Ideology and "Psychology", was Re: identifying with the enemy

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat May 19 18:10:02 PDT 2001



>Carrol Cox:
>> ...
>> I suspect this confusion between being wrong and being (somehow) "wrong
>> as a person" -- irrational or weird -- was at the source of Gordon's
>> absurdities on the POW/MIA question. (As I pointed out at the time, he
>> is probably quite wrong, empirically, in his demographics, but for the
>> purposes of the present argument we can assume he is correct in his
>> rough-and-ready sociological description of the "believers" in the myth
>> of the MIAs.) He assumed that if his "trailer-park and tract home"
>> people were _wrong_ about the MIAs, then they were, as people, weird or
>> irrational -- i.e., that one could only respect them as people by
>> somehow or other respecting the content of their beliefs. But that is
>> outrageous condescension. ...
>
>However, I didn't much consider whether they were "right" or
>"wrong" since substantial, verifiable evidence on the question
>isn't available to me.

You should read H. Bruce Franklin, _M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America_ (Brooklyn, NY: Lawrence Hill Books, 1992). If you are interested in evidence, that is. I'm not sure if you are.


>What I drew attention to was the class
>structure of the issue. The class structure of the issue does
>not refer to who is manipulating it, but to whose social
>context it exists in as a legitimate concern. Tim O'Brien
>disparaged an activity emanating directly from lower-class
>anxiety and anger about the War in Vietnam and its outcome,
>and disparaged the people who constitute that class as well.
>He was angry at "the narcissism of an American public that
>embraces and breathes life into the policy -- so arrogant, so
>ignorant, so self-righteous, so wanting in the most fundamental
>qualities of sympathy and fairness and mutuality." That is,
>"Too bad we got your friends and relatives killed, maimed and
>disappeared in a meaningless war. Get over it, and get back
>to dumb jobs and crappy lives."
>
>This isn't respect, it's ruling-class bigotry.

The propaganda about the MIA/POW originated in the Nixon administration, in their effort to steer the families of American prisoners of war away from the anti-war movement, use them to prolong the war, and so on. In the process *more Americans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, etc. got killed*. In other words, the American MIA/POW propaganda *got more working-class Americans killed*.

Tim O'Brien is simply pointing out the nearly complete lack of sympathy among probably the majority of Americans for the non-Americans who got "killed, maimed, & disappeared" in the war. In their minds, the Vietnamese, the Laotians, etc. are not their class brothers & sisters. Neither in your mind, probably, since you think of only Americans whose remains couldn't be recovered.

Yoshie



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