December 9, 2018: Long Time Ago, Toad on a Log, Out to Sea

This week witnessed the passing of George H.W. Bush, forty first President of the United States.

It is a bit too early to assess his presidency, especially in light of what has followed, but the eulogies that accompany each President must be seen in light of the event rather than the light of history.

H.W. Or “Pappy” Bush as he was known stands now in the pantheon a much larger figure for compared to his idiot son and the clown that followed, his stature has risen since that November day in 1992 when he was summarily dismissed by the electorate.

Pappy, best known for breaking the pledge to enact “no new taxes”, because the country's finances were still hemorrhaging from the ill-advised tax cuts enacted by his predecessor is otherwise remembered for his much-fabled “thousand points of light” beckoning a “kinder, gentler America” than that left in the wake of Reagan and his draconian budget cuts. It seems like a long time ago.

It is difficult to measure the man, for although he was a one-term-er, he was limited to only four years in office by the independent challenge of Ross Perot who, gathering 20 million votes, denied Bush his second term. Clinton, who succeeded Bush, never won a majority of those voting, for Perot was to enter the race again in 1996 again skewing the results by taking votes from the conservative candidate—in this case Robert Dole.

But for all the rhetoric, all the wise public policy—as best a conservative Republican can advance wise public policy—there were darker sides to his legacy.

It was Pappy who brought along the Roger Stone's, Paul Manaforts, Karl Rove's and Lee Atwaters of this world, giving them access to the highest levels of his campaigns and political strategies. Atwater, famously, apologized to the victims of his gutter politics before he died, but the remainder—all of them brought into the adult political arena from the kindergarten of the Young Republican organization by none other than Richard Outhouse Nixon. It was Reagan and Bush who primarily resurrected their careers after the train wreck of Watergate and this legacy must be held to account.

“He stooped so low, to reach so high” I have written previously, parroting U2. Willie Horton became a national figure in 1988 as Pappy, desperate to head off a much more competent Michael Dukkakis, resorted to smear and base racism. Whenever one evaluates the man, the fact is that no measure of George Bush can be made without reference to the depths he would go in order to win. He made his pact with the devil—in this case Atwater and his acolytes—and he must now forever live with it.

And, one must remember, that the man was forever lost in the eternal predicate. Bush introduced the practice of speaking in incomplete sentences, always in the predicate a practice later perfected by his son and in whose hands we now are burdened with the word salad that continually emits from the mouth, if not the ass, of our pretentious Caesar.

He did have the wisdom of not committing this nation to a long ground war in the Middle East. He did have the wisdom to assemble a real coalition in support of the war—unlike his son, whose coalition consisted in the militarily powerful Estonia, Poland, and Costa Rica. One can give him credit here if one overlooks that it was this administration—this President—who told Saddam Hussein through our ambassador to Iraq that it was a matter of no concern to this nation what Iraq did with Kuwait—bringing on the crisis in the first place.

George made his mistakes. They all do. But he was man enough to own most of them.

At his funeral the likes of James Baker and the younger George, our 43^rd president, spoke about the man and his times. Sitting in the front pew on the isle sat our Caesar Disgustus, scowling like some kind of irritated toad on a drifting log. The contrast could not have been more stark.

Meanwhile, on Facebook, memes appeared mocking our Disgustus, some showing fireworks and celebrations the time comes when the country learns that our current Caesar will have passed. I posted that indeed there will be dancing in the streets, suggesting that when his time comes his body will not be brought from tRUMP tower or Mar-a-lago to Washington to lie in state, but instead will be retrieved from his solitary confinement in a federal or state prison to be loaded on the next garbage scow heading from New York City out to sea.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

May 2, 2015: The Dogs of War, Died in Vain, Ends of Innocence

 

Amidst his recounting the Crusades, Edward Gibbon also had this to say by way of preliminary summary:

   “The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise congenial to the spirit of the times.  But the obstinate perseverance of Europe may indeed excite our pity and admiration; that no instruction should have been drawn from constant and adverse experience; that the same confidence should have repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding generations should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before them; and that men of every condition should have staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering a tomb-stone two thousand miles from their country.  In a period of two centuries after the council of Clermont, each spring and summer produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the Holy Land; but the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by some impending or recent calamity; the nations were moved by the authority of their pontiffs, and the example of their kings; their zeal was kindled, and their reason was silenced, by the voice of their holy orators…” (1)

Before it was over the flower of Europe had died on the foreign sands of Arabia.  In the end, with nothing left, Europe sent its children in the famous, or infamous, ‘children’s crusade’ on the dubious assumption that innocence itself would be the savior of the cause. So unhinged and so divorced from reason had society become after decades of stress and sacrifice.

