I am one of the small community of people who found "Joe vs. the Volcano" to be a great film. In it, the Tom Hanks character is diagnosed as having a "brain cloud". This, I sometimes think, is the national diagnosis, as if there was a sticky saran-wrap style film between public topics and reason, between the recent past and the present, and between objective reality and political correctness.
The examples of the national brain cloud are endless, and since most public discussion of events seems confined to nothing more than repeating a small series of memorized phrases, the brain cloud affects everything.
This morning in the shower I was thinking about Haiti (no, I really don't know why). The talking points of one of the political parties is that the President should have intervened in Haiti to support the elected leader of the country. Fair enough.
What is Haiti? It is a former French colony. The French were thrown out by the native population by military force. The recent government was, indeed, an elected one. That government was threatened by a rebel force that controlled half of the country.
The President is vigorously criticized by that particular political party for not inserting the United States military into a civil war and choose which side we want to win and start killing those on the other side. Fortunately, the administration came up with a different policy and Aristide left Haiti.
The thing I find not just minid-boggling, but mind-shattering, about all of this is the following: What was Vietnam in the 1960s? It was a former French colony. The French had been thrown out by the native population by military force. The government in the South was an elected one. That government was threatened by a rebel force that controlled half of the country.
I have been told my entire life that choosing sides in Vietnam, intervening and fighting was unjust and immoral, by the same people who are now upset that we did not do the same thing, under eerily similar circumstances, in Haiti. The only difference is that the rebels in Haiti are not communists. The left is o.k. with killing in foreign civil wars as long as the chosen enemy is NOT a threat to the United States. It is, as I said, mind-shattering.
Bottom line: ONE generation is too little time to lose important national lessons. The older generation that ought to remember the history is guilty of something terrible if it is not honest with the younger generations about it.
But perhaps honesty just isn't possible. There is a national brain cloud.
The examples of the national brain cloud are endless, and since most public discussion of events seems confined to nothing more than repeating a small series of memorized phrases, the brain cloud affects everything.
This morning in the shower I was thinking about Haiti (no, I really don't know why). The talking points of one of the political parties is that the President should have intervened in Haiti to support the elected leader of the country. Fair enough.
What is Haiti? It is a former French colony. The French were thrown out by the native population by military force. The recent government was, indeed, an elected one. That government was threatened by a rebel force that controlled half of the country.
The President is vigorously criticized by that particular political party for not inserting the United States military into a civil war and choose which side we want to win and start killing those on the other side. Fortunately, the administration came up with a different policy and Aristide left Haiti.
The thing I find not just minid-boggling, but mind-shattering, about all of this is the following: What was Vietnam in the 1960s? It was a former French colony. The French had been thrown out by the native population by military force. The government in the South was an elected one. That government was threatened by a rebel force that controlled half of the country.
I have been told my entire life that choosing sides in Vietnam, intervening and fighting was unjust and immoral, by the same people who are now upset that we did not do the same thing, under eerily similar circumstances, in Haiti. The only difference is that the rebels in Haiti are not communists. The left is o.k. with killing in foreign civil wars as long as the chosen enemy is NOT a threat to the United States. It is, as I said, mind-shattering.
Bottom line: ONE generation is too little time to lose important national lessons. The older generation that ought to remember the history is guilty of something terrible if it is not honest with the younger generations about it.
But perhaps honesty just isn't possible. There is a national brain cloud.
