June 25, 1948 The United States, Great Britain and France began the Berlin Airlift of food and supplies to the German city in defiance of the Soviet Union’s blockade of the roads. At the height of the Airlift, two groups of planes flew in four-hour blocks around the clock.While one group of aircraft was loaded and serviced, the other group was in the air. On the 264-mile route, 32 aircraft were in the air simultaneously. Supplies would be quickly unloaded and the aircraft would return for more food, fuel and other necessities for the 2.5 million West Berliners. It was the most ambitious aerial supply operation in history. The Soviet blockade was not lifted until the following May but the airlift continued for four months more. Berliners watch a plane involved in the Berlin Airlift bringing food and supplies About the Berlin Airlift
Queer History 745: Patricia Highsmith – The Brilliant Fucking Architect of Queer Hope by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈 Read on Substack
In the suffocating landscape of 1950s America, when being queer could land you in a mental institution, prison, or worse, one woman sat down at her typewriter and decided to tell the truth. Patricia Highsmith didn’t just write a fucking love story—she carved out a piece of literary real estate where lesbian love could exist without punishment, where two women could find each other and actually keep each other. In a world determined to erase queer joy, she smuggled hope onto bookshelves disguised as pulp fiction.
But let’s not paint Highsmith as some sanitized literary saint. This woman was complicated as hell, brilliant as fuck, and carried enough psychological baggage to sink a goddamn ship. She was an alcoholic, a recluse, and often cruel to the people who loved her. She was also one of the most important queer voices of the 20th century, whether she wanted that label or not. Her story isn’t just about one woman’s struggle with her sexuality—it’s about the price we all pay when society forces us to live fractured lives, and the revolutionary act of refusing to let that fracture define us.
The Making of a Literary Badass
Mary Patricia Plangman was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on January 19, 1921, into a world that would spend the next several decades trying to convince her that everything she was constituted a crime against nature. Her parents, Jay Bernard Plangman and Mary Coates, divorced before she was born, and her mother married Stanley Highsmith when Patricia was three. The family moved to New York, where young Patricia would grow up surrounded by the kind of suffocating heteronormative expectations that could drive anyone to drink—and eventually did.
From childhood, Highsmith knew she was different, and not in the precious, special-snowflake way that adults like to romanticize. She was different in the way that made her feel like she was constantly walking on broken glass, knowing that one wrong step could cut her to pieces. She was attracted to women in an era when that attraction was classified as a mental illness, when “treatments” ranged from electroshock therapy to lobotomies. The psychological pressure of living with this secret would shape not just her personal relationships but every fucking word she ever wrote.
At Barnard College, Highsmith studied English literature and began to understand that stories could be weapons—tools for survival in a hostile world. She was already writing, already crafting the psychological precision that would make her famous. But she was also falling in love with women, conducting relationships in shadows and whispers, learning the exhausting choreography of the closet that would define her entire adult life.
After graduation, she moved to Greenwich Village, ostensibly to pursue her writing career but really to find some semblance of community among other artists and outcasts. The Village in the 1940s was one of the few places in America where queer people could exist with some measure of freedom, though even there, the threat of police raids and social destruction loomed constant. Highsmith found work writing for comic books, including scripts for Captain America and other superheroes—ironic, considering she was creating stories about characters who could live openly as their authentic selves while she remained trapped behind a mask of heterosexual respectability.
The Birth of Lesbian Literary Revolution
In 1951, while working at Bloomingdale’s during the Christmas rush—because even future literary legends had to pay rent—Highsmith had an encounter that would change queer literature forever. She served a beautiful blonde customer buying a doll for her daughter, and something about the interaction sparked what would become “The Price of Salt.” Later, walking through the city, Highsmith felt what she described as a “strange happiness” and knew she had to write this story.
But let’s be clear about what she was attempting: in 1952, lesbian novels ended one of two ways—with the queer character dying or going insane. Those were the only narratives society would tolerate. Happy queers were not allowed to exist in fiction because they weren’t allowed to exist in real life. Publishers, critics, and readers had been thoroughly conditioned to expect punishment for sexual deviance. A lesbian love story with a happy ending wasn’t just revolutionary—it was practically seditious.
Highsmith wrote “The Price of Salt” under the pseudonym Claire Morgan because she knew that attaching her real name to a lesbian novel would be career suicide. Even with the pseudonym, the book was relegated to the pulp fiction ghetto, sold alongside other “deviant” literature in bus stations and drugstores. The literary establishment wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole, and most critics dismissed it as sensational trash designed to titillate straight male readers.
They were wrong, and they were missing the fucking point entirely.
“The Price of Salt” tells the story of Therese Belivet, a young woman working in a department store who becomes infatuated with Carol Aird, an elegant older woman going through a divorce. What follows is a love story that unfolds with the psychological complexity and emotional honesty that would become Highsmith’s trademark. But more importantly, it’s a love story where both women survive, where love is possible, where the ending doesn’t require sacrifice or punishment.
The novel found its audience despite the literary establishment’s best efforts to ignore it. Queer women passed dog-eared copies between friends, smuggled them in suitcases, hid them between mattresses. For the first time, they could read a story where people like them weren’t doomed, where lesbian love wasn’t portrayed as inherently tragic or destructive. The psychological impact was immeasurable—here was proof that queer happiness was possible, that their desires weren’t automatically poisonous.
