Immersed In Red

by Mike Shotwell

  Growing up in the protected environment of the United States, I really couldn’t conceive of how horrifying a true revolution could be, so my outward expressions of moral outrage and leftist pronouncements were mostly just vehement, sophomoric, coffeehouse chatter. But, some doubts began to arise in those early years, as what I was experiencing in my daily life in the real world bore little resemblance to the bleak and negative narratives I received at home; nonetheless, my transition would take more first-hand knowledge and more passing years to complete.

  However, adherence to my strong opinions was never encumbered by lack of experience; but you couldn’t have told me that. I was one arrogant young man, who was pretty well convinced I had all the answers. My juvenile thought process mirrored a man Podhoretz wrote about, Nelson Algren, who described America, “as though it contained only two kinds of people – the exploiting (and listless) rich and the exploited (and colorful) poor.”

  I encountered little in the way of challenges to my strong political views. My teachers didn’t question me; in fact, my high school history teacher enjoyed my dissertations. Most of my college professors were like-minded, particularly one political history professor at the University of Southern California who referred to me openly as “my socialist friend up in the back.” I always received good marks from him, and he called on me a lot as an example of a scholarly and perceptive student who others should emulate.

  Important people in my life. During that time, however, there were people I encountered who prompted me to reconsider some of my perceptions and beliefs. One in particular was Col. Clarence Clendenen, a professor of Western Civilization at Menlo College, where I attended my first year. He was a graduate of West Point and had a PhD from Stanford. He was in his mid-70s and taught and lived on campus. He was also a student of the American Civil War, and had fought in both World Wars. He was a quiet man who puffed on his pipe and invited students to his quarters in the evening and I went there often. Many times I was the only student present. I felt true warmth in his presence. He was the first military man I had ever met. He was intelligent, bright, experienced, had a broad knowledge of world politics, was a good listener, engaged freely in open thought and commentary, was selfless, and was a credit to his profession and life itself. He was a member of America’s Greatest Generation, an American generation like no other.

  Another person I met while studying architecture at USC, was a Catholic nun who was taking some art classes there. She was open, friendly, very perceptive, and a wonderful sounding board. I was moved by the conversations I had with her. But perhaps more significant was that this compassionate nun was a far cry from the anti-Catholic stereotype I grew up with.

  There were two other people I remember meeting while in Peace Corps training after college, preparing to go to South America at age twenty-three. The first was a conservative political expert from the State Department, Don Barnhart, who was teaching us about Venezuelan political history. Democracy was just becoming established in Venezuela in the 1960s, after decades of autocratic rule. However, there was continuous opposition from many quarters, including the communist guerillas, and the intellectual left of the universities. I recall Barnhart predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union in the next ten or fifteen years. We all scoffed at him and what we perceived as his pathetic right-wing reasoning. As it turned out, he was off by only a few years, but correct overall when the Soviet Russian Empire economically collapsed in 1989. Earlier, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had declared the USSR would “bury” us; fortunately he was wrong.

  The other individual was the Peace Corps staff psychiatrist, M. D. Spottswood, whose job it was to evaluate the characters and strengths of the volunteers, and their abilities to withstand the rigors of our next two years in South America. His findings were part of the overall evaluation process. As it turned out, 50 percent of the trainees dropped out in training, were “de-selected” by staff and peers, or terminated their service early. I worked hard to not be in any of those categories.

  Spottswood was viewed with caution by my fellow trainees because he was conservative as well as religious. I had several interactions with him, and found him an impressive man who had a lot of insight into people and the broader world. Prior to meeting him, I never could have conceived that any member of the “intelligentsia,” let alone a psychiatrist, could be a conservative. My conversations with him made me reflect and reconsider my thinking.

  Another person who had a profound impact on my life was a therapist I saw over several years, who helped me to probe my early life, and assisted me to become the person I wished to be. He was able to bring into focus the strange life I had led through my younger years. Certainly there were others who contributed to my overall conversion, but these five stand out in my memory as benchmarks; collectively they provided moments of epiphany.

  The Peace Corps. Besides the impact from these individuals, various incidents presented challenges to my long held political beliefs. While in the Peace Corps, I was asked to teach a program at the University of Caracas School of Architecture on how to use sun machines in the design process. I was well versed in the subject from my architectural education. Shortly into my tenure I was suddenly dismissed, with no official explanation. Naturally, I was confused and perplexed. Afterwards, it was explained to me by a faculty member acquainted with the decision that a group of communist professors (part of the dominant leftist faculty and administrators) determined I was being too well received by the eager students, and that reaction hadn’t been anticipated. As a simple functionary teaching about a design tool, my presence was acceptable, but the results of having students look up to me as a knowledgeable and capable person was not how they wished Americans to be perceived. In addition, these same professors were convinced that I worked for the CIA and was there to foment unrest against the anti-government FALN, the active underground guerrilla communist clique that they supported.

