Regarding the “unread” part. I don’t think you want to try and match my books read CV, since I spent two years in Spanish archives researching the Spanish Civil War. It’s nice getting paid to study and read lots of books and old newspapers. Throw in reading Le Temps, Paris, other French newspapers and the New York Times on microfilm from 1933–47 studying the Popular Front to the Vichy and liberation periods in France as well as the internal workings of the Nazi regime and its war economy (The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben, etc.). I also watched fascism die in Portugal in 1974 and in Spain in 1976, with my face meeting the fist of a fascist thug in Valencia in March 1976 at the fallas while walking with Catalan friends with a still banned Catalan flag. I visited Spain in 1973 and 1974 while Franco was still in power. So don’t tell me I don’t know what the “real thing” looks like.

I also saw the impact of American support for fascism and death squads (Roberto d’Aubuisson, the assassination of Cardinal Oscar Romero) while living in LA from 1979–86. Being bilingual, I volunteered at El Rescate and translated and compiled the political asylum applications of many victims who saw their loved ones murdered by American-supported death squads. I took them to the Canadian consulate in downtown LA and interpreted at their hearings. Two of my clients were twin teenage girls from Guatemala who saw their parents murdered. So don’t tell me I don’t know when the real thing comes along because I’ve seen much more of it than you have…..and that I hope, for your sake, you ever see. And, finally, use the damn spell checker and capitalize proper names if you hope to convince your readers that you’re literate while calling others idiots.