The Psychological Architecture of Survival
Understanding Highsmith’s impact on LGBTQIA+ people requires understanding the psychological landscape they were navigating in mid-20th century America. This was an era of institutionalized homophobia so complete and systematic that it’s hard to imagine from our current perspective. Homosexuality was classified as a mental illness. Same-sex relationships were illegal in every state. Queer people were barred from government employment, discharged from the military, subjected to police harassment, and often rejected by their families.
The psychological effects of living under this kind of systematic oppression were devastating. Queer people internalized shame, developed elaborate systems of concealment, and often struggled with depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. The absence of positive representation in media and literature reinforced the message that queer love was inherently destructive, that happiness wasn’t possible for people like them.
Into this psychological wasteland, Highsmith dropped a fucking bomb of hope.
“The Price of Salt” didn’t just tell queer women that love was possible—it showed them what that love might look like. Carol and Therese weren’t tragic figures destroyed by their desires; they were complex, flawed, human women who found each other and fought to stay together. The novel’s ending, with Therese choosing Carol over societal expectations, was nothing short of revolutionary.
But Highsmith’s psychological insight went deeper than just providing positive representation. She understood the specific ways that homophobia warped relationships, the paranoia and secrecy that poisoned even the most genuine connections. Carol’s ex-husband uses their daughter as leverage, threatening to take the child away if Carol doesn’t renounce her “perversion.” The constant threat of exposure hangs over every tender moment, every stolen glance, every whispered conversation.
This wasn’t melodrama—this was documentary realism for queer people living in the 1950s. Highsmith captured the specific psychological toll of living in the closet, the way fear could poison love, the exhausting vigilance required to maintain a double life. But she also showed that despite all this, love could survive, relationships could endure, happiness was fucking possible.
The Ripple Effects: How One Book Changed Everything
The immediate impact of “The Price of Salt” was profound but largely invisible. Queer women didn’t write letters to newspapers praising the book—that would have been social suicide. Instead, they quietly bought copies, passed them along to friends, and felt something shift inside themselves when they read about Carol and Therese’s love story.
Dr. Eli Coleman, a sexologist who has studied the impact of literature on LGBTQIA+ identity formation, argues that positive representation in fiction serves a crucial psychological function for marginalized communities. “When people see themselves reflected positively in stories,” Coleman explains, “it validates their experiences and provides a roadmap for possibility. For queer people in the 1950s, who had almost no positive representation anywhere, a novel like ‘The Price of Salt’ could literally be life-saving.”
The psychological impact extended beyond individual readers to the broader cultural conversation about homosexuality. While the book didn’t immediately change mainstream attitudes—that would take decades—it planted seeds that would eventually bloom into the gay rights movement. Young people who read Highsmith’s novel grew up with the revolutionary idea that queer love didn’t have to end in tragedy, that happiness was possible for people like them.
This shift in narrative possibilities had profound philosophical implications. If queer love could be portrayed as beautiful, complex, and worthy of a happy ending, then the entire moral framework that condemned homosexuality began to crack. Highsmith wasn’t just telling a love story—she was challenging the fundamental assumptions that justified queer oppression.
The Complex Psychology of Patricia Highsmith
While Highsmith was creating revolutionary representation for other queer people, her own relationship with her sexuality remained deeply complicated. She never publicly came out, never became an activist, and often seemed uncomfortable with the idea that “The Price of Salt” had become a touchstone for lesbian readers. This wasn’t just garden-variety internalized homophobia—though that was certainly part of it—but a complex psychological response to a lifetime of navigating hostile territory.
Highsmith’s personal relationships were often tumultuous and self-destructive. She drank heavily, maintained emotional distance even from intimate partners, and seemed to prefer the company of her numerous cats to most humans. Friends and lovers described her as brilliant but difficult, generous but cruel, capable of profound empathy and stunning callousness sometimes within the same conversation.
This psychological complexity was both a source of her literary genius and a reflection of the damage caused by a lifetime in the closet. Highsmith had spent so many years concealing her true self that authenticity became nearly impossible. She developed what psychologists call “minority stress”—the chronic psychological tension experienced by stigmatized groups who must constantly monitor and modify their behavior to avoid discrimination.
The effects of minority stress on LGBTQIA+ individuals are well-documented: higher rates of depression and anxiety, difficulty forming intimate relationships, substance abuse, and a persistent sense of alienation from mainstream society. Highsmith exhibited many of these symptoms throughout her life, but she also channeled that psychological complexity into her writing, creating characters whose inner lives were as intricate and contradictory as her own.
Her later novels, including the famous Tom Ripley series, explored themes of identity, deception, and the psychology of outsiders—all subjects she knew intimately from her own experience as a closeted lesbian. While these books weren’t explicitly queer, they were infused with the psychological insights that came from a lifetime of living on society’s margins.
Social Impact: Cracking the Foundations of Heteronormativity
“The Price of Salt” didn’t exist in a vacuum—it was part of a slowly building wave of cultural change that would eventually reshape American attitudes toward sexuality. But Highsmith’s contribution was unique in its subtlety and psychological sophistication. Unlike the explicitly political gay rights literature that would emerge in later decades, her novel worked by stealth, smuggling queer humanity into mainstream consciousness through the back door of popular fiction.
The book’s classification as pulp fiction was actually crucial to its impact. While “serious” literature was consumed primarily by educated elites, pulp novels reached a much broader audience. Working-class people, teenagers, small-town residents—people who might never encounter openly queer individuals in their daily lives—were reading about Carol and Therese’s love story. The seeds of empathy were being planted in unexpected soil.
