Will anyone listen to Wesley Clark?

Daily Kos diary 3/4/07

I was with Wesley Clark in Portsmouth, NH, Friday night. He spoke specifically and in lengthy detail on a potential Iran invasion. About two hours northwest, where I live, it rated a two-paragraph story in our local paper on the bottom of page two (below this headline for an article which took up half the page: "Proposal Could Lead to Gay Marriage"). I see this as denial journalism: It says "Let's talk about something else. War is two stressful." It is a form of journalistic infantilism. I think the average age of MSM reporter today is probably 55 - they don't want to think about war; they want to think about health insurance for their pending prostate operations. They also suffer from the illusion that they "make history"; that is, the things they like to think about – whatever they be - become "history" if they write about them. It is all part of the Wonderfullness of Who We Are.

Stony silence resonates throughout MSM world on General Clark's thoughts on a pending attack on Iran by a Bush administration oblivious to diplomacy; oblivious to strategy; oblivious to complexity of ideas greater than a compound sentence or an Old Testament quote. Git ‘r Done. The country seems ready for peace: But peace is perhaps not ready for the country. The Dem candidates in front today ignore the plight; they will send us back to the '90s, the '60s, the '50s instead and pretend Iraq didn't happen; Bush didn’t happen; Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rove didn’t happen and 9/11 didn’t happen. It gives Bush a free hand. And it will give McCain, who keeps Kagan and Kristol as key advisors, a free hand. Perhaps we have not yet seen the greatest tragedy of our times: it is just around the corner. Only General Clark speaks of it.

MSM never makes history; when history wants to be made it is always with upstart periodicals like William Lloyd Garrison’s "Liberation" or with S.S. McClure's "muckrakers" or even DKos. Emerson said people don't make events; events make people. The only place I've read detailed and ongoing coverage of pending invasion of Iran is in the "Fighting Dems Newsletter" and I hope all subscribe. It should get the Pulitzer. General Clark makes the point that the greatest tragedy could well be just ahead.

I notice today that both George Will and David Brooks doused the leading Dems; Will saying the Dems are tired of Billary and Brooks referring to it as "American Idol/Celebrity Deathmarch" which could be deadly TV by next year – both true; MSM resonates these two journalists in particular. The entire formatting could change (Cable News Network especially seems to have planned this as a marketing matrix about 10 years ago.) I think we are at a time of awakening and denial; Churchill spent years trying to get the Brits and the Americans to come to terms with the events that were overtaking them. Likewise we refuse to listen here. In this General Clark is the dark horse. If we wake up before next year we will go to him and seek him out. Perhaps quickly.