Vietnam. Watergate. What's Next -- Disco?
There's no longer any doubt about the master narrative of the Bush Administration. Their purpose is to re-litigate the 1970s. Nixon's downfall, let alone all that followed, clearly has stuck in Cheney's craw. All his New American Centurions were so scarred by the fall of Saigon and the Church Committee reforms that even Morning in the Gipper's America didn't do enough to restore the imperial executive and the American imperium. So now we watch as FISA and FOIA are dismantled, checks and balances are declared Congressional overreaching, and the bully pulpit is being used like Stalin's commissars used scissors and a paste-pot to purge and doctor the historical record.
So what's next? No doubt some reactionaries are drooling to undo Nixon's putting the coffin-nail in the gold standard. Perhaps others want to retake the Panama Canal which, after all, we stole fair and square. The Supreme Court's already doing a decent job rolling back civil rights and civil liberties from the 60s; surely overturning Buckley v Valleo's campaign contribution limits is next in line.
I'm putting my money on an attempt by GOP culure warriors to expunge disco from the national memory. Don't you have a feeling that this crowd is still in a world o' hurt from humiliations they suffered beneath a twirling mirrored ball yea many generations ago?
Comments for this post are now closed
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Hmmm...exp
And just when I thought the right wing had no saving graces. This is a fight of theirs I could support. Speaking of horrible memories..
On the other hand, would they stop with disco, or, drunk upon their victory over this blight in our history, might they expand their attack to Punk Rock? And indeed, give or take a month or so, "it was 40 years ago today..."
How many humiliations did these people suffer at the Summer of Love?
Man we need a draft so bad just like during VN so that the rich boys and girls will have to set foot in Iraq and die for their fathers right wing idiot-o-logy. This tine. NO EXEMPTIONS, unless you are physically unfit.
Do really think that the rich boys and girls parents would leave them exposed to a draft. They could send them out of country, get them rear echelon jobs, fixed medical records, on and on. Anyway they could fight it in the legal system for years, until they could come up with an amnesty law.
The only thing a Draft would do would be to increase the burden on the poor and lower middle class.
Expunging disco wouldn't be such a bad idea. To paraphrase a song popular @ the time "Disco...m
this is off topic, but stop the disco bashing! much of that music was beautifully produced and a lot of fun. compare that to the garbage you might hear today if you turned on the radio. is that music?
I agree--much 70's music (including disco) was wonderful!
I suffered through that era once- must we. hated it then, sure I'll hate it now.
We are still circling the drain, and the pull is getting stronger. Someone throw U.S. a line !!
I just wish some Democrat somewhere sometime would PLEASE point out that, yes, maybe we could have "won" Vietnam. But we would have LOST another 50 to 100 thousand soldiers in the process. Can't the damn Democrats ONCE IN A WHILE remind people what the true cost of "winning a war" is??????
Good point about the "true cost of winning a war." My questions, however, is how could we have won Vietnam, given that the Vietnamese were willing to fight to the last man against us, and we had already killed approximately a million of them?
Your question suggests the answer. Nuclear options were seriously suggested by the most virulent of the prowar crowd.
Speaking of Nixon and Cheney--I wonder if Cheney is keeping His own version of the "Red Files" in His MAN-SIZED SAFE????
They also want social security to go away and unemployment insurance and Medicare. They do not believe believe in Darwinism, but sure believe in survival of the fittest.
They've defeated unions. Science will continue to be eroded. Dissent will no longer be tolerated. Whole segments of our history books will be missing, such as Watergate and the civil rights era. I would be concerned if I didn't remind myself time and again that Bush is the freedom president.
It is amazing that Bush and Giuliani are now commenting about how we could have won the Vietnam War. I guess it is not surprising we are in the mess we are in now in Iraq when these people think what has generally been regarded by most as a horrible mistake on the part of the U.S. (the Vietnam War) as not only not being a mistake but also now being being "winnable"
I remember just after Gulf War George I on TV spouting happily that we had just "laid to rest the ghost of Vietnam" I thought that was one of the most amazing things I had ever heard a President say. More amazing is the fact that no one in the media ever has mentioned it. What a crude comment to make about the meaning of that War after how many Iraqis were killed. Very revealing I thought of the real motivation and mindset of that administration.
