I'm interested in George Packer, Liberal Hawk, saying this:
You don’t have to be a neocon to sympathize with the seriousness of the project under consideration. Kristol’s essays of forty years ago, set in the context of social breakdown and the ongoing spectacle of left-wing lunacy, make the move of liberal-minded intellectuals to the right entirely understandable and, in some ways, justifiable. If nothing else, their migration was more interesting than anything going on in liberal circles, for there’s nothing like dismantling an orthodoxy to bring out the liveliest prose. Compared with the defenses of liberalism written in those years, the intellectual energy and fearlessness are indisputably on the side of the neoconservatives.The "ongoing spectacle of left-wing lunacy" is supposed to be Altamont or something. One notes in passing that the Hell's Angels weren't Leninists. But honestly, the left-wing of the sixties, as distinct from "liberal-minded intellectuals" and the Democratic Party, counted among its radical claims the notion that black people were not sub-human, women not property, consensual sex not criminal nor even especially objectionable, and war . . . how did the phrase go? Bad for children and other living things? These are not, plainly put, especially troubling notions. They are, more tellingly, correct. While left-wing lunacy attempted to dismantle Jim Crow and convince America that the only sure thing that could result from killing a couple of million Asians was a couple of million dead Asians, Kristol's fellow soi-disant left-leaning intellectuals were hyperventilating about Negroes. Insofar as Kristol et al. did not believe--at least not at first--that Social Security was Communism and Roosevelt one of the Elders of Zion, you could have called them Liberal, but they were always firmly on the side of the American state and American expansionism, and when the antiwar left finally realized that the Democratic Party was not interested in ending the war on Vietnam and began protesting in earnest, it was hardly a great transmigration of souls that transported a few militant Jewish warmongers from putative left to nominal right.
54 comments:
Oh IOZ! You're so naive! Didn't you know that it was the virtuous and noble Democrat Party all by it's brave little lonesome that enacted suffrage and ended segregation and ended the Vietnam war and makes brighter brights and whiter whites? Why can't you see the intrinsic goodness that is God-Emperor Obama? Don't you know that Obama has a wonderful plan for your life? Maybe Digby or ChrisWWW will condescend to explain it to you.
Digby's hardly the worst when it comes to ignoring Obama's flaws. She just can't seem to see the forest of a century's worth of imperialism for the trees of torture.
hyperventilating? it seems i read a different essay than you did.
You lot are cute.
Anyway, IOZ, what I think is interesting is how this exodus of liberal warmongers to the right is so well publicized, and yet the quiet story is the more poignant one: of how the Democrats completely betrayed any sense of principle, time and time again. It's as if that whole leftwing maelstrom didn't occur at all. As I said earlier this week--attack dogs on black babies, no; napalm on Vietnamese children, yes. Such was the choice of the official American left, who loved King et al. until they started messing with their war.
Stay tuned for a repeat, of course. We just elected a Kennedy, and only a few people know what that really means.
I sure as shit don't fucking roll! Shomer shabbos!
Dear douche-bag George Packer,
So where is this lively prose as movement conservatism disintegrates?
They are, more tellingly, correct.
Yes, and we can never forgive them for that.
I ended up sort of free-associating a long ramble, so if you'd prefer short & concise quips I'd advise scrolling past.
I certainly hate neo-conservatives, but this is not one of your better efforts. If we distinguish "the left" from simply liberal Democrats (say, McCarthy & McGovern), a lot of them really were deranged, while pre-New Left lib-Dems like the hated LBJ supported civil rights laws for blacks rather than thinking they were "sub-human".
There were members of the left that didn't simply oppose war as harmful generally, but thought it preferable that the Viet Cong win. I have made it a point of emphasis that opposing the Iraq war does not one pro-Saddam, just as opposing WW2 does not make on a Nazi and opposing the Vietnam war does not make one a fan of Ho Chi Minh. Supporting al Qaeda would be unfathomable for the left today. The Weather Underground wanted to "bring the war home" and while I can't figure out the ideological justification, Dohrn still applauded the Manson murders. And speaking of Manson, the second woman that tried to shoot Gerald Ford was a fan of Pattie Hearst & the SLA whose motivation was that she thought Ford was waging war on "the left".
