Revolver reminds us of just how smart PJB really was.
Our resolve is to put America First, to make America First again, and to keep America First. For 50 years, we have liberated, defended, and aided nations all over the world. It was the right and just thing to do. But, now, we must begin to look out for the forgotten Americans right here in the United States. Our great manufacturing base needs to be re-tooled and restored; our economy needs to be revived; our society needs to be healed; and our people need to become one again. --PJB 1992 campaign against GHWB (Globaloney/CIA Chief)
Now that we know the CIA 'was involved' in the assassination of JFK and the take-down of DJTrump and installing THE most corrupt regime in Ukraine, doesn't GHWB's "legacy" look a lot less shiny?
Yes.
Of course, PJB's agenda was not to be.
“In half a lifetime, many Americans have seen their God dethroned, their heroes defiled, their culture polluted, their values assaulted, their country invaded, and themselves demonized as extremists and bigots for holding on to beliefs Americans have held for generations.” Buchanan wrote that, not in 2020 or 2015, but in 2002.
Unmentioned above: the demolition of American industry and working Americans' families and towns. The Club for Growth and the US China Chamber of Commerce purchased the Republican Party. So there's plenty of war-war and drug-drug and lots of jobs in retail stores. Making steel? Building nuclear power plants? Building trucks and cars?
Not so much.
Then there were the Brutuses:
....the Republican establishment steadily drove Buchanan out of the GOP and out of the public square through distortions of his rhetoric and warped lies about his personal character. In 1999, John McCain led a coordinated denunciation of Buchanan over his contention in A Republic, Not an Empire that America’s involvement in World War 2 had been avoidable and was not in the country’s interests. In 2003, David Frum labeled Buchanan as among the worst of the “unpatriotic conservatives” for his opposition to the Iraq disaster....
The Amen Corner (ADL & Co.) happily joined them when PJB asked the simple question: what interest does the US have in Israel?
That's a question no one dares ask anymore, least of all Donald Trump. But it's still a very good question; someone ought to answer it cogently some day.
...In the end, all of Buchanan’s warnings came true: Middle America became a hollowed-out, deindustrialized area wracked with blight and drug overdoses. America’s foreign adventures wasted trillions and achieved nothing. The tidal wave of foreign immigration resulted not in rainbow-like harmony but endless struggles between different identity groups. And all of this culminated in crushing defeat for the Bush-era Republican party that embraced all of these trends. It would only return to the White House in 2016 behind a candidate who finally did what Buchanan had begged the party to do a quarter-century before: Actually reach out to middle America and seek the support of America’s Silent Majority....
Frankly, the direction of the country is still an open question.
Oremus.
When I was thirty years younger, I went to see Buchanan give a speech in his presidential campaign. He came to speak at the Varsity in Atlanta, a famous hamburger and hotdog joint right across from Georgia Tech set up by a college dropout who (accurately) told his professors he'd make a lot more money selling burgers than they ever would teaching classes. It's a landmark; you may know if it you've been through Atlanta much.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what he would have said, though. My friends and I must have looked like an undesirable element at that age, and his security threw us out. Hard to win young voters that way!
(In fairness I doubtless look like an undesirable element even today, although it would be the bold security man who would try to throw me out of anywhere now.)
ReplyDeleteActually, we've BEEN to The Varsity, and munched its burgers. Pretty good stuff.
ReplyDeleteUnderneath all that you're just a kitten. But I won't tell.