In his latest article for Newsweek, Rick Perlstein argues that it’s time to pull down yet another flag that is racist and, therefore, another vehicle for hate. So which flag is the latest to be called out in the liberal game of “Take Down that Flag”? It’s the one shown below.
The flag was created to show of solidarity with members of the U.S. military who were either taken prisoner of war (POWs) or listed as missing in action (MIA). It was designed by the National League of Families and officially recognized by the Congress in conjunction with the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, “as the symbol of our Nation’s concern and commitment to resolving as fully as possible the fates of Americans still prisoner, missing and unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, thus ending the uncertainty for their families and the Nation.”
So what makes it racist and a “symbol of deceit”? Interestingly, Perlstein never gets around to explaining that in his rather lengthy article. He does try to make the case — unconvincingly — that the flag was a propaganda tool used by the Nixon administration to try to blunt the negative attention it was receiving because of the highly unpopular Vietnam War.
You know that racist flag? The one that supposedly honors history but actually spreads a pernicious myth? And is useful only to venal right-wing politicians who wish to exploit hatred by calling it heritage? It’s past time to pull it down.
Oh, wait. You thought I was referring to the Confederate flag. Actually, I’m talking about the POW/MIA flag.
I told the story in the first chapter of my 2014 book The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan: how Richard Nixon invented the cult of the “POW/MIA” in order to justify the carnage in Vietnam in a way that rendered the United States as its sole victim….
That damned flag: It’s a shroud. It smothers the complexity, the reality, of what really happened in Vietnam.
We’ve come to our senses about that other banner of lies. It’s time to do the same with this.
I could devote some space here to explaining all that is flawed and wrong about the article, but John Nolte does a highly effective job of that at Breitbart:
How doornail dead is the left-wing Newsweek? How over, how buried, how room temperature, how worm-food, liquidated, snuffed out, toes up, terminated, bucket-kicked is Newsweek? So dead all the owners and publishers have to grab attention is to troll nothing less than the POW/MIA flag. And as racist, no less.
Some trolling goes so far — so beyond despicable and desperate, you’re committing a moral crime by rewarding it with a link; so we are not going to do that here. What matters isn’t the left-wing lunacy that would float such an idea, what matters is the subtext — what Newsweek’s attack on an iconic symbol designed specifically to honor those who must never be forgotten really means.
What it means is that at long last Newsweek is over.
Newsweek has already died one print death, in 2012, only to reemerge in 2014, with a radically reduced circulation. With propagandist gibberish like this article, how much longer can the rag survive?
Cross-posted at Eagle Rising
