Not a Joke (by Jane Smiley at HuffPost)

[marmar]

Jane Smiley
Not a Joke


One of the most irritating editorials of the week-end was the New York TImes piece on Dick Cheney, entitled "Dick Cheney Rules". On Monday, it was one of the Times' most emailed pieces. Surely the reason for such popularity is the list of Cheney's crimes, not the tone of the piece, which is ironic, but not, I am sorry to say, bitterly ironic. The tone is, in fact, playful. Among Cheney's major transgressions, he "seems unconcerned about little things like checks and balances and traditional American notions of judicial process. At one point, he gave himself the power to selectively declassify documents and selectively leak them to reporters. In a recent commencement address, he declaimed against prisoners who had the gall to 'demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States'." And it points out Cheney's tens of millions of dollars in profits from his Halliburton connection. But then editorial limply observes that "Mr. Cheney is in step with the times. He has privatized the job of vice president of the United States," and ends. What? Where's the call for impeachment? This editorial makes Cheney the monster sound like an eccentric but meaningless old coot like the Dad on Frasier.

Not a page or two from the Cheney editorial is an op-ed by Edward Wong called "Iraq's Curse: A Thirst For Final, Crushing Victory", in which the author reflects upon the desires on the part of most Iraqi groups to see their enemies killed, dismembered, and dragged through the streets. Well, excuse me, but, I have to say, I can sympathize.

I've been reading lately about my home state, Missouri, during and after the Civil War, and it's enlightening these days to think about those days. The similarities of the Civil War in Kansas and Missouri (between 1856 and 1865) to the war in Iraq are striking. Just to refresh your memory, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854, repealing the Missouri Compromise and giving "Kansans" the right to choose whether as a state, Kansas was going to be slave or free, settlers poured into the territory from the north and the south, and many of those were from the two most extremely ideological states, Massachusetts and South Carolina. These immigrants hated each other on sight, and Kansas was soon known all over the country as "Bloody Kansas". Radicals on both sides gained experience in violence and hatred. One of these was John Brown, who murdered five slaveholders in southern Kansas Territory in 1856 and another was William Quantrill, a Missouri border guerrilla who massacred a hundred and fifty Union sympathizers in Lawrence, Kansas in 1863. The Union sympathizers, in particular, made sure to be armed with the latest technology--Sharps rifles. If they had had IEDs, they would have used them. The Civil War in Kansas and Missouri was terrifying to both sides exactly for the reason that the Iraq War is terrifying--no side predominated, neighbor hated and distrusted neighbor, revenge was a primary motivator, and everyone was well-armed. All due respect to Mr. Wong, but the Iraqis aren't unique in their thirst for reduction of the enemy to nothing. Civil wars, and especially civil wars in territories where loyalties are divided, like Missouri and Kansas, inevitably produce just such sentiments.

...(snip)...

When those in power exercise it in an unjust manner, they destroy the sense of trust that average citizens have in their own government and their own society and they open the society to the return of revenge as a sentiment and as an act. American history is replete with examples of how long it has taken and how difficult it has been for us as a nation to escape vengeance as a social mechanism--Kansas and Missouri, vigilantes and lynching, gangs and outlaws. Cheney's specific crimes are reason enough for the New York Times to take impeachment seriously, but his larger crime against the nation has been to roll back the clock and infuse people like me, liberals like me (whom we all know are wimps, right?) with vengeful sentiments and fantasies. We have the crimes, then we have the arrogance--since the 2000 election, Cheney has been adding insult to injury, here and in Iraq. The combination is a potent one--the injuries damage our lives; the insults make us mad (both angry and crazy). The antidote is the exercise of laws, such as Kucinich's articles of impeachment. I have news for the New York Times--if you assume that this is all going to pass away with another election season, you are dangerously wrong. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/not-a-joke_b_50792.html

[Demeter]

1. Hasn't Been Funny Since 9/11, Either

Sahel to the Bushbots!

[stellanoir]

2. Read that earlier when DU was down. . .

packs a whollop and was glad to see it.

K & R'd

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Senitments long remembered

Being from Missouri, you probably know the story of Harry S Truman's mother. When she went to Washington to visit her son, she refused to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. She was a victim of the Border Wars and carried the ill feelings of that times well into the next century.

The James Gang and other outlaw gangs of their ilk got their training during the Border Wars and the Civil War; even when order is restored to a society, lawless elements can remain to terrorize decades after the event that spawned them.

And then there is the problem of refugees. When my husband's family was attacked by the Jayhawkers, and some were murdered, they moved en masse to Texas, where the family resided for several generations in peace. My husband said the family motto was to run away from trouble, and to forget the bad times and remember the good. I hope that the refugees from this war can have an attitude like that-it is festering hatred and resentment that causes the most damaage.

[Phredicles]

4. Rec'd and posting to ease later re-finding.

[Fovea]

5. Want to understand the insurgents?

Read the Autobiography of Samuel Hildebrandt.

[eridani]

6. "Where's the call for impeachment? "

HR 333, introduced by Kucinich. Do try to keep up.

[marmar]

7. "Do try to keep up."

Perhaps you should email that to Jane Smiley: She's the author of the piece. :think:

[eridani]

8. Good idea. I will. n/t