Bed-wetter Nation

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



Bed-wetter Nation
Submitted by Rick Perlstein on September 25, 2007 - 3:02pm.



Here's a big question that I want to start addressing in upcoming posts: what is conservative rule doing to our nation's soul? How is it rewiring our hearts and minds? What kind of damage are they doing to the American character? And can we ever recover?

So: what is the American character? Hard to say, of course. But I daresay we know it when we see it. Let me put before you an illustrative example: one week in September of 1959, when, much like one week in September of 2007, American soil supported a visit by what many, if not most Americans agreed was the most evil and dangerous man on the planet.

Nikita Khrushchev disembarked from his plane at Andrews Air Force Base to a 21-gun salute and a receiving line of 63 officials and bureaucrats, ending with President Eisenhower. He rode 13 miles with Ike in an open limousine to his guest quarters across from the White House. Then he met for two hours with Ike and his foreign policy team. Then came a white-tie state dinner. (The Soviets then put one on at the embassy for Ike.) He joshed with the CIA chief about pooling their intelligence data, since it probably all came from the same people—then was ushered upstairs to the East Wing for a leisurely gander at the Eisenhowers' family quarters. Visited the Agriculture Department's 12,000 acre research station ("If you didn't give a turkey a passport you couldn't tell the difference between a Communist and capitalist turkey"), spoke to the National Press Club, toured Manhattan, San Francisco (where he debated Walter Reuther on Stalin's crimes before a retinue of AFL-CIO leaders, or in K's words, "capitalist lackeys"), and Los Angeles (there he supped at the 20th Century Box commissary, visited the set of the Frank Sinatra picture Can Can but to his great disappointment the premier did not get to visit Disneyland), and sat down one more with the president, at Camp David. Mrs. K did the ladies-who-lunch circuit, with Pat Nixon as guide. It's not like it was all hearts and flowers. He bellowed that America, as Time magazine reported, "must close down its worldwide deterrent bases and disarm." Reporters asked him what he'd been doing during Stalin's blood purges, and the 1956 invasion of Hungary. A banquet of 27 industrialists tried to impress upon him the merits of capitalism. Eleanor Roosevelt toured him through Hyde Park. Nelson Rockefeller rapped with him about the Bible.

Had America suddenly succumbed to a fever of weak-kneed appeasement? Was the general running the country—the man who had faced down Hitler!—proven himself what the John Birch Society claimed he was: a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy?

No. Nikita Khrushchev simply visited a nation that had character. That was mature, well-adjusted. A nation confident we were great. We had our neuroses, to be sure—plenty of them.

But look now what we have lost. Now when a bad guy crosses our threshhold, America becomes a pants-piddling mess. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/bet_wetter_nation?tx=3

[BlooInBloo]

1. I've lost track - wasn't Kruschev (a) the "we will bury you" guy, and (b)...

... the one who tried to put nukes 90 miles off of Florida?

[monktonman]

2. You got it.

but he's a white guy so thats OK

[BlooInBloo]

3. Yup - either that or Americans are complete wusses...

... Or a combination, of course.

[TygrBright]

6. That's him, yep. He was a formidable opponent...

...and he headed an enormous and phenomenally well-armed military with tons of resources at hand. And was head of a state ideologically opposed to America, and one which had, at the time, demonstrated some daunting capabilities to leapfrog us in military and technological innovation, and both expertise and comfort with a successful propaganda war. He was scary.

America and its political and military leaders were rightly wary of him and vigorous in pursuing an agenda opposing him and his nation's stated aims. But the author of this article is correct-- the leadership establishment of America at the time did not dissolve into spittle-spraying, trouser-soaking orgies of rhetoric and fearmongering. That is not to say that there weren't some powerful interests-- and some in the government (paging Joe M!)-- who weren't trying their best to get us to dissolve into hysterical panic at the thought of Reds Under The Bed, but they didn't control ALL the levers of power.

::sigh:: Maybe they're right. Maybe those WERE the days. All we had to deal with then was the female half of the population denied parity under the law, black people disenfranchised, rampant racism and prejudice, 'duck and cover' drills, rural poverty of horrific proportions, DDT on the fields and Better Living Through Chemistry beginning its long nightmare. Oh, and nuclear annihilation. But OTHER than that... dang, those were good times!

ironically,
Bright

[Jackpine Radical]

9. "We will bury you"--Communism will win out over Capitlism in the end.

Soviet missiles in Cuba were a retaliatory move for our placing listening posts & ICBMs in Turkey, near the Soviet border.

Ol' Nikita was no charmer, but neither was he the Prince of Evil.

[lapfog_1]

4. But... but... but... 9/11 9/11 9/11 terror terror terror... Iraq, Iran, Korea!

9/11 changed everything! (Well, changed everything HERE at least).

[THUNDER HANDS]

5. how the RW would respond

Ike wasn't a real republican anyway, he was a pussy.

Secondly, Russia didn't support terrorists. (in Russia, terrorist support YOU - jesus, that's the second Yakof Smirnov joke I've used this week).

Thirdly, uh... 911, 911, 911. Saddam. 911, 911, 911.

[PDenton]

7. Ahmadinejad should have gone to some other place

besides New York. Maybe a Texas university. That was his first mistake. New York is full of people that just don't want to even treat any Muslim from an "Axis of Evil" with the dignity a guest deserves. I love the comment that nobody else should visit the WTC, as if the US has some kind of ownership over the building. It was an international business building. Wheather or not Iranians died there is irrelevent.

America owes the Iranian people an apology. The fact so many people are defending the Dean's rude breach of etiquette just shows how low people have fallen. This is America, it is suppossed to be a civilized land; people with honor and civility don't go around sabotaging guests like it was a Jerry Springer show.

Now Ahmadinejad can go home and tell his countrymen that yes, Americans really are the great Satan, they laughed an him and called him vile things. All confirming that the US is an evil nation, of course. Everybody loses in this one.

[NMMNG]

8. Bad guys don't even have to cross our threshold anymore.

They just have to send us tapes.



Oh yeah....9/11.