Dissecting the
Big Lie
By Jason Miller
|
“If we ever
pass out as a great nation we ought to put
on our tombstone 'America died from a
delusion that she had moral leadership'.”
---Will
Rogers
"It is
only in folk tales, children's stories, and
the journals of intellectual opinion that
power is used wisely and well to destroy
evil. The real world teaches very different
lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated
ignorance to fail to perceive them." --Noam
Chomsky |
12/30/06 "Information
Clearing House" -- -- With the
intensity of Dale Earnhardt, Jr vying for victory in
the Daytona 500, America’s mainstream media outlets
have been racing furiously to imbue the citizenry of
the Empire with unusually large doses of heavily
choreographed agitprop.
Another un-indicted US war criminal has casually
ridden off into a peaceful crimson sunset. In
response, pundits, talking heads, reporters and
various other infotainment personnel are working
feverishly to perpetuate America’s collective
delusion that we embody integrity, decency, and
enlightened values.
Like virtually all of his predecessors and
successors in the White House (regardless of their
party affiliation), Gerald Ford was guilty of a host
of egregious offenses against the human race. But
the Big Lie must not die.
So in the wake of the United States’ recent
facilitation of Saddam Hussein’s hanging, we in the
self-proclaimed “bastion of human rights” are in the
midst of six days of mourning for a man would have
swung from the gallows long ago had he been judged
by the same standards as Saddam.
In apparent deference to Ford’s tireless efforts to
advance America’s savage brand of Capitalism, both
the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ will be
closed on Tuesday. Federal employees and postal
service workers will also take the day off to mourn
the loss of the 38th president (1).
Despite the deeply hypocritical show of reverence
for one so maleficent, it is fitting that a military
escort will deliver Ford’s casket to the Capitol’s
Rotunda for viewing. Why wouldn’t soldiers bear the
body of the former leader of a fascist state replete
with rampant corporatism, militarism, and
pathological nationalism? And why wouldn’t he lie in
state in the Capitol’s Rotunda? After all, Congress
has been deeply complicit in creating and preserving
the nightmare some refer to as Pax Americana.
Since much of the Empire’s strength is derived from
its stable base of obedient workers and consumers,
preserving their illusions of the United States’
inherent “goodness” is crucial. Toward that end,
consider a sampling of some of the mainstream
media’s recent “Ford-lore”.
On 12/27, Newsweek published a
piece by Barry Werth. Genuflecting to his corporate
paymasters, Barry asserted:
Gerald Ford assumed the presidency when
his government was sundering, qualifying him as one
of history's bravest leaders.
As Werth continued with his seemingly benign
discourse, it is highly likely that his facial
appendage began to resemble Pinocchio’s:
Many of those people who originally
deplored the (Nixon) pardon for short-circuiting
history and eroding the notion that no one, not even
the president, is above the law, came around to
agree that it was best for the country.
The Washington Post eulogized Ford
with a favorable comparison to another perpetrator
of wanton slaughter, a man who was responsible for
the deaths of over 200,000 Japanese civilians:
Truman, Ford used to say, "had guts, he
was plain-talking, he had no illusions about being a
great intellectual, but he seemed to make the right
decisions."
Many would say the same of Gerald
Rudolph Ford.
The New York Times, the mainstream
media’s “bulwark of liberalism” fueled America’s
collective delusion with these choice quotes and
observations:
….“He assumed power in a period of great
division and turmoil,” President
George W. Bush
said in a statement broadcast early this morning.
“For a nation that needed healing, and for an office
that needed a calm and steady hand, Gerald Ford came
along when we need him most. During his time in
office, the American people came to know President
Ford as a man of complete integrity who led our
country with common sense and kind instincts.”….
….After a decade of division over
Vietnam and two years of trauma over the Watergate
scandals, Jerry Ford, as he called himself, radiated
a soothing familiarity. He might have been the nice
guy down the street suddenly put in charge of the
nation, and if he seemed a bit predictable, he was
also safe, reliable and reassuring. He placed no
intolerable intellectual or psychological burdens on
a weary land, and he lived out a modest philosophy.
