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The Right Wing Scam
Dec. 29th, 2009 05:29 pmA friend of mine linked me to this article earlier while we were discussing politics. It's rather interesting, definitely worth a read.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/06/0081080
I can't comment on all of the events, of course, I don't have sufficient knowledge or research, though I have listened to a lot of news and radio from WWII period and I can confirm that some of the early stuff in this essay definitely matches what I've heard in old radio broadcasts, particularly in its tone and how it seems to be different from the actual historical accounts of what was going on.
Bush and his lot on the other hand are a bit to recent, fresh, and ugly for most of us to look at fairly. If you haven't seen their blatant lies you really haven't been paying attention.
Instead, I'm going to focus on my very early childhood and myths I heard as a young adult because they've always bothered me.
This thing about all the 'dirty hippies' spitting on returning soldiers. I've never bought it. My dad was in the military, actually just about every grown man I knew when I was a child had also been in Viet Nam. I grew up in a poor rural area where college wasn't as likely to be an option and that meant you were eligible for the draft.
I have to ask about this legend because if you stop and think about it for ten seconds, it doesn't really make any sense. Most of the soldiers sent to Vietnam didn't sign up of their own accord. They were drafted. They went off halfway around the world. They got shot at, and they returned, frightened and traumatized but most of them were still in their early 20s. The same age as the 'hippies'.
So think about this. Does it pass a logic test? If you accept that hippies were mostly into this whole love and peace thing, does it seem likely they're going to be spitting on their brothers, sisters, lovers, cousins, et al because the government sent them off to die in a jungle or are the mass majority going to be thankful they've returned, that they've got back a member of their family or a friend? Someone who has had to witness the horror of war first hand and likely wants no more of it.
Again, use a little logic here. Anyone that was really into the war was probably going to re-up not return first chance they got, right?
Now that's not to say it never happened at all. There will always be a few extremists in any movement who will make asses of themselves, but the hippy culture as a whole? ... None of the hippies I know would have or did (I've asked and they tend to get very upset about the ignorance of this myth and ask that you think about it as I have just asked)
It would be interesting to take a poll of Viet Nam vets and ask just how many of them were spat on personally. Not 'saw someone get spat on' not 'heard about', and I'm sorry National Guard guys, but if you were involved in a police action busting up a peace rally, that's a little bit different and doesn't count either. How many ACTUAL SOLDIERS who were ACTUALLY IN Vietnam got spat on at the airport by 'hippies' when they returned home? 5? Maybe 10? And how many different people spat on them? I bet, if this study were actually done, the numbers would be very very low on both counts.
Or we could just look at our current 'police actions' in Afghanistan and Iraq. People of liberals read my blog. "Everyone who thinks our soliders are babykillers and should be abused for their actions under Bush's regime, please raise your hand!"
Okay. And now everyone who wishes the people we know who are over there come home safe? *raises hand*
*sigh* Stuff like this is why I get so frustrated with the majority of the right wing. By 'majority', I mean the people who react to all the crap and lies spewed by people like Limbagh and Beck and react to it by following conservative agenda.
I don't think most of them are bad people per say, they're just the sort of people who are more comfortable when life runs according to scripts.
In the past, the scripts worked. You could do a hard days work and while you might not be rich, you could probably afford your own home and you'd have enough to eat and your kids could go to school. You had a social network of friends and a community you belonged to.
But most of those jobs are gone. Machines can do so much more and so much more efficiently than a person that a lot of manual labor is just silly and redundant, but what should have been a golden age for unskilled labor has become a nightmare. The companies that own the machines are not interested in the welfare of the workers. They're interested in padding their own margins and getting the most of the least amount of work. They aren't members of the community that their laborers work in and they don't suffer the effects of the poverty of their workers.
Centalized factories are more efficient than small shops, so the workers also must commute further to their jobs. Spend more time sitting in traffic, have more reliance on expensive items like cars and less personal time resulting in more eating out and buying other premade goods. TV and cars have segregated us, televangelism has put churches of every denomination on every corner and there aren't neighborhoods that are one faith or another anymore, it's all mixed which is great in the long run but in the short term, it's broken down the community even further.
All these people who want their life to run on scripts but don't realize that the play has been closed and there's no one specific they can blame it on because the reality is that the world has changed out from under them.
