You're
Either With Us, Or You're Whacko
October 15, 2002
By Maureen Farrell
"I was talking to a Congressional office," Bob Novak reported
on Crossfire. "They told me that the phone calls coming in
were 571 against the war, 3 for the war. You got that? [The
unnamed congressman] is going 100 percent for George Bush,
not saying a word of criticism, because he knows it's the
nuts calling in and that the real people are supporting the
resolution."
As one of the "nuts calling in," I was taken aback. Did a
congressman actually say that? Is that how America's representatives
feel? Given the arrogance of the congressman's assertion,
it seems some of us need to hightail it to the Land of Leahy
and Jeffords to get the representation our taxation is rumored
to buy.
A couple days later, on Resolution Day, my senses were similarly
assaulted; this time, via e-mail from MSNBC's Hardball. "Of
course Byrd went on another tirade this morning," it read,
and I wondered how Byrd's "tirade" could possibly be an annoyance,
considering what's at stake. "I know what you're thinking,"
the e-mail assured. "'Stop having all the anti-war folks on!'
Don't worry, we're gonna have some Hawks on too."
So, great. While Congressman Gough-Tohell says I'm crazy,
MSNBC thinks it is reading my mind. "We know you want war,"
Hardball implies, taking "manufacturing consent," to a whole
new level. Well, thank you very much, but does anyone really
believe there aren't enough hawks on TV? A day without Richard
Perle is a day without sunshine! And dissenting generals aside,
why did Hardball's email say that "everyone's for war?" Didn't
they get the memo about anti-war protests? Tens of thousands,
and countless others, marginalized, just like that. "You're
either with us or you're whacko." Yessireebob.
I tried to imagine who might be among Bob Novak's nuts. Not
the folks at Hardball, that's for sure. "Maybe Jimmy Carter?,"
I mused. After all, didn't he say Congress was wrong to pass
its resolution on Iraq? And what about George Tenet, who says
Saddam won't attack us unless we attack him first? And could
the 50,000 citizens who e-mailed Sen. Byrd last week be whacked-out,
too? Or what about the 20,000 who called him in support? Those
people have been radicalized by the lies they've been told,
and the helplessness and voicelessness of it all, I bet. Congressman
Gough-Tohell's constituents, perhaps? And what, pray tell,
separates the "nuts" from the "real people?"
New York Daily News reporter Lars-Erik Nelson would
have made Novak's list, I think. Because while other Americans
were congratulating themselves for so being reasonably impotent
during the 2000 brouhaha, Nelson deemed the Bush campaign's
post-election ploys "a mugging." Outraged and outspoken, he
drew attention to the blatantly undemocratic shenanigans in
Florida. "If you want to know the truth, I blame the Bush
campaign for the death of Nelson," New York Observer
columnist Ron Rosenbaum wrote. . . . "[He] saw what was going
on in Florida early on, and he didn't see it with any equanimity:
One of his colleagues at the Daily News called him on the
day of his death, the afternoon of the televised Florida Supreme
Court argument, and recalled Nelson crying out, "I can't believe
they said that!" over some outrageous assertion by the lawyers
for Ms. Harris and Mr. Bush. A few hours later, he was found
in front of his television set, dead of a stroke. No one will
convince me it was unrelated."
That kind of caring can be deadly. Yes, it can.
Filmmaker Steve Tesich might be another Novakian nut. Best
known for films like "Four Friends" and "Breaking
Away," Tesich died of a massive heart attack at age 53.
"America killed him," his sister Nadia claimed, which, admittedly,
sounds extreme. But like brilliant writers before him, Tesich
served as a lightening rod for the rest of us, especially
in his outrage over the soulless propaganda perpetuated on
TV. Awakened by "the deadly display, advertising of weapons,
and destruction during the US war on Iraq," Steve was appalled
by the "lack of opposition in the media." So he wrote to combat
untruths and dilute the propaganda. His essays went largely
unpublished.
"My brother suffered," Professor Nadia Tesich wrote, "Silently
most of the time. He suffered because he thought he was an
important writer, whose voice ought to be heard. He suffered
because most of the people around him, even old friends, appeared
brainwashed, brain-dead. He suffered more than I because he
loved America once. That love turned against him. Yes, it
can kill you.
"He suffered because he woke up and with amazing speed
and brilliance he saw what the USA did to us, and to their
own people, and to the rest of the world. It was easier for
me. I was immunized from before -- Vietnam, Chile, Panama,
Guatemala -- the list is long.
"He was only a writer, romantic, sweetly naive, full
of optimism until 1990. He was unprepared. His awakening was
deadly. He could not imagine his future in this new world
order, faster, more deadly every minute as I write. He feared
the day when his work will be censored entirely, the way it
had happened to me. Here in Amerika. He wrote to expose, to
bear witness against this era, this monster without an adequate
name or a real face, so people will know many years later
that someone objected."
Yes, he objected then and we object now - no matter how many
congressmen or pundits pooh-and pooh our concerns. America
is on the eve of waging an unconscionable preemptive war,
with murky motivations, and, as more of us see this, more
will object. Because we too are waking up "with amazing speed
and brilliance." We see what Lars-Erick Nelson saw and what
Steve Tesich saw and what Mark Twain saw, even as far back
as 1905.
Casting a Novakian nut as the centerpiece of his anti-imperialist
tale, "The War Prayer," Twain took on the hypocritical righteousness
of pious warmongers. Arriving with "a message from Almighty
God," Twain's hero, his unearthly "stranger," dramatizes the
duality in praying for God's blessing, which, conversely,
calls for others' hardships. The climax occurs when Twain's
messenger recites this uncensored prayer:
". . . . O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody
shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields
with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown
the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded,
writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes
with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their
unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn
them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended
in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and
thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds
of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring
thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-- For our sakes
who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives,
protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps,
water their way with their tears, strain the white snow with
the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit
of love, of Him Who us the Source of Love, and Who is the
ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset
and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. "
"It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic," Twain
wrote, "because there was no sense in what he said."
So, yes, even though FOX has replaced Twain's altar as our
propaganda podium and though lengthy sermons are now found
in the "Gospel According to 'Showdown With Saddam!,' the message
doesn't change. Because the fiercely anti-imperialist Mark
Twain understood where Bob Novak and Congressman Gough-Tohell
were coming from. He understood, all to well, the sickness
that equates sanity with soulnessness, and approves of ends
justifying means. After all, this sickness gave smallpox to
Indians and root to slavery; it bred hatred towards abolitionists
and killed four at Kent State. Echoed in "Heil Hitler," and
Coliseum cheers, it's a sickness writers like Twain, Nelson
and Tesich sense early on. And though they warn us, they are
dismissed and vilified by the likes of Congressman Gough-Tohell,
until Truth wins out, and the folly in ignoring them is acknowledged.
As the pre-fabricated Bush, Inc. war approaches (alongside
the ridiculous façade that the president wants peace), we'll
soon learn which side is crazy. But, in time, Bob Novak and
his congressman may very well wish they'd listened to the
nuts. After all, History is on the nuts' side.
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