Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Lennon and McCarthy

CNS News reports that Howard Dean believes the Sixties will come again.

America is about to revisit one of the most turbulent decades in its history, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told a religious conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. "We're about to enter the '60s again," Dean said, but he was not referring to the Vietnam War or racial tensions. Dean said he is looking for "the age of enlightenment led by religious figures who want to greet Americans with a moral, uplifting vision." "The problem is when we hit that '60s spot again, which I am optimistic we're about to hit, we have to make sure that we don't make the same mistakes," Dean added. ...

Alternating between references to the "McCarthy era" of the 1950s, which he accused the Bush administration of reviving, the decade of the 1960s and the current era, Dean explained that he was "looking to go back to the same moral principles of the '50s and '60s."

That was a time that stressed "everybody's in it together," he said. "We know that no one person can succeed unless everybody else succeeds."


If any proof were required that a revival of Hair! was imminent, this is it. But I don't think Dean goes back far enough. My alternative candidate for revival is in the second column.

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
The age of Aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revalation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

Singing our space songs on a spider web sitar
Life is around you and in you
Answer from Timothy Leary deary

Let the sunshine
Let the sunshine in
The sunshine in

 

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night ...

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good. ...

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

33 Comments:

Blogger RWE said...

The essence of the 60's was not Hair, Woodstock, nor bell bottoms - but an incident that occurred just after the 1968 Presidental election.

Two black men walked into a liquor store in Charelston, S.C., robbed it at gunpoint, and on the way out one of them said to the terrified guy behind the cash register: "We did this because Hubert Humprephy lost the election. You people let Mr. Humphrey down."

So, small time crime became big time protest, and thus was justified in the minds of some.

Take a look at the "justification" for terrorism, and especially the Left's response to it.

The 60's are coming back? Howard, some of us never left them.

6/28/2006 06:28:00 PM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

The Department of Irony. Power Line notes that the Iraqi insurgency's timetable for an American withdrawal is atually longer than the Democratic plan in Congress.


Eleven Sunni "insurgent" organizations have reportedly told the Iraqi government that they will lay down their arms in exchange for a series of concessions, the key one being that American forces cease all offensive operations against them and set a timetable for withdrawal within two years. The insurgents' position is actually more moderate than the liberal Democrats'; the Democrats wanted to pull out within 18 months, not 24, without getting anything in return--not even an empty promise to lay down arms. So the insurgents must really support the troops!

I'm sure there must be a flaw in that logic, but I haven't yet figured out what it is.


The insurgents are probably looking at all them riled up Shi'ites and that has a way of altering perspective. But yes, it is funny.

6/28/2006 06:45:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

I think Lennon may finally be right, who ever imagined ...

Is it just me, or has “war” changed?
Despite the size of the Israeli operation, with large troop movements, artillery barrages and many airstrikes over two days, no one was hurt.

6/28/2006 06:50:00 PM  
Blogger Chester said...

Auden, yes? Did you read that in Bobbitt?

6/28/2006 06:51:00 PM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

Al-Aqsa claims it has fired a rocket with a chemical warhead into Israel. The militant firing the supposedly imaginary at the definitely illegitimate? Does this belong on a thread about the Sixties. You betcha.

6/28/2006 06:54:00 PM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

Chester,

No I didn't read it in Bobbit. Somewhere else, probably in an anthology of poetry. Auden and his boyfriend Christopher Isherwood went off to see the Spanish Civil war and they came back with tales that no one would believe. In many ways, people like Orwell and Auden saw the Beast before the townsfolk knew it existed. And it existed.

6/28/2006 06:57:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

Met a guy with my Dad one time, sitting around a narrow table in some bar. My Dad, ever the inciter, urged the guy to tell us about the Bay of Pigs. "We were cutting ears off to show we got them..." and the rest was about the hated JFK who betrayed the noble commandos who stormed Cuba, and got caught on the beach with no air support.

Since we're talking Sixties.

6/28/2006 07:04:00 PM  
Blogger exhelodrvr1 said...

So Dean is looking for religious leaders to show the way? I wonder how the rest of the left feels about that!

6/28/2006 07:12:00 PM  
Blogger Pyrthroes said...