I feel bad for them and often wish I knew how to help them, but I don't want to live in a scripted world. I'm okay living in a dynamic world. I just wish I knew how to enabled them to figure out how to get by on their own.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/06/0081080
I can't comment on all of the events, of course, I don't have sufficient knowledge or research, though I have listened to a lot of news and radio from WWII period and I can confirm that some of the early stuff in this essay definitely matches what I've heard in old radio broadcasts, particularly in its tone and how it seems to be different from the actual historical accounts of what was going on.
Bush and his lot on the other hand are a bit to recent, fresh, and ugly for most of us to look at fairly. If you haven't seen their blatant lies you really haven't been paying attention.
Instead, I'm going to focus on my very early childhood and myths I heard as a young adult because they've always bothered me.
This thing about all the 'dirty hippies' spitting on returning soldiers. I've never bought it. My dad was in the military, actually just about every grown man I knew when I was a child had also been in Viet Nam. I grew up in a poor rural area where college wasn't as likely to be an option and that meant you were eligible for the draft.
I have to ask about this legend because if you stop and think about it for ten seconds, it doesn't really make any sense. Most of the soldiers sent to Vietnam didn't sign up of their own accord. They were drafted. They went off halfway around the world. They got shot at, and they returned, frightened and traumatized but most of them were still in their early 20s. The same age as the 'hippies'.
So think about this. Does it pass a logic test? If you accept that hippies were mostly into this whole love and peace thing, does it seem likely they're going to be spitting on their brothers, sisters, lovers, cousins, et al because the government sent them off to die in a jungle or are the mass majority going to be thankful they've returned, that they've got back a member of their family or a friend? Someone who has had to witness the horror of war first hand and likely wants no more of it.
Again, use a little logic here. Anyone that was really into the war was probably going to re-up not return first chance they got, right?
Now that's not to say it never happened at all. There will always be a few extremists in any movement who will make asses of themselves, but the hippy culture as a whole? ... None of the hippies I know would have or did (I've asked and they tend to get very upset about the ignorance of this myth and ask that you think about it as I have just asked)
It would be interesting to take a poll of Viet Nam vets and ask just how many of them were spat on personally. Not 'saw someone get spat on' not 'heard about', and I'm sorry National Guard guys, but if you were involved in a police action busting up a peace rally, that's a little bit different and doesn't count either. How many ACTUAL SOLDIERS who were ACTUALLY IN Vietnam got spat on at the airport by 'hippies' when they returned home? 5? Maybe 10? And how many different people spat on them? I bet, if this study were actually done, the numbers would be very very low on both counts.
Or we could just look at our current 'police actions' in Afghanistan and Iraq. People of liberals read my blog. "Everyone who thinks our soliders are babykillers and should be abused for their actions under Bush's regime, please raise your hand!"
Okay. And now everyone who wishes the people we know who are over there come home safe? *raises hand*
*sigh* Stuff like this is why I get so frustrated with the majority of the right wing. By 'majority', I mean the people who react to all the crap and lies spewed by people like Limbagh and Beck and react to it by following conservative agenda.
I don't think most of them are bad people per say, they're just the sort of people who are more comfortable when life runs according to scripts.
In the past, the scripts worked. You could do a hard days work and while you might not be rich, you could probably afford your own home and you'd have enough to eat and your kids could go to school. You had a social network of friends and a community you belonged to.
But most of those jobs are gone. Machines can do so much more and so much more efficiently than a person that a lot of manual labor is just silly and redundant, but what should have been a golden age for unskilled labor has become a nightmare. The companies that own the machines are not interested in the welfare of the workers. They're interested in padding their own margins and getting the most of the least amount of work. They aren't members of the community that their laborers work in and they don't suffer the effects of the poverty of their workers.
Centalized factories are more efficient than small shops, so the workers also must commute further to their jobs. Spend more time sitting in traffic, have more reliance on expensive items like cars and less personal time resulting in more eating out and buying other premade goods. TV and cars have segregated us, televangelism has put churches of every denomination on every corner and there aren't neighborhoods that are one faith or another anymore, it's all mixed which is great in the long run but in the short term, it's broken down the community even further.
All these people who want their life to run on scripts but don't realize that the play has been closed and there's no one specific they can blame it on because the reality is that the world has changed out from under them.
I feel bad for them and often wish I knew how to help them, but I don't want to live in a scripted world. I'm okay living in a dynamic world. I just wish I knew how to enabled them to figure out how to get by on their own.
