So I get an email from the hatemongers at Human Events, this time from choirboy Pat Buchanan.
Now, he starts out sounding almost nice, saying, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." Of the dead, nothing but good."
However, he goes off into the standard ill-speak of those who can no longer defend their own honor.
Not that Mark Felt (Deep Throat) had much of that. You see, it was HIM (personally) that was convicted of violating the civil rights of the Weathermen by doing what were then called 'Black Bag' ops (now called 'Sneak and Peek' searches). Reagan pardoned him, but he wasn't a 'good guy' (at least by my definition of the term).
And the reasoning was identical to the current reasoning, too. It's just that the 'mushroom cloud' was a lot smaller (Weathermen used dynamite instead of nukes). It should be noted, too that the Weathermen only bombed empty buildings (the one set of fatalities was them accidentally blowing THEMSELVES up).
Now, the REAL problem is laid out by Mr. Buchanan in a nutshell later in the article:
Do we really want, here in America, our premier investigative and police agency to get the truth out that it decides to get out?
Would it have been right for Hoover to get the "whole truth out" on JFK's liaisons with suspected German spies, Mafia molls and Marilyn Monroe, and destroy his presidency? Would it have been right for the FBI to get the "whole truth out" of Hoover's secret files, and ruin all the public careers the FBI could have destroyed?
Well, IMHO, yes, it would have been 'right'. It would have been 'right' to release the info that we had an active group of terrorists WORKING FOR US, blowing up Vietnamese, Thais, Laotians, Cambodians, Cubans, and Venezuelans (at a minimum), and that we tortured and murdered Indochinese with the same abandon we currently use on Iraqis and Afghans.
I guess what Mr. Buchanan finds 'right' is the continued delusion that the people in charge are the 'good guys'.
I don't think that's a logical conclusion. It seems far more likely, for example, that 'bad guys' who cover for other 'bad guys' will be retained in power. In fact, that seems to be Pat's point (other than the obvious one on the top of his head).
In a situation where 'good guys' get the upper hand, wouldn't it be logical to assume that Bill Moyers would be in an equivalent position to Pat Buchanan? I mean, they're both former White House Press Secretaries, they both were involved in major historical moments both in the White House and subsequent to that tenure, and both have been involved in the news industry since (true, Moyers is a journalist and Buchanan a pundit, but still, both are available).
Yet I can tune in and see Pat damn near any day of the week, and almost any time of the day, while I don't see Bill much at all.
Of course, Bill came out with the 'truth' about the original assholes right after they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
At least he survived the attempt to oust him from PBS.
Here's the original Secret Government video (90 mins):
Leave a comment