Justin Cartwright Quotes
Personally, I have detested Gordon Brown since the moment in 2001 when he tried to make cheap capital out of the Laura Spence affair; as his troubles have piled up, I have felt no sympathy for him at all.
Cartwright, Justin. "A life in writing: Justin Cartwright." The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 22 Jul. 2011.
What is fascinating about this quotation is that although the head of a religion, Smith was not advocating the kinds of personal lifestyles of his church the way modern religious leaders do, but was concerned with the much larger issues of expansionism, corruption of the courts and judiciary, and land distribution. He was a classic reform candidate in that sense. Smith had written to most of the then likely Presidential candidates of both major parties asking for their position on the Mormons who were facing persecution wherever they went. None of the politicians would make any satisfactory commitments. Smith took Direct Action and became the only major religious official to have run for the Presidency of the United States until Pat Robertson tried and failed in 2000. Smith’s assassination shortly thereafter cut his run for the Presidency short before it made much headway and politically he had no chance to affect the race.
The discussion was about Ronald Reagan who had always castigated government, but when he became Governor of California and President of the Untied States, he set all records for expanding the size of government and government spending until George W. Bush expanded the government and created a budget deficit even larger than Reagan’s. Bush also constantly denounced big government and even government of any size.
Alluding to the many scandals of the Reagan administration:
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
Indian politicians traditionally campaign in white cotton long shirts.
He was not referring to economic corruption but intellectual and moral corruption. Regan who appointed many excellent key officials picked a very unfortunate choice to lead the CIA. William J. Casey had many faults and weaknesses—See {637472}, {636743} and {637469}. But the worst of his damage was imposing his ideology on the agency and having the intelligence analysts shape their intellectual product to conform with a particular world, political, and religious view. See {634408}. This became acceptable and as future administrations took power their ideologies were considered by the CIA professionals and reports were edited and shaped accordingly. Reform was instituted by some of the future CIA directors but there were precedents from the Casey days for years. One particularly bad manifestation of this intellectual corruption occurred when Vice President Richard Cheney imposed a neocon world view on the agency with a pliant CIA director and the agency gave the President a totally inaccurate assessment of Iraq nuclear capability and intention which triggered the disastrous Iraq war, made all the worse when there were not only no nuclear weapons in Iraq as had been reported, but there was not even a single laboratory trying to develop nuclear weapons or even nuclear power.
His reason for this statment (with which few others agreed) was that at best, the Special Prosecutor's investiation would distract the politicians, the media and the public from focussing on the great achievements of Trump and his administration, and at worst woud uncover some quasi scandal of Trump's years ago that would mortally damage is image and curtail or make innefective what Bannon thought was the most significant and important President in years. There were others who agreed about the consequense of the investigation but becasue Trump was probably guilty of dealing with the Russians improperly before he assumned the presidency and was mired in a hopeless tangle of business conflict of interest. To them, them curtailment of the Trump administration would be very good thing for the country so it could not have been a mistake for the nation, but for a sitting President the investigation and its aftermath mzy well prove to be a personal blunder although one that harmed Trump but benefitted the nation.
Justin James Cartwright MBE FRSL was a British novelist, originally from South Africa.