This demographic reach had significant social implications. When the gay rights movement began to gain momentum in the 1960s and 1970s, it wasn’t starting from scratch. Thanks to novels like “The Price of Salt,” millions of Americans had already been exposed to positive portrayals of queer relationships. The ground had been prepared, even if most people didn’t realize it.
The philosophical implications were equally profound. For centuries, Western society had constructed elaborate theological and pseudo-scientific justifications for condemning homosexuality. These arguments depended on portraying queer love as inherently unnatural, destructive, and incapable of producing genuine happiness. Highsmith’s novel didn’t engage these arguments directly—it simply rendered them irrelevant by showing that none of them were true.
Carol and Therese’s relationship was portrayed as natural, nurturing, and fulfilling. They weren’t predators or victims, sick or sinful—they were simply two women who fell in love. This narrative simplicity was actually a sophisticated philosophical assault on the entire edifice of heteronormative ideology.
The Continuing Revolution: Highsmith’s Legacy in Contemporary LGBTQIA+ Culture
When “The Price of Salt” was reissued in 1990 under Highsmith’s real name with the new title “Carol,” it found a new generation of readers who could appreciate its revolutionary impact. The AIDS crisis had decimated the gay male community, and lesbian feminism was providing crucial leadership in the broader LGBTQIA+ rights movement. Highsmith’s novel was rediscovered as a foundational text, a reminder of how far the community had come and how much further it still needed to go.
The 2015 film adaptation, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, introduced Highsmith’s story to an even broader audience and sparked new conversations about queer representation in media. The film’s lush cinematography and devastating emotional honesty brought Carol and Therese’s love story to life for a generation raised on increasing LGBTQIA+ visibility but still fighting for full equality.
For contemporary LGBTQIA+ people, particularly young people struggling with their sexual or gender identity, Highsmith’s work continues to provide crucial psychological support. In an era of increasing political backlash against queer rights, when transgender youth face legislative attacks and gay marriage remains under threat, the simple existence of stories like “Carol” serves as a reminder that queer love has always existed, has always been beautiful, and has always been worth fighting for.
The psychological impact is particularly powerful for young people from conservative backgrounds or regions where LGBTQIA+ visibility remains limited. Reading about Carol and Therese’s love story can be the first time these individuals encounter the revolutionary idea that their desires are valid, that happiness is possible, that they aren’t broken or sinful or destined for tragedy.
The Philosophical Architecture of Queer Joy
Highsmith’s greatest achievement wasn’t just creating positive lesbian representation—it was constructing a philosophical framework for queer joy that transcended the specific circumstances of her characters. “The Price of Salt” argues, through narrative rather than polemic, that love itself is the highest human value, that authentic relationships matter more than social approval, and that individuals have the right to pursue happiness even when that pursuit challenges conventional morality.
This philosophical stance was radical in 1952 and remains challenging today. American society continues to struggle with the tension between individual freedom and social conformity, between traditional values and evolving understanding of human sexuality and gender identity. Highsmith’s novel doesn’t resolve these tensions—it simply insists that love transcends them all.
The book’s ending is particularly significant in this regard. Therese’s choice to pursue a relationship with Carol isn’t portrayed as a rejection of society or a declaration of war against heteronormativity. It’s simply a young woman choosing love over fear, authenticity over approval, joy over safety. The philosophical implications are profound: if individuals have the right to pursue happiness, and if love between consenting adults is inherently valuable, then society’s objections become irrelevant.
This isn’t the angry politics of later gay liberation movements—it’s something more subtle and perhaps more subversive. Highsmith wasn’t arguing that society should accept queer people; she was arguing that queer people didn’t need society’s acceptance to live full, meaningful lives. The audacity of that position, especially in 1952, cannot be overstated.
The Psychological Legacy: How One Story Saves Lives
The most important measure of Highsmith’s impact isn’t literary criticism or sales figures—it’s the immeasurable number of LGBTQIA+ lives that have been saved by her willingness to imagine queer happiness. In a community where suicide rates remain tragically high, where young people continue to face rejection and violence for their sexual or gender identity, stories matter in ways that straight, cisgender people often struggle to understand.
Dr. Ryan Watson, who studies the relationship between media representation and LGBTQIA+ mental health, explains: “For young people questioning their sexuality or gender identity, seeing positive representation in media can literally be the difference between life and death. When you’re told by your family, your school, your church, and your government that you’re fundamentally wrong or broken, finding stories where people like you are happy and loved can provide the hope necessary to survive.”
“The Price of Salt” has been providing that hope for over seventy years. It sits on countless bookshelves, gets passed between friends, appears on recommended reading lists, and continues to whisper the same revolutionary message to each new generation of readers: you are not alone, your love is valid, happiness is possible.
The novel’s impact extends beyond individual readers to the broader cultural conversation about LGBTQIA+ rights and representation. Every positive portrayal of queer relationships in contemporary media owes a debt to Highsmith’s pioneering work. Every time a young person sees themselves reflected positively in a book, movie, or television show, they’re benefiting from the foundation she laid in 1952.
The Ongoing Fight: Highsmith’s Relevance in Contemporary Struggles
As LGBTQIA+ people continue to fight for full equality and acceptance, Highsmith’s work remains remarkably relevant. The psychological insights she provided about the costs of closeting, the importance of authentic relationships, and the possibility of queer joy continue to resonate with contemporary experiences.
