Press Action ::: John Kerry, The Manchurian Candidate

Friday, April 30, 2004

John Kerry, The Manchurian Candidate

By Jordy Cummings

A note to liberals — I want Bush out of the White House as bad as you do. I am not a big fan of the nationalist rhetoric of Ralph Nader. Now onto the fun stuff.

Four years have passed since that fateful spring in which the unstable but lovable John McCain, the Weekly Standard’s dream, a right-wing social democrat mixing anti-corporate rhetoric with hawkishness was creeping up on George W. Bush in the Republican primaries. Rumors started to circulate — with or without the help of Karl Rove, in the far-right conspiracy networks, that McCain was a Manchurian Candidate, that he was in effect a “Sonderkommando” when he was imprisoned by the VC, narking on his fellow POWs for special treatment. A few theories in the Free Republic and other far-right circuits even claimed that McCain was brainwashed and his message about corporate America was proof that he was now “playing a game of solitaire” in the elegant phrase of Richard Condon’s book and John Frankenheimer’s ur-thriller film The Manchurian Candidate.

All of this was of course a mix of nonsense and conjecture — though, like Wolfowitz’s masters thesis that argued that Israel must be prevented from acquiring WMDs, it is not often spoken about that Bush may have been chosen by Republicans because he seemed less hawkish than McCain’s “national greatness” conservatism. This is all moot now, but discussion will now be centered on Frankenheimer’s film, the ur-text, the communist manifesto of Cold War liberalism. The basic tenets advanced by this film — about to be remade with Denzel Washington in the Sinatra role — were that right-wingers could not be trusted to fight the cold war, that they were caught up in their McCarthyism which was either proof that they were in league with the commies or that they were in fact using that league to advance their own authoritarian agenda. What is left is a radical acceptance of the status quo, a smirking Arthur Schlesinger inviting you to join the ACLU for the sake of Romanian dissidents.

Schlesinger is still around and he in fact has been quite a dissident, comparatively, as has John Kenneth Galbraith and other scions of the old pre-Vietnam Cold War liberalism of the Congress of Cultural Freedom, which incidentally was evoked not weeks after September the Eleventh by the influence-seeking Peter Beinart, editor of the New Republic. It can be noted with some concern that old cold war liberals for the most part have learned their lesson — that even Helen Caldicott is working with Bob McNamara, which is not quite atonement. But the point that is being made is that the Schlesingers and Vidals (Gore claimed it was Vietnam that radicalized him, though I would suggest otherwise) are well to the left of the modern day acceptable Altermanian liberalism.

Cynical bourgeois liberals see wartime as a way to prove that they are more patriotic than the right. They were glad that the commies were kicked off the AFL-CIO board. They are glad to ask for more NED funding, thinking that even if the NED serves American policy, it can be used to “help progressive movements” as the liberal bomber George Packer recently suggested in the Rachel Corrie-slandering Mother Jones. Love them love them love them, as Phil Ochs would say.

The danger of this message should not be lost on anyone with even a modicum of history. Seen detachedly, The Manchurian Candidate as noted, is an ur-thriller, and probably Frank Sinatra’s best performance. But a deeper look can expose exactly how consent-manufacturing messages are being formed by the liberal elites, excited for their first consolidation of power since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. It is behind this that they recruit the best and brightest fence-sitting lefties to say specific things but not anything challenging. Is their going to be an hour with Palestinian spokespeople on Air America? There have been Al Dershowitz marathons after all. Point should be well taken from here on in.

The film follows two men upon their return from the Korean war, who in different ways, found out they were brainwashed by the “Chi-Coms” to be programmed for future use. It all comes to Frank Sinatra’s character, along with others — of course including an African American and a Jew — while in dreams. The platoon, on some form of psychedelic, are programmed to believe they are at a New Jersey garden party. In fact, they are in an auditorium full of a motley crew of communists, and Third World leaders, a sort of crude simulacra of Bandung. Perhaps Frankenheimer was attempting to suggest that communists were often “garden variety” liberals in disguise, but detachedly he clearly is poking fun both at Bandung and at the notion that Bandung and the Third World were secretly brainwashing Americans. The “comrades” are garish, mustachioed fellows and almost play for comic relief. Any Red who watched this film at the time could not have but smirked at the parody of Comintern rhetoric.

The soldiers of the platoon and Sinatra form one arc of the story, the other formed by the soldier who is actually turned into an assassin. We see flashbacks of the Chou-En Lai look-alike pushing the soldier into killing a few of his friends with his bare hands. All of the soldiers were implanted thus with a story that allowed them to be released, and part of their commie created cover was that the assassin was a Purple Heart deserving hero. His programmer and American controller turns out to be his mother, the wife of a man clearly modeled to be Joe McCarthy. This right-wing drunk waves around lists of communists and does whatever he can to attain a position of power, helped along the way by his wife, a Lynne Cheney type played by Angela Lansbury. All the while he is being prepared to attain the position of presidency after his stepson, the Manchurian Candidate, is programmed through playing cards to assassinate the president. Along the way, the candidate develops liberal sympathies and hatred for his right-wing background, and falls for the daughter of a liberal congressman who brags of his membership in the ACLU.

