The American drama

Jogo writes:

Did you know that Sgt Mike Strank, the leader of the little squad of six Marines who planted the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima, was born in Czechoslovakia?

Three of the six (including Strank) died on Iwo Jima. Of the three who returned home only John Bradley was able to put his life back together – married, had eight children, prospered in business ... He died in the same tiny town he was born in – Antigo, Wisconsin

The reason I defend American privilege – hopefully never with my actual life, although I would do so – is that I believe our privilege has been earned. It is not mere accident, nor a triumph of wickedness, that we are who we are. Not only is our privilege earned, it has been shared – unlike the privileges of, say, La Raza, Magyar, Teuton, Gaul or Hutu. In fact, a big part of our painful American journey, a core of our Drama, has been precisely towards more sharing of the privilege. You might say it is “what we are about."

But commieprofs would rather dream about the Ku Klux Klan and others who have stood in the way of this flow. They would rather dream about the Rosenbergs and J Edgar Hoover, or about Mossadegh, or about US-backed counter-insurgencies in Latin America. For them, Emmett Till is eternally lynched in an ever-repeating fractal present. They choose not to dream dreams of love for America.

In the past, I think Communists had a sense of the essential legitimacy of America. The fact that theft, or exploitation, or even slavery, are stones – huge, unmovable, weight-bearing stones – in our Foundation did not, somehow, diminish this legitimacy in their eyes. It is a curious thing. Read or listen to "The Lonesome Train" and you may get a sense of what I am saying. If Communists believed capitalism was wrong, or that the Capitalist Class needed to be opposed and their assumptions challenged, I think most of them also understood that American Greatness was real (i.e., not a manufactured, tin-plated idea).

But now commieprofs do not understand this, they have no sense of it. Not only that,
they teach and write against this idea. Ward Churchill is a perfect example of the tragic, frightening demise of American radicals – a journey, frankly, from Love to Hatred, to put it in very simple, though surely arguable, terms. You may see Ward Churchill as an aberration, but I see him as a Standard-Bearer, or warrior, of his ilk. He displays tremendous physical courage, and says – defiantly and without apology – what other commieprofs also think, but will not say. This is the reason for his high stature in the commieprof community.

Previous posts on the American drama: The American scene and Europe's sickness, Pat Buchanan, archaic type, Thomas Sowell on black rednecks and white liberals, Head and Heart, Four-letter words: a view from America, The Supreme Chutzpah.
Previous CommieProfWatch posts: Chomsky, Shahak and co, Fisking Chomsky, Messianic thought, Swooning with rapture.