The Pill, potheads, and posturing: "And generations all ... (save one) proved equal to the Call" (Holmes, "The Old Punch Bowl"). Boomers, TV, and pop-cult magnified defined that decade. Khrushchev in Vienna took one look at JFK, threw up the Berlin Wall, sent missiles into Cuba, began seriously funding Ho Chi Minh through Mao's Red Rats. And so it went, from Kerry's treasonous utterances through George McGovern. As Venona files make clear, Big Bill Clinton toured East Europe on a Soviet KGB passsport, ratting out dissidents and student groups during 1968's Prague Spring. No-one on the rancid Left cared then, nor do they now.

Instrumental in elevating Castro, the Times with its Pentagon Papers continued efforts to weaken and discredit anti-Communism. Cronkite in 1967 knowingly and purposefully distorted the Tet Offensive, materially contributing to the savage deaths of millions in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Encomiums to Mao T'se-tung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, whose Red Guards emulated Hitler Youth, rose high from media panjandrums such as Rather and Wallace.

Debating these vile authoritarian personalities over decades is a futile exercise. Their intentions were not honorable, either then or now. They admit nothing, concede nothing, and when truly pressed begin a play-skool game of name-calling based on "tu quoque" (you're another).

Bring back the Sixties? If the Thirties represent an economic Depression, that Kennedy - Johnson era stinks to this day of murderous delusions, while retrogressive Democrats played ostrich and gloried in the sacrifice of others.

6/28/2006 07:14:00 PM  
Blogger Starling said...

Dean explained that he was "looking to go back to the same moral principles of the '50s and '60s." That was a time that stressed "everybody's in it together," he said. "We know that no one person can succeed unless everybody else succeeds."

This "no one succeeds unless everybody suceeds" meme is collectivist rhetoric at it's finest. Should Howard dean read this post, expect an email from him requesting that you change the title to "Lenin and McCarthy."

6/28/2006 07:22:00 PM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

AP is reporting that the IDF is rounding up Palestinian cabinet ministers and Hamas lawmakers. Hold on to your hats on this one.

6/28/2006 07:25:00 PM  
Blogger Chester said...

Wretchard,

I've been reading many of the spy novels of Alan Furst, set in 1930s Europe. Furst lists Christopher Isherwood as a major influence in his understandings of that time. More on that in a future post over at my place.

6/28/2006 07:28:00 PM  
Blogger Deuce ☂ said...

You have to admire the Democrats. They really know how to play to their stength. I wonder what it would take to get Howard Dean save his best material for September?

6/28/2006 07:37:00 PM  
Blogger Meme chose said...

Howard Dean will be predicting an imminent return to the 1960's from his wheelchair and on his deathbed. It's the only future he can imagine.

This means that the information content of his current pronouncement is precisely zero.

6/28/2006 07:57:00 PM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

DanMyers,

The world is truly screwed up. We are dicking around, content to leave critical problems in an inconclusive state while ordinary people scrabble for medicine, food and jobs while killers are given receptions in the Rose Garden or feted at the UN. The Palestinian people are people like any other in their natural state, but it is the international political system which is unnatural. Perverse if you like.

6/28/2006 08:23:00 PM  
Blogger Mad Fiddler said...

I'm gettin' stretch marks on my brain from reading all these posts.

Don't any of yous guys ever watch Vanna White?

6/28/2006 10:27:00 PM  
Blogger sam said...

Of course, you know this means war!:

How could the adherents of the Religion of Peace ever make war? It’s to laugh.

But heavens to Betsy, Hamas leaders and govt. reps are being…arrested. It’s war, I tell you, war!

You Know this Means War

6/29/2006 01:02:00 AM  
Blogger sam said...

Democrats court 'values voters':

A convention of evangelical Christians gave standing ovations this week to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill.

And that's news, because pro-choice, pro-gay rights Democrats aren't usually favorites of evangelicals. But that could be changing as the Democratic Party tries to reconnect with so-called "values voters," and some evangelical leaders try to extend religious debates beyond gay marriage and abortion.

Democrats Courtship

6/29/2006 01:09:00 AM  
Blogger Deuce ☂ said...

Our Very Good Friends in The Russian Parlaiment

from BBC...

"The head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Nikolai Patrushev, promised to carry out the task "however much time and effort it requires", Interfax reported.

Separately, the lower house of the Russian parliament approved a statement condemning the killings, and appearing to blame Iraq's "occupying powers".

