Grass Valley Report

Does anyone remember what it was like to have a president who published his first book when he was twenty and got a positive review from Winston Churchill? Can anyone remember what it was like to travel abroad when people knew that our president read a book a day, our first lady spoke fluent French and was friends with the likes of Robert Frost? Can you possibly imagine how proud we were to hear the leader of the free world say “Ich bin ein Berliner?" Does anyone remember what Kennedy's reaction to Roger Blough (ceo of US Steel)
when he artificially raised the price of steel?

You didn't need credit cards to travel abroad because people liked Americans so much we were often invited into their homes. Do you think Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld have any idea of what I am talking about?

Just because some fundamentalist Baptists were able to confuse the South rising again and Papist plots to rule America JFK was shot. Lyndon Johnson was a saint compared to the pretenders that are using the faith to justify power in the hear and now. Yup! there was a time when the pursuit of knowledge was admired and not the work of the devil. Bill Moyers has had to be the apologist for the consequences of protestant xenophobia for too long. And show me a time when the literary IQ of leadership was not a stylized affectation of west Texas ranching (he's even afraid of horses.)

Susan Sontag has just published an article in the NY Times Sunday May 23, 2004 edition on the real meaning of the torture pictures in Iraq. Now that’s it’s obvious we bought style over content I suggest we take responsibility for this Frankenstein our greed has roth and do something about this hideous consensus that we are led to believe is our patriotism.

In 1979 I was approached by a higher up in the CIA who had been active in Latin America. Phillip Agee had just published his “Inside the CIA” and the agent was worried that he was going to be revealed. He ask me to ghost write an autobiography that he could use to vindicate himself with the public at large. George senior was director of the then CIA and my agent was on a friendly basis with him. He referred to himself as “Captain America” and he operated with impunity and was rarely held accountable for his actions.

It was then that I heard the term “denyability.” The term seemed to be invented and appeared slightly oxymoronic. Perhaps it was the government’s way of saying “So sue me.”

As years progressed and the truth became “strategic and classified” the denyable stuff became headlines and the grist for PR firms. The general public was unwittingly being numbed out with re-run certainties meant to play well in the Midwest. Denyability had become the perspective of the elect and history a foregone conclusion.

Democracy was being substituted by a “benevolent” hierarchy, or that’s what the inside tract would have us believe. As long as a lie couldn’t be proven then it had denyability because the placing of the onus was the real name of the game. It became patriotic to practice deceit because everyone else was doing it. We shouldn’t be surprised that Karl Rove should rise to the occasion so effectively. It had been standard procedure (witness Iran/Contra) for years.

As our own congress and senate became a rubber stamp for special interests there are those of us who still cling to those institutions we once held so dear. To see the beacon of light run by a bozo has made contempt the equivalent of righteous indignation.

How much longer will it take before we realize that denyability is corrosive and culpability with appointed judges giving favorable sentences is not due process?

When I traveled around the world you didn’t need a credit card
because hospitality had not become a service industry.
I suffer to think what it must be like today.

It’s about that beacon of light. It seems to have been extinguished
and that appears to be undeniably so.