Young transgender people facing legislative attacks and social rejection can find solidarity in Therese’s struggle to live authentically despite social pressure. Gay men navigating family rejection might recognize themselves in Carol’s battle to maintain relationships with her loved ones while refusing to deny her true self. Lesbian couples fighting for the right to parent can draw strength from Carol and Therese’s determination to build a life together despite legal and social obstacles.
The philosophical framework Highsmith constructed—that love transcends social convention, that individual happiness matters, that authenticity is worth fighting for—remains a powerful tool for contemporary LGBTQIA+ activism. While the specific battles have evolved, the underlying struggle between individual freedom and social control continues.
Perhaps most importantly, Highsmith’s work reminds us that representation matters, that stories have power, that the simple act of imagining queer happiness can be a revolutionary force. In an era when politicians and pundits continue to debate the “appropriateness” of LGBTQIA+ visibility, her novel stands as proof that queer people have always existed, have always loved, and have always deserved the chance to pursue happiness.
Conclusion: The Fucking Beautiful Truth
Patricia Highsmith died in 1995, long enough to see some of the changes her work helped create but not long enough to witness marriage equality, widespread LGBTQIA+ representation in media, or the growing acceptance of transgender rights. She remained complicated and contradictory until the end—a brilliant writer who struggled with intimacy, a queer pioneer who never fully embraced that role, a woman who gave hope to millions while often seeming to have little hope for herself.
But her legacy isn’t diminished by her personal struggles—if anything, it’s enhanced by them. Highsmith’s psychological complexity, her understanding of the costs of closeting, her ability to create characters who were both strong and vulnerable, all stemmed from her own experiences navigating a hostile world. She transformed her pain into art, her isolation into empathy, her struggle into a story that continues to save lives.
“The Price of Salt” stands as proof that individual acts of courage can have ripple effects that extend far beyond what their creators ever imagine. When Highsmith sat down to write about Carol and Therese’s love story, she probably thought she was just crafting another novel to pay the bills. Instead, she created a piece of revolutionary literature that challenged fundamental assumptions about sexuality, provided hope to countless individuals, and helped lay the groundwork for the LGBTQIA+ rights movement.
In a world that continues to tell queer people that their love is wrong, that their happiness is impossible, that they should be grateful for tolerance rather than demanding full equality, Highsmith’s novel remains a radical document. It insists that queer love is beautiful, that happiness is possible, that authenticity is worth any price society might demand.
That message, delivered with all the psychological sophistication and emotional honesty Highsmith could muster, continues to resonate with each new generation of readers who discover that they are not alone, that their love is valid, and that despite everything society might tell them, happiness is not only possible—it’s their fucking birthright.
The woman who wrote comic book heroes while hiding behind a mask of heterosexual respectability ultimately became a hero herself, not through superhuman powers but through the simple, revolutionary act of telling the truth about love. In doing so, she proved that sometimes the most powerful weapon against oppression isn’t anger or violence—it’s the audacious insistence that joy is possible, that love conquers all the bullshit society tries to pile on top of it, and that everyone deserves the chance to pursue their own beautiful, complicated, fucking magnificent version of happiness.
June 24, 1948 In Washington, D.C. President Harry Truman signed the Selective Service Act, creating a system for registering all men ages 18-25, and drafting them into the armed forces as the nation’s military needs required.
June 24, 1948 In Germany, the Soviet Union denied permission for Allied (U.S., France or Great Britain) forces to travel over Soviet-controlled territory to reach Allied-controlled West Berlin; the roads were allegedly closed for repairs and electricity was cut off to West Berlin. This was a blockade of food and all other supplies to the western enclave within East Germany and its population of more than two million.
June 24, 1970 The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution, which had authorized the president “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States,” was used by President Lyndon Johnson, absent a formal congressional, and constitutional, declaration of war, to justify open-ended pursuit of war in Vietnam. The resolution was passed in August, 1964 following a provocation by the U.S. destroyer Maddox in North Vietnamese territorial waters, which was portrayed as aggressive military action by North Vietnamese PT boats.
June 24, 1980 A general strike was held in El Salvador against death squads, primarily military or paramilitary units carrying out political assassinations and intimidation as part of the Salvadoran government’s counterinsurgency strategy. Salvadoran death squad destroying a village The U.S. government helped fund and train Salvadoran police forces. Questioned about the nature of the aid in a Senate hearing, Undersecretary of State for Latin American Affairs Elliott Abrams said, “I think that government has earned enough trust, as I think we have earned enough trust, not to be questioned, frankly, about exporting torture equipment. But I would certainly be in favor of giving it to them if they want it.” Noam Chomsky on El Salvador
June 23, 1683 “Tamanend,” sculpture by Raymon Sandoval, 1995, Front & Market Street in Philadelphia. Chief Tamanend (The Affable), leader of the Pennsylvania’s thirteen Lenni-Lenape tribes, and other chiefs went to Philadelphia to meet with William Penn. Penn wished to buy four parcels of land (most of current Montgomery County), and the chiefs agreed to the sale, each making their mark on the deeds which had been translated for them. Soon thereafter, Penn met with Tamanend at Shakamaxon under a large tree later known as the Treaty Elm. Penn said, “We have come here with a hearty desire to live with you in peace . . . We believe you will deal kindly and justly by us, and we will deal kindly and justly by you . . . .” Tamanend offered, “We will live in love with William Penn and his children, as long as the creeks and rivers run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure.”
