Posted by Re-built Farid from ? (148.233.93.127) on Monday, June 30, 2003 at 11:34AM :
Anti-Terrorism, Son Of Anti-Communism.
And both of them from the family of politics by fear. In a book titled, "Citizen Cohn", about the infamous 50's era McCarthy lawyer and rabid anti-Communist, Roy M. Cohn... by Nicholas Von Hoffman, there is an erie note sent by Ayn Rand, she of the industrial/capitalist balls, to the big shots of the film industry right around the end of the Second World War telling them what kinds of films something called the, "Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals", didn't want to see made.
Don't Smear Industrialists...don't smear the Free Enterprise System...Don't Smear Success...Don't give your character - as a sign of villainy, as a damning characteristic - a desire to make money...Don't ever use any lines about the 'common man' or 'the little people'. It's not the American idea to to be either 'common' or 'little'...Also, don't tell people that man is a helpless, twisted, drooling, sniveling, neurotic weakling. Show the world an AMERICAN (Caps are Rand's) kind of man, for a change...it is the moral duty of every decent man in the motion picture industry to throw into the ash can, where it belongs, every story that smears industrialists as such.
Where Hemingway revered his dick, Rand got it on for smokestacks. I don't recall many films about sniveling, drooling neurotics. I DO recall films like "Meet John Doe", "Sullivan's Travels" and "The Grapes of Wrath" in which the seamy side of free-range profiteering received its due. No one was against making money...it was, "how much" and "how many people and things do you climb over and barrel through on your way", that were issues of concern. You see there the same attempt to equate un-Americanism wih any criticism...any at all. Jeez...sounds kind of like our Traitor/Patrot Assrins.
Cohn was a raging closet homosexual. There were strong hints that Joe McCarthy was also. Add to that the consummate queer, J Edgar Hoover and you wonder if the terrible secret they all had to tuck away convinced them that others must have, or ought to confess to having, "terrible" secrets of their own...like being that one thing worse than being Gay...a Communist. These super snoops, who ruined many an innocent career and drove several men to suicide(and never exposed a single genuine "operative")... alleging that there was more to everyone than anyone let on, were allowed to dominate not only politics and culture but Law, Business and every other facet of American life.
They went so far in blind arrogance that the thing that finally brought McCarthy and Cohn down...ahem, was nothing more than Cohn's untiring and illegal efforts to have his boyfriend first excused from the Draft, then assigned nearby with weekend and nightly passes whenever they asked so they could party. The Army brass got tired of all the arm twisting and then the threats to "expose" Communists and Traitors within their ranks if they didn't play ball. Eisenhower, who was president, grew increasingly pissed at these attempts to blackmail and than smear "his" Army. The Army stood firm...ahem...and in retaliation McCarthy's committe forced them into public hearngs at which the famous lines were spoken to McCarthy by the Army's counsel on national television that ended his career..."Mr Chairman, have you no sense of decency"...
The early infatuation with the Communist Party in America was because of the ideals espoused in their constitution that made much of righting the wrongs inflicted on people by unrestrained Capitalism...and there was much to dislike. But soon it became evident that this was mostly window-dressing and that Uncle Joe was no idealist or friend of the common man. Almost all of the people called before the committe had flirted with the Party in their earlier salad days, when they were but green and tossed...none of them were active, hair raising Commies by the time the hearings began. Even the Rosenbergs were caught up in that brief moment of Internationalism, the hope to end all aggressive wars that ushered in the now dead and long about it, United Nations.
Another quote from the book illustrates the point...
Unhappily, tainted as they were, the Communists also stood at the center of efforts to help the 'buked and scorned', as the spiritual calls the sorely afflicted. Concern for such things as human rights for American blacks came, ironically, to be regarded as prima facie proof of a person's communist inclinations because so few non-Communists in positions of power and influence cared to do aything about the problems of caste and deprivation. This dilemna, which confronted the United States at home, was the same which the nation would soon face abroad in countries where communism took root and strength from pauperism and despair. At home the struggle against the Communists was never free of the ambiguity of motives. Were anti-Communism leaders anti-Communists or were they using anti-Communism to protect racism, destroy unions, and avoid paying their share of taxes?
That's in the 50's, 60's and 70's...when our global stand against the perils of Communism led us to commit all manner of crimes against poor and disenfranchised people the world over. Was it Communism we were fighting...or were we fighting People? In the above paragraph you can replace "communism" with "terrorism"...with only a few other slight alterations and you fast forward to the dawn of the present century when the same people...now out of every friggin closet there is, are once again marching us all down the garden path in lockstep to fight another world-wide scourge...when it's just their power perks and profits they're really interested in, the maintaining of which have caused much of the global misery from which they say we must protect ourselves...by heaping even more misery onto the fire.
If you have any sympathy, even with the children of Palestine, Iraq or any country in the MidEast you could be called pro-Terror. If you criticize the actions of your government you could be seen as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. In many ways they've got the screws even tighter this time around because now they insist we are in a perpetual and long lasting HOT war, not a cold one, against the nefarious forces of world-wide Terror. It's another con job...another bugaboo. You create the atmosphere for Terror like you do for Communism...by robbing people blind and breaking their hearts and their children's hearts and abusing them till they have nothing more to lose or fear. Every country Communism showed its head in was one in which the people had been ground down for centuries or were being abused by local dictators either put in place or kept there by Western Powers, the United States chief among them. WE set the stage for Communism...we flaming Capitalists and Industrialists and Free- Market Pimps. We did the same for Terror...whatever that is.
Every parent the world over wants to "make money". We all have that in common with Ayn Rand and John D. Rockefeller. With most of the rest of us, however, it isn't a disease eating away at our vitals. But it's become one we're all infected by to varying degrees thanks, among other things, to that will-o-the wisp Stock Market/Lotto people pin their hopes on. Part of the spread of this disease has come about by systematically impoverishing people so that their thoughts can't help but increasingly and then exclusively go into plots and hopes and travails and fantasies about making more money. It's the same as the preacher teaching sin first and then selling absolution...our politician/businessmen have stolen so much of the national wealth that we've all become the poorer...CEO's routinely walk away with the company's dough...as we so dramtaically saw recently...and now we have an administation made up of CEO's who are going to first drain the Treasury then foist "loans" on us so we can get the pot holes fixed...for which we'll also have to pay them interest.
Either we stop them...or you guys are NEVER going to earn enough...work long enough at one job to have any retirement security...win enough...get dividends enough, to keep anything but one month and three steps out of the poor house. Not even your wives working or your children, soon enough, will keep your little boat afloat because these guys have lost the sense of "enough". As long as you've got a spare dime, prices will go up and when you need that dime back to fix junior's teeth, they'll loan it to you and charge you interest...the "deficit"...you know..the one created by them every few years.
Ah well.
-- Re-built Farid
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