NO ONE KNOWS if Henry Kissinger is in hell or not but, if there is a hell, he certainly earned his place in it. Because those who knowingly bring about mass murder are rightly held to be as guilty as those who did the killing, he was one of the most accomplished mass murderers in the Post WWII period. Though a runner up to Mao and others remembering, also that there are U.S. Presidents who outdid him by putting him into power. In a numerical body count as a measure of criminal evil, the rightly infamous and reviled Pol Pot comes somewhat after Kissinger in the millions of deaths attributable to him because Kissinger and Nixon share responsibility for the illegal expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia which brought Pol Pot to power. The duly elected president, Richard Nixon and his appointee, Kissinger share in that alongside the millions murdered through the action and encouragement of Nixon and Ford and Kissinger in East Timor, East Pakistan (Bangladesh), the fascist takeovers in Chile and Argentina (Kissinger complained to the generals in the "Dirty War" that they weren't killing People fast enough) and in many other places. Especially after he cashed in on his governmental climb over millions of bodies, Kissinger had a business career and among the things he and his associates did was arm many murderous regimes and movements in Africa and, of course Latin America and Asia.
America is only one among the lands where such world-class criminals are almost never punished but prosper and are media anointed or even created heroes and celebrities. I would put the big networks and such august organs of the media as the New York Times* on the list of those fully and knowingly complicit in that. I don't think modern media leads to there being a distinction between the two, as can be seen in both Reagan and Trump. They certainly don't regularly call out the evil of those with wealth or in service to wealth, especially not that from NYC or other big media center celebrities. That's not unusual, there has never been any real holding into account even the most evil of human beings except in rare instances in which their regimes are toppled from the outside.** In the United States legal and "justice" system hasn't even held the insurrectionist Trump to account for his crimes and I'm beginning to doubt it ever will. Our Constitution and, especially, as that has been interpreted by our "justice" system, the judges and "justices" can't even prevent Republican-fascists from using the TV created fiction of Trump to destroy our liberal democracy as they prove more than competent to prevent real democracy, one based in equality before the law.
That such a man as Henry Kissinger can have led such a life as he did, can have a career so drenched in innocent blood and be glorified within politics, within the media as a hero instead of punished as one of the most dangerous criminals America has produced is, in fact, as much an indictment of liberal democracy as the crimes of Mussolini, Pinochet (put into power by Kissinger and Nixon), etc. are an indictment of fascism and Stalin and Mao** and Pol Pot (I'll repeat, another one that Kissinger and Nixon helped to power) are of Marxism. And Kissinger is hardly alone, liberal democracies here and elsewhere have examples of other extremely dangerous criminals who not only will never be brought to justice but who it is forbidden to suggest that they should be brought to justice. Britain certainly has many, France does, Italy, etc. No doubt there is a long list to be made of such criminals around the world. The first place to start looking is among those with lots of money. [As an aside, here is a story about the businessman from my state who led to America being a shooting gallery for his own profit and was buried with great praise by Maine's political system, including our nasality of evil, Susan Collins.] Balzac's famous observation that there is crime behind all great fortunes is one of the wisest observations made in the 19th century. Though Paul got closer to the root of the matter bout 18 centuries earlier.
I could go into the role that Kissinger played in torpedoing the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 to ensure Nixon won the election - with the media's active complicity - and, I wouldn't be surprised, the similar effort in 1980 that brought Reagan to power. Starting the United States down the path to Trump. Kissinger and his president, Nixon had the blood of millions on their hands even before they expanded the war into surrounding countries.
Henry Kissinger's death certainly should be an occasion for the "free press" to examine their consciences about how it helped him come to power to do such evil things and how it covered up for him and the various elected politicians who gave him that chance and how it treated him as a celebrity instead of the mass murderous criminal he was. And it is as certain that won't ever happen in our media. I could list a huge number of those at the top of American media who played the same role for Kissinger and Republican-fascists that the Nazi supporting media played in 1920s-45 Germany. I will be unfashionable enough to say it, the media are whores who peddle their craft and selves in service to the same gangsterism that Kissinger was so good at. and, like any gangster's whore, they do it for money and proximity to power. Such is the legacy of our inspecific and dangerously abbreviated First Amendment as it really is instead of in scholarly and journalistic and, in order of rising danger, show-biz mythology. Such is the legacy of the form of democracy that is congruent with such gangsterism, the liberal democracy which, as I noted over the last two posts, is so vulnerable to even the looniest of reactionary gangster efforts to topple it.*** If liberal democracy worked, Kissinger never would have come to power because the media lies and bias that brought Nixon to power would never have happened. And if there's one thing that's obvious from the state of liberal democracy around the world, it doesn't work, in the end.