June 23, 1963 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led a massive march down Detroit’s Woodward Avenue followed by a speech to a rally in Cobo Hall. The speech was essentially the same as that he delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. two months later, known as “I Have a Dream.” Photo of King speaking in Detroit from the Wayne State University’s Reuther Archive.
June 23, 1966 High school students in Grenada, Mississippi, tried to purchase tickets in the downstairs “white” section of the local movie theatre. Black moviegoers had always been required to sit in the balcony under Jim Crow segregationist laws. When they were refused tickets, they sat down on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. Fifteen were arrested, including Jim Bulloch, a Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) organizer, who was charged with “inciting to riot.” Jim Bulloch, one of the SCLC organizers in Grenada, Mississippi Grenada Mississippi, 1966, Chronology of a Movement
June 23, 1972 Life magazine published a photo by Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut of children running from an attack with Napalm, an incendiary chemical weapon used widely by U.S. forces to burn out the jungle, thus eliminating cover (foliage) for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops. Napalm, a sticky mixture of gasoline, polystyrene and benzene that burns at very high temperature, had been used in WWII and Korea. Read about the photograph
June 23, 1972 The Education Amendments of 1972, commonly known as Title IX, became U.S. law, prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions. More infoText of the law
June 23, 1973 The International Court of Justice granted an injunction, requested by the Australia and New Zealand governments, against French nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.
because when the US does these things, they take place in all of our names whether we want it, or not. It’s part of why the power for these things lies in our legislature. The power does not rest with the executive unless the legislature votes to give it.
This summer will mark 80 years since the attacks stunned the world. Today, every one of the crew members who carried out the bombings is dead. Here, one of the last writers to interview them reopens his files
‘It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining on the buildings. Everything down there was bright – very, very bright. You could see the city from 50 miles away, the rivers bisecting it, the aiming point. It was clear as a bell. It was perfect. The perfect mission.”
I’m sitting in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco opposite the navigator of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The year is 2004, and Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, aged 83, has agreed to be interviewed for a book I’m writing for the 60th anniversary of that fateful mission. Van Kirk informs me, with the trace of a smile, that this will probably be the last interview in his life.
We have spent the afternoon looking through wartime logbooks from his 58 overseas combat missions. Now, between servings of dim sum, he is telling me about the 59th, the one that wiped out a city, along with well over 100,000 people.
“The instant the bomb left the bomb bay, we screamed into a steep diving turn to escape the shockwave. There were two – the first, like a very, very, very close burst of flak. Then we turned back to see Hiroshima. But you couldn’t see it. It was covered in smoke, dust, debris. And coming out of it was that mushroom cloud.”
The crew of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay. Stephen Walker interviewed Theodore ‘Dutch’ Van Kirk, navigator (1); Tom Ferebee, bombardier (2); Paul Tibbets, pilot (3); Bob Lewis, co-pilot (4); George ‘Bob’ Caron, tail gunner (5); and Robert Shumard, assistant engineer (6). Photograph: Photogquest/Getty Images
He stops a moment, awe visibly registering on his face. “The city was gone. It was only three minutes since we’d dropped the bomb.”
Van Kirk died in 2014. In the years since we met, all the other crew members who flew on the missions to Hiroshima, and to Nagasaki three days later on 9 August, have also died. Meanwhile, the numbers of hibakusha, those who survived the attacks, are rapidly dwindling. We are passing into a twilight of history. As we approach the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings, this biological fact seems disturbingly relevant. Twenty years ago, the world was a dangerous place. Today, it’s more so. More nations are developing nuclear weapons with few, if any, effective international controls. Tactical nuclear strikes have been explicitly threatened by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. And, just in the last week, war has broken out in the Middle East over fears that Iran may be very close to having a bomb. In such times, perspective matters. The shocked testimony of those like Van Kirk needs to be heard. History has lessons to teach us.
It was this thought that prompted me to reopen my files, to reread the transcripts of interviews with some of the crew members of both attacks. Much of this material was untouched for two decades; nothing relating to the Nagasaki mission was published. Here were some of the last testimonies of those who did the unthinkable. They were in their 80s or 90s, nearing the end of their lives. How did they remember it?
On 4 August 1945, Charles “Don” Albury, a 24-year-old B-29 pilot, was summoned to a secret briefing on Tinian, a Pacific island 1,500 miles south of Japan. Then the biggest bomber base in the world, Tinian was a jump-off point for a conveyor belt of the almost daily destruction of Japan. About 300,000 people had already died and 9 million were now homeless.
But Albury’s outfit had yet to take part in the attacks. Known as the 509th Composite Group, they occupied a secret compound on a far corner of the base. “Security was very, very tight,” Albury told me when I met him at his home in Orlando, Florida. Then aged 83, he grinned mischievously. “I remember one time the base commander got too near one of our planes. A guard nearly shot him.”
Even the 509th’s crews knew nothing about their ultimate missions. And they had been training for almost a year. First in Utah, later on Tinian: “We kept dropping practice bombs and flying these crazy steep turns. We did it day after day. For months.” But nobody told them why, and few dared ask. Those who did could find themselves swiftly dispatched by their leader, Paul Tibbets, a battle-hardened bomber pilot, to hardship posts above the Arctic Circle. “You learned to keep your mouth shut,” said Albury.
But in that 4 August briefing a part of the secret was about to be revealed.
