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Lies Versus Lives

In one of the more memorable phrases ever uttered in a headline Washington event, a uniformed, “handsome” young military man will long be in memory. When questioned about his mission to the Middle East, he said justification of his statements furthering that mission, “It was lies versus lives.”

The self-confessed liar was an aide in the Reagan White House, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. The lives were those of U.S. citizens being held hostage in Iran.

This past week, another White House aide, in a very different era, who had worked with a very different President, also said memorable things. North was speaking at his trial, where he was convicted of three felonies. Cassidy Hutchinson was testifying to a House Committee investigating the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. So unexpected and so potentially damaging were her statements, that an enormous effort immediately began to discredit her. Former President Donald Trump’s political machine swung into action. Online, on TV, in newspaper opinion columns, voices were raised as one. Hutchinson must be lying! Donald Trump would not have done, could not have done, what she said!

Trump would not be a mob leader! He could not have tried to take over a car driven by the Secret Service in order to force it to go to the riot’s center! In fact, the car could not be taken over by someone seated where Trump was! The former President could not, did not, throw a dish full of food when angered by what he saw on TV! He would never endorse rioters calling for, and seeking to implement, the hanging of his Vice-President, who had rejected his blandishments that the constitution and his oath of office forbade him to do what Trump wanted!

And oh yes. Trump didn’t plan for January 6 to happen as a riot. It was going to be just a free-speech protected rally in his support. He knew nothing about armed, angry buses and carloads of (mostly) men coming to Washington from all over the country. He knew nothing about legislators in at least six states being pressured to do what they could not legally do – deny results which showed conclusively he had lost his campaign for re-election.

It’s all playing out, at least for now, just as it’s taught in drama school scriptwriting,

See, for example, New York Times Drama Critic James Poniewozik’s June 29 article, “The Jan. 6 Hearings Beastly Surprise.” Hutchinson’s appearance, writes Poniewozik, was “vivid.” It had “surprise reveals” and a “bonus episode.” “Narrative clarity” was accomplished.” The committee presented “a prosecutorial case with a consciousness of what piques viewers curiosity and keeps people talking afterwards.” Use of “recaps” and “previously on”s led to “water-cooler bait”: Ms. Hutchinson was a “flabbergasting behind the scenes tell all.”

Thus governmental process is journalistically transmogrified into the grammar of the National Entertainment State. The spectacle becomes the ur-spectacle. TV anchors and commentariat are the most breathlessly bad. Everything is “extraordinary,” “exceptional,” “memorable,” and “genuinely touching.” And “we,” or enough of us who continue consuming the poisonous fare on TV, are counted on to keep swallowing the swill.

So much for the “lies” part of the Oliver North (whatever became of him anyway?) equation. The message? Let’s doubt Hutchinson, or at least “research” her ties to the anti-Trump “deep state.”

What about the “lives” piece?”

Goofy former President George H.W. Bush liked to remember that the so-called “cold war,” which he falsely credited himself helping to end, hadn’t resulted in great loss of life. At least to the extent of World Wars One and Two. How many did actually die? Not worth it to ask him then. Or to try to find out, with any accuracy, now.

You may be reading this on or near our great national excuse for militarily celebrating victory. Ahistorical, of course, as July 4 commemorates The Declaration of Independence, which was not a military victory.

But it is now a canonical belief that the events around that date allowed the bringers of all that is liberating and noble and just to our since time immemorial, murderous planet. 

And we, who follow in the hallowed footsteps of our Founding Fathers, would thenceforth be doing our best to make this nation a “shining city upon a hill.” (Those were the words that supposedly were uttered by Jesus, quoted by the Puritans, a dissident Christian sect that brought its own delusions and cruelties to Massachusetts, Presidents from supposedly different political parties, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, later used them in major speeches.)

But if this country ever was (and it wasn’t) such an exemplar, it isn’t any more. It’s now a “fortified metropolis,” in the words of University of Washington professor Daniel Bessner. In “Empire Burlesque” (Harper’s Magazine, July 2022) Bessner points out that far from an avatar of peace, it is clear that since 1945 the United States “has been the cause of an enormous amount of state-sponsored suffering.” 

Where? Bessner cites Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, Guiana, Bolivia, Panama, Indonesia, Syria, and Chile. “At least twenty million people died in Cold War conflicts,” he points out. The U.S. intervened militarily overtly and covertly one hundred and twenty two times between 1990 and 2017. The “War on Terror” has been used as justification for intervention in half the world’s countries. And these “interventions” are most often accompanied by mass killings and human rights abuses, as well as subvention of democratically elected governments.

