Tony Leon, My Father, Died — Cowardly, Child-abusing Fraud

Madison, Wisconsin — "I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction," wrote Clarence Darrow in his 1932 memoir.

Darrow might have been thinking of Tony Leon of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin — my late father who died this month, a child abuser, and a malignant narcissist until the day he left this world.

Tony Leon was not a good man. I won't be attending the Dec 21 service in Fondy. Don't believe what you read in his obit.

I think any human being deserves a send-off, but when you self-consciously abuse children, you're shit and the world should know you're shit.

Tony Leon was shit.

My earliest memory, one I won't forget, is the idiot lining us all up in the dining room at our West 13th Street home, when the four kids ranged in age from about seven to about three-years-old.

"You better hope your Mother doesn't die, or you're in trouble" he railed, continuing on and on, but not making a whole lot of sense.

It was a lot to unpack for a five-year-old: Why is this idiot yelling at us? Why he would suggest Mom might die, and what is he trying to accomplish with this hostile screaming?

It never got much better from Tony Leon.

Three sneak attack-ambushes against me between 10 and eight-years-old at our later Howard Ave home: Two in the upstairs hall-way, one when I was walking in the living room past the player piano.

The last attack happened in front of my Mother. And then the physical attacks stopped, either because of her intercession and objection or because I was beginning to grow.

But it was not the hitting, slapping and choking that was the big problem for me, (I was pretty tough for a little kid): It was the malice, and my knowledge that there was a hostile person who could and wanted to cause me harm on a near-constant basis.

It fucked me up. I developed a slight stutter as a young teenager and a mild generalized anxiety disorder that never really went away.

One of Tony Leon's favorite psychological ambushes after he became afraid of one-on-one physical encounters was a bait-and-switch psychological tactic the U.S. military used to use.

It was used in Basic Training to weed out those who might not be temperamentally suited for combat. The tactic was not intended for use against children by anyone.

Here's what it is: Take the innocence and credulity of a child and speak as though you are fraternal, agreeable and sympathetic. Then, without pause, launch into harsh, abusive and maligning words to cause distress, then smile and laugh. That's who Tony Leon was.

There was a lot more abuse, passive aggression and constant put-downs, but those are some of the highlights.

My Mother and I talked often. She said, he was worse towards me because I physically looked like him, and I objected so frequently. She confessed late in her life, she regretted not listening to her Georgia family and leaving Tony Leon.

I told her she was a victim, she did the best she could and had nothing to apologize for. I assured her that her life and kindness would live on through me. My Mother was actually famous in Fondy for being nice.
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Deep-down, Tony Leon both loathed himself and thought the world needed to bow to his every whim and passing caprice.

I came to understand that Tony Leon was a malignant narcissist with authoritarian and obsessive features. But it was worse: Tony Leon was an undiagnosed psychopath.

You see, I read voraciously for the pure joy of it, and escape from the lunatic. I found out the psychopathic personality traits fit this prick to a T.

We had a seal-point Siamese cat named Lady. Lady would get in heat once a while, and Tony Leon would go on-and-on that if Lady had kittens, he would drown them in the Fond du Lac River about a half-mile away.

But it is the way he described the scenario and the joy he took in detailing what he would do that I found chilling, cruel and infuriating. I told the bastard he was a coward.

To get a flavor of this feature of Tony Leon's pathology, the drunken idiot's story at a dinner instructs as well.

Tony Leon was reveling in his telling of tieing ropes onto cats and throwing the cats over a bridge into a river in Aurora, Illinois with his friends.

I told him, again, he was a "fucking coward." A younger brother, Jimmy, picked up Lady and moved the cat away from Tony Leon, but I think this was clowning intended to dissipate the narrative of hurting small animals.

But who does this shit to children? Who revels in hurting small animals? Who invests so much time and effort in deliberately causing harm onto children? Only shit does this, and I am proud that I told him so.

Tony Leon is gone and good riddance. He has been buying off family members for months now to keep the truth silent.