 Rather than strengthening the social bonds that held medieval society together, the conflict only served to depopulate the region, raising the working wages and loosening the feudal bonds. A process that would lead, by degrees to the ‘freeing of labor and capital’ and introduce the modern liberal democratic state as well as a capitalist and quasi-capitalist economy.   Additionally,  with the eventual loss of the Holy Land and the resulting plague that the Crusaders brought back with them, the ties between the people and the Holy See began to fray; a process that once begun would prove inexorable and end in the Protestant Reformation.

“That we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain;” (2) Abraham Lincoln intoned at Gettysburg, for once loosed the ‘dogs of war’ become a force unto themselves, a force to be reckoned with, a force that consumes not only the adversary ,but themselves, and perhaps their masters as well.  Those that gave their ‘last full measure of devotion’ to the cause must be vindicated and the thought that they have, in fact, perished for nothing is repugnant to every patriot. An internal logic emerges in which the war must go on in order to justify the sacrifices; with the result that the conflict becomes its own justification. 

The problem is that rarely does war present us with victory on all sides, and often victory even eludes the victors.  We are presently honoring the centennial of the “Great War”, fought in the killing fields of Flanders, Verdun and the Somme, with a parallel struggle waged in the trenches of Eastern Europe. Two armed camps waged relentless war upon each other for four long years, killing approximately 16 million people and introducing a world-wide epidemic that emerged from the trenches killing an additional 18 million souls.  The war originated from a need to ‘punish’ a nascent insurgency my a nationalist movement called the ‘black hand’, responsible it was said, for the assassination of the heir to the throne of the Austria-Hungarian empire.  By punishing a people, instead of the individuals responsible, the actions of the empire evoked a response from the Russians who had strong cultural ties with Serbia.  Once the Russians entered the fray, a system of treaty alliances brought the other world powers into the contest resulting in the tragedy that was to define the 20^th century.  Before it was over Europe had been bled white, and the empires of Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany and the Ottoman Turks were no more. 

Barbara Tuchman (3) and others have made careers of documenting the follies of war.  One pattern emerges very clear, however, and that is that the ends of the ‘war’ however and whenever fought almost never resembles the purposes for which the conflict was begun in the first place.  In the end a war presents a very different face than when it began and the longer it goes on the greater the variance between what one imagined a resort to arms would accomplish at the beginning and the place in which one finds one’s self at its conclusion.  One looks in vain for an example of a war that ended accomplishing only the declared intentions at the beginning.  The “War of Jenkins Ear” perhaps, but even that unlikely conflict was subsumed by the later “War of Austrian Succession” (4).  No one thought that the American Civil War would last as long as it did and no one, least of all the Confederates would have imagined a national conscription, a national currency, and an emerging national army. (5)  Similarly, no one—least of all the intellectually challenged European elite—could have imagined the war bringing an end to their respective monarchies and empires.  But even Wilson was not immune to the vicitudes of war.  Declaring the conflict a ‘war to end all wars’, the ‘Great War’ served only to lay the groundwork for an even more terrible future conflict after a decent interval in which Europe would be allowed to produce another generation of cannon fodder. 

Similarly the end of the Second World War brought with it uncertain resolutions.  The war began in defense of the territorial integrity of Poland and ended with that country firmly under the Soviet yoke.  In the bargain Britain lost her empire and Europe was once again reduced to ashes.  Finally, at the end of the ‘cold war’, Germany was re-united.  While some things were accomplished, the new world economic order negotiated at Bretton Woods, (6) for example, the war served to shift the locus of world power from Europe to a bi-polar configuration between the United States and the Soviet Union, certainly not an outcome contemplated by any of the parties beginning the conflict.

I raise these subjects because one George W. Bush has recently joined his Vice President in roundly criticizing President Obama’s handling of the conflict in Iraq, calling the president naïve and accusing him of creating ISIL.  Conveniently forgetting that ‘Ol Two-Cows’ and the fools that surrounded him had promised that we would be ‘welcomed as liberators’ with ‘flowers in the streets’, and that we would establish a democratic regime to introduce the fruits of western civilization to this last bastion of resistance, Bush went about nearly unchallenged in his indictment of the current occupant of the oval office. 

