Another reason to hate the Russians March 30, 1985

  

So, The Russians shot an American spy.

His name was Nicholson, and he died because he photographed a secret Soviet installation.

This has given Reagan the propaganda tool he needs to get the public to hate the Russians – just as he did back with the Boing incident in 83. We just keep dragging ourselves into this tangle and find new reasons to turn the Ruskies into agents of evil.

It’s almost like a bad James Bond movie, although we keep repeating the same lines and creating the same public hysteria.

They buried Major Nicholson and made him a national hero, giving his family members medals they can put on their book shelves to brag about later, “that’s my husband, brother, father, etc.”

What about the man himself? Obviously, he’d been ordered to take those pictures and in doing so, risked his life for his country.

Was he a professional like 007 or an amateur who got his fingers caught in the cookie jar?

America has been caught so many times doing such dirty deeds it is just possible that the CIA thinks we’re all too stupid to realize just how they work behind the scenes, stirring up trouble in places like Nicaragua or using new spy satellites to peer down on our enemies from space, making you wonder why they need to pull such a dirty trick as this and put a man’s life at risk for photos they already have.

We watch our agents doing these things, deliberately setting up secret labs and other traps, and we’re not surprised when the enemy gets upset at us. I’m sure they must be doing the same thing, sneaking missiles into Cuba the way they did in 63, perhaps ready to launch chemical warfare of us as we plan to do the same to them.

What does all this mean? Are we slowly building up to a real war, a war that isn’t cloak and dagger, but bombs and planes?

Shall we soon see tanks rolling through city streets, shooting up buildings in which we have set up our secret places of warfare, while Reagan or someone like him tells us these are schools or churches?

Are we being prepared to hate the Soviets enough that we can wish to see their blood flowing in the streets?

Our news stations tell us “See! Look at what they’re doing? Those are horrible people doing those things and we need to retaliate.”

I keep thinking of the poor major who went into all this believing in God and Country, who took his camera out a week ago (on orders) to take a picture of some secret Soviet lab (while no doubt their version of 007 took pictures of our secret labs and didn’t get caught.)

Some months ago, I remember hearing of pictures taken from space of a dock in Leningrad, where there were supposed to be MIG planes waiting to be shipped to Central America in the secret war we are waging there. Those were safe pictures, snapped from orbit beyond the range of Soviet aggression, pictures that revealed state secrets, too, without the risk of killing men in the process.

Is asking technology to take the place of men for such deeds, asking too much? Or is the purpose of all this is to get us to kill people, not just the good Major, but to stir our blood up with enough hatred for the Russians that we will willingly send our kids to go kill them to get revenge? Is all this a preview for real war, out in the open war, the war in which we don’t pretend we have peace, and admit opening that we bring weapons to their borders, and they bring weapons to ours, to kill each other with?

Is this lust for death the real purpose in all this?

Killing is the whole purpose of this game, which is why we track weapons, and once in a while let one of our own die for the cause. We love the violence. We suffer only when we get caught in the game before we are ready to get to the last chapter where the real violence starts.

As long as we get to hate someone, we can justify anything.

We violate their space, they ill us. We advertise just how bad those people are, and make martyrs out of people like Major Nicholson, who died for the cause.

There are no innocents in this game. Even the one we pretend are when we hide CIA operations in a school house in a village in Central America and the enemy uses a Soviet bomb to blow it up.

But what about the Boeing airliner Reagan sent into Soviet space to spy and the Soviets shot it down? Weren’t the people on that plane innocent? Was Reagan right in risking those lives? Is he right now using their deaths as an excuse to hate the Russians more?

Is this all about stirring us up to hate the enemy so that we have an excuse to kill them or put them in some economic box that will strip them of power and make us stronger in the rest of the world?

We fight in Central America just as we did in Vietnam, a proxy war between enemies far away form the battle lines. We need someone to hate, like the Russians, or the Germans at the turn of the 18th Century or the South before the Civil War, polishing them up like tin soldiers to eventually justify the blood bath we have planned for later.

Say a prayer for Major Nicholson, he going to be the first of many.

 

 1985 Menu


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An old nemesis December 11, 1985

Image
    Surisky hated me from early on in grammar school, although “hate” may be too strong a word to describe his reaction to me. I was simply available to him for abuse, Third grade was pivotal for both of us. Prior to that, we were simply feeling our way through Catholic School routine, emerging eventually as whole personalities from the muck of early childhood. He came across as a thug, trying to convey the image of a tough guy. He wore a leather jacket and spiked boots, and snuck into see James Dean movies. Third grade was tough on everybody, including the teachers, who considered us the worst class in the history of the school – even in the safe grades of Kindergarten, First and Second. Two of the three nuns retired after passing us on. But it was in the third grade that we began to work our magic, driving even the stout-hearted nuns crazy. Later, the nuns tried to break our spirit. But we fully represented our age and had the full impact of the 1960s behind us. So,
Read more

Pauly leaves Passaic for the final time July 24, 1985

Image
    Pauly is leaving Passaic again. This comes after two years of us rubbing shoulders after he had been cast out of paradise in Towaco, after his goddess, Jane, went and married that man Pauly calls “a bum.” This has been a tough two years, filled with Pauly’s typical manipulation, his usual shaping of reality to his own needs often at other people’s (mine) expense. When Pauly first came I had Fran’s cultist brother as a temporary guest and Pauly spent most of his time trying to push me into getting that guest out. A few months later – in November – Fran got the ax from her ex and changed her mind about moving in with me after I had committed the spare room to Pauly. He assumed she meant more to me than he did and was already packing when I told Fran no. She had no place to go except for her father’s house, a father she had a love/hate relationship with, and she held it against me, even though we continued to see each other romantically. Pauly being Pauly drove me out of
Read more

The clock is ticking July 18, 1985

Image
  We’re talking love here – silly fictional love with all the connotations of disaster. I seem to be on the meat chopping block with Safire looking for qualities in me that are lacking in her husband. The fact that there is a husband in the first place greatly disturbs me. All this said, I’m uncertain as to why I haven’t ended this already, except to know she is too much like my ex-wife to pass up without a closer examination. Even the way she thinks: slow, methodical, going from point A to point B. It has only been a week since she blurted out drunk that she wanted me in bed. It seems like much longer. And she hints of something more permanent, suggesting that I might fill in for her husband for a much longer duration. The night before last she suggested I come see her in her trailer, as if she is legally separated from her husband, when in fact she is supposed to be biding time until he finds them both a place to live in Baltimore. This is the same kind of smoke and mir
Read more