Jane Pain Again
Let me offer heartfelt thanks to this Michael A. Smith, who did the spitting in the latest Jane Fonda incident. Thanks a lot, brother. For over thirty years, we've had to deal with the stereotyped image of the "crazy Vietnam veteran." I'm so happy that your arrested development and acting out has helped keep that stereotype alive for another few years.
Fonda seems to understand the main reason the hatred is so intense: Barbarella, a leading pin-up sex object of the war, betrayed the troops. She doesn't appear to label this sexism, though that seems very accurate to me. Unfortunately, few of the men still spewing venom in their 50s and 60s have the same level of insight. Nobody ever blames Nixon, who delayed the cease-fire for four months so he could bomb the crap out of Hanoi and look like a winner. I've never heard a word against Wilfred Burchett, the Australian correspondent who spent months with the Viet Cong.
Neither Nixon nor Burchett had great legs.
The conventional wisdom about Vietnam servicemen is that they were disproportionately from minority groups. That has been justly criticised as generalisation.What does separate that war from WWII is that the combat troops were typically younger and more frequently disadvantaged than in WWII. I think there was more political homogeneity, and that may be more important than the race card in understanding a 33 year grudge. The Second World War's draft made few exceptions. It swept up liberal, conservative, Socialist, Communist. It took gay and straight, boys of 19 and men of 35. By contrast, the Vietnam era draft tended to absorb younger, less-educated men from socially conservative backgrounds. A substantial number of those left of centre stayed out. Too bad: there was an opportunity lost.
This unbalanced draft failed to provide the political and social leavening that WWII had. Young, conservative-minded men, led by usually conservative career soldiers, were easily frozen in place politically. Many of them had no real adult experience behind them, and no idea what they would do with their lives after the war. The WWII services were well populated with men who had made their own way in a rather harder world, and who had a civilian identity to return to.
Most of my peers remain 19 to 21 in a large part of their minds, and some of them still don't know what they're going to do when they grow up. Few of the haters care to recall that when Fonda went to Vietnam, Nixon's "Vietnamization" was already well under way, as were peace talks. Most of us were already home. She was taking part in a gesture made futile and absurd by the advance of events, not worthy of a lifetime of rage. It was Nixon, not Fonda, who prolonged the suffering of American POWs. He had it in his power to accept peace terms in October, 1972, that were identical to those he signed in January, 1973, but he had to have his grandstand bombing first. Apparently, it was also the Nixon administration that instantly appreciated the value of Jane Fonda as a diversionary figure, and applied the "Hanoi Jane" label. The wonderful conjunction of politically naive grunts and politically naive protestors has given us this lasting, polarising legacy.
Such immature vindictiveness, carefully nurtured by conservative interests, looks rather un-American when compared to our earlier history. By 1898, 33 years after Appomattox, a substantial number of surviving Confederate officers held public office in the restored U.S. national government. One, Joe Wheeler, served as a general in the Spanish-American War that year. In 1977, 32 years after VJ-Day, the U.S. government pardoned Iva Tuguri, known to the Pacific Theatre as "Tokyo Rose." Time was the nation was big enough not to hold a grudge, even when the stakes were far higher. We have diminished since.
Forgiveness and letting go of the dead past aren't things you do for the person you forgive. It's mainly something you do for yourself. Let it go, guys. Give yourself a little peace.
Fonda seems to understand the main reason the hatred is so intense: Barbarella, a leading pin-up sex object of the war, betrayed the troops. She doesn't appear to label this sexism, though that seems very accurate to me. Unfortunately, few of the men still spewing venom in their 50s and 60s have the same level of insight. Nobody ever blames Nixon, who delayed the cease-fire for four months so he could bomb the crap out of Hanoi and look like a winner. I've never heard a word against Wilfred Burchett, the Australian correspondent who spent months with the Viet Cong.
Neither Nixon nor Burchett had great legs.
The conventional wisdom about Vietnam servicemen is that they were disproportionately from minority groups. That has been justly criticised as generalisation.What does separate that war from WWII is that the combat troops were typically younger and more frequently disadvantaged than in WWII. I think there was more political homogeneity, and that may be more important than the race card in understanding a 33 year grudge. The Second World War's draft made few exceptions. It swept up liberal, conservative, Socialist, Communist. It took gay and straight, boys of 19 and men of 35. By contrast, the Vietnam era draft tended to absorb younger, less-educated men from socially conservative backgrounds. A substantial number of those left of centre stayed out. Too bad: there was an opportunity lost.
This unbalanced draft failed to provide the political and social leavening that WWII had. Young, conservative-minded men, led by usually conservative career soldiers, were easily frozen in place politically. Many of them had no real adult experience behind them, and no idea what they would do with their lives after the war. The WWII services were well populated with men who had made their own way in a rather harder world, and who had a civilian identity to return to.
Most of my peers remain 19 to 21 in a large part of their minds, and some of them still don't know what they're going to do when they grow up. Few of the haters care to recall that when Fonda went to Vietnam, Nixon's "Vietnamization" was already well under way, as were peace talks. Most of us were already home. She was taking part in a gesture made futile and absurd by the advance of events, not worthy of a lifetime of rage. It was Nixon, not Fonda, who prolonged the suffering of American POWs. He had it in his power to accept peace terms in October, 1972, that were identical to those he signed in January, 1973, but he had to have his grandstand bombing first. Apparently, it was also the Nixon administration that instantly appreciated the value of Jane Fonda as a diversionary figure, and applied the "Hanoi Jane" label. The wonderful conjunction of politically naive grunts and politically naive protestors has given us this lasting, polarising legacy.
Such immature vindictiveness, carefully nurtured by conservative interests, looks rather un-American when compared to our earlier history. By 1898, 33 years after Appomattox, a substantial number of surviving Confederate officers held public office in the restored U.S. national government. One, Joe Wheeler, served as a general in the Spanish-American War that year. In 1977, 32 years after VJ-Day, the U.S. government pardoned Iva Tuguri, known to the Pacific Theatre as "Tokyo Rose." Time was the nation was big enough not to hold a grudge, even when the stakes were far higher. We have diminished since.
Forgiveness and letting go of the dead past aren't things you do for the person you forgive. It's mainly something you do for yourself. Let it go, guys. Give yourself a little peace.
posted by Uncle | 22:20
1 Comments:
Well, I was a good little Christian boy (I guess I never got over it and that's not all bad). The forgiving thing is really a hallmark, not only of Jesus folk nor of the West. Your points about Tokyo Rose are well taken. Hell, even Toxic Nixon ended up rehabilitated and called a statesman.
No, we can't forgive that bimbo...even though we had no reason there...even though Truman should have known better than to sign that treaty...even though Ike knew the French and everybody else lost their butts there...even though we had the chance to support a populist government and bring freedom, security and democracy without troops or violence...even though the macho men JFK and LBJ refused to see the obvious.
It rends my soul to see what we have done, and then for those puffer fish in Congress and the White House to murder hundreds of thousands, including thousands of Americans.
Yet of course, the real enemy, as we all know, is that dreadful Cuba. Those Communist monsters don't sleep plotting against us. We can't forgive them for nationalizing our banks down there.
You don't get it. I don't get it.
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