One wicked nanny can turn you into the parallel of a unabomber — a head case that distrusts authority. We’ve got ’em and they’re Kochs.
The reliable Jane Mayer, investigative journalist who also writes for the New Yorker, has turned her focus on the Koch brothers and their efforts to buy off democracy in a new book.
In “Dark Money,” Mayer relies on interviews and previously undisclosed documents to trace a family fortune that was built in part on business ties with the Third Reich, and an early childhood colored by a fearsome German governess and a strict, demanding father who favored corporal punishment. She obtained a confidential history of Charles Koch’s effort to shape American politics that was commissioned by his brother Bill. The report, written by George Mason University historian Clayton Coppin, suggested that Charles has “a hatred of the government so intense that it could only be understood as an extension of childhood conflicts with authority.”…TomHamburger,WaPo.
Daily enemas and Castor oil appear to have nurtured (and damaged) the outrageously rich and destructive pair.
Their father’s embrace of Hitler played a role, too. Koch Industries denies Mayer’s allegation… Still, the most damaging aspect of the Koch brothers’ attempt to buy government lies in their ties to the John Birch Society, ties that continue to afflict — to discredit — the conservative movement. “Don’t think — just follow me” is not what writers of the Constitution had in mind for America.
And no: underneath it all, they are not simply nice, decent guys who may be damaging America in all kinds of ways but are decent and kind in their private lives. The Post report also has this:
Other Koch biographies, including Daniel Schulman’s “Sons of Wichita,” have described the harrowing rivalries that developed among the brothers in their early years. Mayer details the sad state of the siblings’ adult relationships and its consequences. A 1982 sealed deposition from Bill Koch, for example, describes how Charles and David attempted to blackmail their brother Frederick by threatening to reveal to their father his alleged homosexuality unless Frederick turned over his shares in the family business. The hostility led to lawsuits, acrimony and a propensity to use private investigators to unearth dirt on sibling rivals and other perceived enemies.
___
So okay, you’re kind of enamored of Donald Trump who — sure, just like Kochs, inherited millions and turned them into billions. You know: he’s a guy of considerable acumen we can rely on to run a tight and effective administration.
Ha!