American-Brit TV Promotes Ignorance

The pseudo-debates routine that has become routine in our presidential election seasons has a lot of down sides, superficiality not the least of them. Nothing but a real debate on a set question should be called a "debate," something which most of the candidates would never appear in as who was intellectually unprepared to wrestle with real issues in depth would become apparent.  Those Kennedy-Nixon debates might have served the purpose of forestalling the evil day when Richard Nixon became president but they helped set up the superficial use of politics as seen on TV which elected him eight years later.

And the superficial "debates" don't necessarily serve even a serious candidate who might get tripped up on having to give an impromptu answer to a question that isn't really important.  In an article for In These Times Branko Marcetic accurately takes to task Bernie Sanders' naming of Winston Churchill as someone he admired.

Asked by a Facebook user which foreign leader the candidates took inspiration from when it came to foreign policy, Sanders cited the former British Prime Minister.

“He was kind of a conservative guy in many respects,” said Sanders. “But nobody can deny that as a wartime leader he rallied the British people when they stood virtually alone against the Nazi juggernaut, and rallied them, and eventually won an extraordinary victory.”

Which is the safe, PBS-BBC, vetted response to such a question, which those kept in TV style ignorance of just what a total aristocratic thug, racist and, yes, war criminal Winston Churchill was would find heartwarming.    You can find a short list of just some of his more criminal acts in the article linked to, there was much more, including being enthusiastic about genocide and a belief in Aryan supremacy.   Here is a sample of his thoughts as listed in The Guardian a while back.

I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and nazism, I would choose communism. 

Speaking in the House of Commons, autumn 1937

I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.

Writing as president of the Air Council, 1919

It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King.

Commenting on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, 1931

(India is) a godless land of snobs and bores.

In a letter to his mother, 1896

I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place.

Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937

(We must rally against) a poisoned Russia, an infected Russia of armed hordes not only smiting with bayonet and cannon, but accompanied and preceded by swarms of typhus-bearing vermin.

Quoted in the Boston Review, April/May 2001

"The choice was clearly open: crush them with vain and unstinted force, or try to give them what they want. These were the only alternatives and most people were unprepared for either. Here indeed was the Irish spectre - horrid and inexorcisable.

Writing in The World Crisis and the Aftermath, 1923-31

The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate... I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.

Churchill to Asquith, 1910

One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations."

From his Great Contemporaries, 1937

I don't hold it against Bernie Sanders that he gave the BBC-PBS answer to the question, though I hope he might find time to review the real Churchill instead of the heroic bust that most people believe in.  He's got more important things to think about.   I do blame the BBC and PBS for their role in maintaining a story-book, mythic view of history.   I don't, for a second, fear that he would emulate Churchill or appoint people who held views remotely like his.  It is troubling in the same way that calling Kissinger a great man is troubling.  

Hillary Clinton's statements in that "debate" about Henry Kissinger, our own war criminal, was also the safe, made-by-TV thing to say, the "News Hour" made for PBS documentary thing to say.  It was, perhaps worse since Kissinger is America's war criminal who has never been made to pay for his crimes against humanity.  A better question for them to answer is who is the kind of person they would think would be a good appointee as Secretary of State if they are elected.