New in PJ Media:
America has never been in such desperate straits. America has never faced such immense external threats while suffering from so many wrongheaded legislators and enemies within. A strong case can be made for both of those statements, but it isn’t as if no one was prescient enough to see where we were headed when America was much stronger and more confident than it is now. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, a novelist wrote a series of books depicting our nation in severe crisis that with a few changes could have been written yesterday. Allen Drury, almost completely forgotten today, saw all this coming from miles off.
In 1959, Drury wrote a novel of political intrigue in Washington, “Advise and Consent,” that became a bestseller and was made into a hit movie in 1962. Emboldened by success, Drury wrote a sequel, and then a sequel to the sequel, and so on until there were six books in all, each one showing more forthrightly and compellingly than the last the dangers of leftism, the subversiveness of the establishment media, and the end result of the growing political divisions in American society.
By the early 1970s, when the final novel in the series, “The Promise of Joy,” was published, that same establishment media was thoroughly sick of Drury and his insolent questioning of their fabled (and even then, quite fictional) objectivity. Time magazine’s April 1975 review of the final book was scathing: “Allen Drury promises this will be the last of his “Advise and Consent” novels. That is a mercy. The author’s comicbook view of humanity and reflex cold-war xenophobia, as well as the clothespins he calls characters and hangs out on his reactionary line, have long ceased to be amusing targets. Drury, in fact, somewhat resembles those Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender in 1945 and spent 30 years with scorpions and coconuts.”
By 1975, you see, the best and the brightest were sure that the Cold War was just right-wing fantasy, and that the Soviet Union was ready to lock arms with us and march together into the glorious future. It wasn’t until a half-century later that the left, casting about for a weapon to use against Donald Trump, discovered that the post-Soviet Russians were a very grave threat indeed, far more dangerous than the most rock-ribbed Cold Warrior (like Drury) had ever described them as being. But when the actual Soviets were threatening the entire world, the Western Left was busy telling us we were all paranoid.
There is more. Read the rest here.
Transmaster says
If you go back in History to the late 1930’s we had a similar thing going on in the US. Thanks to a leftist New Deal congress and a President who empowered them we had the Isolationists. This lead to a hollowed out military that practiced with wooden machine guns, shooting at trucks the had a signs on the indicating they were tanks. The US Navy, thank the the Paris Treaty was limited in tonnage to a few old battleships, and had 100’s of other surface vessels in mothballs. The only reason The US Navy has the Aircraft carriers was the Treaty of Paris did not cover them and 2 heavy cruiser hauls were converted. The Isolationist telegraphed to the Axis Allies, and Russia we were not going to have anything to do with them. “let Europe fight their own wars”. The latent racism against the Japanese on the West coast was a seasoning in this dangerous stew. all of this lead to World War 2. What is happening right now is scarcely like things were back in the late 1930’s except the Washington DC clowns running things now have the power to lay waste to the entire planet if they get backed into a corner.
PMK says
You might be overstating the case, just a bit. In the 1930’s the US was hardly isolationist. Thanks to past wars, we had bases in the Philippines We had annexed Hawaii in the 1890’s.Immigration had been curtailed after the US experience in WWI. Large German communities in the US had been supporting the Axis during WWI. There is a school of thought that says we should never have gotten into WWI to begin with. The US was hardly a superpower. The British Empire was still alive and well. There was a reasonable fear that another European conflict could bring the US down with it, just as WWII pretty much brought down the British Empire.
The power to lay waste the planet has been with us since at least the 1960’s..The US is not the only country in the nuclear club. Worry more about China and Iran.
Keith O says
There is a comment by Albert Einstein that is still relevant with todays populace, especially our political masters.
“I believe two things to be infinite, the universe and the stupidity of humans. I am however uncertain of the former”
The more things change, the more they stay the same!!!