Once Again Oliver Stone Hypes his New TV Documentary: Time to Tell CBS to Cancel It
As for the truth about Wallace, it is rather simple. Wallace bought the fiction hook, line and sinker that Stalin sought only peace, and that giving him what he wanted would assure a peaceful future and stave off the war Truman sought. He ran for president in 1948 on a third-party ticket, the Progressive Party, that was secretly formed and controlled by the CPUSA, and that was devoted first and foremost to trying to gain popular support for a pro-Soviet foreign policy, one based on appeasement of Stalin and that would support the Soviet Union’s attempt to gain control not only of Eastern Europe, but of nations like France and Italy as well. I wrote the following in the article I cited at the beginning of this post, and it bears repetition:
Not only would there have been a Cold War, [if Henry Wallace had become president] but it would have put the United States on the same side as Joseph Stalin, and helped the Soviet dictator gain his goal of not only creating imitations of Moscow in the so-called “Peoples’ Democracies” of Eastern Europe, but enabling him as well to subvert the established Western democracies existing in countries like Italy and France. With Wallace at the helm, the United States would have had a president advised by the remaining secret Communists in the government, such as Wallace’s top advisor, the Soviet agent Harry Magdoff, who subsequently went on to edit the Marxist publication Monthly Review after his years in government came to an end. Having established already that he in fact supports the other side in Vietnam, it is perhaps not surprising that Kuznick [and Stone]also supports the Soviet side in the emerging Cold War in the 1950s.
Stone says he will show how much “Roosevelt and Stalin had in common,” and that he reexamines “the emergence of the American empire.” And of course, he argues that there would have been no Cold War had Wallace become president.
Stone’s history is one, as he proudly says, that condemns Woodrow Wilson for the repression of radicals, especially the violent I.W.W., shows an America as a nation that tolerated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and the like. Now of course, all this is true, and again, is taught to most students. America had as a nation a long way to go to get to our present day and time, in which we have an African-American president and the old racist social structure in the Old South and the preeminence of the Klan have long passed into history. But what Stone obviously wants to paint is a portrait of a racist, backwards and imperialist country, one which could have been saved had it turned in earlier days to the likes of people like Henry Wallace.
Stone thinks “one of the worst things that ever happened to the U.S. is losing the Soviet Union as an equalizing balance and enemy…a countervailing force.” Since its demise, Stone is sorry that we could not be held back, and hence, that the “military industrial complex” was able to continue “the concept that we have enemies that threaten us.” (my emphasis)
Look at that phrase carefully: “Enemies that threaten us.” I guess as Stone sees things, the United States has only imaginary enemies, not real ones like the jihadists, the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, and, most of all, the Islamist theocracy of Iran. Instead he thinks it is all “paranoia..about terrorists,about Hussein…and they kept going.”
And in case you wonder whom he supports for chief executive now that good old Henry Wallace is not with us — you guessed right — it’s Ron Paul, whom he calls “the only one …who’s saying anything intelligent about the future of the world.” Stone asks: “Why is it necessary for every candidate- except for Ron Paul-to pay obeisance to this hypocrisy that the U.S. is a good force in the world?” To him, the US stands for “the right of empire, the right of force.”
Surprise, surprise. Far Left and Far Right once again come together on behalf of the most extreme and anti-American candidate available.
Here is my suggestion. Write to CBS — the owner of Showtime — and ask them to spare us the attempt to provide a one-sided propagandistic history of the American past, one that will harm the understanding of a new generation and serve to promote a new hatred of our country. Ask them to cancel the series, and if you subscribe to the network, think about cancelling your subscription and tell them why you are doing this. To them it’s all the bottom line. They got well deserve plaudits for the excellent Homeland, perhaps the best new series on television. To succeed, the network does not need Oliver Stone’s history.
“the same publisher that ironically published Dick Cheney’s memoir.”
The same publisher which, coincidentally, published Dick Cheney’s memoir? Or did the publisher publish Dick Cheney’s memoir in a paradoxical or deliberately dissembling way? The publisher, perhaps, didn’t believe any of Mr Cheney’s claims but thought it would be amusing to see how many readers were taken in, or wittily used ink which will disappear any day now?
Well spotted! Not only is “ironically” in there, but it has no commas before and aft. An odd sentence indeed.
Personally, I would go with “interestingly enough” instead of “coincidentally.”
At the end of WW II America had an incredibly rapid demobilization of its troops in Europe; Stalin kept what he could and those countries only finally shed occupation by the Soviet Union when they revolted.
That is not an argument that Roosevelt and Stalin had anything in common on this issue or that America was an imperialist entity; quite the opposite.
Stone was at one time a really bright filmmaker but when he got into his Roswell mode it all fell apart, starting with the Kennedy film I guess. Stone had a really nice run from ’86 to ’91 and it’s been all downhill since.
