval in 1995.  

The Sacklers were private and more known for their philanthropy than the drug business.  That may be different since Dopesick’s publication.

It is not as if the author avers that the men were sitting around a boardroom planning to devastate rural America by hooking people on a powerful derivative of the opium poppy.  The company “touted the safety of its new opioid-delivery system everywhere its merchants went.  “If you take the medicine like it is prescribed, the risk of addiction when taking the opioid is one-half of 1 percent.” said Dr. J. David Haddox, a pain specialist who became the company’s point man for the drug.””

The Sacklers may have believed this and even that they were doing good.  Doing good was not what Purdue Pharma did best.  Selling was far and away the most important company value, or so it would seem, as they were champions at it.

Purdue Pharma is an easy and valid target, but hardly the whole story.  The region’s coal economy and factories were, like much of the industrialized US, somewhat played out.  Ms. Macy was in the right place at the right time, or maybe in the wrong place at the right time to chronicle the disaster.

Beth Macy reported for the Roanoke Times for about a decade and a half until 2014.  Since, she has been writing essays and op-eds for The New York Times as well as other venues and radio.  Harvard awarded her a Nieman Fellowship in 2010.

Before Dopesick, she had written a couple of other books.  Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local --- and Helped Save an American Townwas published in 2014.  Her Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest; A True Story of the Jim Crow Southcame out in 2016.  Both books garnered positive reviews.

For timeliness, however, Dopesick was, and, will be an important reporter's story.  It is happening now and will continue into the future and our ability to come to terms with the abundantly available chemicals may never happen.  From that point of view, her book’s ending can only be artificial.

Macy provides us with intimate portrayals of those dealing with or succumbing to the problem.  Some of them, such as Dr. Art Van Zee came to Appalachia because he wanted to practice in an underserved community and found one.  His match is his wife, Sue Ella Koback.  Shades of Loretta Lynn, Sue was a coal miner’s daughter from over the mountain in Kentucky.

Dr. Van Zee comes off as a hero.  She describes his struggle with the corporate interest as chronicled by another author as a “David-versus-Goliath battle.”  As the book goes on, he is always fighting that good fight.  How he avoids burn-out seems a mystery. 

Where the good doctor is somewhat mild mannered, Sue Ella seems, as the author put it, “a firecracker lawyer.”  When the abovementioned Dr. J. David Haddox told a parent meeting about a somewhat exculpatory open letter they were going to run in a local newspaper, Sue Ella blew up at him.  The letter did not run.

There are many more stories in Dopesick.  Some even hopeful, and others not. Granted, once OxyContin and drugs like it get control of a victim, the brain structure will be changed and the odds are not good.

One of the hopeful ones is Spencer Mumpower.  Spencer was not on OxyContin, but was a full-fledged heroin addict who sold a drug friend the dose that would kill him.  With some tough love from mom, she refused to bail him out, he started the turnaround.

Once out before trial, he continued the process.  Eventually sentenced, he served his time and came out clean to continue the new life.  A small triumph, but a victory nonetheless.

There is little uplift in the story of Ronnie Jones.  Even so, he comes off as a sympathetic character and that is a problem.

The TV series, The Sopranos did the same thing for the eponymous Tony.  It made a vicious criminal who murdered with impunity into a lovable teddy bear.

The author did not seem to be trying to make the criminal Jones into a Nobel prize level humanitarian.  She does document his crimes in detail.  Having a long interview with the man in prison and getting to know him does allow him to be seen as a complex character and not the sum of his crimes and that is not horrible reporting.  Even so, his wrongdoing is so large that unlike the fictional Tony Soprano, it should dwarf anything of his life that we might want to like.

Is there any optimism in the struggle Beth Macy has written about?  She endorses Drug Courts stating that they “remain among the country’s models for preventing recidivism and relapse, with intensive daily monitoring of participants---and swift consequences.”  If one successfully completes the program, charges can be dropped.

That is heartening, but there is no victory lap.  Graduates of the Drug Court program are “roughly a half or to a third less likely to return to return to crime or drugs than regular probationers.”  This means half to two thirds will. 