"The whole responsibility for the situation in Iraq, including guaranteeing the security of its citizens, and also foreign specialists, as before lies on the occupying powers," the statement said

Russia has strongly opposed the US-led military campaign from the beginning.

The diplomats were seized in Baghdad on 3 June.

A group called the Mujahideen Shura Council, linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq, posted the video of the killings on the internet.

On Monday, the Russian foreign ministry urged the Iraqi authorities and the US-led coalition forces to find and punish the perpetrators."...

I stand by my earlier post to let Putin do his own dirty work.

6/29/2006 02:30:00 AM  
Blogger Triton'sPolarTiger said...

"This "no one succeeds unless everybody suceeds" meme is collectivist rhetoric at it's finest."

Or as Hillary! said, "It takes a village..."

These people make me want to retch.

6/29/2006 04:52:00 AM  
Blogger TheJokker said...

the sixties phenomina was largely a result of the youth culture: a high pecentage of the population was under the age of thirty. as an increasing percentage of the population is over 50 we are seing the antithesis of the sixties: the conservative revolution.
Once again dean gets it "ass-backwards"...

6/29/2006 05:08:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

the joker is right
The same folk that brought US the "Summer of Love" have brought US "Compassioninate Conservatism"

All rolled up in a big dose of "free" drugs for themselves and their friends.

To be paid for, by others, later.

The elite dream never dies, it just morphs with the times.
Power to the People!

6/29/2006 06:26:00 AM  
Blogger Dr. Sanity said...

The Democrats--building a bridge to the 20th century.

6/29/2006 06:34:00 AM  
Blogger snowonpine said...

So I guess this means that religious figures like the new head of the Episcopal church, Bishop Katherine Schouri, she of "our Mother Jesus" fame, will lead us into a new era of "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll," doped out parents and kids, stinking hippies and general trashiness dressed up in tie-dye clothes and platform heels--I can hardly wait. Too bad I don't have enough hair for a "Fro" this time around.

6/29/2006 06:54:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

If the ladies on FOX News are right, the SOCTUS has decided that the Gitmo guys and, by extension all detainees in the GWoT are POW's, to be afforded Geneva Convention "rights".

The "left" was right, after all?

6/29/2006 08:13:00 AM  
Blogger Charles said...

The reason that Dean is wrong is that he doesn't understand what happened in the McCarthy Era. And he doesn't understand the historical revision of that era that's currently underway.

Waves of immigrants who came to the USA from 1880-1920: the poles the italians the irish the jews. Most of them voted for FDR by large majorities in 1932, 1936 & 1940. Today only the jews still vote democratic by hefty majorities. Why? The reason for this dates explicitly to the McCarthy period from 1950-54. The reason this is so is because Hollywood still strenuously maintains the communist lie about that era. This lie is maintained by movies in the last years called "A Beautiful Mind," and "Good Night and Good Luck". Dean buys into the popular version t'aint so and university departments familiar with the Venona cables are busy rewriting the history.

There are various reasons given as to why Stalin initiated the Doctor's Plot in the early 1950's before he died. The KGB hated Israel. Many Americans who were enthusiastic supporters of the UN were Jewish.

Edvard Radzinsky in his book "Stalin" argues that while at one time Stalin hoped Jewish financial capital would help rebuild the Soviet Union after the WWII, Stalin hated the prospect of suborning himself to the Baruch Plan and he flat out rejected IAEA nuclear controls--presented in 1946. The Russians were working on their own abomb based on stolen US designs.

Whatever the reason, Stalin fomented the Doctor's plot hysteria and broke off diplomatic relations with Israel. He was within days of preparing to exile the Soviet Jews to the Gulag (as was done previously with various other ethnic minorities such as the Crimean Tatars, Chechens, etc.), and initiate another great purge along the lines of 1938.

The important thing to recall is that the Doctor's Plot happened at the same time as the McCarthy anti communist business from 1950-54

Stalin already had the concentration camps set up. And some of the preliminary accusations had gone out for the Doctor's Plot when he died in 1953.