Before Catholics managed to get evangelicals on board, the big "social issue" of the day was crime. And that's not simply a code-word for racism, homicide had more than doubled from the late 50s to mid 70s (and were ten times what it had been at the turn of the century) and other violent crimes like rape followed with it. When that sort of change was occurring and Timothy Leary hanging out with Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria sends a message back home to kill a cop, I'd hope people noticed something fucked up was going on (just as I hope we'll look back on the post-9/11 pants-shitting in disgust).
I can even agree with a sort of Robert Williams armed defense against cops position, but the Panthers were a vile gang of thugs that tortured some of their own members to death and (while there weren't any convictions) carried out a number of hits to rectify great injustices like infidelity (not that the competing Karenga movement was any better). Many more respectable figures on the left were rather chummy with such characters: Leonard Cohen threw a fund-raising party for the Panthers, Ben Morea (who John Lennon was a fan of) distributed pamphlets in support of Valeria Solanas after she shot Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer & friends helped get Jack Abbot out of jail (resulting in murder six weeks later) & Harvey Milk was friends with Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award recipient Jim "drinking the Kool-Aid" Jones. It wasn't just Kristol that was disturbed by "up against the wall, motherfucker", the Frankfurt marxists Adorno & Horkheimer thought the new left student movement could evolve into fascism. Campus unrest was limited in violence and didn't affect that many people, but around the same time there were a wave of full-scale riots breaking out in cities across the country and the New York Review of Books thought it would be helpful to give instructions on making molotov cocktails.
None of this is to deny that William Appleman Williams was a hell of a lot more sane than Scoop Jackson. But the first generation of neo-conservatives did at least get one thing right, which was that they had been wrong. That their offspring seem incapable doing so is as good evidence as any of the conservative complaint of cultural degradation in our own era.
you wonder if it ever occured to these ass clowns that the omnipotent left may have learned a trick or two while the pro-counsuls grew fat and stupid
TGGP did not rant, and made a lot of sense. Most of the virtuous things that the left accomplished were set in motion during the Eisenhower administration. Momentum and Decay brought a great deal of societal dislocation and actual pain in the 60's and 70's. The idea that the left was about standing up for minorities and nothing more is a dramatic over-simplification, and unworthy of the majority of the analysis I read here.
TGGP, pretty good grip, but re: your demonization of the Panthers, was that before or after the state infiltrated and split the organization? I know that they're all scary now, but they have a pretty twisty history. I'm of the opinion that none of the craziness of the 1960s and 1970s developed in a vacuum.
Impeach Earl Warren!
That was a very pretty disquisition, TGGP, but I must differ on some points.
I don't see what is so dreadful about wanting the "Viet Cong" -- the National Liberation Front of Vietnam -- to win. Consider the options. First there were the French, who took over Indochina because all the other kids on the block were grabbing parts of Asia, so why not them? Then the Japanese took over, and they were no sweethearts either. Then when the Japanese were defeated, the Vietnamese declared their independence, but the US decided that the French should have their empire back. Quite a nasty war was fought to drive out the French, with massive monetary and material support from the US. Communists were not the only Vietnamese who fought against the French and Americans, it should be noted, though as so often happened (as in the US Civil Rights movement) they were the vanguard.
When the French were defeated in 1954, a truce line was drawn at the 18th parallel, and elections were to be held in 1956 so that the Vietnamese could decide their own future. The US immediately began working to undermine this possibility, installing a viciously brutal dictator who arrested and tortured his opponents and refused to participate in the 1956 elections. The North protested, but didn't get involved in the Southern resistance until after 1960. The "Viet Cong" -- a term which I'm told means something like "Viet Commies" -- were Southerners resisting a violent and repressive puppet government that wouldn't have lasted long without illegal US support.
Now, yes, the NLF committed atrocities. That usually happens in such circumstances. So did the American revolutionaries in their war of independence; so did the French resistance against the Nazi occupation. There is nothing wrong with pointing out this fact, but there is something very wrong about ignoring the context in which those atrocities were committed: the vastly greater scale of violence committed by the US and its puppet regime in Vietnam: millions dead, millions more hurt, thousands tortured in Diem's dungeons, the countryside destroyed, land mines still killing and maiming people to this day. As the US violence escalated, the NLF became increasingly dominated by the communists, but opposition to the US always included Buddhists, Catholics, and other groups. The reason why the US finally had Diem removed, remember, was that he wanted to negotiate with the NLF, and the US wouldn't stand for that.