Still, the drug court program does offer hope.  Beth tells us parents approach one judge out shopping to beg him to place their kids in the program.

Drug court coupled with MAT or medication assisted treatment seem to work better than much else according to Beth.  MAT is not allowed everywhere; 12 Step programs don’t favor it.  Some see value according to the author, ““We’ve had thirteen babies born to mothers on MAT, and not one of those babies had NAS (neonatal abstinence syndrome),” Tazewell County judge Jack Hurley told me”

Encouraging yes, but not a solution.

The story Beth follows the longest in the book is the saddest.  The drug problems may have started in the coal camps, but more upscale areas were not left untouched.  Tess Henry lived in affluent venues as a child.  The author follows the young woman with a loving mom and a seemingly smooth life.  

Tess was subject to anxiety from an early age, but that does not seem to have been the cause of her downfall.  She experimented in college, but it was a 30-day opioid prescription of codeine cough syrup and hydrocodone at an urgent-care center to treat bronchitis that seemed to do the trick.

Her drug filled odyssey is woven into the book as the author discusses other matters as well.  Beth would come back to the young lady who was spiraling down with occasional slight glimmers of hope until the last chapter where the inevitable is reported.  Tess had been hustling as a prostitute in Las Vegas and was found by a homeless man in a dumpster.

Tess’s return home ends the book, but hardly the story.  Part Three is titled “A Broken System.”  Notwithstanding the author’s favoring of Drug Court and MAT, the system is fractured and we are not yet near any solution.  

Of course, more attempts to solve it will be made and Beth Macy will be covering the story with the same skill and clarity, we should all hope.

Tanglewood-Near Heaven in Lenox

Cabin Fever in Massachusetts during the winter months can be bleak and drury.  A trip to summer in the mind's eye might ameliorate that somewhat.  Below is my Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine column from September, 2018about a wonderful place to spend a day.

Tour of Duty at Tanglewood

By Richard Morchoe

When this issue of the Sturbridge Times Town & Country Magazine is mailed out and on newsstands, your columnist will have completed his third summer as a volunteer for the season of music at Tanglewood.  

People volunteer for many reasons.  Some might say they want to “give back.”  Moi, I get much more out of my time in the Berkshires than I give.

It may seem odd that a man with no musical ability would want to travel down the Pike to the far western town of Lenox several times a summer to help people find their seats.  Just because one can’t make music doesn’t mean they cannot listen with immense pleasure while helping out.

I never had much interest in classical music until college.  A sound coming from a classmate’s dorm room more than caught my attention and I borrowed the album.

It was Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, popularly known as “The Emperor Concerto” with Leopold Stokowski conducting and Glenn Gould as piano soloist.  Such a rich sound meant it was love at first listen.

Graduation was approaching and we students were all getting ready to go to our separate lives.  Wanting to keep the album, I wrestled with my conscience and lost, Sadly, it was returned.

Though it was back in the ancient days of vinyl, the cost was not prohibitive and not long after, a version with Leonard Bernstein conducting and Rudolf Serkin as pianist began my album collection.

It would be many years before I would experience Tanglewood, and when it happened, it was immediate infatuation.  When you go there, the grounds are so beautiful that you would love it even if you did not come for the music.  That is, if you take the time to explore.

As time went on, the feeling of wanting to be more a part of it took hold.  Obviously, anything to do with the music was beyond me.  While exploring the Tanglewood website in winter, I came across a line that had the word, Volunteer.  Following the links led me to a page that told one how to apply. 

I filled out the application and waited.  Invited in, I found myself with another hopeful undergoing a pleasant interview with Erin Asbury, Manager of Volunteer services.  Notification of acceptance came and with it the requirement for training.  They were not going to unleash us on an unsuspecting public without some knowledge of the basics.

Next was the welcome back event and issuance of badges in a packet of information.  Mine came with the first-year red lanyard.  I was now official.

