... Even Beyond This Life

What Racism, Lying and LBJ Can Teach us about Eternity

In my many long drives to our various comedy performances every week, I have plenty of time to listen to audiobooks. For the past sixty hours of driving or more, I’ve been mesmerized by The Years of Lyndon Johnson series by Robert Caro (expertly narrated by Grover Gardner) - and I’m less than two-thirds of the way through the four volumes! My son Colin recommended these books to me, and I’m very glad he did.

I find these books consoling, as they give an extremely well-written, very deeply researched - and brutally honest - examination of American politics.

Why consoling? Well, because the inner rot that is consuming us is nothing new. And it’s good to know that.

In some ways, The Years of Lyndon Johnson show that the capture of our government by the very rich, the inadequacy and gullibility of the media, the lust for money and power that motivates most politicians, the ease with which the voting public can be manipulated, and how easily elections can be stolen is not unique to the The Years of Donald Trump.

In fact, here are a few things I’ve learned by listening to these fascinating books.

• The senators of the Joe McCarthy era were as cowardly and intimidated by the Soviet-style tactics of McCarthy as the Republicans are of the bullying of Donald Trump. McCarthy managed to do himself in - but had he not, he would have ridden a wave of public enthusiasm and we would have had our American “Uncle Joe” long before 2016.

• It’s easy to forget how openly racist this country was. And how Congress helped enable such racism. This is why it took over a hundred years for the passage of what you’d think would be a no-brainer - an anti-lynching bill.

• Racism was driven underground after the Civil Rights era; American Fascism was driven underground after the start of World War II. Similarly, anti-semitism and misogyny became old-hat in the American Catholic Church after Vatican II. But now, it’s not so much that these things are all back with a vengeance, as it is that it’s become safe to “come out of the closet” for racists, fascists, Jew-haters and bigots.

Throughout Robert Caro’s Johnson books, the reader is both in awe of Lyndon Johnson and horrified at him. LBJ was a political genius, and at the same time a brutal and driven man whose power hunger trumped any fleeting interest he may have had in the common good.

For instance, Johnson responds with apparent earnestness, indignation and compassion at the outset of the Longoria Affair.

What is the Longoria Affair? In 1949, the widow of a Mexican-American soldier who had been killed in World War II was denied the use of the only funeral parlor in Three Rivers, Texas for a wake for her husband, who had died defending his country, and whose body had just been identified and returned stateside, because (according to the owner of the funeral parlor) “the whites wouldn’t like it” and “the Latin people get drunk and lay around all the time. The last time we let them use the chapel, they got all drunk and we just can’t control them – so the white people object to it, and we just can’t let them use it,” and “we never made a practice of letting Mexicans use the chapel, and we don’t want to start now.”

This was brought to the attention of then freshman senator from Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Johnson instinctively fired off a telegram to the man who had alerted him to the situation …

1949 JAN 11 PM 4 59

I DEEPLY REGRET TO LEARN THAT THE PREJUDICE OF SOME

INDIVIDUALS EXTENDS EVEN BEYOND THIS LIFE. I HAVE NO

AUTHORITY OVER CIVILIAN FUNERAL HOMES, NOR DOES THE FEDERAL

GOVERNMENT. HOWEVER, I HAVE TODAY MADE ARANGEMENTS TO

HAVE FELIX LONGIRIA BURIED WITH FULL MILITARY HONORS IN

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY HERE AT WASHINGTON WHERE THE

HONORED DEAD OF OUR NATIONS WARS REST. OR, IF HIS FAMILY

PREFERS TO HAVE HIS BODY INTERRED NEARER HIS HOME HE CAN BE

REBURIED AT FORT SAM HOUSTON NATIONAL MILITARY CEMETERY AT

SAN ANTONIO. THERE WILL BE NO COST. IF HIS WIDOW DESIRES TO

HAVE HIM REBUIRED IN EITHER CEMETERY, SHE SHOULD SEND ME A

COLLECT TELEGRAM BEFORE HIS BODY IS UNLOADED FROM AN ARMY

TRANSPORT AT SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY 13. THIS INJUSTICE AND

PREJUDICE IS DEPLORABLE. I AM HAPPY TO HAVE A PART IN

SEEING THAT THIS TEXAS HERO IS LAID TO REST WITH THE HONOR

AND DIGNITY HIS SERVICE DESERVES

LYNDON B JOHNSON

Johnson’s team, eager for the publicity and political benefits Johnson’s words and actions might generate, sent out press releases to Walter Winchell and others - and suddenly Lyndon Baines Johnson was hailed by hispanics and liberals across the United States.

