Washington Weekly
05/22/2000
A LOOK INTO THE ABYSS
What Elian Tells Us About Ourselves
By Edward Zehr
"They have become, in the fullest sense of the term, Weimar
Republicans."
Oh no, the reader thinks upon seeing the subtitle of this piece,
not another article about Elian. But this series of articles is
only incidentally about Elian -- it's really about us and what is
happening to us. The Elian affair is like a mirror that reflects
our hidden face, the one we never identify with ourselves because
we always imagine that it belongs to somebody else.
For example, I get e-mail from people who have chanced to read
one or more of these articles and drop me a cordial line or two
just to let me know what a numbskull I am. After all, the way I
tell the story is not the way they have heard it. If my version
were correct it would mean that they have been grossly
misinformed, and the implications of that are too terrible to
contemplate.
It would mean that in order to be properly informed they would
have to stop skating over the surface of issues such as these,
letting the anchor people do all the heavy lifting, and start
doing their own thinking. But thinking can be kind of like work.
Besides, a lot of people just don't quite have the hang of it.
The raw material required to do one's own thinking consists of
facts gathered from a wide variety of sources, not just the one
that happens to materialize when the TV set is switched on.
The "facts" presented by the mass media are typically folded into
a smarmy batter of tendentious fiction calculated to elicit a
response from the viewer that will be useful in advancing the
hidden agenda which the presstitutes are paid to promote. The
viewer, who does not comprehend that he or she is being
manipulated responds emotionally, as though watching a soap opera
or a TV series. After all, most people have a lot more experience
responding emotionally to TV plots than they have at thinking
critically and analytically. The script writer manipulates the
emotions of the audience who respond in a predictable fashion.
The viewers are being conditioned to react in a certain way. The
leap from the semi-conscious emotional response evoked by TV
"entertainment" to the conditioned response elicited by the
politically motivated propaganda inserted into "news"
presentations is a short one.
THE FACE IN THE MIRROR
The black-shirted, brown-shirted and red-banner-waving
totalitarians of the twentieth century missed the point on a
grand scale. All that rough stuff is really unnecessary in
building a totalitarian state. In fact, if overdone, it tends to
give the game away. Goebbels was the one who had it right, not
Himmler. Concentration camps are a drain on the economy. That
doesn't mean that you cannot turn the occasional group of
retrograde religious fundies into crispy critters if they offer
sufficient provocation. (It adds to the entertainment value of
the spectacle if you torment the kiddies with noxious gas for, oh
say five or six hours prior to lighting the bonfire -- the
imperial Romans knew about these things). After the flames
subside it will all be seen as the fault of the fundies, of
course. That sinister, shadowy countenance we sometimes catch
sight of, however fleetingly, in the mirror is never our own.
Not that the knock on the door in the middle of the night is
completely passe. In fact, it can prove quite useful if the
courts insist upon being tedious about due process and all that
nausea, and balk at issuing the legal paperwork necessary to drag
away the designated victim in strict conformance with the law. No
matter, hardly anyone understands the law, and who is going to
tell them -- the press? They are far too preoccupied writing
puff-pieces about Janet Reno to shed any tears over the late,
great Fourth Amendment. Mind you, the original Gestapo were such
sticklers for observing regulations they actually used to knock
before entering. (Germans tend to be polite almost to a fault --
they would never dream of using the familiar form of the personal
pronoun with a stranger, even if they were bashing his head in).
Our own ski-masked, ninja-clad mili-cops do their nocturnal
knocking with a battering ram. Small wonder Europeans consider
us to be somewhat gauche.
One of the most disconcerting aspects of the Elian affair is the
public's response to Reno's Raid on the Miami family of Elian
Gonzalez, in which the boy was illegally seized and whisked away
to a secluded stronghold where, according to some accounts, he is
being drugged and indoctrinated by his Cuban communist keepers.