The protocol is to arrive an hour before the concert and have a meeting, usually with Tammy Lynch Director of Front of House Management.  Tammy will apprise us if there is anything out of the ordinary we need to know.  Then it is off to our posts as ushers.  Our job is to guide those who need help to their seats, and also be aware if anyone is having a problem

My first working concert was on a July, 2016 evening in the Koussevitzky shed. when the Boston Pops brass and percussion sections performed with world class drum corps including the Boston Crusaders. You may ask yourself why drum corps?  It turns out many orchestra brass musicians start out there.

The last piece they all played that night was the 1812 Overture, which you know if you’ve watched the pops on July 4th.  To give people an idea what they were in for, ear plugs were handed out. I don’t know if Tchaikovsky meant it to be played with this much brass, but it was loud.

In my three years of volunteering, there has been a performance that has stood out each summer.  In 2016, it was Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.  As a first-year usher, they pair one with an experienced veteran.  After, the man watching me related that someone had complained to him that the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) had played it too fast.  Hey, as a dilettante, what do I know?  We both thought it excellent.  If that was too fast, I hope the BSO never slows down.

In 2017, there would be a wonderful surprise in Ozawa Hall, a lovely space named after the former BSO Music Director. On a Wednesday in July as the evening light declined, Apollo’s Fire, a small Baroque orchestra under the direction of Jeannette Sorrell took the stage. They were there to play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, but began with a piece called La Bergamasca by the Italian Baroque composer, Marco Uccellini.  I had never heard it before, but I shall never forget it. 

The energy Ms. Sorrell and her ensemble brought to the stage was memorable.  Violinist Olivier Brault was superb as were the other soloists and performers.  If you don’t believe me, it was recorded on Youtube.  Entering “Apollo’s Fire Bergamasca” in the Youtube search window should get you there.

This Summer is the Centennial of a famous man who had a huge connection to Tanglewood.  Much was planned to celebrate the life in music of Leonard Bernstein.  Saturday, July 28, on screens at the Shed, they showed the movie West Side Story and the BSO played Bernstein’s music as the film ran.  Everyone in the audience was thrilled, including this usher.

The last Sunday in August, the BSO plays Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.  People who never listen to classical music have heard the Ode to Joy.  Though one might never tire of it, The Ninth on recording does not compare to hearing it live at Tanglewood.  Every summer, I look forward to seeing The Tanglewood Festival Chorus rise as one to sing Beethoven’s adaption of Schiller’s words. It will never grow old.

As the last notes fade away, so is summer on the wane.  Life goes on and there are other tasks and pleasures, but be assured your columnist is anticipating the posting of the schedule for the 2019 season.  That is my favorite harbinger of summer.  Symphony Hall is wonderful, but there is nothing like beautiful music on a lovely day in the Berkshires.

Red Scare Redux- Review of The Plot To Scapegoat Russia

Below is my review of Dan Kovalik's The Plot to Scapegoat Russia as submitted to the Sturbridge Times Magazine (now The Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine) for the September 2017 issue.

It's a bit late, but still timely in light of the hysteria at large these days.

Return of the Red Scare

The Plot To Scapegoat Russia

By Dan Kovalik

Skyhorse Publishing, 2017 

Paperback, 240 Pages

Dan Kovalik probably never thought that he would have writtenThe Plot To Scapegoat Russia the way he did. Not that he believed the Central Intelligence Agency was beyond any skullduggery in promoting foreign adventures.  Indeed, he has spent years observing the agency’s antics in Latin America.

Mr. Kovalik must be surprised by the fact that the only man we can pin our hopes on to stop the march to conflict, if not nuclear war is Donald Trump.  Trump, being a reactionary plutocrat is the type of person Kovalik would normally have nothing but disdain for.  

It can’t be anything he is too happy about.  Dan Kovalik is an old-school lefty.  He cut his teeth protesting U.S. involvement south of the border, traveling to Nicaragua in 1988 to oppose the Contras.  There may a social program he’s against, but that is hard to imagine.  The Trump agenda must gall him.

Except for one aspect.

Donald Trump was suggesting, in his campaign utterances, that it may not be a bad idea to actually try and get along with Russia.  He suggested as well that maybe we did not have the solution to the Syrian imbroglio.