There is a lesson in the passing of this contemptible coward.

The truth is one person can help the world a lot more than what another can do to destroy and harm. You can believe it.

The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking; Purveyors of Killing Today Go On, As a Hero Faces Life Imprisonment

Liberated Concentration Camp
From left to right, the generals are George S. Patton (Third Army),
Omar Bradley 12th Army Group (Patton's immediate commander),
Troy Middleton (VIII Corps, Third Army),
Walton H. "Bulldog" Walker (XX Corps, Third Army),
Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander.
Wisconsin's Al Liethen, of U.S. military intelligence and
chief interpreter is next to Ike, pointing with his left hand.
On the far right is Jules Grad, correspondent for the
military's independent daily newspaper Stars and Stripes.
This iconic photo is on display at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Eric Lichtblau, a reporter for The New York Times in Washington and a visiting fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has a piece on the Holocaust that should be read by American youth in public schools.

American society does not engender a sense of history, nor for that matter a capacity to think.

Lichtblau reports the NAZI concentration camp system, examination of documents reveal, was wider and even more pervasive than previously believed.

Someone close to me, who worked as a museum curator on the East Coast, had an opportunity some years ago to work at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

She turned it down and came back to Madison. One's psyche has limits.

Still, as sentient human beings, the Holocaust remains a discussion in our home.

Most literary treatments do not focus on resistance because there was not very much resistance at least until later; as Norman Cohn writes, just "passive compliance."

But a certain type of person remains committed to the idea that when forces in their countries lie to kill millions, speaking up is the least one can do.

Bradley Manning is one such person.

The Guardian: Bradley Manning blows whistle on American
atrocities. Prosecution to call full witness list despite guilty plea.

Had Manning lived in NAZI-occupied territory, he would have been in the resistance.

Manning leaked documents revealing the idiocies and deceit of American wars, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, and "the breadth of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality." In May 2010, the 25-year-old Manning was arrested and held for years in a small cell by miserable men.

Now, he faces the prosecution, a group better-suited for fascist states.

As Glenn Greenwald writes today: "Manning is absolutely right when he said today that the documents he leaked 'are some of the most significant documents of our time'. They revealed a multitude of previously secret crimes and acts of deceit and corruption by the world's most powerful factions."

So, Manning must endure persecution, perhaps lifetime imprisonment.

I read Greenwald's piece in The Guardian early morning [first published Thursday], and there was 1,000s of Facebook 'Shares.' One hopes his words reach millions.

Today, we have a military that pisses on Vietnam War veterans; cheers the destruction, the near genocide of Muslims, and champions permanent war and the military-industrial complex in the name of Jesus Christ, an obscenity fought by a few like Mikey Weinstein.

The Manning persecution is President Obama's shame.

Bradley Manning is a hero. Manning spoke up against wars that have killed, wounded, displaced and traumatized millions of human beings.

President Obama and the U.S. military prosecution team are a disgrace.

President Obama can redeem himself by commuting Manning's coming sentence.

Madison's Police Chief Couper (ret) on Newtown

A.J. Muste [1885-1967]

Strongly recommend reading David Couper's thoughts.

Intro:

"I have restrained myself from commenting on the Newtown tragedy until I have had some time to listen and think. And what has come into my mind in my life experiences as both police officer, sociologist and pastor is a number of thoughts and images(.)"

I think Couper's contributions to spreading love over his career, what I read as radical pacifism, into the world will live on, perhaps unparalleled from law enforcement. The relevancy to Newtown is obvious.

But peace seems alien to our political culture.

I do not see, virtually anywhere outside of the narrow sphere of progressive writers, the accusation that GOP politicians are engaging in a massive deception sustained by hate. Plenty of examples in Wisconsin. Lies and hate lead to tragedy.

Commitment to truth seems alien to our political culture.

Next April, we have a state Supreme Court race coming up, a race for the top appellate court that above all ought to decide what the law is, without regard to the station of any litigant.

