THE TRIBE IN THE MIRROR: Learning to loathe The Other well!

TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2016

Part 2—How to loathe Candidate Clinton:
How bad does it (routinely) get at the new Salon?

Before we revisit the work which led to piteous cries in the night, let's consider a second example of the nonsense this site routinely purveys for us, the flawless bright very smart liberals who feel quite sure that the very bad people are all found Over There.

Sunday morning, we were wakened by the analysts' screams. Later that day, we read the piece which affected them so. We also read this piece at the new Salon by Susan J. Demas, whose words of self-praise go on and on at the end of the essay.

Below, you see the headline from the new Salon's piece. They had us at "thought he might be president:"

The governor who poisoned Flint: The GOP’s Rick Snyder thought he might be president. Not so fast...

We've always been curious about the claim that Snyder thought about running for president this year. Demas shed little light on that question, but right at the start of her piece, she caught our eye with the highlighted statement:
DEMAS (4/2/16): When Rick Snyder took the reins from Jennifer Granholm on Jan. 1, 2011, there was a certain smugness hanging in Michigan’s raw winter air.

The changing of the guard had been fairly pleasant––the Republican and Democrat had even held a (mundane) joint press conference on economic development. That stood in sharp contrast to the bitterly partisan transition from Jim Blanchard to the man who defeated him in 1990, John Engler, and then from Engler to Granholm 12 years later.

As the state’s first female governor, Granholm had started her tenure in 2002 with some fanfare—and had even been buzzed about as a presidential candidate (despite being born in Vancouver, Canada). But by the time her second term stumbled to a close, Granholm was badly bruised from leading the state for the better part of a decade-long recession and the near-collapse of the domestic auto industry.
Really? Granholm had been buzzed about as a presidential candidate?

We'd always thought that Granholm's Canadian birth to Canadian parents meant that she couldn't run for president. (According to the leading authority of her life, Granholm became a naturalized citizen when she was 21.)

Had Jennifer Granholm "been buzzed about" as a presidential candidate? Luckily, Demas provided a link in support of this claim.

Hungrily, we clicked that link. This is what we found:
DEMAS (7/4/14): When Granholm was first elected in 2002, she was considered a rising Democratic star. There were even murmurs about a presidential run, although, of course, she was born in Canada.
That's right! In support of her claim about a buzz, Demas linked to an earlier column she had written. In that column, she said there had been a murmur!

Demas didn't link to some external report in which a buzz or murmur occurred. She linked to her own fuzzy claim from 2014, in support of her murky claim from 2016.

Had there been a buzz or perhaps even a murmur? Everything is possible, especially when the terms are so fuzzy.

A constitutional amendment had been discussed, for about ten minutes, aimed at letting the brilliant but foreign-born Governor Schwarzenegger stage a run for the White House. Up in Michigan, this may have led to a hint of a thought.

We just thought it was wonderfully Salonistic to see that kind of self-sourcing. Is Demas applying for a job at the New York Times? Flawlessly, we asked ourselves that question. We were thinking of the strange sourcing involved in Amy Chozick's front-page report last summer, the front-page grabber concerning the late Beau Biden's last few nouns.

Occasionally, you can find work at the new Salon which isn't hopelessly flawed. On the whole, the site has been dumbed within an inch of its life, part of the process by which profit-seeking news org owners now pander to tribal appetites on the pseudo-left as well as the pseudo-right.

Rather routinely, the work is bad at the new Salon. In principle, though, the dumbness of much of the work could help us gain an important new learning:

The capacity for enjoying The Dumb isn't all located Over There! We the liberals can be dumb and tribal too—dumb and tribal and drawn to the ancient practice of tribal loathing.

As liberals, our loathing is often directed against Those People who vote for Republicans. In many ways, this ancient instinct serves current goals of "the far right," a point we'll explain at the end of the week.

(Ron Paul's name will be mentioned.)

That said, instinctive loathing can also be unloosed within a party, voting bloc or tribe. That returns us to the first example of Candidate Clinton's "atrocious race record."

Below, you see an early part of the article at the new Salon which produced Sunday's screams in the night. From this work, we can learn something important about our own tribe.

