On 9/26/07, Bill Lear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > NPR has become so awful --- FOX "news" stupidity without the psychotic > ranting --- that I can barely stand to listen to it. > > Much easier to believe that a benevolent father figure handed out > opportunity to the GIs than that the GIs themselves had something > to do with it.
I was thinking about this while driving to work and listening to US NPR (though I switched over to a John Prine CD when the US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, came on, and the softballs started to be thrown). It's absolutely true that NPR ignores the role the GIs in winning the GI Bill. But the feel of NPR's is not about "a benevolent father figure" handing our benefits. Instead, I'd say that it's more like "the GI Bill was a wise investment that _we_ made." In mainstream liberal discourse, there always seems to be an undertone (or a subtext, depending on your taste) that there exists some sort of mystical unity of all us individuals in the country, uniting to tell "our" government what to do. Our Fearless Leaders -- in this case, Truman -- somehow channeled the national spirit, which told him what to do. (In comparison, populism -- usually a deviant flavor of liberalism -- sees a mystical unity, but there is Trouble in River City: a small minority -- the elite -- has usurped the state, so that alienation of the state from the nation prevails. The unity is not realized.) -- Jim Devine / "The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous." -- Naomi Klein.