It was George, of course, who famously used the term ‘Crusade’ when the conflict first began, being as innocent of the historical record as the children who set off for Jerusalem all those years ago.  It was George who announced the intended purposes for this conflict not understanding the nature of the ‘dogs of war’ that once loosed they tend to devour everything, even their own.

_______________

1.Gibbon, Edward. "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Vol. VI, methuen & Co. LTD, London 1912. AMS Press, New York.  Pg. 345

2.http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

3.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_W._Tuchman

4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear

5. Formerly while there was a national ‘dollar’, most currencies were printed by state chartered banks, soldiers were conscripted by the several states and the resulting military units were organized under the banner of each state.  Hence the Michigan 21^st Infantry, for example.  By the end of the war the country was seeing its first military units listed under the U.S. heading.  The same was true in the Confederacy which, in fact, introduced national conscription before the Union did, as it did national currency.  In the end Jefferson Davis was to lament that if the Confederacy died of anything it was ‘states rights’.  The demands of war trump all else.

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference

 

 

 

 

December 28, 2008: Cries of the Damned, Tragical History Tour, If the Shoe Fits

“You have a frightening smile Dianna”, said Tom Ballard to his friend Dianna Trent in the BBC sitcom “Waiting for God”. “When you open your mouth it is like openning the gates of Hell; Whenever you laugh one can smell the burning sulphur and hear the cries of the damned”.

So one could describe the forced grin of 'Ol Two-Cows as he makes his not so unapologetic tour in a last-ditch effort to burnish the record of his miserable presidency. One should also note the look of complete bewilderment and non-comprehension in his eyes as he casts about finding reasons to justify his misbegotten tenure in office. He simply doesn't get it. Poor George simply doesn't understand that it is not generally seen as an act of compassion, intelligence, or strength to lie a nation into war, gut the national economy, and preside over the drowning of a major city. Instead he looks at us as if we don't get it!

“you're out of touch my baby
my poor unfaithful baby.... The Rolling Stones “Out of Touch”

As the clock winds down on both a watershed political year and the bastard presidency of George W. ('Ol Two-Cows) Bush, America—indeed the world—is staring into an abyss the depths of which can only be exceeded by Dubya's malignant soul, now deeply buried somewhere in Dante's seventh level of hell. It was reported this month that in November the nation had shed over half a million jobs, one in ten homeowners have either lost their homes or are about to face foreclosure. The nation's inflation rate is inching up, the decline of gasoline prices from nearly five dollars to a dollar and a half a gallon notwithstanding. Wall street continues to reel from losses and scandal as Bernie Madoff (yes Bernie Made Off) has been arrested for reportedly bilking shareholders (principally targeting Jewish non-profits) out of half a billion dollars in what amounted to a giant ponzi scheme. Meanwhile, true to form, the administration cannot account for what has become of the 350 billion dollars that was thrown at the Wall Street crowd that created this mess in the first place. What has been certain is that much of the money went to stockholders and the investor class in dividends, much of it went for mergers and acquisitions, almost none of it has gone to freeing up the credit markets upon which this country now depends. 'Ol Two-Cows has now spent, in dollars adjusted for inflation, more money than it took to build the interstate highway system, fight the Civil War, World War I and the Depression combined and has not created a single job. In fact we are now hemorrhaging jobs faster than at anytime since the demobilization of the military after the Second World War. Our auto industry, once the pride of the country is teetering on the verge of collapse with sales down nearly 40% and Chrysler and General Motors temporarily closing thirty plants and warning that they must have some kind of financial relief or face imminent bankruptcy.

“Two-Cows” predictable response has been to rush to the aid of the investor class and leave the working class twisting in the wind. This week he was on television saying that he hadn't made up his mind about signing the auto bailout package but then quickly adding that he was worried that to fail to act would not reassure the markets. It's always the markets with George, never the people. Always the investor, never the worker. Whenever George opens his mouth you can hear the cries of the damned. And damned if he ain't.