After reading work like this, we could even decide to take a look at the tribe in the mirror:
AL-GHARBI (4/3/16): [P]erhaps the most disturbing [notion] of all is the insinuation that Hillary Clinton has some kind of proud and storied legacy in the service of black empowerment. She doesn’t. Consider the comparative records of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders:

The Chicago Years

While attending the University of Chicago, Sanders served as a chapter chairman for the Congress for Racial Equality.
In this capacity, he worked to end segregation in schools and housing—activities for which he was arrested.

What was Hillary Clinton doing while Sanders was organizing sit-ins and demonstrations? Well, she was also living in Chicago at the time, but she was working for the other team: in 1963-64, Clinton was a volunteer and supporter for the campaign of Barry Goldwater.

For those who don’t know, Goldwater’s claim to fame is that he was the first Republican to win the Deep South since Reconstruction. He achieved this feat by vowing to undermine enforcement of the Civil Rights Act, and to prevent further erosion of white privilege. His campaign was so disgusting that many Republican leaders, such as George Romney and John Rockefeller, refused to endorse his candidacy even after he won his party’s nomination. A good deal of the Republican electorate, who had traditionally championed civil rights and civil liberties, also refused to support him. As a result, those aforementioned Deep South states were literally the only contests he won other than his home state of Arizona in one of the most dramatic landslide losses in U.S. presidential history. Yet, this is the man who inspired Hillary Clinton to get into politics. And she was campaigning for him while Bernie was campaigning for desegregation.
To peruse the whole essay, click here.

Musa al-Gharbi prefers Candidate Sanders to Candidate Clinton. Whatever your assessment may be, that's a perfectly reasonable judgment. Millions of liberals and Democrats share it.

The problem starts when we let our preferences turn into prehistoric loathing—and when we start picking and choosing our facts to enable our love of this hatred.

We love to loathe those Trump supporters; there's little doubt about that. In this case, we're being taught how to loathe one of Our Own.

This isn't smart and it isn't decent. Are we the liberals willing to look at the tribe in the mirror?

What's wrong with al-Ghabri's act of loathing? Consider what the reader is told. Consider what is withheld.

We're told in that passage that Sanders and Clint were in Chicago at the same time. We aren't told that, due to the difference in age, Sanders was finishing his college years. Clinton was in high school.

That's right, kids! When Candidate Goldwater was nominated in 1964, Clinton was 16 years old. (In 1963, she had been even younger!) In Salon's piece, we're instructed to loathe this internal enemy, The Other, based on her views as a high school junior.

A person could imagine that's ugly. Plainly, it isn't real smart.

There are several other things we aren't told about those Chicago years. In describing Clinton as a Goldwater girl, al-Ghabri reports a high school experience Clinton describes in the early pages of her book, Living History. To help us learn to loathe The Other for her racial ugliness, he omits this accompanying passage:
CLINTON (page 22): My quest to reconcile my father's insistence on self-reliance and my mother's concerns about social justice was helped along by the arrival in 1961 of a Methodist youth minister named Donald Jones.

...I came home bursting with excitement and shared what I had learned with my mother, who quickly came to find in Don a kindred spirit. But the University of Life was not just about art and literature. We visited black and Hispanic churches in Chicago's inner city for exchanges with their youth groups.

In the discussion we had sitting around church basements, I learned that, despite the obvious differences in our environments, these kids were more like me than I ever could have imagined. They also knew more about what was happening in the civil rights movement in the South. I had only vaguely heard of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, but these talks sparked my interest.

So when Don announced one week that he would take us to hear Dr. King speak at Orchestra Hall, I was excited. My parents gave me permission to go,
but some of my friends' parents refused to let them go hear such a "rabble-rouser."
Clinton goes on to describe Dr. King's speech and its effect on her unfolding understanding of the world. To help you loathe the other well, Salon reports one part of this high school experience, keeps you away from the other.

You're kept from learning something else. At the end of his college years, Sanders was admirably engaged in civil rights work. That said, by the end of her college years, Clinton, no longer a Goldwater girl, was featured in Life magazine—featured for speaking out against the war in Vietnam.