No legal system in
which a Henry Kissinger could have reached the age of 100 without being
imprisoned for his crimes against humanity can be held to be a part of
legitimate governance. The same legal system will likely let Trump off,
too. Our "free press" will be thick as thieves with them on that
effort just as it was in his case, it, no doubt, will continue in its
praise of him as he enters hell.
* I almost called this Ode to Kissinger, after Byron's scathing Ode to Napoleon but that would risk misunderstanding. I've been thinking about the Ode to Napoleon a lot and how holding him to something a little like justice didn't keep France from its catastrophic history in his wake. If there is an example of how dangerous trying to make reform through revolution is, France is a good one as is Russia, as is China as is, . . . America's romance for revolution is an anti-historical absurdity.
** Nixon and Kissinger had no problem doing business with Mao who may well have been responsible for the deaths of more innocent victims than Hitler was. Most of them being Asians is supposed to, somehow, make that not matter in the great game of assigning value to human lives.
** Athens' oligarchic, slavery-supported, male supremacist democracy was the original example of how such inegalitarian democracy can, itself, be a gangster ridden governmental system. As in our democracy for most of our history for American People of Color, for all Women, all slaves, all foreigners, and many non-citizens, Athens may as well have been no democracy at all. One that is, unsurprisingly, vulnerable to internal dictatorial putsches and external threats. A vote by elites, results in what those elites want. I think one of the biggest reasons that those who controlled the government in the Federalist period and their rivals, starting with Jefferson found it necessary to gradually expand the franchise was because they couldn't depend on men who it didn't work for and, so had no stake in the United States, risking their lives for it during wartime. I would bet you anything that if the Revolutionary soldiers who may have believed the egalitarian promises of the Declaration of Independence and fought for equality could have predicted what the Constitution would say, a lot of them would certainly not have been willing to die for such an aristocratic swindle. As proof of that you have those who rebelled against the government who had fought in the Revolution, once they realized the Founders were cheating them. The Black Revolutionary Soldiers who weighed so heavily on the conscience of Washington would never have fought if they realized they and their families and friends would be reduced by two-fifths and the three fifths of representation assigned to them would be stolen by those who held them in slavery. Not having put their lives on the lines as Washington did, not having direct experience of Black soldiers, those like Jefferson and Madison became, if anything, more enthusiastic about slave holding as the Revolution faded in their memories.
I think one of the worst things about America's liberal democracy is that, eventually, under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, AND ESPECIALLY THROUGH RULINGS OF THE SUPREME AND LOWER COURTS, it has been made gradually less and less workable for those who are not rich or affluent, which leaves us vulnerable to media-promoted fascists and thugs. Is it any wonder that convincing an effective margin of voters that they have a stake in democracy is increasingly difficult when it is ever more an engine of inequality and injustice. One in which the Harvard educated, Obama-Supreme Court nominated Garland was so slow and timid about pursuing the overt criminality of the celebrity boss, As Seen On TV "billionaire" Trump as he had no problem going after those so much lower in the scheme. I don't have any sympathy for those lower on the scheme but that discrepancy leaves the pursuit of justice vulnerable to that observation. I think that Jack Smith earned so much of his reputation in pursuing the criminals who were left with no protection of the kind Kissinger had has something to ponder in it.
Along with "liberalism" being made useless by calling thinks like laissez-faire capitalism, selfish libertarian notions and worse by that name, "democracy" is as damaged by it being used for anti-egalitarian systems of government. We might just need a new word for the only legitimate form of government there is because "democracy" is about as meaningless as "socialism" is. And it's entirely more important than even the best scheme of socialism.
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