Is Dark Humor Wrapped in a Dark Source Worth Listening to? — Convicted Fraudster Conrad Black’s Brilliant Four Sentence Summary of the United States’ Fall from Respectability

01 April 2016

Consider the following to be one the Universe’s subtle April Fools Day jokes

Journalist Conrad Black recently wrote a humorously accurate summary of recent American history. It is semantically brilliant in its edged way:

Forty-five years later, [the United States’] only rival had collapsed like a souffle without the two Superpowers exchanging a shot between them. International Communism and the Soviet Union disintegrated and America was alone, at the summit of the world.

And then it turned into a nation of idiots, incapable of doing anything except conduct military operations against primitive countries.

The objective performance of the latter Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations, and the Gingrich, Reid-Pelosi, and Boehner-led congresses, and most of the courts, have for these 25 years been shameful and as unprecedented in American history as the swift rise of America was in the history of the world.

The people turned out rascals and got worse rascals.

Consider the source

Canadian Mr. Black reportedly carries American felony convictions for fraud and obstruction of justice. According to Wikipedia, Conrad Black is a:

Canadian-born British former newspaper publisher and author. He is a non-affiliated life peer, and a convicted felon in the United States for fraud.^{[n 1]}

Black controlled Hollinger International, once the world's third-largest English-language newspaper empire,^[2] which published The Daily Telegraph (UK), Chicago Sun-Times (U.S.),The Jerusalem Post (Israel), National Post (Canada), and hundreds of community newspapers in North America, before he was fired by the board of Hollinger in 2004.^[3]

In 2004, a shareholder-initiated prosecution of Black began in the United States. Over $80 million in assets were alleged to have been improperly taken and/or spent by Black.^[4] He was convicted of three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice in a U.S. court in 2007 and sentenced to six and a half years' imprisonment.

On 28 October 2010, the US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned two of the three mail fraud convictions. This left Black convicted of one count of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. The court ruled that he must be resentenced.^[66]

On 17 December 2010, Black lost an appeal as to fact and law on his remaining convictions for fraud and obstruction of justice. The three-person panel did not provide reasons. On 31 May 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to grant Black leave to appeal his two remaining convictions without comment.^[67]

In 2011, two of the charges were overturned on appeal and he was re-sentenced to 42 months in prison on one count of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.^[5]

Black was released on 4 May 2012, after serving a total of 37 months in prison.^[6]

Black maintains his innocence, likening the United States justice system to North Korea. He has never acknowledged any crimes.^[78]

In essence, one convicted (innocence-insisting) fraudster-obstructionist is calling out a series of (equally innocence-insisting) American political huckster-obstructionists — including an impressive series of commanders in chief, as well as the government apparatus which they lead.

The moral? — Our sly Universe (and its shadow-souled action puppets) makes the Truth hard to find

Who can or should we believe?

Even if a sometime scoundrel, Mr. Black’s piquant summary of the American plight rings accurate.

Scathingly on target pot-and-kettle irony is such a delightfully literary thing.

Happy First of April — where sometimes an apparent prank is not one.

PeteFree.com

Is Dark Humor Wrapped in a Dark Source Worth Listening to? — Convicted Fraudster Conrad Black’s Brilliant Four Sentence Summary of the United States’ Fall from Respectability