None of this has a thing to do with the judgment a sensible person will make concerning this year's choice. But in this pitiful passage from the new Salon, you're told certain things, while other material is hidden, for human history's most destructive reason—so you can learn to loathe The Other well.

Within our own flawless tribe, we've spent decades assailing The Others who vote for the GOP. We're happy to say how stupid they are—also how evil, how racist.

This week, we're suggesting that you might want to look at the tribe in the mirror. We the liberals are deeply flawed too, in all the traditional ways.

The desire to loathe is the oldest flaw. (Dumbness runs a close second.) If you're willing to look at the tribe in the mirror, we think you'll see that this ancient, unhelpful instinct runs all through the current work of our own tribe, which we usually think of as flawless.

Tomorrow: Skilled at spotting "the rabble"

49 comments:

  1. cicero April 3, 2016 at 2:48 PM
    @2:12

    That liberals refuse to even refer to a fetus as a baby even seconds before it is delivered is rather telling.

    HRC in deep kaka for violating the liberal code of Pro Choice.

    http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/04/hillary-clinton-roundly-criticized-for-referring-to-the-unborn-as-a-person/?_r=0

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    1. cicero, it would behoove you to reflect on these words: "The desire to loathe is the oldest flaw. (Dumbness runs a close second.)"

      Delete
    2. Now cicero is following Somerby's lead.... Leaving things out.

      Three of the four people quoted criticizing Clinton are anti-abortion.

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    3. @12:22

      HRC pissed-off both sides of the issue just as Trump did with his comments to Chris Matthews.

      The person who did criticize HRC, is Diana Arellano, manager of community engagement for Planned Parenthood Illinois. Surely PP is the most vociferous advocate for Pro Choice.

      NYT reporter Alan Rappeport also said in the article that HRC "frustrated some abortion rights supporters." If it were only Arellano, he would have not made supporter plural.

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    4. @Horace

      In the parlance of horse racing wagering, my money is on you to place.

      Delete
    5. cicero @ 1:05 demonstrates the same skills as D. Trump. Wonder what it would have been like had I mentioned his tiny little hands.

      Delete
  2. "Sometimes we direct our loathing at the racist bigoted xenophobe nativists we are flawlessly able to spot Over There. Sometimes, we direct our loathing at people within our own party or tribe or voting bloc

    Bob Somerby Part One...The Wailing of the Analysts

    "I’m done with this, absolutely,” Mrs. Clinton recalled thinking upon hearing Mr. Nixon’s acceptance speech (while attending the 1968 Republican convention as a Rockefeller volunteer). She characterized the Republicanism of her youth as one of fiscal conservatism and social moderation, and at odds with what she viewed as the intolerance of Miami.

    “All of a sudden you get all these veiled messages, frankly, that were racist,” Mrs. Clinton said of the convention. “I may not have been able to explain it, but I could feel it.”

    Hillary Clinton, engaging in a twofer. She drops her first R bomb as a newly converted dumb, dislikeable, and immoral member of our liberal tribe, aiming it members of her old tribe.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/us/politics/05clinton.html

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    1. [QUOTE] 3. While at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, she became head of the local chapter of the Young Republicans. While there she slowly turned leftward in her politics, campaigning for Eugene McCarthy for president, organizing the school's first teach-ins on the Vietnam War. She wrote her senior thesis on poverty and community development. She graduated in 1969 with a degree in political science....

      5. In 1969, she appeared in Life magazine after giving the first commencement speech by a student at Wellesley. She received a standing ovation after shocking the audience by criticizing the first speaker, Sen. Edward W. Brooke.... [END QUOTE]
      [LINK]

      I think why Bob Somerby might be so enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton is because even if she had been in the anti-Vietnam War camp for a season it would have been for sober reasons related to business, specifically, her own career path; for her it would have been nothing personal or tribal, nothing heartfelt:

      [QUOTE] ...Clinton defended her association with Kissinger by replying, "I listen to a wide variety of voices that have expertise in various areas." She cast her interactions with Kissinger as motivated by her desire to obtain any information that might be useful to craft policy....

