By: Four Arrows and Jim Fetzer
purchased paperback 181 pages
Published: 2004
Genre: non-fiction, political, crime
I bought this over a year ago to give as a gift to my sister who is politically active. I was curious and wanted to read it, so it's been sitting on my ledge for long enough that I had to read it and gift it by Christmas 2024! Our mom really respected Senator Wellstone and definitely saw him as a champion of regular people.
I remember when his plane went down on October 25, 2002. I just looked it up and it was a Friday. What I remember vividly is at church that Sunday, a person who used to have my respect was absolutely gleeful about Wellstone's death. "It couldn't have happened to a better person!" he gloated. I was horrified. Even if you disagreed with the man politically, did you not realize that he, his wife, his daughter, and four other people lost their lives? As Christians, we should be compassionate and loving. The recent shooting of Brian Thompson reminds me of this. I strongly dislike America's health care system with executives who get rich while many people cannot afford treatment. But I'm horrified at the people celebrating this man's murder. He was a human being, with a wife and children and a life to live. If you hate the health care industry, there are other ways to try to effect change. Sometimes humanity saddens me.
On to the book! It was well-researched and well-argued, but not necessarily a book I enjoyed reading. I have plenty of post-it notes, however.
Page 31: He had the most consistent record of opposing Bush administration initiatives of any member of the Senate. He received 100% ratings from the AFL-CIO, the Americans for Democratic Action, and the League of Conservation Voters. The Star Tribune described him appropriately as "the go-to guy to advance the causes of educators, environmentalists, consumer and labor groups, the elderly and the poor."
(I initially read "Conservation" as "Conservative" and had to do a re-read to adjust my understanding of that sentence!) My mom definitely thought of Wellstone as a champion of the "little guy." Honestly, I was more focused on raising my children and staying sane while working full-time at this period of my life. Plus, this was a year after 9/11 and my sister-in-law's death. Politics was not my priority.
Page 33: Wellstone seems to have been a nemesis for big business. However, Wellstone posed an even more significant and costly threat to corporate profit-making interests. He tried to enable the 2002 defense appropriation's bill to bar corporate tax dodgers from being eligible for defense department contracts.
Whenever I think about people who get rich by leeching off our government while also evading taxes, I get so mad! But I know that here on earth, there will be many times that evil seems to prosper. In Eternity, God's justice will prevail. That's why we pray, "Your will be done." I can't make greedy people less greedy.
Page 63: So strong is this prejudice among academics that even when clear evidence of a plot is inadvertently discovered in the course of their own research, they frequently feel compelled, either out of a sense of embarrassment or a desire to defuse anticipated criticism, to preface their account of it by ostentatiously disclaiming a belief in conspiracies.
This was so interesting! Some words definitely trigger negative associations! The word "conspiracy" is one of them. It conjures images of kooks wearing tin foil hats. Yet conspiracies are most definitely developed and implemented, and have been throughout history. The authors draw a lot of parallels to Wellstone's plane crash and JFK's assassination. They make a lot of fascinating points.
Page 76-7: Bill Wilkerson, who has been hiring pilots and leasing aircraft for more than thirty years, said, "This is not a plane that goes down in freezing rain. Visibility and conditions were not an issue in this accident." . . . "Based on my every experience with dedicated pilots and precision aircraft, planes like the A100 do not catch fire in spotty, wet weather and two experienced pilots are extremely unlikely to agree to fly under conditions they can't control. They were not suicide bombers. This plane was destroyed intentionally from afar."
It was so hard to read about the media / FBI / whomever promotion of the bad weather theory (even though there were many, many contradictory reports that the weather was NOT the issue), the focus on pilot error (how awful for their families when there were so many indications that they were qualified and quality), and other "problems" that could have caused the crash when sabotage or attack did not seem to be considered at all.
Page 78: "In a senate that is one heartbeat away from Republican control, Wellstone was more than just another Democrat. He was often the lone voice standing firm against the status-quo policies of both the Democrats and the Republicans. As such, he earned the special ire of the Bush administration and the Republican Party, who made Wellstone's defeat the party's number one priority this year."
Michael I. Niman, a professor, was quoted here. The part that really jumped out at me is that both Democrats and Republicans were thwarted by Wellstone's pushback against maintaining the status quo. I wish we had more politicians who did this. It seems as though all politicians become tainted, jaded, and sold out when they spend time in Washington D.C. Wellstone really was different.
Page 130: And within the administration itself, the most plausible candidates appear to be the troika which runs things, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Donald Rumsfeld.
This was chilling to me. During Bush's time in office, was he more of a puppet than a leader? How did these three men wield so much power? The word "troika" was purposeful and powerful here. And kind of chilling, especially in light of the current political climate!
Page 143: We are not so naive as to think that proving the assassination hypothesis beyond a reasonable doubt means that most Americans are going to accept our conclusion. The principles of social psychology and the manipulation of the mass media by the government as an exercise is (sic) propaganda makes that a virtual impossibility.
I have now re-read that sentence aloud three times. It made perfect sense when I first read it a week ago. Now it hurts my brain. Did they mean "in" instead of "is"? (Yes, I've checked that I typed it correctly from the book. That's why I put "sic" there.)
Page 149: Could it be that individuals were being encouraged to start attacks on Wellstone before he became a martyr? The National Rifle Association has used similar tactics by giving strong pro-gun speeches in communities where school shootings have just occurred to discourage the spread of anti-gun sentiment.
This . . . is horrific. Not the character assassination. That seems to be part of politics - de rigueur. But that the NRA would go to Sandy Hook or Uvalde or Columbine right after a horrific school shooting event so that they can be pro-gun . . . is simply insensitive and awful.
Page 150-1: The death of Paul Wellstone, as tragic as it may be, assumes even greater significance in relation to its place in an apparent pattern of governmental misconduct to preserve and protect this and other corrupt administrations. If we don't understand what this means, our feeble grasp on democracy will be lost, possibly forever. There are lessons here that every American must learn for the sake of our country and of the principles for which it is supposed to stand and for which, alas, an American icon died.
The chilling part of reading this is knowing that two decades after it was written, we would (as a country) elect a man who has repeatedly lied, evaded responsibility, and publicly stated that he would not obey the Constitution of the United States. He is selfish, rude, and greedy. He tried to have the government overthrown in January, 2021, and promoted the murder of his VP and he is simply the most awful POTUS we've ever had. It's too heart breaking for me to think about surviving the next four years and a month.
Page 153: "Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
Kennedy spoke these words. They represent well the commonality of humanity.
Page 153: The Republican Party used to stand for balanced budgets, constitutional government, a non-interventionist foreign polity, and keeping government out of people's personal lives.
Ugh. I hate politics. And labels. But I need to read, think, and pray to be the best Jeanne I can be. History and geography are not my favorite subjects.
Page 157 kicks off a section titled "Paul Wellstone: What He Stood For" and lists his platform positions, his votes, etc. One of the most interesting parts is that he initiated (and got passed) legislation that was co-authored by Republicans! The section closes with this quotation from him on page 181:
"I do not believe the future will belong to those who are content with the present. I do not believe the future will belong to those who are cynics or to those who stand on the sidelines. The future will belong to those who have passion and to those who are willing to make a personal commitment to make our country better."
Reading a book like this is interesting. What was most compelling to me is that the FBI was on-site so quickly. The timeline and evasiveness alone would be suspicious! Whatever actually happened that day, I know that God is the ultimate judge of us all. I just wish that power, money, and corruption were not such a huge part of how the USA works.
