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Commentary Last Updated: Sep 20th, 2007 - 00:50:04


One nation, in denial
By David Cogswell
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Sep 20, 2007, 00:48

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David Podvin at makethemaccountable.com administers a little tough love to the American people in an article, called "Progeny of Gepetto", reminding us of things we'd rather forget. But then again, there may be some truth in the aphorism about people who forget history being forced to relive it.

When someone mentions, as Podvin does so rudely in his opening line, that "In 1962, the Joint Chiefs Of Staff unanimously recommended that President Kennedy bomb New York City to frame Fidel Castro and provide a pretext for conquering Cuba," it's the kind of thing that usually makes people's eyes glaze over. It's such an outrageous datum, though well documented. Kill the messenger, I say! How dare he disturb my sleep! The nerve of him to bring it up! Such an ugly piece of history, and such an aberration in America, where democracy prevails and freedom rings across thine every mountain tip, or top!

This is especially annoying at a time when, as Podvin brings up next, that by some wild coincidence, practically the same scenario as the joint chiefs signed off on in 1962, but that President Kennedy declined to adopt, actually played out in the U.S. in 2001. Of course we don't know that 9/11 actually was a false-flag operation as was recommended in 1962, but it is remarkable how closely it resembles it from the outside.

Making extrapolations between the differences between JFK, who was an honored World War II hero, and George Bush, the stool pigeon of the military industrial complex, can't lead us to any final conclusions either. But the speculation is irresistible. And the increasing consolidation of power and economic momentum of the military industrial complex in the 40 years since Kennedy vetoed the measure do seem to heighten the probability that such a measure could find legs today, but of course that is no proof that it did.

Another disturbing historical fact that's been poking its ugly head up a lot lately is the attempted coup launched in the early 1930s by a group of America's wealthiest, most aristocratic industrialist families who wanted to overthrow Roosevelt and institute a government on the model of Mussolini's fascist state in Italy. (As reported by the book The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR by Jules Archer, or the BBC report, The White House Coup.) That was another of those ghastly old stories of American fascism in which Prescott Bush's name pops up, again coincidentally and insignificantly.

It's a little irritating to be woken from one's pleasant dream with such unpleasant historical facts . . . Could such forces still be at play in the U.S. today as in 1962 or 1933? Does the fascistic tendency of unchecked industrial capitalism still play a role in today's world, or was all of that obliterated with Hitler's corpse?

America is a nation in denial, looking over the edge of the abyss of fascism and turning away in a crippling seizure of vertigo.

David Cogswell publishes HeadBlast.

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