In that one aspect at least, Donald stood head and shoulders above the competition.  

How did we get to a point in history where a progressive activist could see Donald Trump as preferable to the Democrat’s standard bearer?  It’s a long story and in no way travels a straight line.

He spends much of the book discussing his activities in Latin America.  Kovalik identifies with the Sandinistas and opposes United Fruit (i.e. Chiquita Brands International) Company and their pervasive and destructive influence in Guatemala going back to the 1954 coup.  His account takes the side of the poor and indigenous peoples.  At first, I thought his narrative dwelt a little bit too much on the past.  It does become obvious that he sees U.S. policy as continuing from the past into the present and all cut from the same cloth.

In his coverage of the Cold War between NATO and the Soviets he is also somewhat kind to the memory of the Eastern Bloc.  Not that there is not sufficient blame to go around.

When he does get to the subject of the book’s title, the author is on solid ground.  His detail of the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the role of people from the West in looting the corpse, as well as the continuing demonization of the Putin regime is worth the price of the book for the uninformed.  That would be most Americans. 

On Page 132 he begins the story of how we started on the road to the new cold war and though he does not say it, the origins of 911.  

“Another momentous and arguably disastrous, Cold War maneuver of the US was its support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, which at the time shared a 1000-mile-long border with the Soviet Union.”

Without our support for what turned out to include many fanatical Islamic extremists, including Bin Laden, the Soviet Union would probably still have had a lot on its hands, but would have had been better able to manage any changes necessary. 

Our support for the Mujahideen insured, like for us in Vietnam, that the Soviets could never defeat the enemy.  It would be a slow bleed and would fatally weaken the U.S.S.R.

Things had to change and they did. The Reagan Administration and Mikhail Gorbachev came to a modus vivendi.  On Page 111 the author quotes the LA Times,

“In early February 1990, US leaders made the Soviets an offer.  According to transcripts of meetings in Moscow on Feb. 9th then- Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation, US could make ‘iron-clad guarantees’ that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.”  Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.”

Kovalik notes the promise was quickly broken and most of the old Warsaw Pact are now NATO members.  The expansion continues with the U.S. trying to enlist former Soviet Republics.  It is hard to argue that the world is better for NATO enlargement.

Chapter 7 CLINTON MEDDLES IN RUSSIA WITH DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES gives an account of the machinations of Bill Clinton’s presidency as regards the Yeltsin regime.  He did not do us proud.  Yeltsin was essentially our stooge until he knew he could not continue.  This led to Putin whose big sin is not being our patsy. 

Chapter 11 THE US EXPANDS AS RUSSIA CONTRACTS: BROKEN PROMISES AND HUMILIATION explores the project to extend our influence at the expense of Russia.  None of it is anything we can brag about, but the worst bit is our Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland deciding the fate of the Ukrainian government after we had helped riot out an elected, if corrupt, president.  The pair were recorded doing just that and the heavy-handed discussion is rightly attacked by Kovalik.  He does not mention that the recording went “viral.” *

Mr. Kovalik eventually reaches the reality show of the recent American election.  The desire to blame the Russians for the inept campaign of Hillary Clinton is explored at length as are the commonsense pronouncements of The Donald.  

Suggesting that we not bug the Russkies and maybe overthrowing Syria was not a genius level idea appealed to a population that was tired of wars without result.  The Putin is the devil campaign left something to be desired with many including an old socialist like the author.

Post-election, Trump has not lived up to his better nature.  Kovalik notes on Page 170 that “it is never clear what Trump is truly thinking or intending.”  This is true and whether it is a good strategy or evidence of a scattered mind is a matter for debate.  Trump was quick in throwing some token bombs at a Syrian air base after a supposed chemical attack.  

Since the book has been published, the new president has not bombed North Korea.  He worked out an agreement with Putin for a ceasefire in South West Syria that is holding and cannot make the neocons in or out of his government happy, so we live in hope.

In his short book, Dan Kovalik covers a lot of ground.  The continuing demonization of a nuclear power makes his book an important resource for anyone who wants to understand what is going on.

