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In researching Cummings’ life for my book about gun culture and capitalism in Cold War America, I often encountered a rumor: Interarms, the business that Cummings founded in 1954 and built into the world’s largest private arms dealer in just a few short years, began as a front for the Central Intelligence Agency. People interested in the who and why of the JFK assassination might have found the March release underwhelming, but for me, one document seems to offer confirmation of decades of historical hearsay: The CIA created and owned America’s largest gun distributor.

. . .

Summarizing Cummings’ file, the previously released redacted version of the document states that “On 17 August 1954 CUMMINGS became the principal agent of the [redacted] International Armaments Corporation and Interarmco.” In the newly released, unredacted version, it reads: “On 17 August 1954 CUMMINGS became the principal agent of the CIA-owned companies known as International Armaments Corporation and Interarmco” (emphasis mine).

In other words, the CIA “owned” the country’s largest importer and distributor of guns, the company that would spearhead a remarkable boom in gun ownership in the United States in the decade and a half before the Gun Control Act iced war-surplus imports.

. . .

Speak about destruction:

Scholars have long written of a phenomenon called “blowback” to describe what happens when the CIA’s international meddling leads to unexpected, and often disastrous, long-term consequences—think of U.S. support for the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, for instance, eventually giving rise to al-Qaida. What would it mean to add “founded the country’s largest gun distributor” to the Blowback Hall of Fame?

During the past year, I found it hard to explain, to family and friends, a strange truth. I was reporting on places where starvation and dehydration deaths had unfolded across a span of weeks or months—but these were not overseas famine zones or traditional theatres of war. Instead, they were sites of domestic lawlessness: American county jails. After meeting Carlin and Karina, I identified and scrutinized more than fifty cases of individuals who, in recent years, had starved to death, died of dehydration, or lost their lives to related medical crises in county jails. In some cases, hundreds of hours of abusive neglect were captured on video, relevant portions of which I reviewed. One lawyer, before sharing a confidential jail-death video, warned me, “It will stain your brain.” It did.

The victims were astoundingly diverse. Some, like Mary, were older. Some were teen-agers. Some were military veterans. Many were parents. In nearly all the cases I reviewed, the individuals were locked up pretrial, often on questionable charges. Many were being held in jail because they could not afford bail, or because their mental state made it hard for them to call family to express their need for it. (These jail deaths would not have occurred, several lawyers pointed out to me, in the absence of the cash-bail system.) Others were awaiting psychiatric evaluation or a court-mandated hospital bed. Often, the starvation victims were held in solitary confinement or other forms of isolation, which is well proved to deepen psychosis. Some were given no toilet and no functioning faucet, or were expected to sleep on mats on concrete floors, in rooms where the lights never turned off.

Meet the real president of the United States.

His name is Gavin Christopher Newsom. He is chief executive of America’s richest and most populous state.

And in this peculiar moment, that makes him the real president, by default.

Sure, there’s a guy living in the White House who some people call president. But real presidents swear an oath to execute the laws and to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Donald Trump violates the laws and the Constitution constantly, thus abandoning the post to which he has elected.

In response, Newsom has effectively assumed the presidency, though the public doesn’t yet understand this. One common complaint is that Newsom is distracted by issues beyond California. Another dig is that he is pursuing future presidential ambitions.

But those gripes miss what’s really going on. Newsom isn’t running for president; he’s acting like the president, not a governor, because the country needs someone to act like a president.

...

Newsom’s controversial new podcast, with its pluralistic mission — “tackling tough questions, engaging with people who don’t always agree with me, debating without demeaning” — is of a piece with his defend-the-system presidency.

Members of his own party have rightfully criticized Newsom for failing to challenge the far-right figures who appear as guests. (Newsom’s surrender to anti-trans ideology was ugly). But the gambit makes sense if you’re a president seeking consensus in a polarized country. On the podcast, he isn’t really interviewing anyone — he is presiding, since even MAGA strategists like Steve Bannon are the real president’s constituents, too.

I don't think we have any Gruesome Newsom emojis. Maybe we can do something with this?

(brief pause while I google this)

Mein Gott, I almost found one.

I have a turbolib neighbor whom I've never met, but since they're flag enthusiasts with what must be an insane vexillology budget I use them to figure out which way the wind is blowing (as it were). It took them weeks after Biden dropped out to remove their "BIDEN / HARRIS 2024" banner, but their hand-painted blue-and-yellow "STOP THE WAR" sign has never wavered, except after storms, when it sometimes takes them a few days to notice it's become askew.

Anyway, since Biden has dropped out their flags have come and gone fairly quickly. There was a donkey, a more straightforward Harris/Walz flag, and another Ukrainian flag. Since the election they had a week or two with a Mexican flag, before moving on to an upside-down American one and another with an illegible message. March Madness must have meant they wanted to (briefly) support their favorite college team, but that team must have lost because now we have another Ukrainian flag up top and, finally, for the first time, a Palestinian flag flying beneath it.

I happened upon this while on my way to the library to pick up this book, which I guess has already been proven partially correct.

https://theonion.com/stuck-in-the-timiddle-with-you/

Despite the terror, the early weeks of the pandemic contained perhaps more hope than I've felt in the subsequent five years. It became more apparent than ever where the weak links in capital's chain were located. Millions of people realized that their jobs were bullshit. The massive decrease in commuter vehicles proved that there were actually ways we could alter society to combat climate change. Powerful people started talking about universal basic income and universal healthcare.

Then it seems like the 1% got together on Zoom or whatever and put an end to all of that. There was a drumbeat of "it's patriotic to let grandma die." (Was Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick the first to say it out loud?) Teachers' unions became villains for wanting to prevent children and workers from spreading the plague. The people whose jobs couldn't go remote were given the title "essential workers" but never got sick days. In the months and years that followed, the Democrats nominated their most anti-healthcare candidate, who went on to crush a strike that threatened to give supply chain workers sick days. The CDC took its isolation recommendations from Delta Airlines, and masks became rarer and rarer. And worse, and worse, and worse, and millions of people are dead or disabled and we're further into fascism and farther from universal healthcare than we were five years ago.

I'm looking for books or longform essays about this switch, because the change happened very quickly - before the George Floyd uprising, even. Today too much of this is lost in the memory hole, but I wonder if studying the days in which the discourse changed can give us clues about where we should direct our organizing efforts.

Books, Letterboxd reviewers, Substacks, anything. I've been watching a bunch of Czechoslovak New Wave films and so many of the English-language essays I can find about them have brainworms and insist that every film by an Eastern European director is first and foremost an anti-communist allegory.

This book looks great but doesn't cover all of the movements I'm interested in.