CLANDESTINE MEETING
MacGuire visited Butler at his home in Newton Square, Pennsylvania, in June 1933. They met for just 30 minutes, but MacGuire gave him the complete details of the plot, including the names of those involved and a promise of $3 million in financial support. Butler asked MacGuire why something as drastic as a coup was necessary. MacGuire said that it was because Roosevelt’s social programs proved he was a Communist. “We need a fascist government in this country to save the nation from the Communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built,” Butler later said MacGuire told him.
Franklin Roosevelt vetoed 635 bills, more than any other U.S. president. (Grover Cleveland is second, with 584.)
Butler agreed and told MacGuire he was in…except that he really wasn’t. What the ALL members hadn’t taken into consideration was that the combat bonus protests of the previous summer, which had made Butler beloved among soldiers, ended when President Herbert Hoover sent in the cavalry to break it up. Butler was so appalled by this treatment of the WWI veterans that he renounced Hoover and the Republican party, became a Democrat, and actively campaigned for Roosevelt in the 1932 election.
PLOTLESS
After speaking with MacGuire, Butler promptly reported the meeting and the brewing fascist coup to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, the congressional committee in charge of investigating threats to the government, such as fascist coups. (In the 1940s, the committee would try to root out Communists under a different name: the House Un-American Activities Committee.)
Butler gave his testimony to the committee between July and November 1934. Nearly all of the conspirators Butler named were asked to testify. But since they weren’t subpoenaed, merely asked, they never showed up. The only exception was Gerald MacGuire, and he denied everything. In its final report, the committee officially stated that it believed Butler:
Your committee received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist government in this country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient. This committee received evidence from Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler (retired), who testified before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler.
But the findings—and Butler’s credibility—were undercut when the report was released to the public with the names of the conspirators blacked out. The names were never officially released, and no one associated with the “plot” was ever held accountable.
COUP DE-TAH-TAH
So why didn’t the federal government prosecute the plotters? At the time, Roosevelt was trying hard to get his New Deal programs passed through Congress. Releasing the names of the government officials and appointees involved would have undermined Roosevelt’s authority and made him look like a weak leader. In fact, it may have been Roosevelt himself who suggested that the McCormack-Dickstein Committee withhold the conspirators’ names and not pursue charges…provided the plotters agreed to stop speaking out publicly against his social and relief programs.
The compromised report, coupled with the altogether absurd nature of the idea of a fascist coup in America (even if it was true), led to little media coverage. The New York Times and Time reported on the committee’s findings, but dismissed Butler’s claims as rumor and hearsay.
How serious were the conspirators? The idea never got past the planning stages, and the conspirators may have met only that once. When news that Butler had turned informant got out, the plot crumbled. But they did have one “backup” plan—shortly after MacGuire met with Butler, MacGuire also approached James Van Zandt, the head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars office, to be the Secretary of General Affairs should Butler decline. After Butler revealed the plot to the congressional committee, Van Zandt told reporters his story, lending Butler’s story some credence, but that’s as far as it went.
IRONIC POSTSCRIPT
The American Liberty League which, in addition to proposing fascist coups, operated as a legitimate pro-capitalist organization. It folded in 1940. That same year, Franklin Roosevelt was elected to his record third presidential term. Roosevelt was reelected again in 1944, but in the same national election, Republicans took control of Congress from the Democrats, gaining a majority in both the Senate and the House. After Roosevelt’s death five months after the election, the conservative government was eager to start anew, and in 1951 passed the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which limited future presidents to two terms. Why? Many senators and representatives feared that a president who held office for too long could become a dictator.
Dinosaurs did not eat grass…there wasn’t any at that time.
INSTANT CLASSIC
In case you don’t know, an oxymoron is a phrase made of two words that appear to be contradictory. Here are some of our newest favorites.
Cautiously optimistic
Bigger half
Rock opera
Boneless ribs
Resident alien
White chocolate
Global village
Minor crisis
Act naturally
Defensive strike
Slumber party
Oven-fried
Deafening silence
Graduate student
Educated guess
Free trade
Instant classic
Calculated risk
Wilderness management
Vegetarian meatball
Wireless cable
Detailed summary
Fresh from concentrate
Extended deadline
Negative growth
Paid volunteer
Small fortune
Controlled chaos
Doing nothing
Going nowhere
Athletic scholarship
Open-book test
Primitive technology
Audio book
Civil disobedience
Forgotten memories
Virtual reality
Accurate stereotype
Down escalator
Bittersweet
Sharp curve
Unbiased opinion
Alone together
Short distance
Outer core
“The rumors are true”
King Louis XIV of France established the position of “Royal Chocolate Maker to the King.”
