Everett Jenkins Birthday Blog

  I completed viewing "The U. S. and the Holocaust" last night.  It was as advertised.  Very compelling television, but I suspect it was not watched by many.  Very compelling history, but I suspect that the lessons were never learned.  Nevertheless, we continue to do the work of Sisyphus and as such I provide the following tidbits that may highlight what was recently seen. First, whenever I see clips of Jesse Owens running at the 1936 Olympics and hear about how the racist Hitler was angered by the demonstration of the superior athletic prowess of a black man, I am inclined to not ascribe the hate to all Germans, but rather to remember the story of Luz Long, the German long jumper who Jesse Owens beat in competition, but who befriended Jesse after the competition and warmly congratulated him in front of the assembled German people.  Please read for yourself about the story of love and brotherhood that was also a product of the 1936 Olympic Games. https://en...

On my Amherst College calendar, I have penciled in "The U. S. and the Holocaust" as the most important television program to watch for the month of September 2022.  "The U. S. and the Holocaust" is the latest offering from Ken Burns' and, according to Mr. Burns, it is his most important work to this date.  https://www.pbs.org/show/us-and-holocaust/ The importance of this particular offering stems from the ties between what led to the Holocaust and domestic events of today.  A recent Los Angeles Times review highlights the concerns. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-09-16/us-and-the-holocaust-ken-burns-pbs-review Having watched the first two hours, I suspect that this Ken Burns offering will not receive a warm reception.  After all, the subject matter is especially grim and, perhaps most importantly, American complicity in the Holocaust casts a light on the dark history of this country that many would like to ignore. One of the more compell...

Today is 9/11 Remembrance Day.  I begin my remembrance by recalling my comments as set forth below. After the travesty surrounding the American Withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, I felt confident that a reckoning would occur regarding the disturbing revelations set forth in  The Afghanistan Papers.   I was wrong. Once I received the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report entitled "What We Need To Learn: Lessons From Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction" and after I read the almost comical depictions of corruption and incompetence that plagued our effort at nation building in Afghanistan, I thought surely there would be a public reckoning and flogging of those involved. I was wrong. Given all this evidence of corruption and incompetence in Afghanistan, I expected the Global Terrorism Index to record a banner year for terrorism. https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/GTI-2022-web-09062022.pdf I was wrong agai...

I was taken aback last week by the passage of Mikhail Gorbachev. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/world/europe/mikhail-gorbachev-dead.html  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev  I never met the man, but while watching BBC America and DW News (the German news program), I saw a familiar face. William Taubman, one of my Amherst College political science professors, wrote a biography of Gorbachev and was interviewed by both news programs regarding his views on the passing of Gorbachev. https://www.npr.org/2017/09/10/547560506/gorbachev-is-a-gripping-sympathetic-and-detaile    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/08/31/mikhail-gorbachev-biographer-taubman-00054292  It is rather sad that a man who did so much to make this world a safer place is viewed with such disdain in his own native land. However, in Germany, he is regarded as a great hero because his actions -- his tearing down the Wall -- led to the reunification of Germany.  Putin sad...