      What Clinton did not mention was that her bond with Kissinger was personal as well as professional, as she and her husband have for years regularly spent their winter holidays with Kissinger and his wife, Nancy, at the beachfront villa of fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, who died in 2014, and his wife, Annette, in the Dominican Republic. [END QUOTE]
      [LINK]

      Passion is for suckers, not the successful.

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    2. "...because even if she had been in the anti-Vietnam War camp for a season it would have been for sober reasons related to business, specifically, her own career path;...."

      CMike, how the fuck old are you anyway, son?

      Let me tell you something sonny, having lived through it all, nobody at that time thought protesting the Vietnam debacle was a good career move, you know what I mean little guy?

      Ask President John Kerry how that worked out for him.

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    3. @mm
      "nobody at that time thought protesting the Vietnam debacle was a good career move,"

      Or you could ask POTUS William Jefferson Clinton how it worked out for him.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU7JRszfjiE

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    4. Cicero, you asshole, protesting the war in those times took guts. I'm sure you would have been on the other side wearing a fake hard hat and bashing people over the head with a baseball bat.

      Clinton's antiwar activities were viciously used against him by your party of treasonous bastards. (See Dick Nixon and How Richard Nixon Sabotaged 1968 Vietnam Peace Talks to Get Elected President

      *****************
      The Republican campaign to paint Mr. Clinton as a man with a secretly militant history began on Sept. 18, the first night of eight in which a quartet of conservative Congressmen took to the deserted floor of the House of Representatives to denounce Mr. Clinton for the benefit of C-Span cameras.

      The speeches of Representatives Robert K. Dornan, Randy (Duke) Cunningham and Duncan Hunter, all Republicans from California, and Sam Johnson, Republican of Texas, were extraordinary for a level of violent, hyperbolic accusations that echoed the red-baiting rhetoric of 40 years ago.

      In nightly tirades, the speakers described Mr. Clinton as a "useful idiot" to the Soviet Government, as a man who, in other countries would have been "tried as a traitor or even shot," as a "full-time organizer for demonstrations against his country in a foreign country," as a man "directly responsible" for the deaths of American military men in Vietnam. They compared the Democratic Presidential nominee to Tokyo Rose, the anti-American radio propagandist of World War II, and to Ho Chi Minh, the Communist leader of North Vietnam.
      **************

      BTW, I am thoroughly enjoying watching your party choke to death on its own vomit. Who will it be, "Lyin' Ted or "Flim Flam Man Drumpf"?

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    5. @mm

      Anyone who protested WWII at any time during the war took guts if not stupidity. However, protesting the Vietnam War in 1969 was not only de rigueur for doves, students, pop culture, pop music, the liberal media including Uncle Walter Cronkite were openly condemning U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

      What is amusing about the liberal favorite talking point how Nixon sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks by agreeing with President Thieu not to send a delegation, it was POTUS LBJ who bugged Anna Chenault's room at the Watergate to learn about the communication between Nixon's people and Thieu. HRC was a lawyer with House Judiciary Committee investigation Watergate of 1972 fame.

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    6. On May 4, 1970 Ohio National guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[4][5]

      Yeah, asshole, it was a real party.

      Why don't you build another fucking monument to Saint Ronald who gave the Mullahs in Iran missiles and then proceeded to lie to the country about it, while his henchmen destroyed the evidence and became FOX NOOZ hosts.

      Delete
    7. mm writes:

      CMike, how the fuck old are you anyway, son?

      Let me tell you something sonny, having lived through it all, nobody at that time thought protesting the Vietnam debacle was a good career move, you know what I mean little guy?


      How old am I? Old enough to have participated in some anti-Vietnam War marches on Washington. mm, you might want to review some old newspapers, or something and get yourself a clue. Beginning with Get Clean for Gene (that would have been early 1968) the Democratic party split over the Vietnam war.