THE WORLD OF WAR GAMES
On page 251, we told you the story of the “most influential game you’ve never heard of.” Well, here’s one you have heard of. And if this one wasn’t the most influential of all, it certainly comes close.
ROLL MODEL
More than 30 years after the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons hit store shelves in 1974, the game is still the best-selling “tabletop” or non-computer-based role-playing game of all time. More than 20 million people have played it, and over the years they have purchased more than $1 billion worth of Dungeons & Dragons books, dice, and other merchandise.
Not many games have reached this level of success. Even so, the sales figures alone do not begin to describe the impact that Dungeons & Dragons has had on game-playing culture in the United States and around the world. That’s not just because it was the very first role-playing game, but also because it happened to appear at the dawn of the microcomputer revolution.
When Dungeons & Dragons arrived on the scene, only giant corporations and government agencies could afford computers, which cost millions of dollars apiece and filled entire rooms (and they had less computing power than pocket calculators do today). Personal computers were still a few years off, so the only way ordinary people could get access to a computer was by majoring in computer science at a university that had one.
SO MUCH HAS CHANGED
And how did these privileged college students spend their time, once they w
ere granted a few precious hours on one of these rare, multimillion-dollar machines, time that was intended to be used to complete important classroom assignments?
A lot of them created and played computer games.
Many of these early programmers were fans of Dungeons & Dragons, which, because it was based on the roll of the dice, translated easily into computer code. So the programmers did just that. At virtually every point in the evolution of computer games—from single-player games to multiplayer games played on a mainframe computer, to multiple mainframes communicating with each other over the ARPAnet (precursor to the Internet), to personal home computers—these Dungeons & Dragons fans drew directly from their tabletop gaming experience to create one fantasy role-playing game after another.
Captain America’s “real” name was Steve Rogers. The Flash’s was Britt Reid.
LOGGING ON
One of the most successful such programmers is Richard Garriot, who wrote his first Dungeons & Dragons–inspired game, Akalabeth, in the summer after he graduated from high school in 1980. When Akalabeth had sold enough copies at $5 a pop to pay for his college education, he followed up with a game called Ultima, which with nine different incarnations over two decades became one of the most successful computer game series of all time. The success of these PC games led to the creation of a “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” (MMORPG) version called Ultima Online, which launched in 1997.
IMAGINARY WORLDS, REAL GOLD
Although it wasn’t the first game that enabled hundreds or even thousands of players all over the world to interact in a virtual world over the Internet, Ultima Online demonstrated that such games could make big money by charging players a monthly subscription fee. Its success prompted many other companies to create MMORPGs, and today the games are a billion-dollar-a-year industry, with the market leader, World of Warcraft, once again drawing obvious inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons. So even if you’ve never played the game that started it all, if you’ve played any tabletop or computer role-playing game in the past 30 years, you have the creators of Dungeons & Dragons to thank for it.
And yet for all they contributed to pop culture, outside of gaming circles their names are almost completely unknown.
So who are these people to whom game players owe so much?
That part of the story begins on page 393.
Shaquille O’Neal was named Player of the Week his very first week in the NBA.
TROPIC OF MILLER
Observations on the human condition from author Henry Miller, best known for his groundbreaking novel Tropic of Cancer.
“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.”
“Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything… except his own nature.”
“In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.”
“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
“Fear is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it, we are at once enslaved by him.”
“True strength lies in submission, which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.”
“Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
“The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.”
“The frantic desire to live, to live at any cost, is not a result of the life rhythm in us, but of the death rhythm.”
“Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.”
“Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines—these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.”
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
“If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without.”
“I have never regretted anything. Regret, like guilt, is a waste of time.”
The U.S. Marines’ first recruiting station was in a bar.
“STRONGER THAN DIRT”
Time to test your ad-slogan IQ. How many products and brands can you recognize by their slogans? Answers are on page 540.
1. “Live in your world, play in ours.”
2. “Because I’m worth it.”