Some of the author’s views are a bit one sided.  His favoritism of the now Soviet Ancien Regime can seem a bit overboard.  It is at odds with your reviewer’s memory of the brutal repression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, and certainly the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn.  Still, his account of the anti-Russian hysteria is well sourced with ample footnotes.  Unfortunately, with the media’s parroting of the hostile narrative, from NPR to The New York Times, do not expect him to get glowing reviews.

*The recording is still extant and one can hear it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6sxCs5k .  After listening you may be forgiven for wondering if State recruits at clown colleges.

The Most Famous American Writer You Never Heard Of—Ambrose Bierce and the Period of Honorable Strife: The Civil War and the Emergence of an American Writer

I was a boy when I watched the Twilight Zone episode, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.  Rod Serling, who created and produced the Twilight Zone, introduced the episode, “An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: in two forms, as it was dreamed... and as it was lived and died. This is the stuff of fantasy, the thread of imagination... the ingredients of the Twilight Zone.”

The story was so well done that my memory of the episode haunted me for a long time and still does.

Briefly, during the Civil War, Union soldiers ready a man for hanging.  With noose around neck, he drops, but the rope breaks and he slips into the river below and somehow makes it home to his wife.  As he is about to fall into her arms, the reverie ends.  He has not escaped and dies abruptly.

It was a well-made short and had won at Cannes, but I thought it just an episode and did not know its provenance.  I was well into adulthood when I learned more about the author, Ambrose Bierce.

His The Devil’s Dictionary is how he comes to the attention of most people, unless some high school teacher assigns one of his short stories.  The Devil’s Dictionary reveals a humorous, but deeply cynical man.  Indeed, it is the quality that most defined Bierce.  As an example, his definition of Inhumanity as “n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity” aptly makes the point.

Such people may not be born, but experiences of life lead them to look at the motives of men from a deeply skeptical viewpoint.  How did Bierce get there?

It was the American Civil War that most influenced the man.  In Ambrose Bierce and the Period of Honorable Strife: The Civil War and the Emergence of an American WriterChristopher Kiernan Coleman studies the military career that left its indelible mark on the subject.

Bierce grew up in Indiana and tried his hand at a few trades until the Civil War arrived.  For a time, he was at a military academy, but left after a year.  Kentucky Military Institute (KMI) was mostly southern in sympathy and that might have had some effect, as he was from a staunchly abolitionist family.

When the war came, Bierce had been whiling away the time, and was the second man to enlist in the company that would become part of the Ninth Indiana Regiment. That unit would gain the nickname, “The Bloody Ninth.”  The sobriquet gives an indication of what the young man was in for. 

Coleman’s account makes it seem that before the war Bierce was a bit of a devil-may-care, or liked to think he was.  His enlistment, however, was as an idealistic anti-slavery man as much as, if not more than, to save the Union.

War would change him.  He would not lose his antipathy to involuntary servitude, but idealism would not survive.  The mischievous lad might not have become a martinet, but he came to appreciate the need for discipline in the dangerous business of war.

The author speculates that, pre-war, at military school Bierce could stomach only the year he spent there.  This he contrasts with “a positive preference for spit-and-polish discipline while serving under Brigadier William Hazen” that Bierce acquired.

Hazen met Bierce and his unit after the campaign in Western Virginia.  That effort had been successful and Hazen thought his command would be a disciplined force.  As they did not meet his standards, he set about to put them in shape. This was not popular amongst the troops save for one.  Bierce said of the general that he was “the best hated man that I ever knew, and his very memory is a terror to every unworthy soul in the service.”

Bravery in battle led to a promotion to sergeant.  Distinguishing himself in that role saw Bierce raised to the rank of sergeant major.  The young man was now the senior non-commissioned officer in his regiment.  Considering that he was just shy of nineteen when he first enlisted, it could be considered a meteoric rise.  Of course, the odd Confederate bullet may have opened up the possibility of advancement as well.

