Posted on 11/26/2005 5:08:21 PM PST by txgirl4Bush
Back in 1973, as the recession was heating up, American prestige was taking a beating over Vietnam and Watergate, Canadian broadcaster Gordon Sinclair broadcast an impassioned defense of America and Americans, as seen from Canada's uniquely liberal perspective:
"You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here."
Reading it again after a number of years, one sentence jumped out at me. Sinclair says, with obvious admiration, "You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at."
In 1973, scandal-mongering was a relatively new tactic in national politics. Most of the politicians themselves were veteran scandal-mongerers themselves -- that's how politics works at the local level. But as a national partisan tactic, it was viewed as unpatriotic. JFK had his mistresses, his health problems, his addiction to prescription drugs, mafia connections, election irregularities, etc.
All of this was well-known in Washington circles. JFK came to the White House from a Senate comprised of old-time politicians, mostly veterans of one of the world wars, and keenly aware of the power of propaganda.
Most of them had met its victims first-hand on the battlefields of Europe, and marveled at the fanatical devotion of the enemy. They had seen it reflected in the hollowed eyes of concentration camp survivors, had felt it up close and personal, watched it claim the lives of a whole generation.
By 1973, a new generation, having never heard jackboots marching in lock-step, began to clamor for power, and, learning all the wrong lessons from history, reopened Pandora's box, declaring it the "Age of Aquarius".
Under the banner, "Never Trust Anyone Over Thirty" the pampered Baby Boomer generation turned the power of propaganda on its own government, blinded by the light of 'truth' and blithely unaware of the Biblical consequences that come from 'troubling one's own house.'
The Watergate scandal broke the unwritten Senate rule of handling scandals in-house. In part, it was because the shocked Nixon administration over reacted after reading all about it in the Washington Post. Another reason was because many of these formerly-cautious veterans got a taste of the same intoxicant that addicted their former enemy of a generation ago. Power.
Propaganda, as was used by the fascists, employed what is called the 'Hegelian Dialectic'. It was formulated by Georg Hegel, feted by historians as "perhaps the greatest of the German idealist philosophers."
Hegel's dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels' grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat.
The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can't be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda. That is what makes guys like war-hero veteran John Murtha start talking about 'immediate withdrawal from Iraq.' Murtha knew it would never fly; his agenda wasn't to pull out the troops, but to put the administration on the defensive, advancing the partisan goal of discrediting the other side in advance of next year's elections.
When the GOP forced a vote on immediate withdrawal, it failed 403-3. (Not even Murtha voted in favor of it.)
The purpose was never what it seemed to be. Its only purpose was to introduce conflict and force people to take sides. The GOP tactic to force a vote was bitterly decried by the Democrats because it exposed the conflict as a fraud. It is hard to introduce conflict into a policy supported by a margin of 403-3.
Merriam-Webster's definition of 'dialectic': "The Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite; also : the critical investigation of this process b (1) usually plural but singular or plural in construction : development through the stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism (2) : the investigation of this process (3) : the theoretical application of this process especially in the social sciences."
It's a complicated theory by design; it is supposed to so complicated that it takes too long for the masses being conditioned to bother trying to stop the facts from spinning long enough to see them for what they are.
I'll try and explain it in a nutshell:
Thesis: Identify a particular desired, but unpopular political objective. An obvious example would be the disarming of the American public. America was born in a cloud of gunsmoke. For generations, the 2nd Amendment assumed the Constitutional right of Americans to bear arms, since, as Jefferson astutely noted, "an armed population ensures an honest government."
How then, to condition a nation built on the premise that the "tree of freedom is watered by the blood of patriots" to voluntarily disarm?
Synthesis: Having identified the goal, through the use of the media and political operatives, convince the population that the goal is actually the problem. The absurd principle that guns kill people and the solution is to remove the guns rather than address the moral issue of killers is a perfect illustration of Hegelian logic.
Consider it this way: If it made sense, then it would make equal sense to ban cars in response to the problem of drunk driving? No?
Antithesis: Having created a managed panic among the population, reluctantly acquiesce to popular demand after the public begins to clamor for the objective identified in the thesis.
By the time you get to the end of the formula, there are crowds of demonstrators clamoring for laws that, in the end, only accomplishment the actual disarmament of law-abiding citizens. The bumper sticker, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" untwists the Hegelian knot in a single sentence.