Ah! smirk the Clinton/Castro apologists, you don't know that the
kid is being drugged and indoctrinated. But the evidence for this
is already considerable and is accumulating rapidly. The
troubling thing is that the apologists do not know that the kid
is NOT being drugged and indoctrinated, and what's worse, they
don't even seem to care. What this amounts to is a desecration of
everything this country is supposed to stand for. The
indifference of the public to such an obscene spectacle bodes ill
for the survival of liberty.
The online news site NewsMax.com recently reported the
observations of Robert K. Ressler, who has been in law
enforcement for more than 40 years, half of that time with the
FBI. Ressler said that his contacts within the Bureau have
indicated that the FBI was opposed to the raid and declined
Reno's invitation to participate in it. The former FBI agent was
particularly critical of what he considers to be the excessive
use of force. He believes that the feds were determined to "make
a statement" to the Cuban-American community in Miami, but the
risks involved were out of proportion to the ends achieved.
"The Cuban-Americans showed great constraint," said Ressler.
"Considering what the federal government did, you could have had
a disaster with many people killed."
Of course, it would not have been the first time Janet Reno
precipitated a disaster through her impetuous use of poor
judgement (if that's what it was). Ressler mentioned Reno's
mishandling of the Waco siege which resulted in the deaths of 86
people, two dozen of them children. And then there was her
department's slovenly, botched oversight of the ham-handed
attempt to frame Richard Jewell, and its bungled investigation of
the Ruby Ridge case. The attempted framing of White House Travel
Office chief Billy Dale is in keeping with this trend. The former
G-man might also have mentioned Reno's record as a witch-hunter
while serving as a prosecutor in Florida. Janet made her bones
there by trying people for "child abuse" and often succeeded in
sending innocent people to prison for that offense. This was, at
the time, a fashionable cause to shrieking demagogues in the
mainstream media, although they have since lowered their voices
on the subject after it became obvious that numerous miscarriages
of justice had resulted from their rabid, politically correct
hysteria. Needless to say, this is cold comfort to those who are
still rotting away in prison for trumped-up offenses they did not
commit. The big question that comes to mind is why Bill Clinton
wanted a witch-hunter to be his attorney general.
Ressler ticked off the list of blunders committed by Reno, who he
says violated virtually every major rule for handling a crisis.
First the negotiations were cut short. Reno has yet to explain
her pressing need to risk the lives of everyone involved by
resorting to force before the possibilities for a negotiated
settlement had been exhausted. She made the same "mistake" at
Waco with tragic results.
By violating her word that she would not use force to resolve the
situation while negotiations were ongoing, Reno set a dangerous
precedent, says Ressler. "In the future, if there is a real
hostage situation involving Cuban-Americans in the Miami area,
they will not believe the government during negotiations, and his
could lead to disaster."
The excessive use of force in order to make a statement entailed
unnecessary risks, says Ressler. More than 130 federal agents
were involved in Reno's raid. How would he have handled it?
Ressler was quoted by NewsMax as saying, "I would have sent just
two marshals wearing suits, with briefcases, and maybe with a
social worker to collect the child. If that effort failed or
resistance was met, only then should the have been escalated."
The point being glossed over here is that the federal government
did not have the requisite legal authority to seize Elian, but I
suppose Ressler does not consider that to be his department. What
does seem to concern him is the reckless and unnecessary risk to
life and limb taken by the Clinton administration and the Justice
Department just to make the point that their every whim is our
command. He ridiculed the Justice Department's claim that some
people in nearby dwellings might have had guns, pointing out that
this is going to be true in any crisis situation and does not
provide a valid excuse for the abuse of the government's power.
Ressler summed up his impressions, saying:
"The photo [of the agent seizing the boy at gunpoint] said
everything. It's amazing to me that this can happen in
America, to have civilian rights trampled on, and for no one
in the media or Congress wanting to hold Reno accountable.
Its very frightening to me."