Bierce was not finished moving up.  He would be commissioned a second lieutenant and eventually, a first.  Hazen found him useful and he was the General’s topographic engineer.  The making of maps, which he might have learned something of at KMI, was a valuable and necessary skill.  Battles were lost due to lack of accurate geographic knowledge.

As he was clearly a man of skill and bravery in the profession of arms.  Whence came the tendency to cynicism?

A possible clue to the change in spirit would be his wounding.  He had been detailed by General Hazen to take the orders for advancing the picket line to the units involved.  The troops would move forward watched by Confederate snipers who relished officers as targets.

Captain Eastman, leading from the front was shot, fatally as it would turn out.  Bierce went to the assistance of the doomed man.

Coleman began Chapter 13, Casualties of War, with a Bierce story that parallels what happened to Ambrose to a point

“The Butternut(i.e. a confederate soldier)takes aim; he pauses a second.  The shot is more difficult this time.  The second officer is kneeling over the first now.  No mind; he presses the trigger.  A loud report, a flash, a puff of grey smoke, then-nothing.  For a moment the Butternut thinks he misses.  But no; suddenly the second man falls to the ground.  It is a good day for hunting Yankees.” 

Obviously, the second officer would be Bierce.  Coleman does not say it happened exactly that way, but a serious head wound was inflicted.

The story of his journey to the army hospital in Nashville is harrowing.  The recuperation on leave home does not seem to have been complete.  His romance with a local girl apparently died during the furlough.

The author quotes what Ambrose’s brother Albert said of the man post-wound, “He was never the same after that.  Some of the iron of that shell seemed to stick in his brain, he became bitter and suspicious, especially of his close friends.”

Coleman’s account makes clear the words happy camper could never apply to Bierce.  

Was the injury the origin of the literary career of the man who would write so cynically?  If so, his fans owe some gratitude to the shot that wounded him. Bierce’s worldview meant he was not going to write Hallmark card level cheerfulness.

He would continue in the army and after the war, would work with General Hazen in government service and pursue a writer’s career.  His end is mysterious as he disappeared presumably while traveling to another civil war, this time in Mexico.  Considering his life and writings, it was fitting he went as a man of mystery.  He might have wanted it that way.

Full disclosure: Christopher Kiernan Coleman was my undergraduate classmate.  He was and is what I was not, a scholar.  Ambrose Bierce and the Period of Honorable Strifeis well-ordered and Chris’ prose is a pleasure to read.

Precognition: Deja Vu All Over Again

Below is my column for The Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine for the October issue as submitted to the editor.  Time moves on and even this is a little dated though we are still doing some non-genius level stuff in Syria.

Precognition; Déjà vu all over again

By Richard Morchoe

In 2002 Steven Spielberg made the movie Minority Report based on a Philip K. Dick short story of similar name.  It was a popular film and Dick’s idea is disturbing.   It is that crimes that will be committed in the future can be discerned beforehand.  

According to the story, three mutant idiot-savants, or precogs foresee all serious infractions and arrests can be made in advance, thus sparing society any harm.

Philip K. Dick was a science fiction author more popular in death than in life.  Of course, his prediction from The Minority Report has not come to pass.  We as of yet do not have even one “precog.”

Or do we?

This is not to say necessarily that National Security Advisor John Bolton is an idiot-savant, but he has been threatening to strike Syria in response to something that has not happened.

The U.S. Air Force has bombed Syrian military facilities to teach them a lesson for chemical attacks for which there was spurious evidence but no concrete proof.  Now, Bolton figures the regime might try to do something we don’t know they will or will not do, and we shall bomb for that.  Confused?  You should be.

Bolton has said we are going to take action if Assad uses chemical weapons to bomb the Idlib region, the last refuge of mostly hardcore jihadists.

A few years ago, Assad looked like he could be toppled.  Then he received assistance from the Russians and Iranians and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.   Better than that, he reformulated his army into an effective force that would be difficult to defeat.

On the verge of victory, the last thing he would need to do is use chemical weapons.  They are not effective in battle and would be an excuse for US intervention.  So, what is going on?

