Yankees and Cowboys War

Carl Oglesby, 1989.

Carl Oglesby died of lung cancer at his home in Montclair, New Jersey on Tuesday, September 13, 2011, at the age of 76. 

I knew of Carl for decades, and briefly overlapped with his life in the JFK assassination research circles in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1970s-1980s. Yesterday, I posted of being a panelist at the A.S.K. conferences in Dallas. Carl's books Who Killed JFK?  (1991) and The JFK Assassination: The Facts and the Theories (1992), reflected those years, as well as his lifelong passion for investigating the underpinnings of the JFK assassination. (Another friend from those days, Tom Miller, author of The Assassination Please Almanac, 1977, went on to be a well-known travel writer.)

One of Carl Oglesby's often-forgotten books, which I think reveals a twilight language view of the world and should be read by students of political history, is The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate and Beyond (1976).

As you can hear, above, from Carl's own words upon looking back at the 1960s, a view of the ongoing "Civil War" in this country was a metaphor he used. It was a foundation critique.

Carl's 1976 book, The Yankee and Cowboy War describes the historical, current, and future power struggles between the old-money Eastern Establishment ruling class and the upstart new-money oil/real-estate/aerospace ruling class of the South and West. The book used Carl's (and Kirkpatrick Sale's) interpretation of Dallas (a Cowboy assassination of a Yankee president) and Watergate (a Yankee overthrow of a Cowboy president) to make his main points to a public with a short memory. Of course, it would take a Rockefeller Republican, Gerald Ford, former member of the Warren Commission, as a Yankee President, to give amnesty to Vietnam-era draft resisters and placate the Cowboys by pardoning Nixon.

The Yankee and Cowboy battle is written in our history.

Many would see later that the Cowboys won when the scion of the relatively old-money (Rockefeller-aligned) Bush family moved to Texas and pretended to be a Cowboy so Bush the Younger had a chance of succeeding his father, Bush the Elder.

The sometimes covert, sometimes overt war between Yankees and Cowboys continues into the present, during 2012.

Few today are willing to look too deeply at the ongoing "Civil War" that rages in this country, the Yankees vs Cowboys divide, or even the Morgan vs Rockefeller Yankee conflicts.  


For most Americans, the insights today of Mitt Romney, for example, hardly ever look at the moderate Yankee background of his father, George Romney, and George's defeat at the hands of the Cowboy Richard Nixon. Few will examine closely the history revealed in the undermining of George Romney by his subtle rival Nelson Rockefeller.

But Mitt Romney, try as he might, is still a Yankee fighting the Yankee versus Cowboy War in the glaring view of today's media.

When Mitt Romney was battling for a victory in the state of his birth, blue-collar Michigan in February, Romney told voters about the four cars he and his wife own, including "a couple of Cadillacs." 

In late February, Romney traveled to Florida to attend the Daytona 500 and was asked whether he followed NASCAR closely: "Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans," he said, "but I have some friends who are NASCAR team owners."

Mitt Romney admitted that "it's a bit of an away game" as he struggles to secure votes in the Deep South, during a campaign stop at the Port of Pascagoula, Mississippi on Thursday, March 8, 2012, in an appearance with Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant.

On Friday, March 9, 2012, the call out by Mitt Romney, at one Southern whistle stop, was an uncomfortable Mornin' Y'All. 

"Mitt Romney, a Yankee born and bred, is trying hard for the Southern vote. Real hard. Aside from shouting out the regional greeting to a Jackson, Miss., audience, Romney shared with them his breakfast menu: cheesy grits with a biscuit on the side," wrote Michele Salcedo of the Associated Press, on March 10th. 

Later Romney talked about eating catfish, for the second time in his life. At other stops in the South, Mitt Romney attempted to play up his everyman credentials. But failed, miserably, again.

"I’ve got a lot of good friends — the owner of the Miami Dolphins and the New York Jets — both owners are friends of mine," Romney said in an interview with an Alabama radio host Paul Finebaum on Monday, March 12.

Stephen Gordon, a Republican consultant based in Birmingham, Alabama, told the Boston Herald that the former Bay State governor is a Yankee, and will always face skepticism no matter how many catfish filets he raves about.

"People in the Deep South have a bit of a natural distrust for Northerners, especially folks from the Northeast," said Gordon, who is not affiliated with any campaign in the Republican presidential contest. "There are cultural differences, stemming all the way back to the Civil War, and they affect the way people perceive Mr. Romney."

Avoid being distracted by the media game with the Yankee versus Cowboy jokes. There is a much more serious background battle being played out here. Romney appears to be the Republican Yankee here, with various other Republicans trying to appear to be Cowboys. Some may be. 


Meanwhile, President Barack Obama seems to be firmly entrenched as a Yankee Democrat, with ties to the Zbigniew Brzezinski camp. 


Ask yourself, what are the real histories behind these current political candidates, and who are their advisors, their mentors, and their fiscal supporters?


Carl Oglesby was correct.