THE ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM
A more recent development is the emergence of anti-Cuban hate-
mongers who gather in Miami on weekends with signs and banners
that proclaim "Cubans go home," "one down, 800,000 to go," and
similar sentiments. The rallies are organized by a man referred
to by the Miami Herald as "a self-described redneck" who has
spent nearly a year in jail after being convicted on three counts
of "sex offenses against a child."
A local attorney who describes himself as a "blonde, third
generation American of Irish, German and Greek descent, who was
born and grew up in Miami," took out a full-page ad in the Miami
Herald last week to convey a message that reads in part:
"The disturbing irony is that these "pro-USA" hate-mongers
are condemning people who have struggled to uphold the very
values of liberty and justice that the American flag
symbolizes, and which Cuban Americans have sacrificed to
uphold. Cuban-Americans have proven their dedication to
American values in many ways. First, by rejecting an
oppressive, totalitarian communist dictator, and giving up
everything they once had to live in freedom and democracy.
Then, more recently, by trying to save a little boy from that
same political oppression after his courageous mother died
tragically in her own search for freedom. Sadly, most Anglo
Americans do not fully appreciate this fact, because most of
us have been fortunate enough not to have lived under
political oppression."
Of course, not everybody in Miami agrees with these sentiments.
Carl Hiaasen writing in the May 14 Miami Herald took Rep. Tom
Delay (R-TX) and Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH), whom he characterized as
"arch-conservatives", to task for "ham-handedly" attempting to
use "the custody clash to try to advance a hardline agenda in
Congress." Hiaasen comments that Joe McCarthy, whom he in a
surfeit of charity and compassion has consigned to "the bowels of
hell," must be "grinning from ear to ear."
Demonstrating that anti-anti-communists have very long memories
indeed. McCarthy was a lot of things, including a world-class
drunk and a close friend of Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of JFK.
He also made a hash of investigating communist infiltration of
the U.S. government during the 1950s, but what did he do to
deserve damnation? It hardly seems to matter that information
which came to light subsequent to the collapse of the Soviet
Union indicates that, if anything, McCarthy understated the
extent of communist infiltration of our government at the time.
The pertinent facts in the case are these: the media jackal-pack
were in full-cry against McCarthy, his chief investigator was a
homosexual, the Washington crowd were scared to death of him, and
the senator, who was not all that photogenic, had a personality
about as smooth as sandpaper. As if that were not enough, he was
brash enough to take on the Eisenhower administration in the
immediate wake of a landslide election victory, having already
alienated the Democrats to the limit of possibility. McCarthy had
a death-wish -- it's as simple as that. His reason for taking on
the Washington establishment was the same as that of his pal Joe
Kennedy. It was only incidentally about communists and had
everything to do with the WASP mentality that prevailed in those
days: no Irish need apply.
Then as now, the mainstream press functioned as puppets of the
power-elite -- that is why they went after McCarthy with such
feline ferocity. Of course there was also their ideological
commitment to the milque-toast left in vogue at the time, but
they were able to keep that in check so long as it seemed that
McCarthy had the upper hand. One of the most telling slips by the
establishment press of that era is an article that appeared in
Time magazine which conceded that, for all his crudity and ill-
mannered lack of decorum, the senator had some solid achievements
to his credit. On the following week the Army-McCarthy imbroglio
erupted, which was to doom McCarthy's political career. What a
faux pas. How could Time be guilty of such a faulty sense of
timing?
DeLay and Smith are making a big mistake -- they are out of step
with the Washington crowd and that is not permitted in this land
of the free. If I seem to digress it is because one cannot
understand the present political dynamic, particularly as it
involves the mainstream press, without knowing something of the
McCarthy era. It was a defining moment in our history that
signaled the emergence of the anti-anti-communist left from the
closet to dominate the front page of the elite newspapers, as
well as their editorials, and commandeer the burgeoning new
medium of television. Then, as now, the conservatives were
relegated to radio -- voices such as Fulton Lewis, Jr., were
heard for a few minutes in the evening. Walter Winchell, a gossip
columnist who had been lavish and tireless in his praise of
Franklin D. Roosevelt, had become a national institution with his
Sunday night radio broadcasts. Oddly, Winchell defended McCarthy
to the bitter end. It was he who coined the term "presstitute."