At the same time the Rosenburgs were tried and executed for treason in the USA in 1953--and this less than a decade after the Holocaust. This naturally caused fear and suspicion in the US Jewish community. This fear and suspicion was played upon by knowledgeable communists and leftists--large numbers of whom were jewish. These folk not only knew about what Stalin had done in the 1930's and was about to do with the doctor's plot--before he died-- but also saw the Rosenburg trials as show trials american style ... that is, a prelude to an american purge/haulcaust/pogrom.

What Stalin had planned to do-- in a brilliant piece of jujitsu --leftists and communists imputed to Americans on the right. But it was done soto voce. Basically a blood libel was perpetrated on Americans without their knowing it. Worse, protestant america was painted as tribal enemies tooth and claw of the US jewish establishment without protestant america even knowing it. Never again! -- Was the battle cry. But there weren't any protestant tribal enemies of Jews in the USA. If that were the case -- Meyer Kahane would have provoked them them to a fight. Instead, he married an american woman & helped expedite Stalin's last wish--to rid Russia of Jews. When Kahane died it was at the hands of a Moslem in 1990.

While the American public outside NY/LA were generally given the view that the McCarthy era was an age when innocent men were unjustly tried by suspicious anti semites like McCarthy & Nixon--the NY/LA Jewish establishment was given a different story. They were given to understand that the democrats/liberals had prevented the US from visiting a holocaust on them. And that therefor American Jews owed their loyalty to the liberal democrats because the liberal democrats were the protectors of the Jews.

And this Meme went on untouched for decades after McCarthy.

This dual track story line didn't crack until the early 1990's when the kgb/nkvd/gru opened up their files on the WWII-McCarthy Period. In 1995 the US's NSA agency opened up their Venona files. Both Russian and American spy agency files showed that McCarthy was right. The US government --as well as the Manhattan Project--had been at one time soaked with Russian Spies. The Rosenburgs were guilty. While McCarthy was wrong in most the details he got the general outline of the story right. Why did he get the outline right and the details wrong. The reason is McCarthy's relationship to Hoover was the same as Hoover's relationship to the NSA.The NSA told the FBI about the Venona intercepts but insisted that the FBI could not use NSA intercepts as evidence in court. The FBI had to develop their own leads. As a result most of the spies escaped prosecution. The FBI did not get their man.

In 1950 J Edgar Hoover began weekly meetings with Joseph McCarthy. Those meetings ended in 1954. The beginning and end of those meetings coincided with the beginning and end of McCarthy star turn in the national spot light. McCarthy got most of the details of the spy story wrong but he got the general outline of the story right. His predicament was the same as that of the FBI. To this day the FBI denies that Hoover told McCarthy anything about the Venona Cables and maybe Hoover said nothing explicit to McCarthy for which Hoover could be liable in court.

Needless to say, an American style shoah was never in the cards.

The reason that hollywood hated Ronald Reagan so much was that he was an anti communist in hollywood during the McCarthy period. During this period to be staunchly anti communist in Hollywood or NYC was to be at least vaguely anti semetic because in the 30's to the 50's communism was considered to be almost a secular form of Judaism in the Jewish communities of NY/LA. To understand this its important to know that in Russia the Russian Jews were a big part of the communist establishment. Communism was seen as a way to get ahead. There was a biblical precedent for this in the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Essentially the relationship of Russia's Jews to Stalin was the same as Joseph and his kin to the Pharoah. And when the Russians realized that communism was a failure back in the 1970's they turned on the Jews just like the Egyptians did in the book of Exodus.

Reagan was among the first wave of FDR democrats to switch parties. Reagan was blacklisted from Hollywood. He couldn't get work there after McCarthy. However, his experiences in Hollywood served him well when he went into public service. He always understood the jujitsu of media talk of the age. Something that cannot be said of Nixon.


When I hear American based Moslems talking about McCarthyism being visited on them. I have to laugh. They don't know that they have pronounced themselves guilty in the eyes of many Americans.

As for the democrats, part of the reason for the loss of their inner coherence has been that part their foundational raison d'être steming from the McCarthy era was revealed to be based on a lie. So now the core of the democratic party is the sodomites. Those folks are not just confusing. They are confused.

David Horowitz, interviewed by Rush Limbaugh several months ago-- talked about how his parents were communists and he was a communist in college. He said when he was in college his views were always treated respectfully by his professors. But he said recently a young christian college student told him that his homosexual college professor had singled him out in class and asked him "Why do you christians hate queers." Asked why he continued to do what he did in the face of all the abuse he gets, David Horowitz said like Rush he took public political positions because he had to. But also he said he did it as a matter of atonement.