      Having come to realize his war policy of escalation was a failure, LBJ, himself, was desperate to end U.S. involvement in the war in the last months of his presidency. At the same time he felt that his Vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, the Democrat's 1968 presidential nominee, had broken with him in public over the war.*

      The Republican Richard Nixon ended up succeeding LBJ, he was seen, along with his sidekick Henry Kissinger, to be prolonging it, and he was hated for it by Democrats as, along with his other personal history, Nixon had run won on the promise, "I pledge to you that we shall have an honorable end to the war in Vietnam," during the 1968 campaign.

      Immediately after Nixon's election it had looked like Edward Kennedy was the most likely person to become the Democratic nominee for president in 1972. Kennedy's older brother Robert, you might remember, had put himself at the head of the anti-war movement in the weeks before he had been assassinated, that tragedy occurring the night RFK gave his victory speech following the 1968 Democratic California presidential primary.

      In 1972 at the Democratic National Convention George McGovern gave his "Come Home America" acceptance speech. That sentiment was in the mainstream of the party by then.

      The fight on to victory crowd in the Democratic party by 1972 found itself having to, or wanting to, coalesce around the white supremacist George Wallace.

      The idea that Hillary Clinton was taking a courageous stance in opposing the war after 1968 comes to you mm because you are more loyal to her than you are to the truth of what you say you witnessed.
      ___________
      Here's a Wikipedia summary:

      [QUOTE]On September 30, hoping to separate himself from the policies of the Johnson administration at the advice of O'Brien who noted that he needed the anti-war vote to win in New York and California, Humphrey delivered a televised speech in Salt Lake City to a nation-wide audience, and announced that if he was elected, he would put an end to the bombing of North Vietnam, and called for a ceasefire.[80] He labeled the new policy "as an acceptable risk for peace."

      The plan was compared to Nixon's, which the candidate stated would not be revealed until Inauguration Day.[82] After the speech, anti-war protesters stopped shadowing Humphrey's appearances, and a few McCarthy supporters joined the campaign.
      [END QUOTE]
      [LINK]

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    8. Thanks for the history lesson, CMike. You didn't have to bother, I was there.

      So when you participated in those anti war marches, was that a career move for you. It sure the fuck wasn't for me, and your despicable obscene comment questioning the motives of Hillary Clinton is too disgusting to comment any further. I don't believe you, no one who was there could have made that comment.

      Delete
    9. Thanks for the history lesson, CMike. You didn't have to bother, I was there.

      Like a lot of people who were there, looking back you're confused about what was going on at the time.

      So when you participated in those anti war marches, was that a career move for you.

      At the time, I was coming up on being draft eligible and didn't want go to prison over refusing to serve. Refusing to serve would have put a damper on any prospects I might have had and if I had followed through with my convictions that's where I would have had to show some courage- by demonstrating, not so much.

      I happened to have thought I was on the right side of the issue so it did not seem like it ever would have been too much of a long term downside for me regardless of what career I might have chosen- unless it had led me to refuse to serve after I was drafted. To be honest, though, I was too green in the ways of the world to anticipate that there would be a "stabbed in the back" backlash years later that gained so much traction. I think it's your memories of that backlash which reigned in the MSM narratives during so many of the subsequent years is what's left you so confused about how the political winds were blowing from '69 to '75.

      ...your despicable obscene comment questioning the motives of Hillary Clinton...

      Get a grip.

      ...no one who was there could have made that comment.

      I was there, and I did make "that comment." You're operating on a lot of unfounded assumptions.
      _________________
      *Others at the time tried to finesse it, "The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason: to maintain my political viability within the system."
      [LINK]

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    10. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    11. @mm

      Did your middle school teachers neglect to inform you that liberal icons JFK/LBJ were responsible for the Vietnam War? 38,000 of the 58,000 U.S. troops killed in Vietnam occurred under those two presidents administration.

      Now that you realize your phony story of how brave it was for anyone protesting the vastly unpopular Vietnam war in 1969, do you have any other revisionist history regarding HRC, Vietnam, the 1968 election?

      Let me guess. You were the runaway girl kneeling over the body of the dead student shot by the Ohio National Guard?

      Delete
    12. Actually, it was the Republican smear that Truman lost China to the Communists and the Republican red baiting through the fifties and into the sixties that trapped Johnson in Vietnam. You keep mainlining toxins into the body politic you get a sick result.

