On my recent diary regarding the real story about Bob Woodward’s LONG history as (at the very least) an intel asset (Bob Woodward. Where’s The Beef? Where Is OUR Beef?), BT contributor spiderleaf commented that (s)he wasn’t surprised at all. But then in the same comment spiderleaf said “I hadn’t heard the doubts about `All the Prez’s Men’ “.
A confusion of this sort…a kind of media hypnosis-induced doublethink, when looked at in a certain way…is the main reason that the left has remained so essentially powerless in this country over the past 40+ years. Since JFK went down in ’63 we have had exactly two Democratic presidents…not counting LBJ who was as far as I am concerned (at best post-event) a witting participant in what went down in Dallas that day.
Probably BEFORE it went down, Texas being his turf and all.
Anyway…I started a reply to that comment.
And it got large.
So now it’s a diary.
Read on…
I do not mean to be rude here…I really don’t, spiderleaf…but how the left can be so self-deluded about what has happened in this country since the coverup of JFK’s murder (especially in the media) is almost inconceivable to me.
That the incredibly successful Frank Wisner-run “Operation Mockingbird” idea (started in the late ’40s/early-’50s) has become a colossus of institutionalized deceit in this country has been thoroughly documented in print and especially on the internet. It is there for anyone with half a computer and a quarter of a brain to see. But even without the aid of well researched materials…I mean, it was evident to me at the age of 20 that there was something fundamentally rotten going on in a media and justice system that could not come up with anyone other than loner losers as suspects in the wave of assassinations that crippled the left wing leadership of this country. And Nixon’s administration (Kissinger’s, really, as it turned out…) plus the Watergate farce was the CLINCHER.
You know, it is often said that bad things sometimes happen to good people. Right? That’s a piece of common wisdom that is unchallengeably true. But of this concept’s many possible corollaries, the one that would center around “good” results…such as the impeachment of Nixon…coming to pass for bad reasons seems to elude almost everyone.
The same oligarchy that largely runs this country is ultimately responsible for both the assassinations AND the taking down of Tricky Dicky.
And the various coverups and the Iran-Contra/B.C.C.I. nexus and the crack epidemic and the Clinton investigation/impeachment foolishness and the Bush II wins in 2000 and 2004 and the Blood For Oil War in the Middle East AND the current turn of the media against BushCo.
At the very LEAST.
Did 5 or 12 or 120 men sit down in a room somewhere and vote on these things? Were there a series of Appalachia meetings on the grandest of scales?
I tend to doubt this.
It is more informal and less consciously planned than that. It almost must be, because that sort of thing would be too hard to hide. I mean, Cheney’s secret “Energy Task Force” meeting…which was just a meeting of some high level LACKEYS of the real people in power…was common knowledge the day after it happened.
But some people gave some other people some green lights. As in “Do what must be done.” And then preserved plausible deniability by keeping their hands (and information channels) largely off of the actual machinations.
As long as they worked. As long as they were ultimately “good for business”. And if they were NOT good for business, then other green lights were…and continue to be…given, and other machinations came into play.
It works the same way with the media. The dirty work is done by people like Woodward. Like Judith Miller and Robert Novak. Media buttonmen and frontmen. People who work the streets. Media footsoldiers. Up the chain of command to Bradlee, further up to the Grahams, and even FURTHER up to (and through) intel people and then on up into the stratosphere of REAL power…the Permanent Government (Permanent money, the kind that buys governorships and political parties, the kind of money that is barely affected even by such things as depressions and wars, the kind that in fact is able to profit from EVERYTHING.)…up THAT chain of command, the rule is plausible deniability squared, cubed, and then on up in a geometric progression the size and seriousness of which is almost inconceivable.
When Barbara Bush…married into that system at a middling low level, really, married to a powerful technician in that system, nothing much more…says “‘Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?’, it is a unintended little snapshot
of the ongoing truth of how this shit plays out.
SHE has plausible deniability. She’s too fucking dumb to know what’s going down.
Right.
Like the Corleone women.
Riiiiight…
And yet…over and over again the left rolls over and plays good dog when this game gets run.
Lionizing media buttonmen like Woodward.
Almost willfully turning a blind eye to what is really happening in in a paroxysm of relief that at least SOMETHING is “going right”.
And yet, in the long run…nothing has gone right.
We have lost our democracy.
We have murdered millions…literally MILLIONS…in various foreign adventures over the past 60 years or so. And have created a permanent population of enemies around the world that outnumber us 5 to 1 and are rapidly acquiring the means and inventing tactics that will eventually cut us off at the knees if not destroy all of civilization and perhaps all life on the planet as well.
And we have damned near destroyed our economy and the very society and culture that created and sustained it. The working class/middle class society that prevailed over almost EVERY obstacle during the first several hundred years of the history of the United States.
Not a perfect system…but one that WORKED. One that grew, and one that learned from its errors.
Since the corporate takeover of the media…that system is over.
Color it gone.
Except on the net.
And BARELY even there.
A consistent pressing of this point is really what got me bounced from dKos, for example. But it is a proven truth, in my view.
And here we are again.
“Oh MY!!! You mean Robert Redford…errr, I mean Bob Woodward…is crooked TOO!!!??? Oh MY!!!!”
Meanwhile, right in front of our faces the institutional media has “suddenly” seen the light.
Once again.
What is this…about the fifth time in 40 years?
“VIET-NAM!!! VIET-NAM!!! RAH, RAH, VIET-NAM!!!”
And then, “suddenly ” (Once it is plain that the war is bad for business…)
“NO MORE WAR!!! NO MORE WAR!!! RAH , RAH, NO MORE WAR!!!”
Same with Nixon.
Same (in reverse) with Clinton.
And now…”suddenly”…the same with Iraq and the architects of that particular debacle, BushCo.
And where were these people when the 2000 election was stolen?
When that other snapshot of how business is REALLY done surfaced?
Enron?
Where were they during the runup to the invasion of Iraq?
“RAH, RAH, SHOCK AND AWE!!! RAH, RAH, SHOCK AND AWE!!!”
It’s crooked up and down the line, spiderleaf. And it must be fixed AT THE SOURCE.
Not just another application of ANOTHER coat of whitewash by these crafty, tricky Tom Sawyers.
“C’MON, Huck. It’s FUN!!!”
The left…the poor, hapless Huckleberry Finn of this ongoing story.
Being huckstered once again.
“Why…the media is GOOD now!!!”
BULLSHIT.
“Nothin’ personal.”
“It’s just business, George.”
“Just business.”
(Sound of a big fusillade of media multi-automatic weapon “BADA BINGS!!!” going off.)
And here we sit in the darkened movie theater…having paid our money to watch a show over which we have almost no control whatsoever and in fact do not (most of us) even realize IS a show, having surrendered our capability of disbelief at the age of three while watching the Flintstones or some OTHER mindless crap…and applaud the carnage.
“See, Mabel. I TOLDYA the bad guys would get it in the end!!!”
Just as it has been for 50 or 60 years.
Wake the fuck up.
I take my first statement back.
I DO mean to be rude here.
If it takes some rude boys to get through the thick mantle of media-induced skin that has grown over the consciousness of the so-called intellectual elite of this country, then so be it.
Wake the fuck UP!!!
You are being huckstered once again.
“Look Huck!!! It’s FUN!!!”
Bullshit.
AG