Slate: Karina Longworth- The Hollywood Ten Paid The Price For Refusing to Answer The $64 Question

Herbert Biberman & Samuel Ornitz

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review

I blog about political correctness and what I at least see as fascism on a regular basis. Perhaps one piece a week, because its such an important issue today with free speech coming under assault practically everywhere in America and even on college campus’ where free speech needs to be at it’s strongest so young people can learn and share views with each other and get as good of an education as possible. But just like Caucasian-Americans don’t own a monopoly on racism and other forms of bigotry in America, the Far-Left doesn’t own a monopoly on political correctness and fascism. Back in the late 1940s and really through the 1950s Americans were under attack from the Far-Right in this country for simply believing what they believed and who they associated with.

It started in Congress in 1947 with the House of Representatives starting an investigation with their so-called Un-American Activities Committee doing an investigation about Communists in Hollywood. And sure there were Socialists in Hollywood and perhaps even Communists. But so what. They were also Americans who went to work everyday producing films and other entertainment that had nothing to do with the Cold War and certainly were not on the side of Russia and other Communists states back then. At least in the sense of propping them up and trying to make them look better than they actually were. They were Hollywood employees. Actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, who simply went to work everyday producing a lot of good films that people wanted to see and paid a lot of money to see. Who ideologically were Socialists who backed Far-Left candidates and causes in America.

The Far-Right and right-wing version of political correctness which is a form of fascism is that people who don’t share their view of the world and what America should be and be about and don’t agree with them ideologically, are somehow Un-American. And not deserving of the same constitutional rights as other Americans. Meaning the right-wing and especially Neoconservative fascists on the Far-Right who see Senator Joe McCarthy as a hero and even speak highly of Russian President Vladimir Putin today for his crackdowns on opposition media in Russia and homosexuality in Russia. And are now backing Donald Trump for president. People like Far-Right columnist and author Ann Coulter. Who is the real-life Donald Trump who actually believes what The Donald says. Even if Trump doesn’t believe his own propaganda.

In 1947 you had the House call members of the so-called Hollywood Ten to testify in front of the Un-American Activities Committee and asked what would normally be seen as an innocent question. “Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” The problem is they were asked to do this under oath and on live national TV. When broadcast news was still an infant. With the whole world (at least in America especially in Hollywood) listening. With Hollywood executives and studio heads being anti-Communist and not able to afford to be associated with Communists or anyone else on the Far-Left in America. With these Hollywood employees having a choice to either plead the fifth and look very suspicious, or admit to being Socialists and risk not being able to work again ever in Hollywood. Even though most of them had kids to take care of and needed to work and earn a living.

The Hollywood Ten weren’t asked if they had committed any crimes or even knew any criminals. Or even associated with organize criminals and mobsters. They were put on trial for their political beliefs. They were considered guilty by association and communist political beliefs. Without any trial even though every American is guaranteed under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to free speech and the constitutional right to believe whatever they want to. Whatever you think of political correctness on many of our college campus’ right now that is done by private individuals. People getting together in trying to eliminate and censor ideas that they not only disagree with, but find offensive. What happened to the Hollywood Ten back in the 1940s and 1950s was a form of state-fascism. American citizens put on trial simply for their political views.

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The Onion: Nathan Eckert- ‘The Iraq War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region & Set Off a Global Shockwave of Anti-Americanism’

Source:The Onion– debating the War in Iraq.

Source:The Daily Review 

“George W. Bush may think that a war against Iraq is the solution to our problems, but the reality is, it will only serve to create far more.”

From The Onion

“Bill Maher rips all of those bad predictions from “think tanks” and tells them they can’t call themselves think tanks if they are stupid. “To those of you who dreamed up the Iraq conflict, and predicted we’d be greeted as liberators, and that we wouldn’t need a lot of troops, and that Iraqi oil would pay for the war, the WMDs would be found, looting wasn’t problematic, that the insurgency was ib its last throws, and that the whole bloody mess wouldn’t turn into a civil war…

…YOU HAVE TO STOP MAKING PREDICTIONS!!!”

Richard Perle thought we could win Iraq with 40,000 troops.

Paul Wolfowitz predicted in 2003 that within a year the grateful people of Baghdad would name some grand square in their fine city after President Bush.”

