West!
More Land!
Dec 2, 2004
– Page Palace
General
Waste-More-Land
He
was one of the first Urban Legends. He called himself General
Waste-More-Land. But how am I to explain him to Thieu, whose country
has been mangled between the cogs of two competing Spheres of
Influence, which both put their faith in the Hegelian premise that
statecraft transcends morality?
“Ever
since the days of Colonial America,” General Waste-More-Land
pro-claimed to the students of The Evergreen State College in 1974,
“America has always been fighting a war in the West, and the object
has always been to acquire more land and more resources.”
Tom
Dumphy had fought in Viet-Nam as a common soldier under the renowned
– or notorious – General Westmorland. Like so many other
soldiers, by the time his enlistment had ended he had found himself
appalled by the senseless carnage of a war that was filling body
bags, but which was becoming a public relations disaster for American
interests all over the world. He joined up with an associate who
called himself “General Hershey-Bar,” after the general who was
at that time in charge of the selective service system. Together,
they went about the country lampooning a “police action” which
was becoming increasingly unpopular.
The
Paxton Boys
“Tell
me more,” demands Thieu
When
students followed General Waste-More-Land’s suggestion and examined
the historical record, they found disturbing precedents. For
instance, it had been the Western Pennsylvania Militia which, towards
the end of the Seven Years War, had produced the “Paxton Boys.”
These “Paxton Boys” gained lasting notoriety, as well as a
hostile editorial from Ben Franklin, by massacring the friendly
Conestoga Indians – human sacrifices to commemorate the surrender
of the French.
By
the time of the American Revolution, the sons of these “Paxton
Boys” had settled Westmoreland County, on the forks of the Ohio
surrounding the former French stronghold which now had become Ft.
Pitt. The Westmoreland County Militia now became the “Legionnaires
of the New Rome.” In 1782, even though their captains should have
known the British were capitulating, these legionnaires had massacred
96 Christian Indians at Gnaddenhutten – while the Native converts
to Moravian pacifism had sung their Dunker hymns, and prayed.
The Monster from Westmoreland County
A
monster had come forth from Westmoreland County Pennsylvania and
Westmoreland County Virginia. He could have called himself “West!
More Land!” but he preferred the name, “Manifest Destiny.” He
was a God who demanded human sacrifice, and who was only happy when
he saw the Natives die.
Robbing
and killing, Manifest Destiny followed the sunset until, eventually,
he reached the shore of the Pacific Ocean. There now were no more
Natives to be killed; there was no more land to be taken. Or so it
seemed.
There
came a morning when some Japanese planes dropped bombs on a naval
base which Manifest Destiny had established on an island the Natives
called Honolulu, in a place which he called Pearl Harbor. Manifest
Destiny woke up quickly and put on his 7 league boots. He proved that
he was capable of riding his B-29 bombers all the way across the
Pacific Ocean, to kick Japan’s hindenberg.
A
couple hundred years after the French had been driven out of Fort
Duquesne, the French Foreign Legion pulled its troops out of Saigon –
and just look at who proceeded to move in!
Texas Hold-em
From
1965 to 1975, whenever they tuned in on their newfangled Peacock
Screens, Americans were subjected to re-runs. It was the Second
Coming of Davy Crockett. Every Vietnamese morning, which pretty much
corresponded with the 7 o’clock news in New York, Davy Crockett
would attempt to defend the Alamo. The sun would set in Saigon, at
the same time it was rising in New York. The CBS morning news would
pronounce that victory was just around the corner, and when the news
camera caught the footage of the heap of ashes where the old hero lay
buried, the voice of the announcer would proclaim that:
Davy
Crockett and Old Betsy are going to rise again.
Even
as those words were uttered, all the teenagers who had been given
Davy Crockett hats when they were little boys found themselves in a
country with snakes and crocodiles, where every tree had become a
hostile Indian.
“Of
course you must understand,” sighs Thieu, “why our military
leaders were passionate about trying to stop Communism in Cambodia.
After he had been exiled to Mexico Leon Trotsky may have proclaimed
some very lofty ideals – but the People of Chairman Mao’s Little
Red Book did not read Spanish, and all they knew of Trotsky was that
Stalin had pronounced him a traitor.
“And
of all of the People of the Little Red Book, the worst were the Khmer
Rouge. In the first place, they were led by a man named Pol Pot, who
never had been either a peasant or a proletarian, and who had grown
up regarding the working class as a race of mere servants. Being the
grandson of a king’s mistress, he was close enough to the throne to
cherish the romance of a man who might have been king, but far enough
away that he did not need to test his theories against the harsh
realities of high diplomacy. Because the gulf between him and the
throne was almost bridgeable, he chafed with anger and resentment.