“The harder you work, the luckier you are,” he said
once in summarizing his career. “I worked like
hell.”….
(Author’s Note: Citizens of the American Empire
needed soothing reassurance of their greatness after
the humiliating results of the imperial invasion of
Vietnam. And like the mainstream media, “Jerry” put
no “intolerable intellectual or psychological
burdens” on them).
….The pardon, intensely unpopular at the
time, came to be generally viewed as correct. In May
2001, Mr. Ford was honored with a “Profile in
Courage” Award at the
John F. Kennedy
Library in Boston. Senator
Edward M. Kennedy
spoke and said he had originally opposed the pardon.
“But time has a way of clarifying past events,” he
said, “and now we see that President Ford was
right.”….
….His basic philosophy involved fiscal
prudence, strong national defense, suspicion of
alien lands and a belief that citizens should earn a
living rather than be given one…..
(Author’s Translation: Ford believed in slashing
federal spending on programs benefiting humanity to
enable increased military spending, was xenophobic,
and was opposed to using public funds to aid the
poor).
Now that you have perused samples of the rubbish our
oligarch overlords are attempting to burnish into
the minds of their unsuspecting plebeian underlings,
consider how the affable “Jerry” enabled or caused
the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings
and ensured that the ruling elite in the United
States would reclaim the power they had begrudgingly
ceded to the masses in the face of economic
upheaval, civil unrest, and powerful progressive
movements.
Like our current unitary executive, Ford did not get
into the Oval Office by winning an election. Also
like Bush, in spite of the fact that the people did
not vote him into office, Ford brazenly defied the
will of the American public on an issue of great
magnitude. Exercising the integrity of the
mythologized Ford, “Jerry” fulfilled his end of the
bargain he had made with Alexander Haig (3). In
exchange for his ascendancy to the Empire’s throne,
he shielded Richard Nixon from facing consequences
for his multiple grievous transgressions of
international and domestic laws.
Paving the way for Reagan and his successors to
marginalize America’s poor, minorities, and working
class and to gut our Constitution,
Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, chose to keep habitual
war criminal Henry Kissinger(4) on as his Secretary
of State, and elevated future mass murderers, Donald
Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney to key White House
positions.
Letting Nixon off the hook was a particularly
sinister act in at least two ways. Ford, an
unelected president in a purported constitutional
republic, absolved a fellow patrician of grave
violations of international law, the public trust,
and the US Constitution. Thus Ford became Nixon’s
accomplice. At the same time, he landed a crushing
blow for the moneyed class in their persistent
assault on the republic envisioned by men like
Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.
Bear in mind that Ford pardoned a man who was
responsible for the deaths of at least 600,000
innocent civilians. During the invasion and
occupation of Vietnam, Nixon ordered secret bombings
of neighboring Cambodia. The goal was to strike
North Vietnamese supply and transit routes, but
unfortunately for the Cambodian people, the B-52
carpet bombings did not distinguish the
nationalities of victims(5).
Nixon’s use of illegal wire-taps was such a flagrant
abuse of executive authority that Congress passed
the FISA Law in 1978 to prevent similar breaches of
Constitutional law (6). In the wake of Nixon’s
immunity from prosecution, the Bush Regime has
subsequently ignored the FISA Laws and run roughshod
over the Constitution, without consequence. Thank
you for setting the precedent, “Jerry”.
Ford also enabled Nixon to evade prosecution for
obstruction of justice, perjury and possible income
tax evasion (7). The IRS eventually ordered Nixon to
pay $467,000, a relative pittance for a man of his
means.
Despite the damage and suffering they left in their
wake, Nixon and Ford both lived in security and
wealth until their mortality finally caught up with
them. Saddam met his maker as he dangled from the
end of a rope.
Like his predecessor, Ford was quite enamored with
Henry Kissinger. He once summarized him with this
quip: “wonderful person. Dear friend.
First-class Secretary of State. But Henry always
protected his own flanks.”