It has been reported that deep inside the bowels of the White House the Goppites have formed a “Bush Legacy Project”. This is an effort to organize subalterns around the talking points of the day so as to get a head start on refurbishing the Bush image and in so doing burnish the Bush legacy. He knows that he will emerge with the lowest approval rating since such records have been kept. Bush will have surpassed even “Tricky” Dick Nixon in sounding the depths of political purgatory. Unlike Nixon, who could pawn himself off as something of a foreign policy guru, “Two-Cows” has no such assets upon which to bank a political comeback. Nevertheless we have Condy Rice stumping the talk-shows praising Bush for his far-sighted foreign policy, and First Lady Laura Bush making similar appearances to downplay the tragedy in New Orleans saying that it wasn't as bad as was reported. There are two salient points regarding this latest “Tragical History Tour”, the first is that the rescumlicans are once again going about the business of smearing the historical record, the second is that once again Bush and Cheney are having someone else—this time the womenfolk-- do the heavy lifting.

So far the American public is not buying it. Neither, it seems, is the world. Getting little traction—except on Fox Noise—the Idiot-in-Chief” momentarily fled the country showing up in Baghdad to commune with the troops and his Iraqi puppets. There for all the world to see, Bush and Malaki were holding a joint news conference to tell the world about all the splendid progress being made when an Iraqi reporter shouting at the “Great Decider” managed to throw both his shoes at the president, barely missing his target before being quickly ushered off to a local dungeon. In such esteem is this president held that domestic reaction within the United States to such treatment of our head of state ranged from mild consternation to bemused laughter. While the miscreant in Baghdad may do some serious jail time, George “Dubya” 'Ol Two-Cows Bush is being laughed off the stage. Meanwhile there were demonstrations in which thousands of Iraqi's gathered in support of the protester and the manufacturer of his shoes reportedly has had to hire at least another one hundred workers to meet the skyrocketing demand. As Jimmy Durante would say, “everybody wants to get in on the act “ or, in the words of Curley Howard, 'if the foo shits wear it”.

November 3, 2008: Republican Legacy, Reflections on the Rough Rider, Buried in Shit

This journal welcomes the periodic contribution of my old friend Lawrence F. Hamp.

Larry and I go back nearly 40 years now, we met facing each other across the ramparts of that great divide known as Vietnam. First confronting each other during those contentious times, I first met Larry as a classmate in Dr. Batchelder's Political Science class. Later assigned by Dr. Mapes to do a joint study of the Civil War era Draft Riots, we quickly became fast friends. Seeking adventure wherever he may find it, Larry, who is never at a loss for words, can be depended upon to provide a unique and prescient perspective. So, without further ado, I welcome to these pages my dear old friend.

Should democrats win 60 votes in the senate, our first orders of business should be repeal (or rewriting) of the 'Patriot' act and tightening the rules regarding war-making powers of the president. These 'little' presidential wars are proving the bane of America's democratic society. Two (of half-a-dozen) have lasted a total of eighteen years, devoured tow huge public fortunes, cost the nation well over 60 thousand lives (as well as several hundred thousand life-long cripples), and left our position as the world's 'shining city on a hill' corroded to the point of dissolution.

Blame, of course, lies totally on our congress. They long ago abdicated constitutional war-making powers, and have allowed the 'little' wars to become full-blown, long-lived, wastefully mis-managed, poorly thought-out, planned and executed military adventures. Iraq/Afghanistan have become gut wrenching slaughters of innocent civilians (much like Vietnam), our air power killing far more of them than Taliban and al Quaeda combined.

Our government is already trying to weasel out of Iraq while saving some face and preserving some semblance of success. Outside of Baghdad, the country is seething, burning, exploding daily. The only reason the Shrub/McPain Baghdad 'surge' appears to have worked is because we bought-out the Sunni leaders who rand the place under Saddam, while selling out the Kurds, Christians, Turkmen, and the Shi'ah we (supposedly) went in to save.

Military commanders (American and NATO) say we've wasted our opportunity to save Afghanistan—victory there, they now claim, cannot be won on the battlefield and will have to be negotiated. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, how many tens of thousands (in each nation) will we now leave to the tender mercies of their former oppressors? Many, I expect.

Our whole national security apparatus is dis-functional, inept, more interested in spying on us than on the enemy. Failure of our intelligence services dates way back to WWII's Manhattan Engineering District Project, when Joe Stalin often learned of atomic bomb developments before FDR.

