Subject: Re: Obama Uses Myths About Vietnam to Silence Anti-War Protest Today
Miriam,
Well,it is possible that Bush presented himself as a regular guy just bumbling along, but I don't believe he pulled it off. My personal assessment is that Bush was a pretty average guy. He said the same sort of dumb things that I might have said if I were suddenly elected president. Of course in my case it would have been on different subjects. For example, I know how to pronounce nuclear. But I always drive Cathy crazy when I say, Oyshtur. And after about 5 years of marriage, Cathy trained me to no longer say, Fameous.
So I cut George Bush or Dan Quayl some slack in the diction and spelling category.
But rather than bright, I pegged Bush as sly. His mistake was to believe that sly was the same as bright. And he had that sound in his voice. The sound of the cat that swallowed the canary. Almost a simpering smirk when he thought he was pulling one over on us.
When I was growing up as a very poor boy in a rich boys school, I called it "That rich boy's smirk".
Now Obama is bright. Like Bill Clinton. But what Obama proves to me is that being bright is not being smart.
And even though I find his tone so much easier to listen to, I'm beginning to tune him off because he lies so often that I find myself swearing and banging my head against the fireplace mantle.
And that hurts.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----From: Miriam VieniSent: Monday, June 04, 2012 7:36 PMSubject: RE: Obama Uses Myths About Vietnam to Silence Anti-War Protest TodayCarl,
Bush lied a lot and I'm sure he knew he was doing it. I also think that he
got away with stuff by acting stupid when he wasn't. He manipulated people
by acting as if he was like them or even dumber than they were. Obama fools
them by representing himself as if he were a principled intellectual.
When I look back at how people felt about guys serving in the military
during the Vietnam War, I don't think that people put forth effort, as they
do now, to publicly show their support for them. Of course there wasn't a
Prarie Home Companion program back then. Now, during the part of the program
when private messages are read publicly, if anyone is mentioned who is
serving in Afghanistan, or before, was serving in Iraq, the audience
dutifully cheers and applauds. I don't remember this sort of thing happening
during the Vietnam War.
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2012 11:20 AM
To: S. Kashdan; Blind Democracy Discussion List
Subject: Re: Obama Uses Myths About Vietnam to Silence Anti-War Protest
Today
Frankly, I've grown very tired of listening to President Obama. At least
with George Bush, I felt that he really believed his own garbage. But Obama
is some higher on the brain chain and knows that what he spews is pure
Bullshit. I really am tired of being lied to as if I am 4 years old.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----
From: S. Kashdan <mailto:skashdan@scn.org>
To: Blind Democracy List <mailto:blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2012 5:47 AM
Subject: Obama Uses Myths About Vietnam to Silence Anti-War Protest
Today
Obama Uses Myths About Vietnam to Silence Anti-War Protest Today
By David Sirota
Salon, Posted on June 3, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/155701
Out of all the status-quo-sustaining fables we create out of
military
history, none are as enduring as Vietnam War myths. Desperate to
cobble a
pro-war cautionary tale out of a blood-soaked tragedy, we keep
reimagining
the loss in Southeast Asia not as a policy failure but as the
product of an
America that dishonored returning troops.
Incessantly echoed by Hollywood and Washington since the concurrent
successes of the Rambo and Reagan franchises, this legend was the
central
theme of President Obama's Memorial Day speech kicking off the
government's
commemoration of the Vietnam conflict.
"You were often blamed for a war you didn't start, when you should
have been
commended for serving your country with valor," he told veterans.
"You came
home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been
celebrated.
It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never
happened."
It's undeniable that chronic underfunding of the Veterans
Administration
unduly harmed Vietnam-era soldiers. However, that lamentable
failure was
not what Obama was referring to. As the president who escalated the
Vietnam-esque war in Afghanistan, he was making a larger argument.
Deliberately parroting Rambo's claim about "a quiet war against all
the
soldiers returning," he was asserting that America, as a whole, spat
on
soldiers when they came home--even though there's no proof that this
happened on any mass scale.
In his exhaustive book titled "The Spitting Image," Vietnam vet and
Holy
Cross professor Jerry Lembcke documents veterans who claim they were
spat on
by antiwar protestors, but he found no physical evidence
(photographs, news
reports, etc.) that these transgressions actually occurred. His
findings
are supported by surveys of his fellow Vietnam veterans as they came
home.
For instance, Lembcke notes that "a U.S. Senate study, based on data
collected in August 1971 by Harris Associates, found that 75 percent
of
Vietnam-era veterans polled disagreed with the statement, 'Those
people at
home who opposed the Vietnam war often blame veterans for our
involvement
there'" while "94 percent said their reception by people their own
age who
had not served in the armed forces was friendly." Meanwhile, the
Veterans'
World Project at Southern Illinois University found that many
Vietnam vets
supported the antiwar protest, with researchers finding almost no
veterans
"finish(ing) their service in Vietnam believing that what the United
States
has done there has served to forward our nation's purposes."
In the face of such data, why would the current president
nonetheless repeat
the apocryphal myth about spat-on Vietnam veterans Because--facts be
damned--it serves a purpose to suppress protest and perpetuate the
ideology
of militarism.
This objective is achieved through the narrative's preposterous
assumptions.
Metaphorically, if not explicitly, the mythology equates antiwar
activism
with dishonoring the troops, implies that such protest is kryptonite
to the
Pentagon's Superman, and therefore insinuates that America loses
wars not
when policies are wrong, but when dissent is tolerated.
As political memes go, this 30-year Vietnam storyline has been
wildly
successful in helping presidents silence opposition to the Iraq War,
the
continued Afghanistan occupation, our expanding drone wars, and, of
course,
our ever-increasing defense budgets.
Yet, as much as the propaganda is cast as a genuflection to
veterans, it's
anything but. For one thing, it ignores the fact that many troops
enlist
specifically to defend our freedoms--among them the freedom to
dissent.
Additionally, in manufacturing falsehoods out of the painful Vietnam
experience, it insults many Vietnam vets by writing their opposition
to that
war out of history. Unchecked, the mythology ultimately uses the
revised
history of yesteryear's soldiers to vaporize the very dissent that
might
prevent tomorrow's soldiers from facing another Vietnam-like
quagmire.
That's not respectful or supportive of veterans--it's the opposite.
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book Back to Our
Future How
the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now. He hosts the morning
show on
AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on
@davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.
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