E. Howard Hunt Dies

E. Howard Hunt has died. More than any individual since World War Two, this man represents the death of the American Dream.

The working class (guys like my father) who fought in World War Two...kicked ass, saved the world, came home and started families and went back to work, thought they had it all in the late 1940's and early 1950's.

Then came E. Howard Hunt and his CIA. Men who poisoned the American Dream and the promise that America made to the world after WW2.

John Kennedy tried to be that guy who brought forth his nation into the world of nuclear weapons and technological advances that put the moon in our grasp, but guys like E. Howard Hunt killed him...and propped men like Richard Nixon onto the throne.

Anything…anything for the cause…E. Howard Hunt even made us accept regicide.

We want to believe the 'Greatest Generation' led us through the dark years of the Great Depression and safely out of WW2 and the Cold War and are now passing into their place in the history of the United States. Isn’t it pretty to think so?

The Greatest Generation did those things, but E. Howard Hunt is of that generation, too. He betrayed his generation and squandered the gains made by American Democracy in the first half of the 20th century.

More than the G.I. and Rosie the Riveter, more than Jack Kennedy, or Norman Mailer, John Wayne or Spencer Tracy or even Ronald Reagan the Greatest Generation is E. Howard Hunt, is Richard Nixon, is George Bush Sr. These are the guys that won in the end.

The rock that the current Bush Administration lives under was put there by E. Howard Hunt. He walked through the second half of the 20th century like a Greek deity, half human/half god dispensing his brand of justice as he and his Agency saw fit.

They toppled governments, crushed democracies and the people around the world trying to live in them. People who thought that victory in WW2 meant liberation were soon wiped out. This includes in America. We didn’t get defeated by the Empire of Japan or Nazi Germany. Nor did we get taken over by Communists. But our industry was destroyed just as if we were bombed into submission. Our liberties have been destroyed as much as if by a fanatical dictator and his invading armies.
E. Howard Hunt brought us that.

World War Two was fought in vain because men like E. Howard Hunt rendered the victory meaningless.

JFK’s assassination. LBJ’s abandonment of the Great Society for the Vietnam War. Robert Kennedy’s assassination. Nixon’s Presidency. Ronald Reagan’s paper presidency. The rise of Corporate Media. The Bush Family. The Republican Congress of the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Does this sound like victory?

Maybe we had to sink so low as to have Bush Jr. steal the election of 2000, and the humiliation of 9/11and the Homeland Security Act and Dick Cheney lurking in the halls of power once again, for us to realize that the United States of America lost its way in the second half of the 20th century because we let E. Howard Hunt make the decisions for us.

We can’t go back in time. We can’t pretend we didn’t do the things we did and as a people accepted them. America has a lot to answer for. So let’s not pretend Gerald Ford was a great and noble man. Or that Ronald was not senile in his second term. Or that a 24 year old loser shot JFK in the way JFK was shot, or that we were right in Central America in the 1950’s or the 1980’s or that we are right in Iraq now.

We need to look at where were are as a nation, post E. Howard Hunt’s America and move forward.

We have to turn our wars inward against poverty, and health-care cost and mismanagement, and education failures, and environmental crimes. We have to participate in our democracy.

E. Howard Hunt is dead, so maybe it is safe to come out of our homes once again and try to remember the promise that America made to the world and to itself after WW2…Liberty and Justice for all.

Comments

[fallenmonk]

Excellent post Jim. We do indeed need to reflect on the world that men like Hunt and his kind left us and resolve that we will learn from our mistakes and not let it happen again.

[ziem]

Very nice Jim.

Wasn't he the Watergate burglar?

You're right, we need to see and remember the past or risk repeating it - as we are now.

[Thomas Wallin]

That was a magnificent essay, Jim. I think the activity under the rock has become so putrid and swollen it has come into at least partial view for all to see. Let's hope the momentum of the last election continues, and the rock is upended.

[The Noosance]

Superbly written. You should try to syndicate this piece.

[timberwolf]

Always wished E. Howard Hunt would come clean about the JFK assassination...