Recent reports of the National Security Agency (NSA) from two retired military officers who worked there for years, claim they routinely break the law, listen to our electronic communications, pry into our personal lives at will—and without legitimate reason. The fools are still fighting the same old turf wars, and the right hand knows not what the left is doing.

Our pentagon, CIA, FBI, NSA (and countless other creepy fascist spooks) are still being run by those who left us vulnerable on 9/11/01. They've been shuffled in and out of agencies in what amounts to a giant shell-game. Much more of this, we'll have to learn to speak and write Arabic.

It's interesting how John McCain and Dubya have both tried to calm (or hide behind) Teddy Roosevelt's Republican mantle, when neither of them would amount to a small pimple on the great President's ass, academically, politically, or in any humanitarian sense. Bush was a complete wastrel as a youth, and his youthful ignorance still rules, eliminating any possible comparison.

McCain, without his father's status as a high-ranking navy admiral, would never have made it into the naval academy, or survived his many derelictions as cadet. His standing (fifth from the bottom) in his academy class would have meant no chance of flight training for any other cadet. It seems his father's influence got him into the academy, then condemned him to five-and-a-half years in the Hanoi Hilton (where his conduct was not always 'heroic').

I'd tell you to check his military records, but they're sealed—at his request. As navy flyer, he was a rowdy officer very much like (and likely one of) those involved in the notorious “Tail-Hook Club” conventions.

On the other hand, TR was a serious young fellow from childhood. As undergrad student at Harvard, he wrote “The Naval War of 1812”, a study which is, far more than a hundred years later, still considered the most complete work on the subject. Through the course of his life, in addition to almost continuous public service, he authored more than two dozen books on a wide variety of scholarly subjects, and hundreds of thoughtful articles. As president he won the Nobel Peace Prize for reconciling war between Japan and Czarist Russia.

Teddy never made a threatening gesture, or uttered a threatening phrase. He never carried the 'big stick' he quietly spoke of. He didn't have to. His record as NYC police commissioner, Dakota rancher—bully-buster--and outlaw-catcher, Navy undersecretary and leader of his “rough-rider” friends to combat in Cuba during the Spanish conflict, assured all due respect.

TR was the last Republican president (bar Ike) to believe wealth and influence owed the masses financial honest, political integrity, and well-managed affairs at home and abroad. His handling of crooked bankers, brokers and corporate officers we so often see today would doubtless be a bit more harsh than buying up their messes. Military inefficiency demonstrated by the pentagon through Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan would certainly have called forth his wrath, and resulted in many premature retirements, and many more demotions.

Theodore was a no-nonsense sort of guy (though contemporary Republicans of the Bush, Cheney, McCain ilk often spoke of him as “that damned cowboy”).

To sum up, I'll quote my old grad school advisor, military history and WMU Professor of History emeritus Sherwoood Cordier. “I must say the current economic disaster could not happen to a more deserving President, but the rest of us certainly do not deserve this Bush legacy—our civil rights destroyed, endless savage wars, our economy in ruins, record national debt, and our political culture buried in shit.” (Emphasis added, because in a thirty-six year friendship I've never before known him to utter or pen either obscenity or profanity).

May 16, 2008: Raw Politics, The Political Mendoza Line, Bullshit in Cowboy Boots

‘Ol Two-Cows, perhaps the most divisive and certainly the most arrogant political figure in at least a generation did, however, make great strides in uniting the Democratic Party. Rushing to Obama's defense, Senators Joe Biden (D-Del), Jim Webb (D-Va), and Chris Dodd (D-Conn) worked the talk-show circuit, savaging Bush and his Rescumlican surrogates for their remarks. Even Hillary was driven back into the Democratic camp as the president’s remarks, by forcing her to defend her position as well as Obama’s, drove a wedge between the McCain and Clinton camps who were heretofore making common cause against Obama. “Biden, who made waves this week by telling a Politico reporter that Bush’s comments were ‘bull___” [shit],” appeared on ABC’s “This Week” to discuss Bush’s comments before the Israeli Knesset and defend the likely Democratic nominee. ‘“It was so outrageous,” said [the] Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman…”This is raw, raw politics demeaning to the president of the United States of America.” Then Biden proceeded to point out that the Bush Administration has had direct talks with Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, ‘”a ‘known terrorist’ as Biden put it.”’ (1)

Two other Democratic Senators, Jim Webb and Chris Dodd, “pointed out that previous Republican presidents have met with rogue leaders without giving up the option of military force.” (1) ‘ “If…Bush were to use the right historical example, he should be looking at China in the 1970s,” Webb said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”’ (1) But Joe Biden was the most vociferous in his defense, correctly pointing out that both current Defense Secretary Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have advocated direct talks with Iran moving the Foreign Relations Chairman to coyly suggest that perhaps they should be fired.

