UNDERSTAND THE WAR WE'RE IN: Gore Vidal’s History Of The Failed National Security State
As only he could do, Vidal walks us through the eight-decade long fraud that has impoverished our nation, numbed our national soul and led us into the cauldron of now.
Twenty-one years after Vidal’s tutorial and his words and explanation are even more appropriate to the world now enveloping us.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (10/11/24)
Many presidential elections are marked by some form of domestic or foreign ‘October Surprise’, designed to goose along voter turnout and nudge final outcome. The big difference this time around is the truly cataclysmic Israeli-led, US-armed genocide world war ‘surprise’ exploding in the Middle East.
Several days ago, Israeli ‘Defense’ Minister Yoav Gallant postponed a scheduled meet-up in DC with US ‘Defense’ Secretary Lloyd Austin. Expect Israel and the US to ignite the world within days.
In 2005 novelist and political writer Gore Vidal was featured in a brief documentary interview on the rise and death-grip control of the national security state, as embodied in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). As only he could do, in just 26 minutes Vidal walks us through the eight-decade long fraud that has impoverished our nation, numbed our national soul and led us into the cauldron of now.
As an added bonus, he does it with pitch-perfect imitations of FDR and JFK.
26-minute video
FDR was near death when he won his fourth term. As Vidal notes, Vice President Henry Wallace was a strong progressive with solid experience and deep understanding and appreciation of foreign affairs. Unlike the emerging far-right McCarthyite cold warriors, Wallace saw clearly the reality of Stalin’s shattered and shaky post-war Soviet Union. But — like today — FDR caved to corporate right wing Democrats and Communist fear-mongering and picked low-brow conservative Henry Truman to replace Wallace, setting the first brick in the pathway to the disaster we are now in.
Vidal succinctly explains how the government, economy and national character was hammered and twisted into the corrupt, militarized and doomed neocon fraud we now suffer.
As Vidal explains, we had a choice and a chance. But the corporate MIC hijacked the nation. A polluted, acquiescent, collaborative media eliminated any chance of redemption and reality. Instead, Gore notes, the media left us America’s only original artform: the television commercial.
We blew it
The nation had a chance to not die. We blew it and the consequences are now about to explode.
Appropriately, Vidal winds up his overview talking of the manipulated fear-mongering paranoia of a supposed Iran threat, led then by now Democratic Party icon and military profiteer Dick Cheney. Twenty-one years after Vidal’s tutorial and his words and explanation are even more appropriate to the world now enveloping us.
Vidal lays out the ways of MIC propaganda now underway to soften our heads and pump us up for once again sending our young people off to yet another military failure.
This interview was the basis for journalist Paul Jay’s excellent 2014 book Gore Vidal History of The National Security State.
Journalism hero Julian Assange was holding a copy of Vidal’s book as security state thugs hustled him out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London and off to five years of prison and torture. Jay is founder of theAnalysis.news website.
Assange’s arrest and unjust imprisonment for daring to publish the dark truth about the sinister, illegal corporate national security state is the embodiment of all Vidal described and preface to what we are now caught up in … again.
Priorities…
Ban AIPAC. Keep TAX money for health care.
“The Americans dying because they can't afford medical care” the Guardian.
“The Uninsured - Healthcare Crisis” PBS, About 44 million Americans have no health insurance, and another 38 million have inadequate health insurance.
“Israel says it has secured $8.7 billion U.S. aid package” Reuters , September 26, 2024
— noorpath9127, online comment
"The Apprentice": New BioPic Opens Despite Trump's Attempts To Block Anyone From Seeing It
Democracy Now! (10/22/24)
We speak with the director of The Apprentice, "the movie Trump doesn't want you to see," which opens today in theaters despite legal threats from the former president.
The film looks at how Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn, former chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. He went on to represent Trump as he built his New York real estate empire, and "was the person who sort of built Trump, as a person, as a brand, as an identity," says Abbasi.
22-minute video
Gore Vidal was one of the first voices to explain to me that the US is an empire and all empires fail (along with Chomsky, who regrettably is pro-vaxx). Henry Wallace is a forgotten hero and for understandable reasons.
Another book on the TBR pile... I'm enjoying "JFK and the Unspeakable" now.
I've always wondered what would have happened if Wallace had been vice president when FDR died. We'd probably be living in a more peaceful world today. SIGH.