Chamblee54

This content was originally published July 4, 2024. … Every Night For A Thousand Years is a story about Walt Whitman’s time as a caregiver during the War Between the States. It appears this month on The New Yorker fiction podcast. ENFATY was written in the voice of Mr. Whitman by Chris Adrian, and read for the podcast by @NathanEnglander.
After looking for his wounded brother, Mr. Whitman was struck by the plight of wounded soldiers. He started to visit the soldiers, giving them candy and food, writing letters for them, and giving what comfort he could. ENFATY focuses on one soldier, Hank Smith. Doctors wanted to amputate his leg. Hank had a pistol, and would not let them. By the time Hank was tricked into allowing an amputation, it was too late.
Not everyone approved of Mr. Whitman. “One disapproving commissioner, Harriet Hawley, complained to her husband: “Here comes that odious Walt Whitman to talk evil and unbelief to my boys. I think I would rather see the evil one himself—at least if he had horns and hooves.”
Others saw things differently. “Union Colonel Richard Hinton met Whitman at Armory Square Hospital while recovering from a bullet wound suffered at Antietam … “When this old heathen came and gave me a pipe and tobacco, it was about the most joyous moment of my life. Walt Whitman’s funny stories, and his pipes and tobacco were worth more than all the preachers and tracts in Christendom. A wounded soldier don’t like to be reminded of his God more than twenty times a day. Walt Whitman didn’t bring any tracts or bibles; he didn’t ask if you loved the Lord, and didn’t seem to care whether you did nor not.”
Conditions conditions in the hospitals were beyond horrible. This was an era when many people said “I do not need to wash my hands every day!” One nurse asked Mr. Whitman if he had a Bible. She wanted to cheer up, by reading the Book of Job.
“These hospitals, ranging in size from converted private mansions to filthy, mud-encrusted tents in contraband camps, were places to be feared by any thinking person. The great European medical advances in bacteriology and antisepsis were still tragically a few years in the future … the overworked and understaffed physicians continued to ascribe the soldiers’ ills to such fantastical causes as “malarial miasms, mephitic effluvia, … sewer emanations, and poisonous fungi in the atmosphere.” …
The predictable result of such hurried and horrific operations was postoperative infection. Pyemia, septicemia, erysipelas, osteomyelitis, tetanus, and gangrene were grouped together as “surgical fevers.” Pyemia, literally “pus in the blood,” was the most dreaded of all, with a mortality rate of 97.4 percent, but the other surgical fevers also claimed their deadly share of victims. Not without reason did Civil War soldiers fear doctors much more intensely than they feared the enemy. They had a greater chance of dying in the hospital than in the field.
“That whole damned war business is about 999 parts diarrhea to one part glory.” The quote is on page 187 of Intimate with Walt – Selections from Whitman’s Conversations with Horace Traubel, 1882-1892. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The social media picture was taken in September 1864. “Petersburg, Va. Group of Company B, U.S. Engineer Battalion”

Darryl I recently finished listening to Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem parts 1-6. I listened to part 7 shortly after October 7. I only listened to 1-6 after the Douglas Murray went on JRE to promote his new book. I have a few thoughts about this intense experience. If you could find the time to read this, I would be honored. I also plan to post this letter on my blog, chamblee54.WordPress.com, and at r/martyrmade. I have made 4 blog posts about listening to FLNJ. 041525 041825 042325 042625
We have never met in person. However, after listening to 22:54:47 of FLNJ, I do feel a connection. Listening to FLNJ is intense. I appreciate Douglas Murray’s reluctance to take this journey. This is the same person who said “So what. 30 plus hours of podcasting, you do that in a week”
The most obvious comment is about the insanity of forming opinions about Darryl Cooper based on a few comments on the Tucker Carlson show. FWIW, I disagree with the idea that Winston Churchill was the true villian of WWII. This was not the first time I had heard these ideas. For some bizarre reason, I read Pat Buchanan’s book a few years ago. I generally prefer fiction, and honestly don’t know what drew me to that book.