      Delete
    13. BTW, Cicero had written in this thread:

      ...it was POTUS LBJ who bugged Anna Chenault's room at the Watergate to learn about the communication between Nixon's people and Thieu.

      But of course that's wrong. The FBI legally bugged the South Vietnamese ambassador in Washington, D.C. and that's how they became apprised of Anna Chennault's treachery at the behest of Richard Nixon. The FBI then informed Johnson what was going on. For Johnson, that's what explained South Vietnam's sudden withdrawal from the peace talks at that critical moment.

      Nixon lost his presidency over setting up an illegal burglary/bugging team, the Plumbers. Six days after the team was busted at the Watergate, Nixon made plans to head off an FBI investigation into the matter by having CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters suggest it had been his own agency's operation. The Deputy Director, to his ever lasting credit, wouldn't go for it.

      Delete

    14. CMike wrote, *Others at the time tried to finesse it, "The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason: to maintain my political viability within the system."
      ************

      Precisely. Which contradicts your previous absurd assertion about Hillary Clinton's antiwar motives.

      "...because even if she had been in the anti-Vietnam War camp for a season it would have been for sober reasons related to business, specifically, her own career path;...."


      You think and reason like a child who sees everything in black and white. Unfortunately, reality isn't so simple. People my age have learned that lesson a long time ago.

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    15. @CMike

      Chennault's treachery? She had no allegiance to Communist South Vietnam. Just because it was the FBI doing the wiretapping it didn't make it kosher. The bugging violated national security laws. President Thieu had no reps in the Peace Talks to withdraw from. Odd that neither Humphrey or LBJ disclosed Nixon's participation with Chennault's diplomacy in 1968. Perhaps they realized that LBJ was a disgraced POTUS and Humphrey, who was intrinsically linked to LBJ's failed administration, had zero chance to beat Nixon.

      Your hero LBJ is responsible for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution perfidy. LBJ trapped himself in Southeast Asia even more than JFK managed to do.

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    16. mm,

      Go back to using the F-word at least once every comment, it makes you sound smarter than whatever you were huffing and puffing about at 9:04 AM.

      And here, Hillaryfan, take this with you. It's suitable for framing- you having become such an admirer of pragmatism since your anti-war days. [LINK]

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    17. CMike,

      I would recommend professional help. CDS is very damaging to your mental health.

      This is such a ridiculous argument, I can't believe I'm wasting my time with you.

      You made an accusation, pulled right straight out of your ass.

      "...even if she had been in the anti-Vietnam War camp for a season it would have been for sober reasons related to business, specifically, her own career path; for her it would have been nothing personal or tribal, nothing heartfelt:.."

      Is that you GUT feeling, CMike? Ya got anything to back that up with?

      Like I said, CDS is a serious problem with our younger generation.


      Delete
    18. Cicero asks:

      Chennault's treachery?

      Channault undermined the sitting President of the United States' efforts to conduct foreign policy.

      As for who was participating at the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 Wikipedia says [LINK]:

      [QUOTE] One of the largest hurdles to effective negotiation was the fact that North Vietnam and its ally in South Vietnam, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF, or Viet Cong), refused to recognize the government of South Vietnam; with equal persistence, the government in Saigon refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the NLF.

      Harriman resolved this dispute by developing a system by which North Vietnam and U.S. would be the named parties; NLF officials could join the North Vietnam team without being recognized by South Vietnam, while Saigon's representatives joined their U.S. allies.
      [END QUOTE]

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    19. @CMike

      If you imagine Anna Chennault undermined POTUS LBJ foreign policy by speaking with Nixon campaign folks, you must be apoplectic with liberal icons Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, David Bonior and Jimmy Carter who were actually making separate arrangements that were contrary to American foreign policy as set by the then sitting POTUS.

      On Nov. 20, 1990, as President George H.W. Bush gathered support to oppose Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait, the former Democratic President Jimmy Carter wrote a letter to nations who were in the U.N. Security Council trying to kill the administration's efforts. As Douglas Brinkley explained, Carter's letter was an attempt "to thwart the Bush administration's request for U.N. authorization of hostilities against Iraq. President Bush's criterion for proceeding with a war was the exhaustion of 'good faith talks,' and Carter placed his interpretation of that standard above the administration's."