One wonders when the Left will get tired of its Marx-based Critical Pedagogy which portrays success as racist, moral failure and failure as nobility incapable of bigotry; I can get more nuanced views about human nature from The Flintstones and I mean that quite literally.
Like a lot of people, when they become more senior, they tend to drift off into another dimension.
Such is most likely the case for Mr Grassy Know-it-all.
At the end of WW II America had an incredibly rapid demobilization of its troops in Europe; Stalin kept what he could and those countries only finally shed occupation by the Soviet Union when they revolted.
Why do people put so much attention to the post-WWII world? It is as if the Soviet Union was not expansive and imperialist from its very inception. Already in the early 1920-s the Communist International was created exactly for the purpose of subversion and destabilization of governments abroad. It is exactly then the Communist revolution/coup was sponsored and organized by commies in Germany. CPUSA was not the only Communist party run from Moscow via the International, there were much more of them: in France, Germany, etc. Kho-Chi-Minh was a Communist International officer. A lot of people in the West were soviet spies.
The Jihadists & friends are real enemies, and Iran (like Afghanistan) is a dangerously backward society. Rest assured though, Mr. Stone may actually know something about Iran’s ridiculous government.
yes, we have real enemies. dealing with them in a real way has been to the world’s great benefit of having an american superpower.
the problem with oliver stone or any of this fake history is that truth gets mixed in with junk thinking and that is how fakery becomes a commonly held belief. now that we have so many outlets for opinion it’s worse than it could ever have been.
The Untrue History of the U.S.
Stoner really needs to go away. He’s been a delusional goofball since El-Puerco-Lips Now
You’re thinking of Platoon. Apocalypse Now was produced and directed by Coppola.
Stone had nothing to do with Apocalypse Now; that was John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola. His was Platoon.
Wouldn’t you just LOVE to see a voluntary mass migration of the more obnoxious lefties to Cuba or Venezuela, or some other worker’s paradise? Oliver Stone and Barbara Walters could go to Cuba to be “free” (she once posited the idea that “if literacy rates are any measure of freedom, Cuba is one of the freeest nations on Earth”). They should take Joy Behar with them. Sean Penn could go to Venezuela and live in the castle with his buddy, the new Emperor Hugo. That would be poetic justice on a grand scale. Alex Baldwin of course, would have to go to North Korea, just because Trey Parker has deemed it so. Susan Sarandon would get to work in a worker’s paradise, the FoxConn factory in Shenzhen, China, with Van Jones, Cass Sunstien and Howard Zinn. Noam Chomsky and Ward Churchill could live in Gaza, to teach the freedom loving rebels of Palestine how to oppose evil oppressors. And Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn could go (okay not voluntarily, but after being convicted of murder) to the collectivist paradise in Leavenworth Kansas known as the Federal Penitentiary (or better yet, SuperMax in Florence Colorado). The silence following these departures would be pure heaven, and this would probably reduce global warming, too, as less hot air would be needlessly spilled into the atmosphere.
Do you have this dream often?
What a great dream! Can we send many in the current administration in a similar direction in Nov?
Communists were always good at propaganda. Stone proves the point. What I could never understand is why do people like that live here? If we are so very horrible, then go live in Cuba. I’m sure the Castro brothers would love having him there. Gucci leftists like this always gave me a swift pain. I guess I’ll do what I did to these people when we were actually living throught the Cold War, and that is just ignore them. I just hope some idiot teachers in high schools or colleges don’t use this tripe to infect the minds of young kids. But you know they will, and kids will eat it up with a spoon, especially if they think they’re getting school credit for it.
Perhaps the best documentary series ever made for television was The World at War. Kids should watach that to see the real origins of the Cold War.
That and Victory At Sea. I watched both when I was in elementary school when they came on late at night on weekends if mom would let me stay up.
Will Michelle Obama be narrating alone, or will it be both Michelle and Nancy Pelosi?
But don’t ever question their patriotism…
Wallace was not FDR’s first Vice-President, but his second. John Garner was his first. Wallace was Secretary of Agriculture from 1933 to 1940 and is responsible for the USDA’s heavy hand on agriculture policy and production. The plans he and FDR made to “adjust” the crisis in the farm states led to the Wickard v. Filburn commerce clause decision that gave the federal government nearly complete power to regulate commerce, even over one as Wickard who raised more grain than allowed by the federal plan, intending to use it on his own farm rather than sell it, because it made up the “interstate market” the national supply and demand curve the USDA was attempting to manage. Of course Wallace is an “unsung” hero of the progressives and Stone’s ilk.
‘Now, Stone argues this history documentary will be “a liberal progressive history of the U.S.”’
So, it’s a comedy?
“So, it’s a comedy?” no more like a tradedy!