Bashar Assad has just about won his war and will reunite the Syrian nation.  To the United States, that is terrible because he is the worst head of state to have ever lived, and why not?  He has to be the worst because we got rid of the last two contenders for that title, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi.  Never mind that we made those two locales places of despair, we would do better in Syria because we say so.

When we kicked over Hussein in Iraq, the Shia, who had been ruled by him were now the majority in government.  At that point, the hot shots at State realized that we had empowered the co-religionists of Iran.  The Iranian Shia religious leaders were the other meanest people who ever lived.  What to do now?

In a prodigious feat of overthinking, we kind of changed sides.  Way back in 2007 Seymour Hersh, whose memoir Reporter is reviewed in this issue, published an article in the New Yorker with the title “The Redirection.”  Nothing ominous there, but the sub-headline, “Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” should have set alarm bells going off amongst the erudite audience of that highbrow journal.

Up on Long Hill, we were a bit slower on the uptake.  It was not until the September, 2013 issue that we noticed there had been a change.  Indeed, the mortal enemy who had slain our fellow citizens in two towers was now tacitly our ally.

We noted the new circumstances with the words from George Orwell’s 1984:

“At just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia.  Oceania was at war with Eastasia.  Eurasia was an ally.

There was of course no admission that any change had taken place.  Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy.”

Our recent history is even more ominous as there was not a statement of who we are in alliance with.  There was the mention of the “Free Syrian Army" a tiny, secularist band of heroes that we would train and arm.  Post-instruction, their weapons would mysteriously appear in the hands of hard-core Jihadis.  That’s okay as long as they were fighting the new bogeyman, Assad.

Does it make any sense?

Less and less to the average American.  Back in January, a group called the Committee for a Responsible Foreign Policy ran a poll and the results showed the public was “Overwhelmingly Opposed to Endless US Military Interventions.”  There is little groundswell for war, even though the mass media is pushing it.  One could be forgiven for thinking that “Chemical Weapons” is Syrian for “Weapons of Mass Destruction” with the same level of evidentiary proof.

The American attitude should not be surprising.  The last three presidents have been “peace” candidates until elected.  The younger Bush campaigned calling for a modest foreign policy.  Obama lampooned Iraq as a “dumb” war.  Trump called for getting along with Russia and not making a worse mess in Syria.

The late John McCain never saw a war he didn’t like and ran in that vein.  Hilary was far more a war candidate than the Donald.  They both lost.

The people have an idea what they want and the winners agree but only until the votes are counted.

If there is a war party, it is not popular with the citizenry.  To get them on board, they have to be propagandized, which is why the mainstream press is always telling us that Assad is diabolical.

In the abovementioned Hersh memoir, the author had meetings with the Syrian leader.  Hersh never made him out to be Mother Teresa, but reported on him as a rational interlocutor.  So why the desire for the man’s blood?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson thinks he knows.  Wilkerson was Colin Powell’s chief of staff at the time of the Yellow Cake disaster and that situation led to disillusionment.  Wilkerson, now a professor at William & Mary, warned in an interview on Tuesday, September 11 that “the neoconservative agenda” for an escalated United States war on Syria followed by war on Iran has had a “resurrection” in President Donald Trump’s administration.”

From administration rhetoric, speculation that that is the plan is not unreasonable.   Backing al Nusra, an al Qaeda front In Idlib is only the excuse to defeat Iran in Syria.  Embedded in that ointment is a fly.  That fly is Russia.  Bolton seems to think baiting the Russkies is without cost.

Who knows, it may be.  Turkey shot down a Russian Plane and US forces killed Russian mercenaries in Syria at Deir al-Zour.  The night before this was written, a Russian plane with troops aboard was shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft fire due to an incursion in Syrian air space by Israeli planes.

Russia has to get to it or fold and admit they are not a world power.  If they decide enough is enough and stop being long suffering, the reductio ad absurdum will be nuclear war, and we shall get there.

So far, despite media propaganda, Putin has been the adult in the room.  On Long Hill, we hope he can pull it off again.

Here’s hoping this is not the last issue of The Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine.