Time To Fix Our Boots

It may take awhile for me to make this point, but I ask that you work with me on this.

Last night, Turner Classic Movies ran “The Longest Day,” a truly great film adaptation of a truly great book, and I managed to help put the young one to bed and turn on the T.V. in time to watch the very end. I’d seen it before many years ago, and its depiction of D-Day was as involving and realistic as audiences were willing to accept for the year it was made (1962). I believe this is partly because World War II and the Allies’ invasion of Europe at Normandy Beach upon which the book and film were based was probably still a vivid recollection for many people who watched it; I would guess that many people who read the book or watched the movie actually fought on D-Day or know someone who did. Of course, Stephen Spielberg recreated this in a much more realistic manner in “Saving Private Ryan” as we know, and for that, I believe we all owe Spielberg a debt, lest we all forget Robert E. Lee’s quote about war.

Anyway, I was able to watch the movie at the scene where a young PFC, patrolling cautiously near a French farm house, comes across a German soldier. The PFC immediately takes cover, thinking the soldier has his back turned towards him. However, the PFC, seeing that the soldier isn’t moving, comes from behind his cover and moves towards him slowly. As he approaches, he sees that the soldier has a bullet hole near his head and shoulder.

At that moment, a voice calls out from behind, saying, “He’s dead, Yank.” The PFC immediately flips and takes cover once more before he spots the person who spoke to him. It’s a downed British soldier, played by Richard Burton (I think the rank of Burton’s character was major), who is sitting on the ground against the stone farmhouse near some livestock with hay scattered nearby. I don’t know who the actor was who played the PFC – Richard Beymer, maybe – but the PFC approaches Burton and sits down next to him, and both men smoke cigarettes.

Burton’s character tells the PFC that he killed the German from close range, and he asks the PFC if he’s ever killed a man, and the PFC says no. Burton then says that he’s sitting down because he received a shrapnel wound in his leg and, since the doctor ran out of stitching material, he gave Burton a heavy dose of morphine and used staples to close the wound. Burton, obviously still dazed from the morphine, tells the PFC that he hopes it doesn’t wear off before he’s rescued (the PFC glances at the wound and a look of revulsion crosses his face).

Burton then looks over towards the dead German soldier and says, “Do you see anything wrong with him?” The PFC shakes his head no, as they both look at the soldier from behind hanging dead over a wooden fence (Burton does almost all of the talking in this scene until the very end). Burton tells the PFC, “His boots are on backwards,” causing Burton and the PFC to laugh a bit with an expression bordering on disdain and amusement.

And I thought to myself, that approximates the state we are in at this moment. Our boots, metaphorically speaking, are on backwards. I’ll do my best to explain that.

Given the fact that protective footwear is critical for everyone, especially someone in the midst of a battle, why would a soldier let this happen? Panic (answering the call to battle without enough time to prepare)? Fatigue (exhaustion for any number of reasons)? My guess is that it would be some type of distraction or another.

Could you imagine an army fighting without boots (even though the Viet Cong reportedly fought in the jungles of Southeast Asia wearing sneakers, which I would partly attribute to abject poverty but also because of the terrain)? The boots are insurance of a sort when it’s time to march, charge, attack in close quarters, or take cover. Our “boots” would represent sound, reliable sources of information that we can rely on to form our opinions as we do battle with the distractions all around us in our quest to try and resolve the issues that truly matter (the war in Iraq, jobs, the economy, education, the environment, etc.).

I’m speaking symbolically about “boots,” I know, but I’m being quite literal about everything else. Anyone who believes that we aren’t at war in this country (and I’m not even talking about Iraq) might as well believe in the Easter Bunny as far as I’m concerned.

It is a war of symbols, spin and propaganda that has been foisted on us by the Repugs and their acolytes in the right-wing media echo chamber, and we have no choice but to engage them in it. What’s more, the enemy is gaining around in places that we once held sacrosanct as we tried to form our opinions in as reasonable a manner as possible. CNN (which published what I thought was a truly obnoxious column in the Business section of their site about pensions a few days ago, implying workers were dumb to rely on them instead of private accounts) recently hired right-wing demagogue Glenn Beck to spout his garbage (and by the way, they pretty much blew off Al Gore’s recent excellent speech blasting Dubya’s domestic spying). The Washington Post (the newspaper that stood above all others during the Watergate scandal) recently hired Deborah Howell as ombudsman, a person whose goal seems to be to silence a dissenting point of view (Atrios and others have been all over this for the last couple of days - Update: the reader blog that Howell shut down seems to be up again as of 1/20). The New York Times, the supposed “paper of record” that turned a blind eye to Jayson Blair and Judith Miller, downplayed Gore’s speech also.

I believe that what we’re witnessing are “street skirmishes” being fought by the Repug shock troops in the media at this moment (Chris Matthews comparing bin Laden to Michael Moore, for example, along with other histrionics from Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough). That would seem to indicate a lull in the fighting for now, so to speak, in anticipation of major new offensives to distract and manipulate us that would leave us in approximately the same state as the German soldier killed by Burton’s character. And make no mistake…we’ve already seen a preview of things to come with release of the most recent bin Laden tape (at this point, the fact that this guy’s head isn’t rotating and roasting on a spit instead of spewing his cowardly garbage to try and scare us is HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS – and John Kerry was dead-on with his most recent assessment, by the way).

Another tool to try and frighten/distract us will be manipulation of public opinion over the possibility of war with Iran (the subject of a recent Atrios post that was absolutely brilliant and I’ll plan to have more on that soon). I think we can also look forward to the return of color-coded alerts and even the possibility of another Anthrax scare in an effort to get our “lizard brains” pumping into overdrive.

The Repugs, knowing that this has all been done before and that the majority of the voters in this country are FINALLY getting wise to it, will no doubt add new wrinkles of one type or another. They know that this is the only chance they have to hold onto power, because, as Bill Clinton stated at the 2004 Democratic Convention with typical foresight, “they need a divided America, and we don’t.”

The Repugs know that they are losing, and that will make them even more desperate. Their best weapons are our apathy and neglect and a supine opposition party (which makes our task all the more urgent, because both of those discouraging prospects are definitely “in play”).

It is up to us.

This is meant as sort of a “catch all” post, because I know I won’t be able to call them on all of their attempts to distract us, trying to induce panic as we fight off our own fatigue at times (make no mistake…this will be a tiring exercise until it is resolved one way or another in November). I would only ask with all humility that you check back here periodically to obtain the best information that I am able to provide to help you form your opinions. Also, there are plenty of fine, esteemed individuals, some much better than I, who I link to over in the right column to help you in this process.

I mentioned that the PFC with Burton in the French farmhouse scene in “The Longest Day” doesn’t say much, but he does have probably the most important line of dialogue. He pauses after Burton takes a long drag on a cigarette, glances towards him as he contemplates the D-Day battle which, at that point, is winding down, and says, “I wonder who won?”

By mid November, let us all hope that we know the resounding answer to that question with an unmatched feeling of pride and accomplishment.

Update 1/20: They couldn't be more obvious, could they?

Update 1/30: Leonard Pitts, Jr. nails it (registration required).