Nine days earlier, on 26 July, President Truman had delivered his ultimatum to Japan in the Potsdam declaration: either surrender unconditionally, or face “prompt and utter destruction”. The means of that destruction was not specified. And Japan had not surrendered.
If I live for 100 years I will never get these few minutes out of my mind
“Zohran Mamdani would do to New York City what Khomeini and Khamenei did to Tehran,” Fine said. “We cannot let radical Muslims turn America into a Shiite caliphate.”
The proposal is unlikely to generate much revenue for the government; there is almost no private-sector interest in the mail trucks, and used EV charging equipment — built specifically for the Postal Service and already installed in postal facilities — generally cannot be resold.
“The funds realized by auctioning the vehicles and infrastructure would be negligible. Much of infrastructure is literally buried under parking lots, and there is no market for used charging equipment,” Peter Pastre, the Postal Service’s vice president for government relations and public policy, wrote to senators this month.
Read the full article. $10 billion into the sewer to please their Glorious Leader. Something something DOGE.
Stephen Miller spoke at an April event in Warren, Mich., marking President Trump’s first 100 days in office.Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images
Stephen Miller wanted to keep the planes in the air—and that is where they stayed.
When a federal judge in March told the Trump administration to turn around flights of deported migrants headed to El Salvador, senior officials hastily convened a Saturday evening conference call to figure out what to do.
If they didn’t return the passengers, they would be defying a court order, some administration officials worried. Miller, who is President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, pushed for the planes to keep flying, which they ultimately did. The judge would later say that allowing officials to defy court judgments would make a “solemn mockery” of the Constitution.
The 39-year-old immigration hawk, who has been by Trump’s side since the 2016 campaign, has emerged as a singular figure in the second Trump administration, wielding more power than almost any other White House staffer in recent memory—and eager to circumvent legal limitations on his agenda.
He has his own staff of about 30 and a Secret Service detail, which White House officials said was because he had received death threats and serves as homeland security adviser. He has been responsible for the administration’s broadsides against universities, law firms and even museums. He has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.
Miller had considerable sway in Trump’s first term. But when aides at the time suggested promoting Miller to a leadership role at the Department of Homeland Security, Trump declined, according to a former administration official, telling aides he thought Miller wasn’t leader material.
His influence has expanded sharply since, thanks largely to his steadfast loyalty to Trump. This account of Miller’s tenure is based on interviews with current and former White House officials, Trump advisers and other prominent Republicans.
Some of Miller’s colleagues said they were alarmed by some of the legal maneuvers that Miller has proposed for executing the administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, and Trump has gently ribbed him for being too “happy” about deportations.
Miller, who has written or edited every executive order signed by Trump in his second term, attended a May event of the Make America Healthy Again Commission.Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
Miller, who isn’t a lawyer, is the official who first suggested using the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants, which the Justice Department pursued. He also privately, then publicly, floated suspending habeas corpus, or the right for prisoners to challenge their detention in court, which the administration hasn’t tried. That prompted pushback from other senior White House and Justice Department officials.
His orders to increase arrests regardless of migrants’ criminal histories set off days of protests in Los Angeles. Miller coordinated the federal government’s response, giving orders to agencies including the Pentagon, when Trump sent in the Marines and the National Guard, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Miller’s portfolio covers almost every issue Trump is interested in. In recent months, he talked to CEOs about a coming tariff announcement; joined a meeting between Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Trump about the company’s antitrust case; and met with other tech companies on artificial intelligence.
Even some posts at cabinet agencies have been described by administration officials as reporting directly to Miller, effectively bypassing cabinet secretaries.
There are some limits to his influence. He was supportive of Meta’s push to settle its antitrust case, which fell flat. Trump last week signaled concerns that the administration’s deportation policies were too aggressive, calling for a pause in some deportations that he has since rolled back. Trump, asked how Miller’s directives on deportations squared with his own, declined to put distance between the two of them. “We have a great understanding,” Trump said.
The aggressive posture has started to spark some voter backlash, with polls showing Trump’s approval rating on immigration and deportations has turned negative.
Several White House staffers said Miller always takes the most “extreme” view of any issue, and his positions have cost the administration in court. In Trump’s first 100 days back in office, courts issued nationwide injunctions in 25 cases against the federal government, compared with six in his entire first term and four during the Biden administration, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Several cases have already reached the Supreme Court, which has ruled against Trump on some immigration cases.
“I think the administration has miscalculated and overstepped,” said Skye Perryman, who leads Democracy Forward, an organization that has repeatedly sued Trump.
Miller has responded to the courts’ intervention by denouncing it as “judicial tyranny.” His allies argue illegal border crossings are down to almost zero because his aggressive proposals are deterring migrants.
“Stephen Miller is one of President Trump’s most trusted and longest serving aides for a reason—he delivers,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary.
In the wilderness
Miller stuck by Trump when many staffers quit their jobs after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He had helped draft Trump’s speech that morning, and worked until 12 p.m. on Jan. 20—the day Trump’s first term ended—telling the officer taking his badge he would be back in four years.
“Sixteen Hundred Pennsylvania Avenue is the greatest address in the world, and though we now leave these gates, rest assured, this is not goodbye,” he wrote to colleagues.
Three months later, Miller launched a nonprofit, America First Legal, aimed at countering what Miller described as a “years-long, one-sided legal assault” by the left. “Now, we must turn the tables,” he said at the time.