Once Ford assumed the Empire’s helm, he wasted
little time before collaborating with Kissinger in
another imperial escapade. Consider the US role in
Indonesia’s genocide that killed over 200,000 East
Timorese:
"Jakarta
Godfathers" by John Pilger, Guardian, 7
September, 1999:
"No help came, because the western
democracies were secret partners in a crime as great
and enduring as any this century; proportionally,
not even Pol Pot matched Suharto's spree. Air Force
One, carrying President Ford and his secretary of
state Henry Kissinger, climbed out of Indonesian
airspace the day the bloodbath began. "They came and
gave Suharto the green light," Philip Liechty, the
CIA desk officer in Jakarta at the time, told me.
"The invasion was delayed two days so they could get
the hell out. We were ordered to give the Indonesian
military everything they wanted. I saw all the hard
intelligence; the place was a free-fire zone. Women
and children were herded into school buildings that
were set alight - and all because we didn't want
some little country being neutral or leftist at the
United Nations." And all because western capital
regarded Indonesia as a "prize"."
Declassified in 2001, several US government
documents (8) clearly demonstrate that “Jerry” and
Kissinger gave Suharto, Indonesia’s leader, their
blessing to do as he wished with East Timor. Shortly
thereafter Suharto launched a wave of US-supported
state-sponsored terrorism (9) that lasted until
1999.
Obviously, Gerald Ford was far more shrewd and
Machiavellian than the mainstream media’s recent
wave of white-washing would indicate. Aside from his
complicity in Nixon’s crimes (for which our Ministry
of Truth has exculpated Ford by concluding that the
pardon was necessary to “heal the nation”), and his
role in the carnage in East Timor, he also aligned
himself closely with J. Edgar Hoover. Ford played a
pivotal role in the Warren Commission’s affirmation
of Hoover’s “lone-assassin theory”. As a member of
the Warren Commission, Ford convinced the group to
alter the final version of their report to conclude
that the same bullet killed Kennedy and severely
wounded Texas Governor Connally. Robert Morningstar,
who has researched the Kennedy assassination
extensively, stated that the Ford revision was “the
most significant lie in the whole Warren Commission
report."(10)
Admittedly, some of the positive qualities and deeds
the corporatized Fourth Estate has recently been
attributing to Gerald Ford are true. However, their
apotheosis of a man who harmed far more people than
those whom the US state and federal governments
murder each year (in open defiance of the Eighth
Amendment) reveals the truly deceitful and malignant
nature of the mainstream media in the United States.
Ostensibly, our society in the United States is
based on democratic principles. In such a society,
the purpose of the press would be to act as an
independent check on the government’s power.
However, our evolution into a corporate-dominated
fascist state has obliterated the media’s
independence. A handful of colossal corporations
owns or controls over 90% of the mainstream media
outlets in the United States.
As a result of this incestuous relationship, the
Washington Post, CNN,
and a mélange of others are but mouthpieces of the
government singing a seductive chorus that engenders
and sustains the Big Lie. Occasionally they bleat
feeble opposition to imperialism and our rapid
regression into a nation resembling a banana
republic, but most of the time they beat the drums
of war, promote the interests of the wealthy,
manipulate the hoi polloi with fear, and perpetuate
the myths of America’s virtue. Ethical journalists
have little or no opportunity to ply their craft in
such an environment.
Those who remain captive to the Big Lie will spend
the next few days mourning the passing of a man who
was fortunate to escape the death penalty with which
his country is so infatuated. Those same comforting
delusions of superiority, entitlement, and
invincibility that enable men like Gerald Ford to
act with impunity will entice many Americans to
continue wearing the intellectual manacles of the
Empire.
As frightening as it may be, it is spiritually and
mentally liberating to realize and admit that one of
“our own”--an Eagle Scout, a football hero, a
Christian, a White heterosexual male, a Capitalist,
and an “American”--was capable of the savagery and
lawlessness that minds shackled by the Big Lie can
only ascribe to “terrorists” like Saddam Hussein.
Despite its tendency to inflict pain, the truth will
indeed set you free.
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