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. ================================================================= 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. ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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