He gets it.

Dean does not.

Venona Historical Writings that include comparisons of venona and russian spy lists and the changing venona story in the academy.
http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page43.html
http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/index.html

6/29/2006 09:07:00 AM  
Blogger Deuce ☂ said...

Dean may be right and it is getting like the sixties:

From Polipundit: A letter from an on-duty Major.

"This morning, the United States of America signed the instrument of surrender with al Queda and all affiliated terror organizations. The signatories representing the United States were Anthony Kennedy, Steven Bryer, John Paul Stevens, Ruth Ginsburg and David Souter.

The reason for this unconditional surrender was that while the Supreme Court Justices “support the troops” and particpate in drives to send old magazines to soldiers, they do not “Trust the Troops.”

In addition, this was a total rebuke of Chief Justice John Roberts whose lower court ruling was overturned.

Justice Stevens wrote the opinion. Terrorist have Geneva protection.

I only wish that this was sarcasm. These individuals have no idea what they have done.

I wasted 12 months of my life in Afgahnistan for this.

Support by the military in the GWOT is going to collapse.

UPDATE: This opinion will go from a ripple to a wave throughout the uniformed military. We were slapped by John McCain last December. Today, we are slapped by the Supreme Court. This afternoon, I am removing myself from the volunteer list at Human Resources Command-St. Louis to re-deploy. I will not be the only one."

6/29/2006 09:35:00 AM  
Blogger Herr Wu Wei said...

There's no reason to get hysterical about this decision. As President Bush said, it didn't let any terrorists go. All it said was that the new kind of trials which Bush invented don't fit either the Geneva Convention or the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The Supreme Court said Congress can pass new laws to try the terrorist under, and invited the President to submit those laws.

In fact, according to the decision the alleged terrorist himself admitted that current laws allow him to be tried:

Hamdan filed petitions for writs of habeas corpus and mandamus to challenge the Executive Branch’s intended means of prosecuting this charge. He concedes that a
2 HAMDAN v. RUMSFELD
Opinion of the Court
court-martial constituted in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), 10 U. S. C. §801 et seq.(2000 ed. and Supp. III), would have authority to try him.

6/29/2006 10:31:00 AM  
Blogger Herr Wu Wei said...

Here's the decision:

Link

6/29/2006 10:32:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

In Iraq, when discussing detainees, over a year ago, there were 13,000 to 14,000 of them, same as today.

We know that large numbers of Iraqis and a small number of foreigners were taken prisoner in the last year. The detainee population has not grown.

Even though the Opinion says the detainees can be "held for the duration" of hostilities, as POWs,

our Policy has been to release as many "old" detainees as there are "new" ones captured.
Or the detainee population would have grown, not remained stable.
Catch & Release

If this Opinion prescribes a "take no prisoners" reality and then is combined with "don't return fire if the streets are crowded" Operations Order in Taji and Ramadi ...

6/29/2006 10:32:00 AM  
Blogger Triton'sPolarTiger said...

Trish said:
"Mark my words: Either we are going to stop taking prisoners or we are never going to see an end.

If they can be identified; if they can be hunted down, they do not need to be "brought to justice" - and ought not be."

I agree completely - justice needs to be brought to them.

6/29/2006 10:41:00 AM  
Blogger desert rat said...

And here, another Bush Administration Policy Goal, that is falling short of promises, but well within expectations

By AARON C. DAVIS
Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO, Calif.

The Bush administration has been unable to muster even half of the 2,500 National Guardsmen it planned to have on the Mexican border by the end of June.

As of Thursday, the next-to-last day of the month, fewer than 1,000 troops were in place, according to military officials in the four border states of Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona.

President Bush's plan called for all 50 states to send troops. But only 10 states _ including the four border states _ have signed commitments. ..."


Falling short of the Federal's Goal, 6,000 Guardsmen was the initial number, again.
More nativist "spin"?
Or just weak leadership

6/29/2006 08:50:00 PM  
Blogger Monkeesfan said...

We're going to enter the 1960s again?

Cool - let's hope Micky, Mike, Peter, and Davy get respect as entertaining performers this time.
;-)

7/01/2006 12:34:00 PM  

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