From: "Steve Rosenthal" <smrose@exis.net>
To: PSN@CSF.COLORADO.EDU
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:07:35 +0000
Subject: A patriotic epiphany?
The official mourning and mass media attention given the two
security police killed at the Capitol building inWashington came 
exactly one year after the death of Princess Diana set off both a 
media frenzy and lengthy discussion on PSN.  I wasn't quite sure what 
to make of the immense effort made to memorialize the two officers 
until I read a  New York Times op-ed column by Maureen Dowd titled 
"Proud words:  My dad was a cop."  Dowd put it all together for me.

Dowd first described the 1960s:  "In the Vietnam era, with
the National Guard killing kids at Kent State, with the Chicago
police billyclubbing yippies, with the stench of tear gas and class
hatred everywhere...Cops were pigs.  The military was fascist."

But Dowd thinks that the reaction to the death of John Gibson and 
Jacob Chestnut shows that times have really changed:  "As I watched 
their memorial service, it struck me that my generation had come a 
long way from the days when anyone in uniform was a fit target..."

Cops have been rehabilitated:  "Old Mayor Daley is dead.  Long live 
Sipowitz..."

But the ruling class "narrative"  is not only about their effort to 
rebuild support for domestic law and order.  It is also about the 
other "bodies of armed men and women," the military.

Dowd continues:  "Steven Spielberg has been giving interviews, 
talking about having made "Saving Private Ryan" to honor the men who 
fought in World War II and risked so much for freedom...Seeing the 
long queues for the patriotic "Saving Private Ryan,' it seems a long 
time from the days of the military as fascist."

Historian Stephen Ambrose, whose books  about World War II soldiers
Steven Spielberg used in producing "Saving Private Ryan," said on 
National Public Radio last week that this movie shows soldiers what 
they need to know about combat in order for them to be ready to fight 
the next war.  Tom Hanks, star of the movie, has said on many 
occasion that he wants to act in movies that rebuild patriotic unity 
in American society.

Dowd, Spielberg, Ambrose, Hanks, and the ruling class for whom they
are such loyal, devoted, and highly paid mouthpieces, are giving us a
pretty good glimpse of the future.  It is a future of fascism and
war, in which police and soldiers will be doing a lot of killing and
dying.  The sharpening of the contradiction between the competitive
requirements of the bosses and the needs of the workers was reflected
in the recent GM strike.  The spreading global crisis of
overproduction is reflected in the new outbreaks of war in Kosovo
and Kashmir.

Whatever the stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress may turn out to be, the 
person who becomes President after Bill Clinton will continue and 
accelerate growth of fascism in the U.S. and preparations for 
imperialist war.  Maureen Dowd may claim that almost everybody has 
jumped on this patriotic bandwagon, but that is far from true.  All 
of us have a responsibility to make sure that it never comes true.

Steve Rosenthal