Given this reality, of course I wanted the NLF to win, without illusions that they were a bunch of Gandhi/King pacifists. (Though Gandhi was quite capable of supporting horrific wars.)And "win" here does not, as hysterical Americans of both parties claimed, mean that the Vietnamese would sweep across the border and occupy the US, stealing our women and raping our cattle. It would mean that the Vietnamese would control their own country. You've heard of "self-determination"?
Given your casual elision of this basic history, I don't take seriously your account of the Black Panthers either. Probably it's as much a bunch of half-truths as your understanding of Vietnam. The US government had not only the Panthers but Martin Luther King Jr under surveillance, remember, so if they went after the Panthers it wasn't because of a distaste for macho nationalism and internecine violence; that was probably just fine with our government.
Goddammit, ain't nobody raping my cattle but ME.
Yes, Promiscuous Reader, you are correct to distrust the Black Panther account. It would seem to come directly from David Horowitz's lips.
useful time to read phillip roth's "american pastoral"
I'm of the opinion that none of the craziness of the 1960s and 1970s developed in a vacuum.Nothing happens in a vacuum.
Was Deng bad? Sure. So was Saddam. I wouldn't support a war against either. Supporters of the NLF cannot legitimately said to be "pro-peace" except in as much as they wanted the other side to surrender. By that logic, LBJ was pro-peace for wanting the NLF to surrender and Petraeus is pro-peace for wanting Iraqis to lay down their arms. The NLF evidently thought millions of dead asians would result in something other than just millions of dead asians.
So did the American revolutionaries in their war of independenceWhich was nothing to celebrate.
The reason why the US finally had Diem removedIt was the opposite of the reason you give: they thought he was too heavy-handed and by alienating his countrymen he was undermining the country. Ho Chi Minh himself said after Deng was killed that he couldn't believe how stupid the Americans (really, it was mostly Henry Cabot Lodge) were, as he was the only person capable of resisting (in part because Deng weakened much of the government to make it dependent on him & his family). The Buddhists in particular, which you mention, had been protesting against Deng and U.S advisors wanted him to be more accomodating towards them. When the NLF actually took over they arrested and killed a number of these same trouble-makers, but nobody wept for self-immolating monks by then. We have access to Vietnam's archives now, and they make it clear that the northern government was behind the NLF. It certainly wasn't the case that that Ho Chi Minh was above dungeons and brutality himself, so it was hardly an improvement to transfer power over the south.
does not, as hysterical Americans of both parties claimed, mean that the Vietnamese would sweep across the border and occupy the US, stealing our women and raping our cattleThat's a very good reason for the U.S not to have any involvement. It is not a good reason to support the NLF.
You don't need to look to David Horowitz for dirt on the Panthers, and his association with them makes me question his judgment in the first place. In Eldridge Cleaver's own Soul on Ice he writes about being a serial rapist, and years after being charged with murder and fleeing to Algeria he admitted to having deliberately ambushed and shot police officers. We don't know if Bobby Seale himself was involved with the torture & murder of Alex Rackley, but there doesn't seem to be any dispute that field marshal George Sams and others were.
I'm pretty sure it was Leonard Bernstein who threw a fund-raising party for the Panthers, not Leonard Cohen as asserted by TGGP.
Seale was acquited of those charges in a trial that was largely viewed as a ridiculous attempt at political persecution - by very moderate political voices at Yale no less.
No argument on Cleaver - he was nothing but a loon, but the larger story of the Panthers and the incredibly positive community organizing they did shouldn't be confused with one or two terrible personalities. Classic right wing debate tactic - conflate the misdeeds of one individual associated with a movement to 'discredit' the movement as a whole. Really, you should be ashamed of yourself for arguing in this manner.
How many of us here want the Iraqi resistance to win? I know I do.
Well... I am in synch with CuneyT, The Promiscuous Reader and lucid.
And let me add...
...& Harvey Milk was friends with Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award recipient Jim "drinking the Kool-Aid" Jones.It was nto so much that HM was "friends" with Jim Jones, tho you can find embarrassing endorsements from HM and Willie Brown and others w/r/t JJ, easily enough... it was that JJ was in service to and alliance with the SF Dem party machine. He delivered votes and was an easy to point to "good" (which of course he was not), working against poverty and for a multiracial world and whatever else he spouted.