      In 2007, newly elected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. As the Associated Press reported at the time, "The meeting was an attempt to push the Bush administration to open a direct dialogue with Syria, a step that the White House has rejected."

      In 1984, 10 Democratic lawmakers — including the then majority leader and House Intelligence Committee chairman – sent a letter to Nicaraguan Communist leader Daniel Ortega known as the "Dear Comandante" letter. In it, the lawmakers criticized Reagan's policy toward Nicaragua and whitewashed the record of violence by the Sandinista communists.

      As Stephen Hayes recounts: "In September 2002, David Bonior, the second-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, flew to Baghdad in an attempt to undermine George W. Bush's case for war in Iraq on a trip paid for by Saddam Hussein's regime. Bonior, accompanied by Reps. Jim McDermott and Mike Thompson, actively propagandized for the Iraqi regime. McDermott, asked whether he found it acceptable to be used by the Iraqi regime, said he hoped the trip would end the suffering of children. 'We don't mind being used,' he said."

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    20. Cicero,

      I think you raise good points and I am aware these have been matters of controversy. I've never sat down and tried to come up with a protocol for what I think private citizen Americans or American congress people while either abroad or at any time in communication with foreign governments should be able to say about U.S. foreign policy.

      Certainly, Americans on U.S. soil should be allowed to challenge their government's conduct of foreign policy as part of an ongoing democratic debate about those issues. Whereas, perhaps, Americans should not be allowed to encourage other Americans to defy Selective Service laws Americans should always be allowed to call for the repeal of Selective Service laws.

      You will have to agree that in the matter of Anna Chennault, what she did was treasonous -she was a U.S. citizen by then, right? That was a clear and extreme case of what, is rightly, prohibited.

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    21. @CMike

      Chennault was associating with an ally of the U.S., not an enemy of the U.S. If She were in violation of the Logan Act, why was she not indicted? Because the FBI's best evidence against Chennault consisted of one phone call from Agnew to her? And because LBJ didn't want to make public that he bugged Chennault's dwelling at the Watergate?

      BTW: Did you support JFK having his brother use the FBI to bug MLK? What treasonous act was MLK engaged in?

      See Sgt. Bergdahl for traitorous behavior.

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    22. Do a thought experiment, cicero. The kind Einstein was famous for.

      Imagine the political fortunes of Richard M. Nixon if the public had known he personally sabotaged an end to the Vietnam war in 1968. Do you think he would have minded if the American public had known about it?

      ****
      "Huh, no," Nixon responded. "My God, I would never do anything to encourage ... Saigon not to come to the table. ... Good God, we want them over to Paris, we got to get them to Paris or you can't have a peace. ... The war apparently now is about where it could be brought to an end. The quicker the better. To hell with the political credit, believe me."
      ****

      That was tricky Dick, panicking that LBJ found out about his treason.


      Do you think he would be been twice elected president of the United States?

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    23. @mm

      Nixon had many faults and his administration was riddled with scandals. But the liberal desperate attempt to resurrect JFK/LBJ as not responsible for the Vietnam War and characterize Chennault and Nixon's message to Thieu to not attend the Peace Accord as "sabotaging the end of the Vietnam War" is urban legend. There was no chance for peace in 1968 on any terms that would have been acceptable to any American president, President Thieu, or Le Duan. Hanoi would never accept anything less in 1968 than a unilateral American withdrawal from Vietnam and a promise to topple Thieu's regime.

      William Bundy, assistant secretary of state in 1968 for LBJ, was obsessed with the Nixon/Chennault message to Thieu in his book “A Tangled Web.” Yet even he had to admit “no great chance for peace was lost.”

      Chennault's message to Thieu was superfluous. President Thieu already knew from American newspaper accounts how a Humphrey presidency would benefit North Vietnam goals.