Winston Churchill is an actor in FLNJ. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Zionism, for whatever reason. I did do some digging into Mr. Churchill, and found a copy of his editorial Zionism Vs Bolshevism. I also found a quote: “As prime minister, in 1941, he proclaimed that “I was one of the authors” of Zionist policy. Indeed, among the lengthy catalogue of criticisms of Churchill was that “He was too fond of Jews.” My irony meter went crazy while listening to FLNJ.
There are many whatifs in the FLNJ story. One is the Ottoman Empire. What if OE had allied with the Allies, rather than the Central Powers? Or better yet, remained neutral. From my Wikipedia level view of history, it seems as though Germany simply made a better offer than France. That would have changed a lot of things.
Another missing link is the history of communism and Judaism. At one time, communism was seen as being a Jewish movement. Over the years, this evolved to the point where Israel is seen as being the enemy of communism. In the eighties, we heard a lot about the need to rescue Jews from anti-semitic persecution in the Soviet Union. How/when did this change take place?
On a related note, here is a quote from part two part two of the chamblee54 commentary. “While driving back, I heard the last few minutes of FLNJ-4. Darryl mentions something I had never heard before. At some point in this era, the United States and Great Britain restricted Jewish immigration. Darryl says the fear was about communist revolutionaries coming into the country. At this time, most of the Bolsheviks were Jewish, and the Russian revolution was seen by many as a Jewish revolution. When I try to find out more about this, the only google results are to sources concerned with anti-semitism or the holocaust. Any information about communism being a motivation for restricted emmigration is are very difficult to find.”
FLNJ-5 and FLNJ-6 are difficult to listen to. There are a lot of things I had never heard about that era. The Arab rebellion, the Zionist terrorism against the British mandate, the dirty business of getting the UN to approve the partition were all new to me. While I had knew that the Nakba existed (contrary to what some propagandists tell you today) I had no idea about the details. There is a saying about making laws and making sausages … you don’t want to be there when either one takes place. The same thing could be said about “nation building.” God is in the details, or maybe it is the Devil.
It is obvious that a 2016 show about Israel/Palestine is going to sound very different in 2025. It is a fitting irony that one of the last things you mentioned in FLNJ-6 was the quote from Refaat Alareer. “Sometimes a homeland becomes a tale, We love the story because it is about our homeland, and we love our homeland even more because of the story.”
On December 7, 2023, Dr. Alareer “was killed by a strike in Shajaiya, in northern Gaza … He was staying with his brother, his sister, and her four children, who were also killed.” Shortly before his death, Dr. Alareer had been in a twitter squabble with Bari Weiss. The IDF saw this as sufficient reason for a targeted assassination.
Anyway, thank you for the hard work you put into FLNJ. It took me 13 days to listen to it. If listening causes this much brain damage, I can only imagine how tough it would be to create those 23 hours. Thank you. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the facebook picture in December 1942. “Chicago IL An unusually heavy fog in the early afternoon”

This is part four of my guided tour with Fear & Loathing in the New Jerusalem, a podcast series about Israel and Palestine. This will be the final episode, and will cover FLNJ-6. FLNJ covers the time between 1890 and 1948, and is 22:54:47 in 6 episodes. FLNJ was created by Darryl Cooper aka @MartyrMade. Other episodes of the chamblee54 series are available: 041525 041825 042325 Disclaimer This post is a greatly simplified view of what happened. For more information, you can listen to FLNJ, or google one of the many histories of this era.
April 23, 2025 Throughout this process, I have been hitting the wrong button on my phone, and sending FLNJ back to 0:00. I’ve started taking notes of when I finish listening, so that if when I screw up, I can go back and find where I was. A minute ago, I arrived at dinner. I turned off the phone, and looked at the time (1:54:26). I then hit the wrong button on the phone, and wound up at 0:00. It is one of the problems of listening to long form podcasting.
At 1:57:24 I have to pull over into a parking lot. Darryl has gotten to where he needs to discuss the Jewish Holocaust of World War II. It’s an important part of the Israel story, as well as an overwhelming human tragedy. Darryl is having a tough time deciding how to approach it, and settles on reading three individual stories. Multiply these 3 stories by 2 million, and you have a holocaust. God/Satan is in the details. Focus on the tragedy, and leave the statistics for someone else.
