Jerryworld 5: Love / Machine, Pt. 2

Fourth Reich Archaeology

We're back with Part 2 of Love / Machine! After a quick recap of Part 1, we link up with our hero circa 1948. Jerry's in Grand Rapids practicing law at the firm of Butterfield, Keeney & Amberg, where Harvard-trained OG superlawyer Julius Amberg takes Jerry under his wing.

We dig into Amberg's background, yielding rich results. Amberg is the scion of Grand Rapids's first well-established Jewish family. And wouldn't you believe it, Amberg's grandfather even once held the same Congressional seat Gerald Ford eventually occupied!

It is in no small part thanks to Amberg's support and guidance that Gerald Ford is able to launch his underdog, outsider campaign to primary Grand Rapids's incumbent conservative representative - Bartel J. "Barney" Jonkman. According to Ford, he was motivated to run (besides having dreamt of a political career since his boyhood dreams of playing a role in some Arthurian legend) by Jonkman's outdated, out-of-touch commitment to isolationism in foreign policy, expressed among other positions through Jonkman's vocal opposition to the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe.

The alternative to isolationism - championed by both Gerald Ford and his political godfather, Senator Arthur Vandenberg (whom we also dig into) - was known as "internationalism." We spend some time situating this liberal, anti-communist brand of "internationalism" within the 20th-century trajectory of the Fourth Reich's development, distinguishing it from proletarian internationalism and checking in on the fruits it has borne in our present times. This leads us into a full treatment of the '48 primary, which Jerry wins in an unlikely landslide thanks to his signature grindset.

Once Jerry has made a home out of the House (of Representatives), he's ready to join a lodge. On September 30, 1949, just over 75 years to the day before this episode's publication, Jerry and his two half-brothers are inducted into the Grand Rapids Malta Lodge. We dig lightly into the history of freemasonry in Grand Rapids, Ford's deep involvement in freemasonry and its offshoots (including the notorious Royal Order of Jesters), and hear Ford's own words about his relationship with the old fraternal order.