Mar 8, 1999

 Dear Colonel Joe,

Reading Noam Chomsky is always enlightening. Particularly for we Americans, so badly informed of the reality, quietly managing their decisions, and lives. Specially those who may think they don’t need such awakening are often merely happy being either fat and happy or moral cowards. Each man has his mind made up, just as most all men like women to make up their faces before going out. Chomsky can help clean one’s face. A clean face is a good way to start the day, better even to end with, actually, ...as some few in our media during the sensuous Indochina days honestly understood and practiced.

Ah, the good old days....

richard

And Colonel Joe answered :

The Country looks to you Joe DiMaggio! They weren’t any simpler, the Ol’ Days.

Regards

Although my "good old days" ending was meant as a terse parody on the nostalgia of simplistic sentiments so common to America’s conned and/or bad students of history, geography and political science (perhaps 90+ percent of the population, who have been so well duped by the media, specially the so called ‘liberal’ press, as Noam Chomsky has so often proved in his books, and speaks about specifically in the attached article), in one sense I was serious : as what I call a John Wayne Jesus Christ American when I left for Vietnam with the CIA in 1967, my life was MUCH simpler because my belief system was equally simple. In essence, like so many other men who went to Vietnam I fully believed the lies and bad history I had been fed about what we were up to in Indochina.

In other words, even as a former teacher, social worker and NYC Police Detective in an elite squad out of headquarters (Safe, Loft and Truck Squad, Special Frauds Bureau) - with a good number of medals and a member of the Honor Legion - I was nearly as ignorant of history, geography and political science as a Pvt. just escaping Parris Island indoctrination. Ignorance is indeed blissful, particularly when a heroic detective truly believes the story the newspapers, his church and his government had fed him about the possibilities of "saving the Indochinese from Communism". And it is much less blissful when so many of us woke up in Indochina to realize that our government was there to kill the ‘gooks’ and take over, albeit in a more sophisticated fashion, from where the French had failed.

So, yes, the good old days were truly simpler for the ignorant youth like me who grew up in the bright sunshine of America’s most honorable handling of two W.W.II fascist regimes murdering and torturing throughout Europe and Asia. We were pretty much the good guy in that war - except for a few comparatively minor inhumanities we couldn’t help resisting - and my generation believed it and try to live by those ethics. Yes, things were not so simple at first learning many new truths and much history in Vietnam, 1967-68; and even more complicated trying to later understand what we did in other places I’ve worked like the Dominican Republic, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, the Philippines, Indonesia, et. al.

DiMaggio only had to wonder what happened to Marilyn. Like the Dodgers quitting Ebbets Field, we ignorant finally had to grow up to what really makes America go round.

Oh, for the youthful bliss fullness of sweet smelling girls and propaganda.

Most sincerely,

richard manning

PS: I hope you read Chomsky, as much as you can get. There is no more loyal, intelligent and trustworthy man in the country. If our copycat governments could live by his ethics - and his life - we’d still have as many friends overseas as we did just after W.W.II; and much MORE equality here at home. Even the degradation of our national ethos might manage to slow down, though that’s a big bill even for a real Sky God to fill. Any page of Chomsky’s writings is of more value to true Americans - if they could only unplug their media filled ears long enough to digest his traditionally honest and humane Bill of Rights values - than a month of verbosity out of Washington, DC or any State capitol.