What you’re not being told about on July 4 is all of that. But United States’ interventions since World War Two have indeed had another result, other than millions of dead and wounded. There has been a massive increase of wealth in this country, especially among the richest 1% of the population. And a monopolization of corporate controlled food and fuel (with accompanying climate destruction). “Liberals” (often conflated with Democratic Party voters) and “Conservatives” (often conflated with Republican Party voters) continue to enable all this. The difference between the Democratic Leadership Council and the Proud Boys is one of means, not ends. On policy issues, Donald Trump can be thought of as Bill Clinton is a hairstyle,

The king of the liberal commentariat, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, has had enough. For him, the Republicans are now are a party of “crazies and cowards.” That may well be, but if it is, Krugman errs in indicating it’s something new. Within his lifetime, we’ve had such folks as Robert Welch (he of the John Birch Society), William F. Buckley Jr., Newt Gingrich, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Bob Dole, Richard Nixon, John Mitchell, Gordon Liddy, Rush Limbaugh , Henry Hyde, Rudy Giuliani, Clarence Thomas, the Koch brothers and the aforementioned Oliver North. Enough craziness and cowardice in there to set a precedent, no?

As for Cassidy Hutchinson, I wouldn’t worry too much about her. Her statements were made under oath. Those professing doubts about what she said have refused to obey subpoenas or appear voluntarily to be sworn in. Moreover, the White House is full of electronic surveillance gear and social media surveillance devices. Her lawyers know this. The committee staffers who briefed Hutchinson’s questioner, Committee Vice-Chair Liz Cheney, know this. When Hutchinson says someone was somewhere and said or did something, there isn’t likely to be any credible evidence to the contrary. Though fact-free election deniers, like Rudy Giuliani, get to make statements about Hutchinson People will have to decide who ‘s credible. 

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan, kind of a Paul Krugman for the religious right wing, has this to say. “I found her testimony entirely credible, If she lied, I can see no motive. She was, by all accounts, professional and discreet, a Trumpian committed to the higher political mission. The powerful men around her appear to have been undefended in her presence and spoke freely – she’s only a kid, a girl, what can she do?” (“The Courage of Cassidy Hutchinson,” WSJ7/2/2022). Noonan and a few other dissident conservative commentators are now pointing out that that Hutchinson can in fact do a lot. Including providing a substantial case for prosecution of Trump and others for violations of Federal law. The Attorney General’s office, a leak-proof (thus far) entity that charges people with crimes (which a House committee doesn’t) is gathering its material. 

When the hearings resume, we’ may begin to see more evidence indicating if prosecution is likely to happen. And, if it is, we may begin to see who deals with the prosecutors in order to abandon, Watergate style, a sinking ship.

Meanwhile the mostly forgotten six million Ukrainians continuing to live amidst fear and death in their beleaguered homeland (four million having somehow escaped) rely on an increasingly uncertain military support from President Biden and his verbally supportive, practically cautious European allies. Two words you shouldhear from the January 6 committee are “Vladimir” and “Putin.” Putin, whose career was in clandestine work, has seen the United States tied in dysfunctional political knots before with Presidents Bush and Clinton clueless about how to lead, and where, while tens of thousands died. Putin’s been trying to tighten those knots further. Using the latest American wack-job on the far right, Charles Bausman, and his spurious web site, “Inside Russia,” Putin peddles a convoluted narrative whereby Ukrainian neo-Nazis in league with pedophiles in the United States are trying to destroy him and Russia. “(An American’s Murky Path from Russian Propagandist to Jan. 6” NYT 7/3/2022)

Bausman even revives a reliable staple of the nutso far-right, Anti-Semitism, claiming that an international Jewish conspiracy led by George Soros and the Pope is Vladimir Putin’s real target. (Full disclosure: this writer is a DNA-bearing member of that conspiracy. He has been since he was born 85 years ago, and will be until he dies. The only ways to stop further Jewish conspirators from joining him is to abort them at conception. Although we can’t do that anymore, or soon won’t be able to, thanks to his preferred politician, Donald Trump and his faith-based, precedent and procedure neglecting followers, A second way would be to exterminate the progenitors of Semites like me: other Jews. 

Well, none of this conclusively discourages Peggy Noonan. So let’s leave the last July 4 word to her.

“Happy 246th Fourth of July to the great and fabled nation that is still, this day, the hope of the world.”

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