What Is Hitting The Rotating Blades

It's interesting that, when the generational fecal matter hits history's rotating blades, and the assumptions of the past no longer apply, that everything about the Thesis' founder can come under the microscope.

That's because, after a generation with a particular Myth, Americans have so internalized its Values that they operate almost on auto-pilot. The Myth and its Values become baked into our assumptions. Children are raised on it, they merely extend the myth, yet we don't recognize them.

In the 1960s, for instance, everything involving FDR became subject to question. His deficit spending, his use of propaganda, his World at War foreign policy, his attitudes toward racial minorities, even the way he hid his polio. It was part of the process by which we all -- left and right -- challenged the assumptions we had lived under, and created new ones.

Those new assumptions, of course, were created in the image of Richard M. Nixon. And these are now running on auto-pilot. The McCarthyism may be most interesting. Nixon rose to power on the wings of McCarthyism, and it was an integral part of his political Myth.

Here is the Myth. Vietnam wasn't lost by our brave fighting men, but by those who stabbed us in the back. I've previously mentioned Jane Fonda in this regard. But in our own time we have the cases of the Dixie Chicks, of John Kerry, and (in the link above) Prof. Juan Cole, whose appointment to Yale is being fought because he's "squishy" on the Israeli right.

Nixon's enemies list has been re-created, whole and entire, by this Administration. All the horrors of that era are being repeated, ten-fold. The lies, the cover-ups, the endless war rhetoric, the crazy-man assumptions...it's all there. (Makes you want to see that 10-year old Oliver Stone film again.)

The irony is that none of it is working. Invading Cambodia (excuse me, Iraq) isn't working. The scapegoating is not working. The enemies list keeps growing, and people are no longer intimidated. The cover-up is not working.  The whole idea of lip service is not working.

Finally, very soon, thanks to George W. Bush,  we're not going to have Richard M. Nixon to kick around anymore. Won't that be a blessing. Almost makes these days worth it.

Comments

[Jesse Kopelman]

I mostly agree here, but one thing I'll say is Vietnam wasn't lost by fault of the Nixon Administration. If Iraq is lost it will be the fault of the Bush Administration (he is like Kennedy in that regard -- with an interesting parallel in the ousting of Diem and the the ousting of Hussein).