But …

Johnson’s financial backers, the Texas multi-millionaire oil men who paid him to do their bidding, were quite open about their hatred for Latinos (except for the illegal ones who could be made to work on the Texas farms for next to nothing), and they were furious with Johnson, who had to backtrack and pretend as if his involvement in this affair was inconsequential.

And - shades of 2025! - a handy series of lies were concocted by the funeral parlor owner and the big wigs of that part of Texas. The Not So Big Lie went like this:

The owner did not refuse the widow’s use of his parlor for racist reasons. Heavens, no! It’s just that, well, you see, the widow’s late husband’s family was mad at her because she started galavanting around as soon as she found out her husband was dead, and, well, you know how emotional and hot-headed these people are, and so the only prudent thing to do was to make sure both sides of the family didn’t mix and rumble at the wake.

The town’s “prominent citizens” even brought the late Longoria’s aged father, Guadalupe Longoria, in for the third degree. He was sickly and couldn’t speak English. They placed a letter before him, echoing the lie they were putting forth about his daughter-in-law and the fictional rift in the family. They demanded he sign it.

Despite repeated visits, Guadalupe refused to sign, saying the declaration was not true; ultimately he left town to avoid further pressure. The town decided to publish the letter anyway, as if Guadalupe had agreed.

And here’s what’s interesting to me.

This is deja vu all over again.

Ask yourself if this doesn’t sound like what’s going on in the public sphere all around us.

1. Someone does something wrong, assuming no one will find out.

2. When the wrong is revealed and an uproar ensues, then

3. A handy lie is concocted that scapegoats others; this lie is repeated, echoed and eagerly eaten up by the wrongdoer’s supporters, who have a vested interest in eating it up.

And in the midst of all this, we know the lie stinks. And we know the truth smells even worse.

We know the real story is not about infighting or the prudence of a small business owner. We know it’s about a barely concealed evil, like Elon Musk’s neo-Nazi urges, which keep revealing themselves more openly, through both his worldwide political endorsements and his AI bot. We know that the Big Lies and the Not So Big Lies are awkwardly trying to cover up something that’s rotten and rotting. We know the fibs are mere fantasy. We know that, tucked away in the dark closet, and occasionally coming out of the closet, is a beast that’s “moving its slow thighs”, an awakening ogre of anger, bigotry and hatred - a hatred that “extends even beyond this life.” (Remember what LBJ said, about bigots denying honors to a dead man because of the color of his skin? “I DEEPLY REGRET TO LEARN THAT THE PREJUDICE OF SOME INDIVIDUALS EXTENDS EVEN BEYOND THIS LIFE.” This is an excellent statement, despite Lyndon’s cravenly backing away from it.)

But ask yourself this: is it just the “prejudice of some individuals” that “extends even beyond this life”?

"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones," as Shakespeare has Marc Antony say … but Marc Antony is only half right. Actually, both the good and the evil that we do live after us; they both “extend even beyond this life”.

Here’s Eric Voegelin. He could be talking to the late LBJ - who has, like all of the dead, whether buried in Arlington, Three Rivers or elsewhere - “extended beyond this life”; or he could be talking to any one of us still living, who act without taking into account what “extends beyond this life”.

I find students frequently are flabbergasted, especially those who are agnostics, when I tell them that they all act, whether agnostics or not, as if they were immortal! Only under the assumption of immortality, of a fulfillment beyond life, is the seriousness of action intelligible that they actually put into their work and that has a fulfillment nowhere in this life however long they may live. They all act as if their lives made sense immortally, even if they deny immortality, deny the existence of a psyche, deny the existence of a Divinity—in brief, if they are just the sort of fairly corrupt average agnostics that you find among college students today. One shouldn’t take their agnosticism too seriously, because in fact they act as if they were not agnostics!

Somehow, both our truths and lies are eternal.

May we all remember - heroes and villains, saints and sinners alike - that there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be made known and brought to light.

(By the way, thank you to everyone who commented on my last post for all your encouraging words!)