  At one dinner engagement I attended, with several Venezuelan professors present, I was questioned about my “CIA employment.” I could produce no denial that satisfied them. The brilliant Peace Corp program of anti-communist President John F. Kennedy, which sent young people overseas to learn about other cultures and help out with their skill and knowledge, was, they believed, nonsensical and duplicitous. They shook their heads with disgust at my honest explanation. And to think that here I was, a devoted leftist, raised and nurtured in a Marxist household, freely espousing strong sentiments against America and our involvement in the ongoing Vietnam War, being accused of being a CIA imperialist. What irony.

  Two other incidents in Venezuela affected me a great deal. The first involved projects I was working on in various outlying towns. Using a jeep that was made available to me by the governor of the state, I had to drive through the mountains to reach them. The mountains were sporadically controlled by communist guerillas, and I learned that they had destroyed a military checkpoint just a short time before I passed through. Had I encountered these forces and, very possibly, been taken hostage, I would have been nothing more than a disposable pawn in their political quest; my liberal leanings would have had no bearing on my fate. In the guerrillas’ eyes, I would simply be a disgusting American capitalist piece of trash.

  The other incident, not commonly known to our group, involved three Peace Corps volunteers teaching physical education, who had earlier been stationed in the same town that my former wife and I were sent to, San Juan de Los Morros, the capital of Guárico State. This, and the other locales in which I lived, were poor barrios lacking most of the common comforts that even those in the US with little economic means took for granted. Shockingly, we learned that the three volunteers were stoned by leftist high school students in the middle of the town. I was informed by our director that one of the girls had been badly hurt. Believe me, I was very cautious where I went in the town after that revelation. In fact, our neighbor, Don Jose, a man who had served time for two murders and had carried contraband over the mountains t
o Columbia when he was ten years old, insisted on accompanying me to the center of the town whenever I needed to go there. His reputation was formidable and few would dare to take him on.

  I also befriended a traveling black American basketball team, the Harlem Stars, a mini version of the Harlem Globetrotters, who made quite a hit in the surrounding towns, leading local teams on for a half, and then squashing them at the end with their extraordinary skills. The fact that I traveled around with them for a bit and acted as their translator (they didn’t speak a word of Spanish) worked in my favor to break down the racist label that the Venezuelan locals assumed I had as a white American. In fact, it was confounding to them and caused much comment. But the assumption of guilt against white Americans had a disturbing undercurrent that was all part of the ubiquitous leftist propaganda.

  I had an interesting encounter that illustrates some of the unrealistic perceptions that were rampant in Venezuela (and still are). From time to time I had conversations with one of the professors connected with the University of Caracas, a well-educated engineer and an avowed communist. During one of these visits, he regaled me with back issues of newspapers showing photos of the 1965 Watts race riots in Los Angeles. Seeing the blacks protesting in conventional neighborhoods with individual houses, which was in stark contrast to the bleak hillside slums in Caracas and the rest of Venezuela, he was convinced these were photos that had been doctored by the CIA. His thinking was that racist Americans were falsely showing these rioters against faked dwellings, as if to say, “What do they have to protest about?” But at the same time, he could fully accept that American blacks were oppressed by whites, giving them ample reason to do so.

  I attempted to explain the reality of the photos from my own familiarity with South Central Los Angeles and the neighborhoods in question; after all, I had lived there during my college years. I described my own experience during the riots. While still a married student, my wife and I had to escape our apartment in the neighboring area of Baldwin Hills late at night, taking our terrified stewardess neighbors with us. The Japanese apartment owner’s tires were slashed in the carport, but our car, luckily, was okay. Bonfires blazed in the neighboring streets and an orange glow filled the air as we drove slowly down the street past the very attractive apartment buildings, winding our way down to Exposition Boulevard, where we met a long National Guard convoy heading toward the riot zone. I was never happier to see American military personnel in my life. But the adventure was eerie and frightening. None of us exhaled until we arrived to safety in West Los Angeles.

  The issues surrounding the riots themselves were complex, but no amount of explanation by me could affect or nuance this man’s preconceived notions that were further solidified when seen through the lens of communism. White Americans were racist and oppressed the black population, and that was that. I deeply resented his blanket assessment. I wasn’t a racist and my ancestors weren’t slave traders. In fact, they were Quakers who were among the leading abolitionists from the seventeenth century onward.

  Perhaps lost in this man’s view was the contradiction that blacks who weren’t living in squalor would have reason to revolt while at the same time feeling it was only natural that they would rise up as a result of their lifelong oppression. He seemed to want it both ways.

  All of the combined experiences in Venezuela took a chunk out of my feelings of benevolence for the communist rebels. What I had experienced was a dose of the real world. It also brought to the fore the knowledge that many of my political preconceptions were badly off-base, and that the anti- US venom of the Venezuelan leftists was wildly irrational. I also learned that I better act with caution around political zealots, and particularly with the FALN communists who painted huge graffiti banners on the whitewashed walls around my neighborhood. I found out it was one thing to intellectually espouse leftist idealism sitting in a classroom, a coffee house, or a university dorm, and quite another to come face to face with it in the real world. (A price is paid, though, for not facing reality. I think of the millions in Russia and China during the upheavals under Stalin and Mao, who would not or could not face the realities of their own changing governments and paid the ultimate price.)

