More analysis of right wing rhetoric: This time, a reaction to the Perino-Giuliani-Rove-Cheney-Kristol Axis of Lies, and the insane claim that no terrorist attacks took place on American soil during the George W. Bush years. Part of an ongoing series.
Memory is eroded and calcifies into myth, in human, rather than in geological time.
For many years I taught undergraduate courses on the Vietnam War, and I watched history slowly recede in the face of an onslaught of revisionist political and pop culture productions until a moment in the early 1990s when I stood in front of a class of students at George Mason University and asked them: "Why did we go to war in Vietnam?" It was my usual question on the first day. I repeated it every year, and every year the answers changed slightly as the war faded into the background noise of "American history," becoming distant, as the Korean War had been when I was young.
On this particular day, however, the first answer, provided by an eager young freshman, was astonishing: "We went to war to get our POWs back!"
I suffered instant brain freeze, and stood there blinking like an owl while my consciousness went for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride through time, spinning into endless recursive loops of grandfather paradox. When I finally struggled back to the present, it was with this realization: Yes, yes, of course we did! What else was the poor boy to think? He'd been raised on a steady diet of Rambo and Chuck Norris, belated "Welcome Home" parades, a political landscape in which the "shame" of the war was not that we fought it, but that we were cruel to veterans when they came home.* If even the politically aware antiwar left was tied up and gagged with yellow ribbons in the face of the (First) Iraq War, what could I expect of an average American teenager?
I experienced a similar moment of vertigo back in January when Giuliani blithely proclaimed that there had been "no domestic attacks" under George W. Bush. Given that Giuliani's political career received such a huge bounce in the wake of his post 9/11 crowning as "America's Mayor," he could hardly have forgotten the bombings, the collapse of the tallest buildings in the city, and the terrible suffering and grief of so many New Yorkers. And of course Giuliani hadn't forgotten -- he was simply engaged in the time-honored practice of rewriting history. Dana Perino had done the dry run months earlier, from the safe haven of Fox News, claiming "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." And now the claim is being codified by the likes of Rove, Cheney, and Kristol, as Frank Rich outlines in his New York Times Op-Ed.
Rich doesn't think it will stick, but I'm less convinced. After all, during the Carter years it seemed utterly inconceivable that our misbegotten war and resounding defeat in Vietnam would not only be rehabilitated, but eventually claimed as a victory by the right. Rove's new book and the Keep America Safe anti-reality hit squad won't change history all by themselves, but constant repetition will take its toll. It's important to remember that there was never any credible evidence that American POWs remained in Vietnam after the close of the war, but the hard lobbying of the far right not only kept the issue alive; it shaped popular culture and American public opinion to the extent that, as Bruce Franklin once remarked, you were more likely to start a bar fight if you said there were no POWs than if you proclaimed there was no God.
Most of the liberal pundits discussing the Perino-Giuliani-Rove-Cheney-Kristol Axis of Lies are concerned with their attempt to portray Obama as weak on defense, in comparison to Bush's alleged strength. In these analyses, the truth is cynically and intentionally manipulated for a greater (evil) political purpose. I wouldn't argue against this interpretation, but I'll offer another parallel or overlay narrative that examines their claims as not only bad history, but as the foundation for a new American myth.
To make any sense of the otherwise utterly crazy claim that no terrorist attack took place on American soil on George W.'s watch, you need to keep in mind that the right wing today owes everything to the 9/11 attacks, and that, without them, they would be nothing. Without the WTC bombings, Bush could never have held onto the Presidency for more than one term, there never would have been a "War on Terror," or Patriot Acts, or a Department of Homeland Security, or a War on Iraq and Afghanistan, or an unbelievably bloated defense budget regularly rubber-stamped by Congress, or the clout to cow Democrats who otherwise might vote the way their constituencies want them to. Giuliani would never have been "America's Mayor," and a whole lot of Republican political figures and talk radio madmen would not have been able to make patriotic hay over the bodies of slaughtered American citizens.
The right wing loves 9/11 with a passion, and has taken over the mechanism of commemoration, settling itself in to celebrate "patriotism" on September 11 every year from now until the end of time. (It's important to note that the actual victims of the bombing recede further and further into the background every year.) At the same time, it has ruthlessly quashed groups like WTC wives and survivors, and the mothers of soldiers who voice the desire for peace, in the same fashion that right wing history sucessfully erased the existence of a veteran's antiwar movement. In the twisted Troll Logic that passes for right wing thinking, 9/11 has transcended history, and is no longer an historical event, but a founding myth, sacred, and existing -- like all myths -- outside of time and history. They run it up the flagpole, and anyone who doesn't salute is a "traitor."
Revision of the Vietnam War was successful because the right wing took control, not only of the political arena, but of a great many popular culture venues, from Fox News to Clear Channel. Although right wing media mechanisms are more powerful than ever, and will be bolstered by the recent, deeply partisan, Supreme Court Decision to allow corporations a greater role in the electoral process, right wing positions are moving more and more out of the American mainstream, and are increasingly confined to the approximately 30-35% of Americans who comprise the Republican "base." One cannot, however, overestimate the power of popular culture in (re)shaping American memory, and progressive forces have been neither adept at, nor enthusiastic about, putting forward the kind of united, totalizing messages at which Republicans excel. We don't like simple answers and easy slogans, and while I see the virtue in that attitude, I'm not as pleased with its results.
If progressive history doesn't leave the Ivory Tower and invade the public airways, and if we don't get busy producing transcendent mythologies of our own, we're going to find ourselves standing slack-jawed as the well-meaning students of the next generation recite the received "wisdom" that America was finally made safe and secure under the Gipper (who won the Vietnam War), and that every Republican administration since has had to repair the damage done to our "freedom" and "security" by Democratic regimes, under whose watch the most terrible events imaginable -- attacks on Americans, on American soil -- took place. Even a weak Republican party, out of political favor, can wreak havoc in Congress and sway the opinion of millions of Americans; out of power, they still dominate the public sphere. Jon Stewart, Maddow, Olberman, and a few liberal Hollywood epics aren't going to turn the tide. We really need to beef up our Department of National Mythology.
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* Much has been written about the myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran,
most notably by Jerry Lembcke (a veteran himself, and a fine scholar). When the right wing decided the U.S. had to "get over" the Vietnam war, a crucial part of their program involved spreading lies about how vets were treated by the peace movement. (Lies right wing vets were perfectly happy to tell.) What was left out of the story, of course, was the central role played by the largest Vietnam veterans organization -- Vietnam Vets Against the War -- in the peace struggle, and the way that its members (over 300,000 strong) put their bodies where their mouths were, not only holding their own actions, but leading almost every large peace march with the rallying cry, "Vets to the front!" The right wing had to make VVAW and antiwar vets disappear in order to put forward their revisionist history, and so that is what they did.