      Delete
    24. It doesn't matter if an initiative is likely to succeed or fail, or if the foreign government is Israel, or the UK, or the Republic of Vietnam during the presidency of N. V. Thieu. A citizen who seeks to sabotage the foreign policy initiatives of the POTUS -as opposed to arguing against them- is committing treason.

      [LINK]

      Delete
    25. @CMike

      Except Chennault didn't sabotage the peace talks. She wasn't indicted by LBJ's DOJ for violating the Logan Act. Her record of helping the U.S. fight the Japanese in WWII is on the record. She didn't sell out her adoptive country, America. She did not give aid or comfort to the enemy or sell or steal U.S. secret documents for a foreign government.

      But all of a sudden you admit that Chennault's actions had zero impact on the success or failure of the 1968 Paris Peace Accord. Good for you!!!

      Delete
    26. Cicero,

      Here I was engaging you, trying to get you to up your game. But you just can't help yourself, can you? All of a sudden you've got to seek the refuge of playing at semantics, disingenuously.

      Delete
    27. @CMike

      Historical fact is not semantics. Your opinion of whether Chennault violated the Logan act is no more persuasive than your opinion of whether Tom Brady deflated footballs. If you have some evidence that Chennault was ever indicted for treason or convicted of treason please submit it. That you are compelled to believe she committed treason is required to fulfill the liberal canard that Nixon ruined any chance to end the Vietnam War in 1968.

      Delete
    28. Well known liberal, George Will writing about the criminal break in Nixon ordered to destroy the evidence of his criminal treason.

      ************************

      At about 5:15 p.m. on June 17, 1971, in the Oval Office, the president ordered a crime: “I want it implemented on a thievery basis. Goddamn it, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.”

      The burglary he demanded was not the one that would occur exactly one year later at the Democratic National Committee’s office in the Watergate complex. Richard Nixon was ordering a break-in at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, to seize material concerning U.S. diplomacy regarding North Vietnam during the closing weeks of the 1968 presidential campaign.
      *******************

      Nixon did it. He knew what he was doing and goddam knew it was wrong.

      All your obfuscation of the issue is irrelevant. Republicans have a long history of putting party ahead of country.

      Just look at the hideous group of candidates they will vote for to lead this country.

      Delete
    29. @mm
      Could you elaborate more on Will's notion that Nixon ordered the Brookings Institution safe blowing? I would imagine that burglary would generate some WaPo and NYT headlines back in 1971.

      Oh wait....Will goes on to say "As they sometimes did regarding his intemperate commands, Nixon’s aides disregarded the one concerning Brookings."

      Those pesky documents "supposedly in The Brookings safe" ( George Will seems unsure if they ever exised) could still be there!

      But you left out the best part of Will's column.

      "This aide suggested using the Internal Revenue Service against political adversaries, but added: “The truth is we don’t have any reliable political friends at IRS. . . . We won’t be . . . in a position of effective leverage until such time as we have complete and total control of the top three slots at IRS.” Forty years later, the IRS has punished conservative groups, and evidence that might prove its criminality has been destroyed. Happy anniversary."

      You cite a Regan speech writer to buttress your Nixon perfidy argument, and then complain " Republicans have a long history of putting party ahead of country."

      Sure seems Republican George Will is condemning what you say he should be supporting.

      Delete
  3. "That said, by the end of her college years, Clinton, no longer a Goldwater girl, was featured in Life magazine—featured for speaking out against the war in Vietnam."

    Clinton was featured for speaking at her college commencement. The link below is to a transcript of that speech. References to Vietnam and War cannot be found.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-rodhams-1969-commencement-address/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'd missed that, thanks for pointing it out. I had meant my comment [LINK] to go here in reply but I put it in the wrong place.

      Delete
  4. 3 out of four ?!? What are your thoughts on 4 out of five dentists? Chew on that for awhile.

    ReplyDelete
  5. John Rockefeller? Maybe Al-Gharbi meant Nelson Rockefeller.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think it's ridiculous to vote for or against someone because of a political position that person took almost 50 years ago.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @6:35

      Why ridiculous if they have not wavered from that position regardless of what had transpired over the course of those 50 years? Their convictions could be warranted or unwarranted.

      Delete
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