The Good, the Bad, and the Tweeners

Some of these calls are easy, folks; Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Roberto D'Aubisson, etc.. Most of the rest, unfortunately, aren't. Take, for instance, guys like Joe Kennedy Sr., Prescott Bush Sr., Averill Harriman, the Duponts, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, et. al., who either through their words or deeds, have been associated with comforting and/or assisting Hitler's Nazi regime. Few, if any, of these men can be painted so simplistically.......................................This, I'm saying, in that, while, yes, these men clearly did make mistakes/used shaky judgement, 1) the mistakes have often been exaggerated and 2) their positive contributions ignored. Bush's case, in particular, is illuminating. His critics (many of who were not even alive during his Senate career, by the way, motivated by the hatred of his grandson, etc.) have essentially accused him of being a Nazi collaborator, of being Adolph Hitler's personal banker, for Christ! And those are some of the nicer things that people have said about him..........................................I mean, don't get me wrong here. The fact that Union Banking Corp (the company where Bush was on the board of directors) was doing business in Nazi Germany in the years leading up to (and even after Germany declared war on us) the 2nd World War can in no way be viewed positively. But (and like I stated on a previous posting) there are a myriad of mitigating factors here. Some I referred to in a previous post. Here are some others...........................................Point one. If you look at all the U.S. Companies who were doing business in Nazi Germany during this specified time-period, it's essentially a who's who of American industry. Are we going to hold each and every one of these companies (it's in the hundreds, folks) accountable for this transgression, basically accuse them all of treasonous activity? And what about the employees (possibly as many as a million)? Are we, being that there apparently isn't such a thing as being a little guilty here, going to put all of THEM on trial, too? And how about the friends and associates of these people? Might they be considered as well a part and parcel to this conspiracy? What about F.D.R. himself, folks? Was not he one of Averill Harriman's best friends (yes, THAT Averill Harriman, the Averill Harriman who allegedly owned 3,997 shares of that dreaded Union Banking Corp stock)? You do see what I'm saying here, don't you?.........................................Point two. When we strictly focus on the transgressions, not just of Bush, but of all these men, and not on their total lives, the tendency, frankly, is to miss a lot. Kennedy, for instance, at the same time F.D.R. was canning him, was also raising sons who went on to be great leaders in America. Bush went on to be one of the country's finest Senators, Harriman a vital and indispensable aid to Truman. Industrialists, such as Dupont and Ford, added greatly to the U.S. economy. These men weren't, clearly, in any way, shape, or form, pure evil..........................................Point three. When you try and reduce historical perspectives to such clear-cut dichotomies of good and evil, not only do you sometimes vilify the wrong people, so, too, can you inappropriately deify others. Winston Churchill, folks, probably the greatest man of the 20th century, he was the person who ordered the fire-bombing of Dresden, an act that not only destroyed one of the world's most beautiful cities but killed as well 200,000 civilians - an act that we now know wasn't necessary. F.D.R., probably the second greatest man of the 20th century, he incarcerated thousands of good American citizens - simply because of their nationality! Abraham Lincoln, too, damned if he didn't suspend the writ of habeus corpus. And what about Thomas Jefferson, boinking his slave-women as if it were his God-given right? Yes, all of these men in fact WERE great, but so, too, were they decidedly flawed..........................................Bottom-line, folks, shouldn't we all be getting a little tired of this gotcha shit, the sins of the father, guilt by association, etc.? I sure as hell know that I am.................................................................P.S. Correction, folks, it was not Averell Harriman who owned these shares of Union Banking Corps. It was his brother. I apologize for any confusion brought about by this error. Thank you.