FLNJ was recorded in 2015 and 2016. This is 9 years ago, or 7 years before October 7th. Today is also 8 months after Darryl’s notorious appearance on Tucker Carlson, after which he was called a holocaust denier. It’s tough to see how you could listen to FLNJ, and then call Darryl a holocaust denier. That is how the modern discourse goes. You can create an intense multi-part series about the creation of Israel, and people are more interested in a few sentences on youtube.
Another thing that’s happened since 2016 is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This surprised most people, who knew little about the Maidan coup, or the Russia-Ukraine war already raging. In FLNJ, Darryl calls the capitol of Ukraine KEY-evv, whereas most people now say KEEV. Darryl also has a tasteful quote in FLNJ-6. “In the early 1930s, Poland got to look across the border to Ukraine and watch the Communist secret police, which was 75% Jewish … murder, by intentional starvation, somewhere between 6 and 10 million Ukrainian peasants.”
At 2:18:02 Daryl mentions the social ramifications of not accepting the Holocaust story with worship, but by questioning some of the details. It’s almost as if he saw the reaction to his comments on Tucker Carlson, 8 years later.
April 24, 2025 At 0833, I take my brother to the marta station in Chamblee, and find a non-handicapped place to park. I’m going to do my morning walk on the paths in downtown Chamblee.
At 3:32:00 of FLNJ-6, Darryl is talking about a jailbreak. This is the point where I came in on FLNJ-6, thinking it was FLNJ-5. I’m going to continue to listen. It’s going to be difficult, because I know what is coming. Israel is going to declare independence after the British mandate ends. The Zionists are going to be rewarded for their terrorism against the British, and they’re going to turn their homicidal fury on the Arabs. Israel is gaining their Homeland by violence. This is not the message that I have been taught about Israel.
I finished my walk at 3:58:20 of FLNJ-6. It is 0958 in Chamblee, and I’ve turned off FLNJ-6. I’ve had enough. There was a United Nations vote to establish the partition of Palestine. It was going to fail. The vote was delayed. Many countries were put under intense pressure, and given threats by the United States, to pass this resolution. Liberia was told that they were going to lose their major employer. France was told if they did not vote yes, they will not receive financial aid after World War II. There are reports that the Soviet Union pressured Ukraine to vote yes. It was dirty dirty dirty.
The Lebanese representative made an impassioned speech against establishing the partition. It’s almost as if he could foresee the future, and the destruction that Israel would visit upon Lebanon.
4:22:58 Always write down the time. I somehow hit something on the player that said show album art. Meanwhile, I was talking to some idiot phone scammer, and the show-album-art screen would not go away. I had to close the player out to get rid of the screen. By the time I got the player back on, FLNJ-6 had gone back to 0:00.
April 24, 2025 I am in a parking lot, turning off the player at 5:21:58 of FLNJ-6. The series is essentially over. The last chapter was about the Nakba. … Darryl continues, “The Zionists are never going to give up Israel, and the Palestinians are never going to give up their fight to return. Refaat Alareer wrote “Sometimes a homeland becomes a tale, We love the story because it is about our homeland, and we love our homeland even more because of the story.”
On December 7, 2023, Dr. Alareer “was killed by a strike in Shajaiya, in northern Gaza … He was staying with his brother, his sister, and her four children, who were also killed.” Shortly before his death, Dr. Alareer had been in a twitter squabble with Bari Weiss. The IDF saw this as sufficient reason for a targeted assassination.
This is where the journey ends. Listening to FLNJ has been difficult, although not nearly as difficult as living it. … to paraphrase an obnoxious argument, which one hears all too often these days. The chamblee54 series is not comprehensive, and leaves out a great deal of information. I write this knowing that almost nobody will read it, and that even fewer will care. If you tell this story to a supporter of Israel, you can expect to hear some angry talking points about October 7. Angry hasbara is a huge part of the problem in the United States.
The pictures are from The Library of Congress. John Collier took the photographs in November 1942. “Pittsburgh PA (vicinity) Montour no. 4 mine of the Pittsburgh Coal Company. Miner’s wife, who is an Office of Civilian Defense first aid nurse.” · selah