Assessment:
What hath the politics of scandal, so admired by Gordon Sinclair in 1973, wrought since? It isn't too hard to trace. Having been so successful in effecting a legislative coup de etat with Watergate, both sides began to rethink the unwritten taboo on the injection of propaganda into national politics.
Compare the very worst scandal of the Bush administration to the litany of scandals that never saw the light of day during the Kennedy years. One could argue with hindsight that even the Clinton administration had fewer skeletons than JFK. But the Cold War was in full bloom, and it was not in America's best interests to hand the Soviet propaganda machine any more reasons to hate us.
But Watergate changed all that. The Nixon resignation handed the Soviets a windfall; but the world didn't end. It brought an end to the hated Vietnam War. America won every single battle of the war except the propaganda war. Peasants armed with antique weapons (and the power of propaganda) defeated the most powerful military machine the world had ever seen. America evacuated under fire, Vietnam fell to the Communists, but the world didn't end. Nobody stopped to unspin the facts. Nobody blamed the purveyors of Hegelian conflict, they blamed its victims.
That emboldened the scandal mongerers.
During the Reagan administration, the Iran-Contra scandal erupted over a deal that would have effectively traded arms for hostages while simultaneously arming the anti-Communist Nicaraguan rebels. A Communist state in North America wasn't in America's best interests by anybody's definition, but it provided an excuse for conflict. It almost brought down the Reagan administration at the same time the Soviets were about to crumble.
But it served a partisan interest, which had, by this time, begun to supersede national interests, as more and more politicians succumbed to the intoxicated effect of the dialectic.
America's image abroad continued to take a beating, as Republican politicians were handed a propaganda windfall by the Clinton administration. By the time the dust cleared in 2000, America's national image was that of a wilful, immoral and decadent society obsessed with sex and unperturbed by perjury.
By the time George Bush assumed the Oval Office, Pandora's propaganda demon had been tried and tested over six successive administrations with seemingly no ill effect. The nation had just experienced its longest period of sustained prosperity in its history. With the exception of a few minor terrorist incidents and the minor annoyance of the Saddam Hussein regime, America was a nation at peace, strong and secure.
The reckoning came on September 11, 2001. Pandora's demon had done its work. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every politician condemning PART of America to advance his own agenda, there is an enemy or would-be enemy hearing the condemnation pronounced on ALL America.
"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away." (2nd Timothy 3:1-5)
A very good read. Thanks for posting it!
Nothing like ending on a scriptural high.
bump
GREAT find. Crystalizes things that have troubled me about our current political climate lately. Especially when I watch HardBoiled on MSNBS......
The anti-war crowd was correct in blasting LBJ (though for the wrong reasons).
Don't discount the Left's attack on Nixon as payback for the "Alger Hiss Affair".
But you are correct-- my generation sucks.
It opens a line of thought that is frightening and explains the complicity of entire segments of our presently pathetic society
But it served a partisan interest, which had, by this time, begun to supersede national interests, as more and more politicians succumbed to the intoxicated effect of the dialectic.
To get the attention of our purposely mis-educated masses, and try to explain to them how they are being duped, will be a monumental, almost impossible task.
With all due respect, this line is nonsense. The "peasant" war - I assume the author is referring to the Viet Cong - was finished in 1968 with the destruction of the VC during the Tet offensive. Much of the fighting before that and all of it afterwards was with NVA regulars - which the US also won.
He is dead on about the propoganda, however.
Note how well the Democrats and the MSM have learned THAT lesson
You gotta stop watching that stuff.... it's bad for your blood pressure!
It's COMEDY to me....like "Spin City", or...or..."Mary Tyler Moore".....heeheeeeee
I'll BB.
I''ve had my education upgraded here by the exposing of the fact (and the dynamics) of how that all is not what it appears to be in Washington. That seems to apply very broadly there these days.
And both the Dims and the Baathist/Insurgents have learned how to use the American (and British) press against us.
We need to proceed with intelligent counter-propaganda campaigns. It's partly an educational process - brainwashing versus truth.
Another thought, as I read of the flower people of the 60s & 70s: we haven't ecucated our children and from that flow many problems.
They need to know where this country came from and what it's about, not how to avoid offending left-handed Slobovian vegetarians.
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