Evan White, then a long time investigative reporter with local NBC news, told me when Guyana hit, within 24 hours, newspaper photo files all over CA were purged of embarrassing photos of Dem party officials with JJ. Not surprisingly...
TGGP: A charge of murder was not the reason Cleaver fled the country.
I was one of those "lunatics" in the 60's. I thought the Weathermen were nuts, but they were a very tiny part of "the Left", and the story of the Panthers is way more complex than you paint, facts you utterly elide.
I can't even bring myself to give you a "nice try".
"But the first generation of neo-conservatives did at least get one thing right, which was that they had been wrong."
Actually, they got nothing right. Their start of their Long March to perfidy began in the 60's, not 1956.
oh yeh another thing:
Poor pathetic New Yorker. So well suited these days to a lousy wuss like Packer. A lousy useless wuss propagandist like Packer, I should say.
It often had lousy parts, bad fiction, great non fiction (oh for the days of John McPhee and others) but that magazine opposed the Vietnam war thru the years.
And now it supports Dem party center/right pro-war sycophants. And ObRama The Great, as well. From low to low.
Whoops, I did confuse one Leonard for another. I blame the popularity of that stupid Hallelujah song.
I stated that we didn't know whether Seale was guilty, but Sams surely was. He wasn't just some individual but was a field marshal sent from California in order to enforce party discipline. The Panthers did do some good things, but I don't consider that much of an excuse. Arguing that we shouldn't let a few bad apples spoil our view of the whole barrel is a common right-wing plea and it's funny to be accused of it.
SteveB, you have no moral high ground over those who say they "support the troops". You are a war supporter. I could be misreading you so that the U.S simply packing up and leaving and all conflict (including that between the U.S created government and insurgent groups) thereby ending would count as victory for the Iraqi resistance, in which case I would be in the same boat. A second best alternative would be if the people of Iraq just abjectly accepted American domination. Hell, that might have resulted in American troops exiting sooner. In reply to the Promiscuous Reader, I don't think "self-determination" is worth a single life. I reject the sick ideology of nationalism which endorses sacrificing human beings on the altar of chauvinistic honor. The fact that so many people are susceptible to the measles of mankind is unfortunate and a good reason not to invade countries in the first place.
marisacat, yes the alliance was what I was suggesting when I said they were friends. It might actually have been more commendable had pols merely been poker buddies with Jones rather than enablers even after it had been reported that his cult had engaged in kidnapping and murder. Milk wrote a letter to Jimmy Carter to explain that allegations against Jones were lies and attended a rally (with Willie Brown & Art Agnos) at the heavily armed compound against Jones' enemies.
Anonymous:
Sure, the story is more complex. I'm commenting on a blog not writing a book. But Cleaver was charged with a murder and fled the country before it could come to trial, and the conventional wisdom is that the former is the reason for the latter. I'd be interested in hearing what the real reason was.
What was all that shit about Vietnam?
Arguing that we shouldn't let a few bad apples spoil our view of the whole barrel is a common right-wing plea and it's funny to be accused of it.You refuse to see the good - so you take the two sides. We can dismiss them either because there was a bad apple, or because it was stringently ideologically correct [which it wasn't, wrong again asshole].
Either way, it doesn't matter to you that what the Black Panthers acutally did was help a deprived, victimized and murdered community start to fend for themselves, organize for themselves and educate themselves upon a slightly different idea than King - the idea that little black girls and little white girls would sashay down the aisle was bullshit.
This is where the 'new, new' left loses me. They really believe in this post-racial shit, or post-class shit, or post-whatever shit, as if the fragrant ass nuggets they poop over everything have cured all problems.
We don't live in that world asshole, and you know why? Because tired 'liberal' asses are too busy apologizing for the completely contradictory and self-defeating capitalism that butters their buns.
Nothing will change unless every idiot out there is inspired to suspend their belief for at least an instant - and see a better world.
Good luck... I hope that's real butter and not some rancid vegetable oil substitute... empire always loves the cheapest trick.
"I'm commenting on a blog not writing a book."
No. You are lying. Cleaver was arrested for attempted murder for his participation in the events that led to the shooting of Bobby Hutton. He was ultimately tried upon his return to the US and convicted of assault.