Source:Renegade Poster– Bill Maher on the War in Iraq.

From the Renegade Poster 

Looking back at the Iraq War from over a twelve-year perspective it reminds me of someone who knows a guy down the street, who knows this man has beaten up a lot f people and at the least is suspected of murdering some people in his home. So lets say this guy Joe, decides to invade this bad guy’s home and beats let’s say Tom up and holds him hostage there at Tom’s own home until a more suitable homeowner can be installed to live there and bring justice to Tom.

And even though Tom’s friends come over to try to save Tom and Joe takes them out as well and in the process perhaps Tom’s wife and kids are seriously hurt if not killed in the process for being there and Joe thinking they are in the way of bringing justice to Tom. When innocent people are killed in war they are called innocent bystanders. And a cost of war.

What America did to Iraq in the spring of 2003 is what Joe did to Tom in my hypothetical. We invaded their territory and killed millions of Iraqi’s simply because they had an evil government led by an evil dictator. And the Bush Administration thought (if you want to call that thinking) the price of losing innocent Iraqi lives was worth eliminating an evil dictator.

Weapons of mass destruction? Well not in Iraq as it turns out, because the United Nations as well as the U.S. weapons inspectors did their jobs in the late 1990s and early 2000s and had Saddam’s weapons removed. Remember, the Iraqi Military didn’t even put up a fight against the American forces during the invasion. They all rolled over, not to get their bellies rubbed like my cat does everyday, but to surrender and not be killed.

What was all this for again? Well originally if you believe all the propaganda from the Bush Administration in 2002, it was about preventing Iraq from becoming a nuclear power and to get rid of their other WMD. Chemical weapons that Moammar Gadhafi still had and used against his own people in the Libyan Civil War of 2010-11.

But Saddam no longer had weapons like that to use against Americans or Iraqis. And the worst thing about this colossal disaster, (10 on the Richter scale when it comes to the world championship of mistakes) is that the weapons inspectors were telling the Bush Administration that Saddam not only had zero nuclear weapons, but they couldn’t find other WMD as well.

WMD, was an excuse for invading Tom’s home and preventing Tom from hurting and killing other innocent people in the future. But what the Bush’s really wanted to do was to eliminate Saddam and at all costs.

Seriously, who are the brainiacs who dreamed up the Iraq War? And how many weeks straight were they up drinking nothing but Red Bull and Starbucks Frappuccino’s developing this grand scheme of imposing liberal democracy on a society that still believed that women should always cover their faces in public and wear nothing but long black dresses and long black suits so no one can discover that they are women.

As well as a country that was actually scared of freedom like an inmate whose been in prison since he was 18 and now finally getting out in his sixties being told he now has to take care of himself. I mean you don’t have to be a foreign policy expert to see flaws in this grand strategy that has more holes in it than a Chevy Caprice that is parked in Watts or Compton, California.

Iraq, is even a unique country even for Arabia and the broader Middle East. Different Arab population, as well as a country that has other major ethnic groups in it and several different religious groups.

A country the size of California in the heart of the Middle East. That pre-Iraq War the only form of government they knew was life in prison. So what the Iraq War did was pardon all of these innocent prisoners who’ve all been in prison for 40-60 years and tell them: “you’re free to go and good luck to you. You’re certainly going to need it! Oh by the way, that free society we were talking about, doesn’t exist! Ha, ha! Fooled you! Yeah, no more military, or law enforcement to deal with, Just murderous thugs who kill people for the hell of it. Wish you best!”

Nathan Eckert, (assuming that is his real name. You never know with The Onion.) was damn right about the consequences of the Iraq War in the early days of it in 2003. But if you’re a Neoconservative, you only think in terms: “they are either with us, or against us! They love, or hate America.” So of course a Neoconservative wouldn’t listen to this, because in their peanut brain size mind they don’t believe in intelligence and evidence. Just neoconservative political fundamentalism.

Neoconservatives believe: “trust us, it will all work out in the end! Don’t trust the evidence, because in your heart you know we’re right!” That is not thinking, because thinking requires evidence.

The Iraq War was simply based on blind faith that since the supporters of this war believed they were on the right side of history and were doing the right thing, that is all they needed. And it has been multiple trillion-dollar mistake. And has cost Iraq the country we were supposed to save, millions of their own lives.

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