3. “You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers.”
4. “So easy a caveman can do it.”
5. “The freshmaker!”
6. “Hello, boys.”
7. “Progress is our most important product.”
8. “Obey your thirst.”
9. “Science for a better life.”
10. “The pause that refreshes.”
11. “Kid tested. Mother approved.”
12. “Quality is job 1.”
13. “Let the dance begin.”
14. “The cereal that’s shot from guns.”
15. “Stronger than dirt.”
16. “You’ll wonder where the yellow went.”
17. “Once you pop, you can’t stop.”
18. “When it rains, it pours.”
19. “Australian for Beer.”
20. “The Champagne of Beers.”
21. “Where do you want to go today?”
22. “Lifts and separates.”
23. “Who wears short shorts?”
24. “The toughest job you’ll ever love.”
25. “It’s all inside.”
26. “Leave the driving to us.”
27. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
28. “Zoom-Zoom.”
29. “The happiest place on Earth.”
30. “Tastes so good cats ask for it by name.”
31. “Put a tiger in your tank.”
32. “The ultimate driving machine.”
33. “We’re number two. We try harder.”
34. “Be all you can be.”
Michael Keaton’s costume from Batman (1989) weighed 70 pounds.
FAMOUS AND SMART
Living proof that not all celebrities are bimbos and bozos.
• Marcia Cross (Desperate Housewives) was having trouble getting acting work after she left Melrose Place in 1997, so she went back to school. Result: She earned a master’s degree in psychology from Antioch University.
• Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello graduated Harvard University with honors in 1986. More impressive: He found time to practice guitar for eight hours a day.
• David Duchovny (The X-Files) has a master’s degree in English literature from Yale.
• Guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter was a member of the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan. But while his bandmates spent their free time partying, Baxter was studying missile defense systems. Today he’s a freelance defense consultant and chairs a congressional advisory board.
• Ashley Judd majored in French at the University of Kentucky, but had four minors: anthropology, theater, art history, and women’s studies.
• Dexter Holland, lead singer in the punk group the Offspring, has a master’s degree (and is halfway to a Ph.D.) in molecular biology.
• Emeka Okafor, power forward for the Charlotte Bobcats, joined the NBA in 2004 after three years of college. But he didn’t leave school early—it took him only three years to earn his degree (with honors) in finance from the University of Connecticut.
• In 1970 Brian May was studying for his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the Imperial College of London by day and playing guitar in the band Queen at night. He quit school in 1971 when the band became successful, but in 2007 he completed his dissertation (“A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud”) and was awarded his doctorate.
• Graham Chapman earned a medical degree and began a residency at a h
ospital, but quit to join a comedy troupe formed by some old college friends—Monty Python.
In 2007 Americans threw away or recycled 68 million old TV sets.
WHAT RACE(S) ARE YOU?
White? Black? Cherokee? Chinese? All of the above? Recent DNA studies say you might be surprised.
IT REALLY IS A MELTING POT
In 2006 Professor Peter Fine at Florida Atlantic University asked his class to do a project on their own racial identities, and to submit to DNA tests as part of it. Twelve of the students considered themselves white with European ancestry; one considered himself black and of African descent. Results: Only one of the white students turned out to be completely European, and the black student turned out to have 21% European ancestry. The rest had various degrees of European, African, Native American, and East Asian genes. Professor Fine himself, who considered himself of typical white European stock, found out that he had 25% Native American genes. “I honestly think these tests could have a large effect on American consciousness,” Fine told the U.K.’s Observer newspaper in 2007. “If Americans recognize themselves as a mixed group of people, that could really change things.”
HOW IT WORKS
Recent breakthroughs in the science of genetics have had a huge effect on the world, with applications in medicine, agriculture, law enforcement, and much more. Genetics has also dramatically changed a popular (and growing) pastime: genealogy. Relatively inexpensive DNA tests for genetic markers that can reveal familial and ethnic lineages are available to anyone who wants one. And the science behind it, while immensely complex in its details, is basically pretty simple.
Human DNA is alike in every person—but it’s not exactly alike. Individuals can acquire mutations along the way. This can have many different results: Some genetic mutations cause disease, some affect eye or hair color, some do nothing at all. The ones that are used for racial testing are, primarily, ones that have no known effects.
Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader Page 36