For all his character flaws, self-destructive impulses and
weakness for alcohol, McCarthy performed a lasting service for
the country. No, it wasn't exposing communist influence in the
government, which even then had become screamingly obvious to
anyone with so much as half a brain. The all-consuming self-
hatred of our degenerate ruling class, with which they are
inculcated during the course of their expensive and exclusive ivy
league educations and which they so lavishly project upon the
rest of us, became all too apparent during the Vietnam War and
their subsequent flirtation with communist governments in Central
America. Their present crush on Castro is merely an extension of
this dementia. By depth-bombing the Washington establishment
McCarthy forced this cabal to the surface, defining it forever in
the minds of conservatives, even if most of this went over the
heads of the general public.
It hardly matters that McCarthy was hunted down and destroyed by
the Washington jackal-pack. He had already marked himself for
destruction and died a few years later from cirrhoses of the
liver, a quixotic and tragi-comic figure. Curiously, McCarthy's
real crusade -- the one against the WASPs -- triumphed a few
years later with the accession to power of John F. Kennedy, the
son of the senator's old buddy, and nobody seemed to notice; or
at least they didn't let on. Stranger still was JFK's embrace of
the anti-communist cause that was supposedly anathema to so many
of his liberal admirers. Granted, he was even more inept at it
than McCarthy had been -- it was Kennedy who gave us the Bay of
Pigs, after all (without the air cover). JFK's Keepers of the
Flame have labored mightily to shift the blame for that one to
the previous administration, but come on -- he WAS the president.
He could have just said no. Kennedy's problem was that he
woefully lacked experience and depended too much on his advisers,
and they, in turn, were reluctant to go against what they
perceived to be his intent. After the debacle he settled down
with grim determination to have Castro assassinated -- by the
Mafia yet. Although full details of the denouement are not yet
known to the public, and probably never will be, it would appear
that the Mafia bumped off Kennedy instead. He, or rather his
younger brother, the attorney general, represented a greater
threat to them than did Castro.
Did the Washington jackal-pack really live through such
extraordinarily interesting times without understanding any of
it? This seems inconceivable, yet if they really do understand
why do they behave so strangely? The answer has to be found in
their psychology. These people have courage only in numbers.
There isn't a real individual in a carload of such creatures.
They were born to lick boots, even if they came along just a bit
late to get in on the real action. What excellent Nazis they
would have made -- what splendid little agitprop phonies, singing
praise to Father Stalin, one of the most prolific mass murderers
of all time, while stealthily nudging reports of his atrocities
under the carpet. Lest you think that I exaggerate, a New York
Times correspondent, Walter Duranty, actually performed the
latter function for kindly, twinkly-eyed, old "Uncle Joe." I
quote the French journalist Jean-Francois Revel from his book
"The Flight From Truth":
"During a tour of the Ukraine in 1933 Duranty could joyfully
inform his transatlantic readers that he had seen enough to
be able to assert categorically that all rumors about a
famine in that region were ridiculous. Four years later,
during the Moscow trials, the famous correspondent informed
his readers no less categorically that it was unthinkable
that Stalin, Voroshilov, and the Military Tribunal had been
able to condemn their friends to death without crushing proof
of their guilt."
What was Duranty's reward for licking Stalin's boots? He won the
Pulitzer Prize, of course. It is still prominently displayed in a
place of honor at the New York Times. Although they have since
acknowledged that the reports by this Gulag-denier were a pack of
lies, the brahmins at the Times have not had the decency to
scrape the plaque proclaiming Duranty's excellence as a reporter
off their wall.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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