Out of his jealousy, Pol Pot fashioned the dream of a world which
never could be.
“In
the end, Pol Pot fell in love with the peasantry, but he could only
love them so long as they idolized him. His love was a battering
love, and most of the peasants who learned how to draw conclusions
from the Little Red Book ended up being killed through slow
tortures.”
“The
Dark Regime sounds very much like a medieval Peasants’ Revolt,” I
find myself reflecting. “Led, of course, by a few disaffected
aristocrats who had turned to Satanism.”
“So
why then,” demands Thieu, “did the C.I.A. rush in where Luther
feared to tread? Why did they point a gun to Lon Nol’s head, and
force their general to depose the king who was holding the country
together,? And why, after they had aggravated the peasants through
this desperate measure, did the Americans drive the countryside into
flaming revolt through intensive bombing and a 30 day invasion, and
then inform Lon Nol’s government that there was nothing more that
they could do?”
“Probably
because the Americans have an inherent prejudice against kings,” I
find myself surmising.
Nxxxn
Perhaps,
it was blind passion which caused Davy Crockett to stumble into the
Mekong River. In 1956, when Richard Nixon was the vice-president
under the Eisenhower administration, he had made a “goodwill”
tour of Latin America. In Caracas, Venezuela, his limousine had been
pelted with rotten eggs, other unmarketable grocery items, and even a
few stones.
Apparently,
he got the message. The number of electro-convulsive tortures which
were performed on Latin students during the subsequent Nixon regime,
as well as during the regime of his protégé Ronald Reagan, shall
give future historians reason to believe that Mr. Nixon returned from
Venezuela determined to return the compliment with a vengeance.
Or
perhaps, like Hernando De Soto before him, Mr. Nixon returned to the
north with an old Inca curse on his head. Will not these future
historians have cause to debate whether, during the course of his
subsequent presidency, Mr. Nixon really was being himself?
There
are some who will assert that lust for power will cause a man to be
seduced by demons. Maybe some men do rise to power by signing a
contract with devils. Of course, the blood that is used for the
signing shall be the blood of others. Mr. Nixon’s performance on
the House Un-American Committee during the early ‘50's makes it
evident that he already had become Satanically Certified at an early
stage in his career.
But
what happens when two disciples of Satan come together? When Richard
Nixon and Chairman Mao met, did they recognize they both were serving
the same master?"
What
has Tricky Dick to say for himself? The outcome would justify his
abuse of Cambodia? Raising the ante so high, that when the tortured
became the torturers, every Cambodian peasant suspected everyone else
of being an American spy? Was he justified by the results of the
overthrow of democracy in Chile? How much penance must the Esmeralda
now make, before she may be welcomed to festivals of tall ships?
After being disgraced as a Hell-ship, where women were raped beneath
the decks by guard-dogs – how can she now come to the land which
once elected Richard Nixon, unless she demonstrate her repentance by
presenting herself as a shrine to all the political martyrs?
Perhaps
Richard Nixon should be given credit for what he accomplished on the
home front. For instance, in Ohio, four protesting students were
killed by the National Guard. An attempt to impose Nazi discipline on
the FBI was thwarted only because Patrick Grey swore by a different
model of military protocol.1
An outright declaration of war against progressive veterans who were,
allegedly, self-medicating with drugs – by the greatest
self-meidcator of all, whose chronic use of Dilaudid is only
beginning to become public.
Promoting Whose Ideals?
Nixon
did open the doors to allow us to trade with Red China. China gained
a great deal from the Vietnam War, primarily because the policies of
Nixon, Westmoreland, and the like inspired the European press to
portray the Viet-Nam era America as the biggest International Bully.
For years, Communist China had been lobbying the U.N. for recognition
as a member nation. America had used her veto power to block these
efforts. Now, with America cast in the role of Darth Vader, China was
able to line up enough votes in the General Assembly for a resolution
that would put the American stonewalls on the shelf.
As
the legal argument went, China already had a seat in the U.N.,
because the revolutionary government that now sat in Beijing was the
proper legal successor to the Chinese government which had signed the
U.N. charter in 1945. Taiwan was thrown out of the Security Council
and Communist China attained the veto power before its government had
even been challenged for a statement of intent to bring its policies
into conformance with the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.
So
let us all toast the accomplishments of Comrade Nixon’s presidency.
Of course, there is one more pertinent detail that should be
mentioned. In spite of his Dilaudid habit, Tricky Dick had been
blessed with an excellent publicity engine. Nevertheless, it is
doubtful that his claim to being a martyred saint shall hold up under
the scrutiny of posterity. And just what shall Richard Nixon argue
when his soul is brought before the Tribunal of the Last Judgment?
