Everybody look what's goin' down
by digby
As I watched the Sabbath gasbag shows this morning I was once more struck by the fact that so many aging conservative baby boomers seem to be acting out their bizarrroworld version of the 60s counterculture. In many ways the Tea Party phenomenon was nothing more than a creaky rendition of the 1960s protests. Anti-abortion zealotry is their civil rights movement and the anti-government gun nuts are their Weathermen. It's true that many of the foot soldiers in these various strands of the conservative movement are younger, but the leadership is boomer all the way. It's a radical mindset that these folks resisted in their youth but have embraced as they have aged. How sad for them.
Consider the issue of "supporting the troops." For the past four decades, it has been an article of faith that the dirty hippies treated the Vietnam vets contemptuously:
(That stale trope was thoroughly debunked by Holy Cross professor Jerry Lembke in his book “The Spitting Image,” not that it made any difference to those who chose to believe it.)
This cartoon from last week turns that on its head:
But then it's important to recall that the right wing has always had a very contingent regard for the troops. They are sacred because they are fighting for our freedom of speech, religion and all those good things. Unless they say things the right wing doesn't like:
They were the kind of veterans who - Gerald Nicosia tells the story in his history of Vietnam Veterans Against the War - greeted the antiwar veterans who had marched 86 miles from Morristown, New Jersey to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, just like George Washington's army in 1877. The World War II veterans heckled them:
"Why don't you go to Hanoi?"
"We won our war, they didn't, and from the looks of them, they couldn't."
A Vietnam vets hobbled by on crutches. One of the old men wondered whether he had been "shot with marijuana or shot in battle."
(Ah, the Greatest Generation ...)
The point is that there is a fundamental principle involved in the right's national security fetish but it's not the fight for "freedom" or defense of our values or the constitution. It's called "might makes right." There is nothing sacred about the troops beyond the fact that they are an instrument to that end. If you want to see just how far they will go to prove that, look no further than this:
Late Saturday, the F.B.I. said the Bergdahl family in Idaho had received threats. Federal agents, working with state and local law enforcement authorities, were “taking each threat seriously,” an F.B.I. statement said. Officials declined to give other details.
Could it be the Symbionese Libertarian Army?
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