Sinatra and company save the day, but not before it is exposed that the leader of the American right wing is either a dupe of the commies or is duping them into using their technique to simply attain hegemonic power. Kind of like how Bush is either in league with the Saudis (thus, crudely, the terrorists) and is either using the Saudis against themselves or being used by them, both sides probably have their own assumption. The sad thing is that it is true, but it is of course also true that he is using or being used by Sharon who recently has used Prince Bandar to forward the Israeli propaganda assertion that Arafat “turned down a generous offer.” The deal seems to be Bandar and Sharon playing a game of whoopsy daisy with Bush, and probably grinning at their international Mafia retreats, but I digress. The very notion that it is true that Bush is in league with the Saudis to an extent is being used to form a vital piece of liberal rhetoric that is as if not more disturbing than Bush.

The first postulate is truthful — that Bush is in league with Saudis, through family connections, friendliness with Bandar, who knows. The second is that the Democrats and Richard Clarke and the Al Shifa bombers and draft loving Chuck Rangel would be better at fighting terrorism than Bush. Arguable, since both parties are committed to a unilateral approach, the Democrats just using better propaganda to not piss off allies, and having liberal cred to have less dissent when they commit war crimes such as the Sudan factory bombing. So if anything, of course there are international intelligence-based alternatives to Bush’s anti-Al Qaeda strategy, alternatives that have worked well for many states that have suffered worse terrorism than the States. But the Democrats are not saying a word about a Rapid Reaction Force and suborning U.S. soldiers to peacekeeping teams that are truly peacekeepers and led by generals that aren’t necessarily American and surely will have to have security precautions to prevent CIA (and other agencies from other nations) infiltration. In short, the only alternative to unilateralism is cosmopolitanism, and Kerry is no more Cosmopolitan than the Steven Emerson-endorsing Richard Clarke.

The third postulate of the new Cold War liberal narrative is that Ashcroft sucks and that the Patriot Act has gone too far. True, very true, but one doesn’t hear a word about how Clinton created these circumstances through the “anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act” after the Oklahoma bombing, or how Janet Reno was probably — in deed, if not perception — worse than Ashcroft. Then we get centrist think tanks with grinning Donna Brazile types talking about how they will “reform” the Patriot Act, but no talk of abolishing it. Some have suggested renaming Homeland Security “civil security” surely more charming and less fascist sounding, but no difference in the fundamental bipartisan cold war attitude towards post cold war realities. Thus there is talk about the ACLU, but not the Lawyers Guild or the Center for Constitutional Rights. The ACLU itself, not a few years before the original Manchurian Candidate, kicked many “communists” (CP members or Trots, even just plain old radicals) off of its board.

The fourth postulate of the new Cold War liberalism is that if the first three postulates are true, then liberals have to develop a “Double Awareness” to use Susan Buck-Morrs’ phrase of enemies on “both sides.” and in an Arrendtian twist, the enemies may seem to be diametrically opposed, but in fact are in cahoots. This has the benefit, as noted, of being somewhat true. But the way it is twisted in the new Cultural Cold War rhetoric, with Kerry as its champion, is that the right wingers aren’t wrong because they are right wing. They are wrong because their right-wing rhetoric is either ineffective or duplicitous. This has the benefit of being as Straussian as it gets, because it can allow a “noble truth” as it were to be turned into a policy that has no real changes except perhaps pleasant press conferences with Paul Martin and Joschka Fischer, perhaps a liberal judge, and more American deaths, plus perhaps a draft and China deflating the U.S. currency. But it will be better than Bush, of course. So vote Kerry. Be American. Huzzah.

One assumes that the remade Manchurian Candidate will be sexy and radical seeming enough for even In These Times to give it a good review and report on how it shows the proletarian realities of soldier’s lives. It is being directed by Jonathan Demme, an able lensman. Unfortunately, Demme, who was part of the Hollywood antiwar movement in the case of Iraq, is not being critical enough to really throw a pox on both of their houses — that is the Democlican and Republicrat houses. Instead, he may think he is being progressive, but he is more dangerous than Rush Limbaugh, if you want to look at it objectively. Remember the Bosnia Consensus? David Rieff and Michael Ignatieff are about to take over America and it won’t be pretty.

Jordy Cummings, editor of Pure Polemics, lives in Toronto and can be reached at yorgos33ca@yahoo.ca.

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