Son of Who?
“I
simply was promoting the ideals of the Free Market,” the Tricky
Dick shall say.
But
what can be the value of this so-called “Free Trade” if the
people of the village are not free to create their own marketplace,
and appoint their own referees to regulate the rate of exchange? How
can the market be sustainable, unless the people are free to
establish those ethical boundaries that are necessary if the market
is to remain a thing of the people?
Behold
my own beloved son, in whom I am well pleased
Now
where did that voice come from, that rumbles and belches like the
throat of a volcano? And who is this gentleman with the
well-manicured tail who asserts that he is wearing cloven hoofs
because it is the fashion of the ‘80's? Are those horns that we see
protruding from the Old Nick’s Stetson?
“Chairman
Mao,” laughs Old Nick, who, being the God of Power-&-Control,
was undoubtedly there to pull the strings, “simply reminded Mr.
Nixon that if he was going to be free to batter in his own
hemisphere, he was going to need to let his Chinese brother do the
same. It was a sensible communication between two P&C addicts to
divide the turf so they could both rule their own. It created an
illusion of domestic tranquility that would have been disabused, had
the bruises of the victims been examined.”
The
Voice of the Most Great Satan then rumbles:
Remember
– they got where they did because I taught them, that the ruler
shall be the one who can make everyone betray.”
Shall
we look, then, at the profiles of the persons whom Mr. Nixon was
betraying?
We
see Richard Nixon seated before a microphone. This session of the
House Un-American Activities Committee is being broadcast to the
still black-and-white television sets which are beginning to invade
middle-class American living rooms.
“What
else did you know about the Communist Party?” we hear him asking.
“Who did you know who was a member of the Party? We want you to
name names.”
Among
the victims of the House Un-American Activities Committee we can
recognize Bertolt Brecht, The Hollywood Ten, Lilian Hellman, Dashiel
Hammett, Arthur Miller, and Richard Wright. Of course, we have got to
recognize that these folks were not nearly so victimized as those we
do not recognize because they did not have enough of a name to put up
an effective defense.
And
we also must recognize as victims the folks whose rights were being
violated by the Ku Klux Klan, which HUAC should have investigated,
but chose not to because, in the words of HUAC member John Rankin,
the KKK was “an old [read: and
respected]
American institution.” John Rankin, as well as Martin Dies who
chaired HUAC from 1937 to 1944, was a KKK sympathizer.2
True Discrimination
His
tenure on this commission enabled Mr. Nixon to distinguish between
the orthodoxy of the American Right, and the Quaker ideals that he
had been brought up with. After the once pious Quaker had signed on
the dotted line with the blood of a lynched and burned Black Man, he
was quickly elevated to the position of Vice-President of the United
States.
After
this point the wheel begins spinning more quickly. If anyone had
bothered to read the Spanish-language signs the demonstrators in
Caracas had been holding, they would have discovered that liberals
all over the world were angry with the CIA for overturning fledgling
democracies in Iran and Guatemala. Complete domination of one’s
own “Sphere of Influence?”
A
Foreign Service that operates on the premise that “All is fair in
Love and in The Cold War?” We are only beginning to appreciate the
warning the Caracas demonstrators were trying to give us. Under the
eyes of Eisenhower and Nixon, the Dulles State Department was playing
Texas Hold-Em with Satan.
After
the assassination of JFK the Power-&-Control wheel began a new
spin cycle. Now we can recognize more faces – but this time, they
are coming from Mr. Nixon’s own backyard. Some of them, like Daniel
Ellsberg, are dropping out from the Intelligence community because
they’ve seen the Devil without his clothes on. Some, like Richard
Alpert and Timothy Leary, are professors who are beginning to suspect
the true intent of the psychological research which they have been
commissioned to conduct. Some, like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin,
are part of the pool of the “young, White, and intellectually
enriched” from which the CIA is trying to recruit.
All
of them have seen the Devil’s tail, and all of them are feeling
betrayed.
But
who is being betrayed now? As Richard Nixon begins to speak with
Chairman Mao, the wheel spins faster and faster. We can no longer
recognize individual faces, but only a composite image.
From
the composite blur, an image is beginning to come into focus. A face
that looks like that of a Buddhist leader who is generally referred
to as the Dali Lama.
1
1
For a stunning expose by a disillusioned Nixon Conservative, see L.
Patrick Gray III with Ed Gray,
In Nixon’s Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate.
(©
2008 by LPGIII Pages LLC. Times Books edition, Henry Holt & co.
New York)
2
See
“Un-American Activities Committee,”
http:www.sparticus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhuac.htm. Accessed 04/12/10.
