Von Braun

[David Morris]

On 10/11/07, Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net> wrote:
> Laura writes:
>
> > ... But
> > there has been a resurgence of "Best Generation" rah-rah we're-the-good-guys patriotism.  You'd think, though, that the Iraq Invasion would be clobbering the hell out of it.
>
> That goes hand in hand with the culture wars of the last two generations.  From the civil rights and Viet Nam years into the 1970s (and still to an extent greater than I'm comfortable with in some academic bubbles) the left had some success challenging the previously regnant Pledge of Allegiance, John Wayne version -- and went overboard with AmeriKKKa, dead white fascist imperialist patriarchal etc's as a cancer on the world, etc.
>
> In a successful counterattack, the right managed to label not just that wretched excess but almost *any* questioning or qualification of Our superiority over Them as "moral equivalence."

In fact the neocons consciously proposed the Iraq war as a way purging
the Vietnam-defeatist mentality from the US.  It was revealing when
Bush suggested we shouldn't leave Iraq because we would then be
repeating the mistake of pulling out of the Vietnam war - if only we'd
stayed, we'd have won (which fantasy he'd like to maintain by refusing
to withdraw from Iraq - leaving it to the next president to "fail").
THAT was the revision to history that they wanted to teach us with
their macho Iraq war.  And ironically their hubris seems to have
brought us back full circle (almost).  And now the Republican party is
in full melt-down, probably to remain a minority party for the next 20
years...  The only silver lining in this very dark cloud we've been
under for so long.

David Morris