“If Bush were to use the right historical example…” Oh my. If Bush had only the slightest idea, the most cursory understanding, perhaps a proper example would have leaped to mind. But one cannot operate on such assumptions in this White House. Remember, this is the very president who, incredulously, asked the Brazilian ambassador, “You have Black people in Brazil?” The problem with ‘Ol Two-Cows is that as his presidency wanes, his polling numbers now dropping below Nixonian levels — the political equivalent of baseball’s ‘Mendoza Line’(2) — his maladroit accusations, explanations and justifications serve only to further solidify his standing as perhaps, short of Zachary Taylor, the most ignorant man ever to occupy the presidential office. Early in this bastard administration, when America was stunned and reeling from the political larceny that brought this man to power, the country exhibited an unwarranted propensity to forgive his malapropisms, and excuse his ignorance as one befitting a Governor of Texas. But with each emerging crisis, and the Chief Executive’s — make that the Great Decider’s — wretched response, it became increasingly obvious that the country was not being led by a man whose native intelligence was betrayed by an inability to master the common language. What became increasingly clear was that his use of language reflected precisely what lay beneath: an empty suit, an intellectually challenged man who presented the Neo-Cons with a blank slate — an empty vessel — into which they could pour or write whatever they wanted. The awful truth is not simply that George W. Bush has no intellectual curiosity. It is that he is not smart enough to be curious, and into his empty head the Neo-Cons could deposit, as Senator Biden calls it, all the ‘bullshit’ that one man can hold. And so the critics of the administration re-emerge as modern Neville Chamberlains playing the wimps to ‘Ol Two-Cows’ John Wayne as Winston Churchill.

Napoleon Bonaparte once described French Foreign Minister Charles de Talleyrand, a man of great political acumen who survived the Ancient Regime, the Revolution, Robespierre, Bonaparte, and the Restoration, as “shit in silk stockings”. ‘Ol Two-Cows, a man of much lesser talents and no political acumen who nevertheless survived two military quagmires, the loss of a major city to a hurricane, two dubious elections, and an imperial vice presidency, can best be described as “bullshit in cowboy boots”.

Footnotes:

1. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10432.html.
2. The Mendoza Line is a baseball term referring to “an offensive threshold below which (a) players’ presence in the Major Leagues cannot be justified despite their defensive abilities” The term is said to have been coined by Kansas City Royals’ great George Brett for shortstop Manny Mendoza who hit .198 during the baseball season of 1979. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wikki/Mendoza_Line. Keith Olbermann on his “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” is credited with creating the “Mendoza Line of Presidential politics” while referring to Rudy Giuliani’s withdrawal from the 2008 contest for the Republican Presidential nomination. I suggest that the true “Mendoza Line” was the Nixon approval rating during the waning days of his administration soon to be superseded by the current occupant in the White House.

May 15, 2008: Return to Munich, A Question of 'Appeasement', Television is no Medium for an Ignorant Man

“Television is no medium for an ignorant man”
--from The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

Wrapping up another unsuccessful journey to the Middle East, in which ‘Ol Two-Cows had sought to get the Saudis to turn on a few more oil spigots, the empty-handed President appeared in the Israeli Knesset to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the modern state of Israel. Instead of focusing on American and regional foreign relations, the President chose, instead, to transform this festive occasion to launch a dark assault on the critics of his actions, likening “those who call for talks ‘with terrorists and radicals’ to those who appeased the Nazis.” (1)

“‘We have an obligation to call this what it is,” he declared, “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.’ There are few words more fraught than “appeasement” and no place where they carry more emotional weight than in Israel.” (1)

The White House tried to put some distance between itself and the politics of the campaign, with “White House Press secretary Dana Perino, insist[ing] the president’s remarks had nothing to do with Obama and slyly suggest[ing] that the Democratic senator was being narcissistic.” (1)