Over the next four years, it filed dozens of lawsuits, many of which are ongoing, categorized on its website under topics including “DEI,” “Woke Corporations” and “Women’s Sports.” The group’s targets are now under fire from the Trump administration, too.
Miller speaking with reporters outside the White House in January.Photo: Francis Chung/Press Pool
In 2022, the group called on the Education Department to stop distributing federal funds to universities where it alleged antisemitism was festering. Three years later, the Trump administration would do just that at universities including Harvard, Columbia and Northwestern.
In 2024, Miller’s group helped 16 Republican-led states sue the Biden administration over a policy that protected illegal immigrants married to U.S. citizens from deportation. A judge ruled in the states’ favor, and the Trump administration overturned the policy this year.
By the time Trump returned to the White House, the group had about two dozen lawyers on staff and had raised more than $60 million from donors, whose identities it doesn’t disclose. The group paid Miller more than $500,000 last year, according to his financial disclosure.
Meanwhile, Miller continued to play an active role across the Republican Party, even if his outreach wasn’t always welcome.
Congressional aides fielded lengthy calls from Miller about illegal immigration, often without any specific requests. One likened him to a grandmother who wouldn’t stop talking and said his calls were akin to listening to a podcast. Others said he would call to scold aides about how they had framed a social-media post on a particular issue or criticizing the way they had worded a press release.
As a House committee prepared for then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to testify, Miller came to the Hill to play the role of Mayorkas, aides said. During the prep, he answered questions as the secretary—but also chimed in to give lawmakers advice on questions.
Miller was determined to kill a bipartisan bill pushed by Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma in 2024 on the border and regularly called House Speaker Mike Johnson.
He also called the Republican National Committee to offer his advice on how the party should communicate on immigration, sometimes offering his thoughts on what the RNC chairman could tweet, people familiar with the discussions said.
He was a regular visitor to Mar-a-Lago during the campaign, meeting with Trump above his ballroom. Campaign aides say Miller always wanted to talk more about immigration. Trump’s top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, and his other aides wanted to keep the message on the economy. Trump staffers started displaying ominous photos of migrants at his events.
Some posts at cabinet agencies have been described by administration officials as reporting directly to Miller.Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Hundreds of orders
In the first term, Trump was largely unprepared to govern. Miller regularly complained then that others in the administration tried to block his immigration decisions, and outside lawyers would stymie their efforts. This time, Miller came in determined to correct that.
He brought hundreds of proposed orders to the White House as well as his own staff. Russell Vought, the onetime treasurer of America First Legal, is now the White House budget chief. Reed Rubinstein, the group’s senior vice president, was nominated as legal adviser of the State Department. Matt Whitaker, a board member, is the U.S. permanent representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
He now tells other staffers how to behave around Trump, people who have heard his comments say, and upgraded his office from one on a different floor to one steps from the Oval Office.
During the first term, Miller would push for hard-line policies that others blanched at, including advocating for several dozen countries to be added to the travel ban list of seven, a former administration official said. People laughed, but he was serious, the official said. This time, Trump announced a ban that covered a dozen countries.
He keeps in Trump’s good graces by giving Trump ideas—but more importantly, helping the president carry his own out.
Administration officials noted how Miller shut down discussion about whether the U.S. should bomb Houthi targets in a Signal chat that was accidentally shared with The Atlantic’s editor in chief. As the vice president and top national security officials discussed options, Miller weighed in.
“As I heard it, the president was clear,” Miller said. “Green light,” he added.
Earlier this month, Leavitt, the press secretary, interviewed Miller at a private event for Republican donors at the Four Seasons in Washington.
Miller, who grew up in Santa Monica, Calif., said large swaths of Los Angeles were engaged in a “rebellion,” according to people present.
Los Angeles had become like Cancún, he said—it was fine to visit, but not good for its own citizens. To conclude the event, Leavitt told the crowd that Miller needed to return to his work of deportations.
Miller smiled in response, and then left to return to the White House.
I got a lot from reading and re-reading this. I tried to comment there, but WordPress sigh. Anyway, as a show of respect, here is this. Very good info and commentary
The transgender flags that usually adorn the Stonewall National Monument in New York City during Pride Month were missing this year, so some New Yorkers are taking matters into their own hands.
During June, Pride flags are placed around the park’s fence. They usually include a mixture of rainbow LGBTQ+ flags, transgender flags and progress flags, which have stripes to include communities of color.
Photographer and advocate Steven Love Menendez said he created and won federal approval for the installation nine years ago. Within a few years, the National Park Service was picking up the tab, buying and installing flags, including trans ones.
Pride flags fly in the wind at the Stonewall National Monument in Manhattan’s West Village on June 19, 2023 in New York City.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
This year, however, Menendez said the National Park Service told him to change the protocol.
“I was told … only the traditional rainbow flag would be displayed this year,” he said.
Now, no transgender or progress flags are among the 250 rainbow flags installed around the park.
“It’s a terrible action for them to take,” Menendez said.
“I used to be listed as an LGBTQ activist, and now it says ‘Steven Menendez, LGB activist,'” Menendez said. “They took out the Q and the T.”
“I’m not going to stand by and watch us be erased from our own history”
Many visiting the monument said they are opposed to the change.
“I think it’s absurd. I think it’s petty,” said Willa Kingsford, a tourist from Portland.
“It’s horrible. They’re changing all of our history,” Los Angeles resident Patty Carter said.
Jay Edinin, of Queens, brought his own transgender flag to the monument.