But they see it as the inverse. Liberals see everything upside down and the truth means nothing, it is all about feelings.
No, it passed comedy and went straight to farce.
CBS will cancel it if they can’t sell commercials to show it, unless they can’t buy any other filler for dirt cheap. They can’t be expected to actually produce something of their own anymore. That would be too much like actual work and who do they have that would try any of that? I saw Dan Rather on the tube tonight and I still hate CBS, so my opinion is probably biased.
It’s on showtime; no commercials. They’ll only cancel it if they see that it may lose them subscribers. The sad thing is that other good shows on the same network may save it by keeping viewers subscribing to the network.
We caused the Soviets to violently suppress all the nations of Eastern Europe, and later suppress peoples’ revolutions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. We caused North Korea to invade South Korea. We provoked the North Vietnamese into invading South Vietnam. We made the Soviets target Western Europe with SS-20’s so they would look real bad. And now Stone has uncovered even more of our crimes against humanity. The guy’s a genius.
I remember doing all that stuff. I also remember how we made Hitler invade all those countries and exterminate all those Jews even though he didn’t really want to.
Pfft. The Soviet Bear was misunderstood and just wanted to give everyone a big hug? Pull the other one.
FDR thought Stalin just wanted peace and as my grandfather (channelling Winston Churchill) quipped me to me ‘Yes, a piece of Poland, a piece of Czechoslovakia etc etc etc’.
OK, now I remember – this is the old “sympathy for Hitler and Stalin” thing he was on about. “Secret” and “Unknown” History? God, please spare us.
What we have here is another liberal Hollywood airhead who decides that because he is ignorant of history, everyone else is, too. Furthermore, if he was unaware of certain unpleasant facts of history it means they were carefully hidden from him – and everyone else – by powerful people with sinister motives. And so it’s up to him, the heroic leftist, to reveal the Truth to the ignorant masses. The result, of course, will be the American people’s complete acquiescence in the Progressive agenda.
Trouble is, what he’s peddling aren’t facts. Those are available in any decent public library. No, he’s selling an *interpretation* of facts – the leftist interpretation. That, too, has been widely available for many years to anyone who’s interested. So I’m not sure why Stone thinks he’s dropping a blockbuster, blowing the lid off decades of “official” secrecy and obfuscation.
I must admit that since the implosion of the USSR it is very difficult to bludgeon Liberals with it. The reason being the latest crop of Left Wing Loons was born after the Clown Empire collapsed. Learn from history or hit the Replay.
The left has to keep pushing their lies. If they stop then their whole “big lie” will collapse. Look at everything the left does: push racial stife, envy, tension, agitation, distortion of US history, denigration of America, violence, fear, victimization, victims vs. Americans, the more complete dumbing down of each successive generation and so on in order to get what they want: a marxist America. And now they are at the precipice of victory; the re-election of Dear Leader will complete the hope and change they have sought for nearly 100 years.
Don’t believe me: Take a good look at us. Then as yourself why the left allows or better said foments and supports something corrosive or ruinous to America to happen-OWS, NBP, etc? And yes I said the “left allows” on purpose because if we on the right had the stones, we would have stopped them 70 years ago or at least 50.
So Stone is just doing what the left has to do is asking him to do to help the cause.
“Surprise, surprise. Far Left and Far Right once again come together on behalf of the most extreme and anti-American candidate available.”
I’m in agreement with a lot of what Ron Paul says, but the man is simply incapable of adjusting his ideological tenets to deal with real world situations, and I think he would be an absolute disaster as POTUS…not that he has any chance at all of ever becoming POTUS (fingers crossed).
I’m totally in favor of the idea of American neutrality, and non-involvement in Old World affairs, but not after an event like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. At that point, isolationism becomes idiocy, and I don’t think Paul is capable of seeing that. He’s basically a 21st century version of Jeanette Rankin. Caveat: He did vote in favor of authorizing military action against Al Qaida, so he’s not quite as crazy as Jeanette…but, he’s too close for comfort.
As for Stone, I don’t care what he says or does, but if he’s going to be honest, he ought to note that all (or most) of the things he hates (Cold War, U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Woody Wilson’s various lunacies) were pretty much 100% the work of liberals and/or Democrats..IOW, the work of guys who think like him.
DS: Cong. Paul said he would never use the military. Please read his mission statement and foreign policy ideas. What he did say is that we should no longer be the world’s policemen. He has said we should protect our borders instead of S. Korea, Germany, and many areas of Africa. He never said he was an isolationist.
Okay so what would you like our president to do with Iran? Be advised that our troops are bone tired, our military machinary are broken and not being refitted in time for another war.
Oh, and while you are fighting Iran who will be supported by Russia, China will no doubt take advantage of our distraction and push for a greater China sphere of infuence….