  In the following years, Venezuela’s democracy lost its struggle, ultimately falling to the communist left, some of the very same people who terminated my seminars at the university. The result was the later communist dictatorship of Hugo Chavez. Within a short time, the democratic government had been usurped and clothed in deceptive populist jargon, just as Juan Peron had achieved in Argentina from the 40s through the 70s. Chavez re-wrote the constitution, rigidly controlled the press, stacked the Venezuelan Supreme Court, nationalized businesses, promoted hate crimes against Venezuelan Jews, characterized the US as an international bogeyman, created a national welfare state with no long-term economic foundation, and concocted a political mechanism that effectively made him president for life. I was not teary-eyed at his death. However, he has been succeeded by Nicolas Maduro, a man cut from the same cloth. The consequences for the Venezuelan people may be irreversible. Democracy is difficult to reestablish once lost.

  At the end of my stint in South America, I was very grateful to finally board a Pan American jet and return to the US. I realized by age twenty-seven how precious our country and our political system were, but at the same time how fragile it could be. Nevertheless, I remained to the left in my basic political outlook.

  A new beginning. After my return, my wife and I divorced and my life took on a new purpose. I began working as a consultant in the dynamic free-market business environment of this country. I was blessed with architectural projects in Mexico, Israel, and Central America, along with many domestic projects. With the responsibilities of vice-president of a development company, I not only managed design and building, but also the hiring and firing of personnel amid the ups and downs of the economy. Eager to branch out on my own, I opened my own architectural practice just before my second marriage in 1976. It was exciting and exhilarating, and sometimes unnerving. But with a growing family, my wife and I gladly took on the burden, believing in our capabilities to work hard and succeed.

  Eventually, my twenty-five years of private practice segued into the area of forensic architecture, in which I acted as an expert witness in the area of construction defects. Through over two hundred cases over the last twenty-five years, I was intimately involved in the establishment of facts for proving or disproving allegations. It has also informed my attitudes towards the so-called authority that accompanies much of what passes for truth in the fields of education, science and politics.

  Early in my career I also donated time to construction projects on an Indian reservation; worked in a food program connected with our church; and donated services to church building projects. I’ve always had compassion for the unfortunate, the sick, and those with mental issues. Our society should, and does, provide a safety net for those in need. In the 1960s, with the advent of the Great Society and the War on Poverty, well-intentioned government programs blossomed and grew, which had the unexpected consequence of creating dependency, and for many became a way of life. Unfortunately, for every truly needy person, there are many others who have learned how to take advantage of the system.

  The self-empowerment I gained from knowing I could succeed in the business world through my own efforts was gratifying. My experiences with clients, contractors, business people and others bolstered my sense of what was possible within a free-market system. I encountered average trades-people who had developed their own businesses out of singular determination, honesty, and grit. I came around to the understanding that it was because of our unique form of democracy and capitalism that the US became the beacon light of the world; that we were not the grim and reckless country responsible for countless crimes against humanity, as espoused by my family, their friends, and the radical leftists I had encountered in South America.

  I also came to realize that the Constitution gives people the rig
ht to pursue happiness, and the freedom to pursue their goals based on their abilities and desires. But there is no guarantee of success; things in life do not always work out and you often have to pick yourself up and start again. In contrast, nowhere in the history of the world has a nation built on socialism or communism succeeded in producing a vibrant, innovative society, upward mobility for those willing to aspire to their highest potential, and a happy populace. It is simply an ideology that does not allow such things.

  Reading Podhoretz’s book in 1980 really put the icing on the cake for me. It beautifully stitched together an understanding of many aspects of my prior life and my experiences that had so many parallels to this wonderful author. Since then, many other writers and researchers have opened my eyes even wider. Some of the many writers I have used as reference include Prof. Paul Kengor, an expert on the history and strategies of the left, who has spent his academic career studying communism, socialism, totalitarianism, progressivism, and the Cold War and its unsettling intrusion into American politics; John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, preeminent scholars and authors who have written tomes on Minnesota politics, American communism, and the analysis of the Venona Decrypts and other Russian KGB documents; Dr. Lyle Rossiter Jr., a psychiatrist who has written about the destructive underpinnings of radical liberal thinking; David Horowitz, who has written eloquently on his own conversion to conservatism and the dangers of Marxist/communist intrusion into our country’s institutions; Ron Radosh’s works about the radical left, the Rosenbergs, and other facets of the politics of WWII; Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, a firsthand expert on the Soviet disinformation apparatus; S. J. Taylor’s work about Walter Duranty; Dr. Jerry Bergman, whose research into the life and “scientific” studies, and religious orientation of Charles Darwin was so illuminating; and Herbert Romerstein whose literary career in regard to communism in America spanned 40 years.