“I’m not going to stand by and watch us be erased from our own history, from our own communities, and from the visibility that we desperately need right now,” he said.
The transgender flags that usually adorn the Stonewall National Monument in New York City during Pride Month were missing this year, so some New Yorkers are taking matters into their own hands.CBS News New York
He is not the only one bringing unauthorized flags to the park. A number of trans flags were seen planted in the soil.
National Park Service workers at the park told CBS News New York they are not authorized to speak on this subject. CBS News New York reached out by phone and email to the National Park Service and has not yet heard back.
Dave Carlin has covered major national news stories and events in the past four decades including Superstorm Sandy and its tri-state impacts, Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina and Iniki on Kauai, Hawaii. He also covered the Space Shuttle Program, 1989 San Francisco Earthquake, numerous Southern California wildfires, the trial and execution of serial killer Ted Bundy in Florida, the 1994 police shooting death of Tyke the eacaped Cirus Elephant on the streets of Honolulu, 2009’s Miracle on the Hudson, the NYC Mayoral administrations of Bloomberg through Adams and more.
My wife and I recently returned from a Danube River cruise — no, it’s not blue, the waltz notwithstanding — and we had a wonderful time.
One of the many pleasures of these relatively small river cruises is all the interesting people you get to meet from around the world. This time around, we spent most of our time with Canadians and Australians, who seemed to enjoy our company once they determined we shared their low opinion of our president.
When one of the Canadians we dined with several times learned that we had signed on for a “Sound of Music” tour of Salzburg, Austria — featuring fountains, mountains, cityscapes, trees, a church and other locations from the movie — he told a nice story about an Austrian who emotionally described to him his love for their traditional folk song, “Edelweiss.”
I had read that the song actually was written just for the movie and had no significance for Austrians, which our guide confirmed the next day. So when our new friend repeated his story at dinner that evening, I politely corrected him, explaining that although some Austrians may have embraced the song — the Edelweiss is their national flower — it was a Rodgers and Hammerstein creation.
I won’t say our friend was crestfallen, but he did seem disappointed. I should add that I have a long tradition of spoiling people’s favorite stories, in part through the urban legend columns I used to write semiregularly.
So here’s the question. Is the truth really that important, if it spoils a good narrative?
After all, we’re in what some people have characterized as the Post-Truth Era, ushered in most recently by Donald Trump, his congressional lapdogs and Fox News but immortalized much earlier by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. Falsehoods abound, not just in the White House but all over social media.
Here’s how the European Center for Populism Studies explained the Big Lie technique.
The big lie is the name of a propaganda technique, originally coined by Adolf Hitler in “Mein Kampf,” who says “The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one,” and denotes where a known falsehood is stated and repeated and treated as if it is self-evidently true, in hopes of swaying the course of an argument in a direction that takes the big lie for granted rather than critically questioning it or ignoring it.
Pssst. If that doesn’t sound familiar, wake up.
Hitler used it to blame his country’s problems on his best available scapegoat, Jewish people. Trump and company have broadened this approach to encompass multiple scapegoats — immigrants, foreigners, transgender people, people who are “woke” because they encourage social justice and care about the future health of our planet — and to big lies involving the 2020 election and so many other subjects that we’re numb to it. He lies about everything, and his supporters don’t seem to know or care.
I remember when the idea of act checking first emerged in political coverage. Instead of just quoting politicians who were fudging the truth, the fact-checkers would point out when they were lying or exaggerating, in the case of The Washington Post by assigning up to four Pinocchios for the most egregious falsehoods.
Some politicians would correct themselves in future pronouncements. Others wouldn’t bother.
Trump, the ultimate Pinocchio, is oblivious to Fact Checking. He just plows ahead — “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats!” — repeating the same misinformation over and over at rallies, news conferences, debates. Facts are irrelevant.
Perhaps most amazingly, his long-since-debunked fraud allegations regarding the 2020 election are being incorporated into Oklahoma’s public-school curriculum. Elsewhere, facts about racial injustice, climate change and our nation’s history have been altered or eliminated from public school curricula to suit the MAGA agenda. Kinglike, Trump even is punishing colleges, states and others who won’t go along with his determination to impose “1984”-style Newspeak.
I think at least some Trump followers — particularly Republican elected leaders — know he is lying. But because it suits their preferred narrative, they go along. That’s frightening enough. Even scarier, though, are the people who are too dim, lazy or Foxcentric to figure out that we’re not being overrun by bloodthirsty killer immigrants or that non-straight men and women aren’t a threat to our military, our children or anything else, not to mention that Trump really lost the 2020 election, that the rioters storming the Capitol weren’t the true victims of Jan. 6, that indiscriminate ICE goon squads aren’t the best solution to illegal immigration and that vaccinating our children continues to be a very good idea.
They don’t just accept the lies. They spread them. That’s why we must be advocates for the truth, correcting and even confronting falsehoods, at rallies, on social media, in conversations. Ignorance is not bliss. It’s fueling our country’s descent into unrecognizable autocratic chaos.
“Eidelweiss” may be trivial. But innocent people being demonized? Trust in our elections destroyed? Our constitutional guarantees shredded? Our planet’s climate threatened? Long-dead diseases given new life?History rewritten?
Speak up. The truth is worth defending.
This is a contributed opinion column. Bill White can be reached at whitebil1974@gmail.com. His Threads handle is whitebil2000. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. For more details on commentaries, read our guide to guest opinions at themorningcall.com/opinions.
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