But the good Marshall of Tombstone was quick to pounce on the remark, endorsing the president’s ‘slash and burn’ politics and suggesting, “It was Obama’s responsibility to explain why he was willing to talk with Iran.”(1)

The spin-machine went into overdrive, drawing a line of sorts in the desert sands. The choice is clear they cried: choose a stalwart defender of freedom who will search out and destroy our enemies, or elect someone who will misjudge our adversaries and, by degrees, imperil Western Civilization itself. Once again, the political ‘wrong’ is relying on fear in order to terrorize America into keeping the Rescumlicans in power. To this end, they trotted out right-wing radio talk show host Kevin James to carry the banner into battle. James is, like ‘Ol Two-Cows, an intellectually lazy troglodyte who regularly trolls the cesspool of right-wing politics for nuggets of ‘wisdom’ with which to regale his audience. Being work-shy, he usually relies — like Fox Noise and other conservative mouthpieces — entirely on the daily talking points of the Republican National Committee. There he looks and looks no further, for he has, from the oracle itself, the very words with which he will fearlessly wage relentless battle against all enemies foreign and domestic; real or imagined. The results of such conflict can be, depending on the venue, variously frightening, comical, or painful to witness. They are, however, never enlightening.

Tonight on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” the nation watched, with frighteningly comical bewilderment, what happens when one of the sirens of talk radio attempts to lure the brave Ulysses of television. Chris Matthews is a hard-nosed reporter who delights, as he puts it, in playing ‘hardball.’ He asks the tough questions and expects forthright answers. What happened tonight was a clear demonstration of what will transpire when one walks between the striped lines on the playing field prepared to do battle protected only with the paper thin armor of the RNC’s ‘talking points’, and no discernible historical understanding whatsoever.

“Tell me, Kevin, what do you mean by appeasement?”

“The President is right, we’re talking appeasement here,” replied James.

“What do you mean by appeasement?”

“What Chamberlain did with Hitler”, replied “Hardball’s” guest.

“What did Chamberlain do that constituted appeasement?” asked Matthews.

Nearly two dozen times Matthews asked the question, suggesting after several attempts that perhaps his guest did not know. James responded indignantly that he did know, but couldn’t answer the question which was precisely what did Chamberlain do at Munich in 1937 that constituted appeasing Hitler. Finally, while protesting that he knew, James said that he couldn’t give a definitive answer, but the critics of the President were appeasing our foes and repeating the mistakes at Munich all over again.

Finally, after shuttling his guest off the program and getting a chance to explain himself, Chris Matthews clarified, one last time, the point he was trying but not allowed to make by the constant protestations and interruptions of the night’s conservative spokesman. “Meeting with Hitler did not constitute appeasement”, said Matthews, “giving away most of Czechoslovakia did. The error was not in meeting and negotiating, but in conceding.” Precisely. Kevin James had no idea what had transpired on that fateful day in Munich in 1937, as Europe lunged toward another total war. He had no idea what bargain was struck nor the reasons why.

Tonight’s debate, reminiscent of the Kerry-Bush debates wherein Kerry mopped the floor with ‘Ol Two-Cows, was a complete mismatch. Chris Matthews is an old pro, a protégé of Representative Thomas “Tip” O”Neil, the former Speaker of the House. Matthews is also a graduate of the University of North Carolina. Chapel Hill has one of the best History programs in the United States, and on this night, it was telling. Matthews could have added more. He could have related the weakness of Chamberlain’s bargaining position; neither the French nor the British had the armored divisions necessary to intervene in Eastern Europe, and both — especially the French — were deeply divided politically. He could have informed his guest that one of the first things Chamberlain did upon returning to London was reinstate conscription and begin the rearming of Britain in preparation for what was to come. Churchill would be invited back into the government from political exile and placed over the Admiralty. None of these steps are much referred to when mentioning Munich and it’s aftermath. Instead the ordeal at Munich has become a card-board, two-dimensional cut-out banner that is waved whenever those who have no legitimate reasons for doing what they are about to do need an excuse to do it.

What Kevin James demonstrated this night on “Hardball” was not that Barack Obama is a political neophyte, but that unlike talk radio, and Beck, O’Reilly and Hannity notwithstanding, television is no medium for an ignorant man.

Footnotes:

1. “Bush’s Unseemly Attack on Obama”, International Herald Tribune.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/18/opinion/edbush.php