SteveB, you have no moral high ground over those who say they "support the troops". You are a war supporter.
Yes, I suppose I am, in the sense that I think people who are living under military occupation have a right to resist that occupation, by any means necessary.
A second best alternative would be if the people of Iraq just abjectly accepted American domination. Hell, that might have resulted in American troops exiting sooner.
So the U.S. had no plans for an indefinite military "presence" in the country with the world's second largest oil reserves? Not that the planners would have considered that an "occupation". No, just a puppet government in power acceding to our every wish, and, say, 50,000 or so U.S. troops at air bases like Balad. But definitely not an occupation, no sir.
Wow. I ought to read more closely. Did TGGP just observe that if the Iraqis had assumed the position, this all might have been cleaned up earlier?
Let me be clear when I say that nationalism and all that go along are pretty ugly indeed. But you know what, even as I am no patriot, if a bunch of foreign powers occupied my part of the country, I wouldn't just fall to the ground, prostrate, and let the occupiers have their way. Expecting the Iraqis to behave in a way nobody else would? Well, it's silly.
"if a bunch of foreign powers occupied my part of the country, I wouldn't just fall to the ground, prostrate, and let the occupiers have their way."
you'd what -- fight for our democracy?
bring on the visigoths!
you'd what -- fight for our democracy?bring on the visigoths!
I think we already know that when it comes time to recruit for The Resistance, the readership of Who Is IOZ? is not going to be very fertile ground.
TGGP said --
but the Panthers were a vile gang of thugs that tortured some of their own members to death.
And I said --
what in hell is this, The John Birch Airwaves?
""if a bunch of foreign powers occupied my part of the country, I wouldn't just fall to the ground, prostrate, and let the occupiers have their way."Reminds me of when the Union Army in the Civil War gathered up a small company of north Georgian Confederates. These people looked like pretty shaggy-ass people.
One Union officer turned to the Confederate corporal or whatever. He said, "You men don't have a pot to piss in. You don't own any slaves. The government of the state of Georgia has never done you any favors. So why are you fighting us?"
The Confederate looked him dead in the eyes and said, "Because you're here." No further explanation was forthcoming.
Actually, Anon 11:50, I think cthulhu's mom spoke pretty well for me, but let me be clear.
I wouldn't be fighting for democracy. I'd be fighting because occupations invariably kill those they claim to serve, and once even one American gets killed by accident or through malice by even the most well-intentioned foreign soldier, I think I'd have to act.
Now, if you don't want to be glib, and we actually want to talk, I'd pose this to you. It's something that troubles me. What if the choice was between a domestic autocrat, not necessarily a Hitler but someone bad enough, and a foreign power that's cosmopolitan enough but greedy, too, and is going to treat us like expendables anyway. Well, that's a state and a state, and I wonder if I'd have the balls that some Europeans had during WWII--and I'm not talking about Chalabis and whatnot, because there are always turncoats. But what about Germans who turned around and fought the Third Reich? Would I have the strength to do that? And how do you know that any you serve will aid you?
Well, maybe the answer to that question might settle the argument on the next post, too.
Lucid, my sympathies -- I remember what it was like to be 13 and getting my first zits!
I could spend all day railing against some of the stupidity in the above comments, so I will restrict my remarks to one: to wit, the person who said "There were members of the left that didn't simply oppose war as harmful generally, but thought it preferable that the Viet Cong win."
I am one of those people. You see, when a military megapower invades an innocent country without a shred of excuse, and in violation of treaty commitments which it voluntarily undertook, and when in the prosecution of that act of aggression, it murders between 2 and 4 million civilians, I for one do not want to see them benefit from that atrocity.
Yes, I care more for those millions of innocent dead than I do for the bruised egos of American politicians, even though the dead are foreigners.
Don't you? If not, what kind of moral monster are you?
I could spend all day railing against some of the stupidity in the above commentsfunny thing coming from an idiot, such as yourself. you confuse things and see events in only a manner that confirms your beliefs...that is ok. its common among those who think they are morally righteous. the bible beaters do it all the time.
The more germane point, for me, is that the scary hippie radicals haven't actually, like, existed since I was born.
And yet we still have to spend time saying how awful and scary they were and we oppose the war but god knows we're not scary leftists, no.