Fidelity to the rule of law, and a candid job description of what a supreme court justice ought to be have been virtually absent from Wisconsin's supreme court races, with two recent exceptions.

We have an opening for peace, truth and the rule of law becoming part of our politics, perhaps given a push by the sickness.

Rape Is Not Funny

In the American entertainment world, prison rape is an amusing topic and there is some wonderful prison-rape fun for the whole family.

Hey, there’s Chris Rock on cable making a hilarious prison-rape joke in his HBO Special monologue. Good one, Chris!

Or Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality(Donald Petrie, 2000) laughing it up at the end that the villainess, Candice Bergen, is going find her self getting raped in prison. Ha, ha, ha.

Rape is so funny! And you can find great prison-rape lines easily in American comedies, amazing that it's all over the cinema but we do need to lighten up sometimes and find relief from war.

Actually, as any decent person knows, rape is tragic. From David Kaiser, Lovisa Stannow in the New York Review of Books:

Prisoner rape is one of this country’s most widespread human rights problems, and arguably its most neglected. Frustratingly, heartbreakingly—but also hopefully—if only we had the political will, we could almost completely eliminate it.

In the second part of this essay we will discuss the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission’s report, which analyzes the dynamics and consequences of prisoner rape, shows how sexual abuse can be and in many cases already is being prevented in detention facilities across the country, and proposes standards for its prevention, detection, and response. Those standards are now with US Attorney General Eric Holder, who by law has until June 23, 2010, to review them before issuing them formally, following which they will become nationally binding. We will discuss the attorney general’s troubling review process, the opposition of some corrections officials to the commission’s standards, and why some important corrections leaders are so resistant to change.

In the meantime, the next time you hear a prison-rape joke, make a note: Not so funny.

Waco, Virginia Tech and Violence

As we mourn the violence of the deadliest mass shooting by one individual in US history, it’s worth pausing to note the grim anniversary of another tragedy.

Tomorrow, April 19, marks the fourteenth anniversary of the killing of 76 Branch Davidians at Waco, including 21 children, after the deadly FBI assault on their church and home.

I remember it well.

In April 1993, I had written a letter of encouragement to Attorney General Janet Reno, urging her to stand tall in the shower of condemnation following the FBI attack and lethal fire.

I felt little good will toward the religious-minded in general, even less so for those benighted whackos from Texas, as I believed the Branch Davidians to be.
But after further investigation, the Waco attack demonstrated that a bias against the religious-minded among us can be as blinding and deafening as any religious dogma.

And Waco reminds us that violence, the abdication of humanity, is something that we as individuals and a society must work to prevent, at least by employing it as a last resort.

The lies and propaganda justifying the deadly violence at Waco have been well-documented and exposed. See the following:

- David Thibodeau. "A Place Called Waco" (BBS, 1999), lauded by Howard Zinn as "An extraordinary account of one of the most shameful episodes in recent American history."

- James Tabor and Eugene Gallagher. "Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America" (UC Press, 1995), described by Ramsey Clark as "a critically important book"

- the Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated documentary "Waco: The Rules of Engagement (1997)"

In Waco: The Rules of Engagement, a powerful segment presents Sheriff Jack Harwell of McLennan County (Waco), Texas, as he speaks of his dealings with the Branch Davidians in a southern drawl, near tears.

"They were all good people. They had different beliefs than others, different beliefs than I have, maybe different beliefs than you have in their way of life. … But basically they were good people. I was around them quite a lot. ... I liked them," said the sympathetic sheriff.

Human beings are likeable entities, so whether they be Branch Davidians, Iraqis, or somebody different from you and me, let’s honor the dead at Virginia Tech, Waco, and other tragedies by thinking anew about ways of preventing violence and promoting peace among the living.

Perhaps we could put in a little extra effort to stop the US occupation of Iraq where the Iraqis experience several Virginia Tech-like massacres a day.

- This is an edited version of a previously published piece, Clinton, Reno and Waco, Remember What They've Done, that appeared in Counterpunch, June 5, 2003.
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