They all seem to have taken lessons in the Nixonian school of government . .. and with a weak bunch of Dems and a defunct GOP . . .not only have they already surpassed Tricky Dicky . . but it does seem as though they will evade his fate . .. what a sad sick commentary on American politics and values ... and just think what it took to get nixon elected ... two assassinations within a month ... Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy . . . and then the so called Moral Majority hijacked the Republican Party . .. at least then Barry Goldwater had the balls to tell nixon to go . . . now well . . . complicity is the order of the day
Nixon was a saint compared to these guys, and his policies, EPA,Civil Rights, Detente, China, would be considered liberal today.
And no I'm not forgetting the dark side: Watergate, enemies list,cambodia, Laos whitehouse tapes.
I wouldn't go as far as to say he was a "saint compared to these guys" but even with the Nixonian bumper stickers: "Loose lips sink ships" and "America Love It or Leave It" -- he was no where near as bad as this lot . . . and just think what kind of scum these guys will spawn as their political successors . . .
KNOW WHAT CHENEY, ROVE & CO. REALLY LEARNED FROM WATERGATE?
They learned HOW TO AVOID PROSECUTION for "high crimes and misdemeano
IF THIS WERE THE SEVENTIES.
The entire crowd would be outta there by now and securely locked away in slam.
Well, this Disco thing is something I could support. That had to be the cultural lowpoint of the 20th Century.
I should know, we had a Disco theme at my high school prom in 1978.
KC and the Sunshine Band, the Bee Gees and Van Morrison.
Oh the humanity!
Hey! Van Morrison was not about disco! "Gloria"? "Tupelo Honey"? "Brown-eyed Girl"? Disco!!WTF
Grrr.
Yeah, Van Morrison was the antithesis of disco. I think myiq2xu meant Van McCoy, he of "The Hustle" fame. It's an apt theme song for this thread--the Bush presidency has been a hustle from day one.
Marty, my first wife actually forced me to take disco lessons, it might have been the last straw.
Wow. Even the very THOUGHT of such a situation makes me feel faint!
As they say, "Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it!"
Bringing back Viet Nam, with selective historical modifications, is this prez latest attempt to bring the country around to his way of thinking. Hmm...with Bush maybe thinking is too strong a word.
He reminds us of the things that happened after we pulled out of Viet Nam, but conveiniently forgets that, like IRAQ, we should never have been there in the first place.
Let's just hope that we won't wind up making Cheney happy by bombing Iran.
He's only got so long left in office to bring Democracy to the rest of the world.
Rightwing revissionists have been whining about what a bumb rap Nixon got, give peace a chance (we coulda won that war but for Hanoi Jane), etc. for, well since 1976. It took 25 years to get enough people who weren't there in the population to get the BS to fly. I knew when it became CW that Nixon had been rehabilitated that we were looking at trouble. If he had spent a few years in the cooler that might have sent a real message to the traitorous GOPers. Appointed Presidents shouldn't have the power to pardon the guy who appoints them. Kinda a conflict of interest.
Yeah, and nearly all of the neocon fascists who bewail the factthat we left Vietnam without "winning" never served in uniform or in the Armed Services altogether. Think Cheney, Dubya, DeLay, Buchanan, Hadley, Tony Snow, Gingrich, Bill Kristol, etc., ad nauseum. What a bunch of gutless, hypocritical pricks!
Wilbur
GOOD COMMENT. RIGHT ON TARGET, AlTHOUGH..
The "Nixon Rehabilitation" is kind of the least of my worries about the neocon cryptofascist movement. (And it really IS a movement. Hillary Clinton is at least half-right about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" -- it's a half-vast conspiracy
The Republicans do not understand courtesy, and this will be their downfall.
People raised during the last few decades want to do their own thing. They've basically been doing it since birth in this society, and they would like to continue doing so.
Republicans are not big in letting each do his own thing, and they will get shoved aside. They will join the Wigs and the Mugwumps in history's crapper.
Be sure to flush twice this time.
TC
Perhaps, not so conincidently, flushing twice is known as . . . the "courtesy" flush.
I was thinking more about their clinging residue, actually, but good one!
"There they go again.....
It's a BRADY BUNCH moment
http://www
Loading comments…
Posted August 22, 2007 | 10:39 PM (EST)