Christ, people who didn't even live through that shit still spend time railing against the scary hippies.
Yeah, there were some assholes on the left back then, but it's not like people who talk about the "context of social breakdown and the ongoing spectacle of left-wing lunacy" are doing it because they really want to portray the times accurately.
They want to paint their opponents as scary hippies who are too scary and radical to be worth listening to.
We can talk about the nuances of those times when addressing people who want to talk about the nuances of those times.
Green Eagle---
What exactly do you mean by Vietnam as an "innocent" country? Virginal? Resistant on principle to the greasy blandishments of capitalist seducers? Naive? Ingenuous? Not guilty of wrongdoing?
If the latter, that must be why China and the U.S.S.R. were "innocent" as well in those troubled times. Green Eagle's Dictum: When Military Megapowers are ruled on paper by and for the Power of the People, why then they have a Shred of an Excuse for invasions and subjugation.
"I wouldn't be fighting for democracy. I'd be fighting because occupations invariably kill those they claim to serve[.]"
this is a good point, although i might argue that insurgencies invariably enslave those they claim to liberate.
Well, here you go.I'm going to reply to the two people who criticized my remarks.
First- to anonymous, who said, "funny thing coming from an idiot, such as yourself."
................................
Oh, sorry there, I fell asleep. Listen, I hate to resort to this sort of argument when confronted with such pertinent, incisive commentary, but I do, in fact, have a graduate degree from Harvard, which I mention only as evidence that I do not, in fact, have a grossly subnormal intelligence.
Now, on to the at least reasonable question from Inkberrow: "What exactly do you mean by Vietnam as an "innocent" country?"
Inkberrow, I mean that Vietnam represented no threat to our security, nor had they engaged in any hostile acts toward us. This rendered our attack on them nothing but a criminal aggression.
The domino theory and other militaristic fantasies of the sixties have so long been revealed by history to be delusions, as many of us knew them to be at the time. Yet we saw fit to drop more bombs on Vietnam than we dropped in World War II, and, as I pointed out, to slaughter their civilians by the millions. This constitutes a gross abomination; many in our country are still incapable of facing up to this.
Forgive me, please, for posting again, but I just noticed the following:
"Anonymous said...
"I wouldn't be fighting for democracy. I'd be fighting because occupations invariably kill those they claim to serve[.]"
this is a good point, although i might argue that insurgencies invariably enslave those they claim to liberate."
Invariably, Anonymous? Would that include the insurgency which started in Massachusetts in the 1770's?
OK, Hold on, I've been away too long.
Yeah, I’ve got a “graduate degree from Harvard” too, but it’s the fucking Divinity School, where I spent two years jacking off, getting high, and learning Greek and Latin.
The “H-Bomb” don’t really work anymore anyway, since all the assholes running the show have their paper from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.
I'm glad TGGP has been disrobed, I've read a lot of his stuff and he's an expert in not answering questions but bringing up some other point. If he were an AI, his programming would be to engage sceptical leftists, left-libertarians and radicals with their own language but always to shade it in a basically monarchical direction (I love Platonists who just want the world to be run right).
Bravo, again, hae acrosticae, IOZ!
Solar Hero,
"Idiot: Psychology. a person of the lowest order in a former classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old and an intelligence quotient under 25."
Sure, I agree that plenty of marginal people have gone to Harvard. Look, the Business School somehow saw fit to give a degree to our ex-President. Still, I think you would agree that it is vanishingly unlikely that either one of us has an IQ under 25.
Listen, as you must know, my point is that calling someone an idiot isn't really a helpful contribution to the discussion. So, if anyone has anything to say about the substance of my remarks, bring it on. Otherwise, you are really just making yourself look foolish.
Thanks for making my point for me, GE. The last Anon isn't all wrong; states, after all, dominate and are often born from movements that undo other states. But yeah, invariably? He's either throwing "invariably" or "enslave" around carelessly, but they can't both be literally true. Many states are better than those they preceded. It's what my central argument is in most of the "let's not do anything because other people do bad things" shitstorms that take place here.
But that's the thing. Political movements aren't for purists. If America was invaded and destroyed and then sought to rise up again, you can be damn sure that there'd be fascists fighting among the resistance. You'd see militia members fighting alongside former cops and soldiers, criminals, religious fanatics. They'd fight the powers and they'd fight each other. In short, it'd look like Iraq. It's what happens. But oh no, I'd be working with people of terrible background who don't share my goals... Life is conflict.
