Geopolitics, Kootenai style

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John T. Wood, in his later years, might have fit right into today’s Kootenai County Republican Party.

Almost.

He was a respected professional man, a physician who among other things was the founder of Coeur d’Alene’s first hospital, and served as mayor. But by 1950, when he was 72 and elected to the U.S. House, his interests ran in other directions – turning to dark conspiratorial theories. He was convinced the United States was about to become a “foul fascist state” about to be split into seven administrative units governed by dictatorial boards.

But much of his effort in Congress concerned the United Nations which, he believed, was tring to take over the world. The U.N. Charter “was designed as an instrument of force,” he said, modeled on Soviet governing documents, and the organization itself (as one book summarized his statements in the Congressional Record) “was ground zero of a broader ‘conspiracy’ to use its own ‘self-granted powers’ to form a ‘one-world government, dominant over the Constitution, and over the laws of every state in the Union’.” And so on. He served in the House but one term, losing in 1952 to Democrat Gracie Pfost.

If I sound dismissive it’s because Wood’s dystopian theories have not, let’s say, proven out. But I don’t dismiss him entirely, because a succession of sorts to his world view is alive and well in Kootenai County.

Last month the Kootenai County Republican Party blasted Idaho’s two senators, Mike Crapo and Jim Risch – Republicans both – for their support of sanctions against Russia.

Crapo, in fact, was one of the Senate leaders supporting the measure. He said of it, “This legislation signals to the world the United States’ unflagging commitment to the sanctity of territorial integrity, human rights, and good governance. It also demonstrates our resolve in responding to cyber-attacks against American citizens and entities and against our allies. The Crapo-Brown-Corker-Cardin bill will result in some very powerful, new sanctions against Russia.” Nearly every member of Congress, in both parties in both chambers, voted in favor.

Didn’t convince up in the Panhandle. The party in Kootenai passed its own measure warning of “the emergence of a globalist ‘Davos Culture’ [that being this decade’s preferred name for the international conspiracy] comprised of progressive political elites around the world that is distinct from Traditional Western Civilization.” Kootenai contended that “Russia has become a nationalistic country that is resisting this progressive globalist agenda.” And: “globalists have recently been agitating against good relations with Russia because they see it as one of the last holdouts against a progressive globalist agenda.”

In tone, it sounds a lot like something John T. Wood might have gotten behind.

Except that Wood did get that Russia – or, then, the Soviet Union – was a hostile power, run as a militaristic dictatorship, was a suppressor of speech, press and religion, active in expanding its hegemony at the expense of the United States and its influence, and … well, on and on. In many ways, it is like that today.

Wood did at least get, more or less, who our friends are in the world, and who aren’t.

It’s a strange thing to say, but John T. Wood from the early 1950s, thrown out of Congress back then by Idaho voters who largely seemed to consider him too extreme, might be a little too mainstream for today’s Kootenai County.

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