Green Eagle---
Of course "Vietnam" hadn't attacked us, but as you know better than I, it is complicated to assess conclude what or was not a "threat to our security" in that war of surrogates. Similarly, concerning the real and potential dangers we sought to neutralize or contain, "revealed by history to be delusions" should not be considered the same as "revealed" by history to have become moot.
For want of a nail, right? Who can say what Vietnam meant in the Cold War, for little things can make such big differences!
And thus we have the arithmetic in which the Soviet Union's evil justifies the war in Vietnam, and the war justifies the My Lai and sundry massacres and murders, and for want of this child raped or that village burned, we might have totalitarianism in Virginia!
Thanks for illustrating.
I want to say, to those who have responded to my (admittedly inflammatory) post, that this has been an unusually thoughtful discussion for the internet, and I appreciate it.
Let me just say that it is forty years later and I still can't get over those two to four million civilians, dead at our hands. Before you do something like that, you'd better be damn sure you've got a real reason, and we didn't.
I want to add that, if we, as a country, had been willing to face the truth about Vietnam, the chances would have been vanishingly small that we would have wasted another two trillion dollars, and God knows how many civilian lives in Iraq.
I like how the defenders of the Panthers and the Weathermen here give off that faint but unmistakeable "greying-pseudoworkingclass-ponytail-loudmouth-windbag-sitting-on-a-bar-stool-in-a-U-District-semiworkingclass-tavern-drinking-Pabst-Blue-Ribbon-while-complaining-about-"greedheads"-and-wishing-that-purple-haired-little-barista-bitch-would-sit-on-his-face-while-she-learns-to-love-Neil-Young stench.
I'm just saying.
Jsabotta,
Come on, guy, this thread is older than John McCain- Don't waste all that cleverness when hardly anyone is going to see it.
Now, on to your comment: I must admit to the "greying-ponytail-loudmouth-windbag thing. On the other hand, I've hated Neil Young since about 1975, when he stole the wife of a friend of mine (I always thought that, as a musician, he was nothing but a whiner), I've been happily married for about thirty years and don't hustle barmaids, I drink Pilsner Urquell, and although I am a union man, it's an IATSE union, so I suppose that doesn't count. I also participated in the meetings at which the Weatherman was formed, although I totally argued that the path they set upon was crazy, and I will cop to having had an inappropriately rosy view of the Black Panthers, many of whom turned out to be little more than thugs.
See? We're not just cardboard stereotypes. Now here's the thing, no matter how silly we may seem to you, we were right about Vietnam, and we are right today about the lunacy that was perpetrated on the country by the conservative Bush administration.
You didn't have anything to say about the substance of our comments. And really, you earn no respect by substituting cheap insults for a real reply.
I particularly detest the IATSE, a particularly thuggish union, and especially when encountered as the projectionist's union.
I recently encountered a good old labor activist type - drunk off his ass, of course - telling everyone within earshot about that friend of the working man, Paul Robeson. He obviously was familiar with Robeson's career, but said nothing about Robeson's disgusting subserviance to Stalin. He was "lying for the truth" as you all do.
No matter how right or wrong you might be about anything, no decent person could have anything but contempt for you. It'd be like accepting Nazism just because Hitler thought cigarettes were unhealthy.
"no decent person could have anything but contempt for you. It'd be like accepting Nazism just because Hitler thought cigarettes were unhealthy."
No facts, no argument, just cheap insults; including the lowest internet insult of them all, comparing someone to Nazis.
I'm currently reading the just-published third volume of Richard Evans' great history of Naziism. Give it a try- see what real Nazis were. You don't seem to have a clue.
As for IATSE, what in God's name do you base your "particularly thuggish" comment on? I am a member of local 800, the Art Directors' Guild. Thuggish is the last word that could be applied to them, or to any of the Hollywood locals, who haven't even gone on strike since 1947.
Let's get to the truth here. Your comment about IATSE is a lie, based on the assumption that whoever reads your post knows nothing about the subject. That pretty much comports with everything else you have had to say.
Stick to facts, not insults, and people might take you seriously. Otherwise, I'd suggest that you don't waste people's time.
Post a Comment