Eighth Circle, Anyone?

With the Rumsfeld imbroglio unfolding and the Beltway press corps, joined by Hill Democrats, engaged in the most opportunistic blood hunt in recent memory, Michael Barone offers a sane and balanced look at reality. Writing for the Daily Telegraph, Barone argues that the elite press's intellectual myopia isn't shared by most Americans, who have the common sense to know that Vietnam and Watergate aren't analogous to today's events. Key paragraphs:

"For liberal Americans of a certain age, the American involvement in Vietnam is the paradigmatic event in human history. It demonstrated - or their warped view of it demonstrated - that America could be on the wrong side of a war, that American military action was dangerous (as the peacenik slogan had it) to children and other living things and could accomplish nothing positive. And to American journalists of that age and younger generations, Vietnam and the soon-to-follow disaster for the American presidency, Watergate, were proof that disbelieving American leaders and providing the most jaundiced coverage of their actions was the road to enormous success and wealth."

"The next time you're in Washington, go to the local records office and check the property assessment of Bob Woodward's house on Q Street."

I was a child in the '60s and not a child of the '60s, so perhaps my views are colored by my late-Boomer birth date. But the Boomers born in the immediate post-war period, or at least those who are now in positions of influence in Washington, are for my money the most reactionary generation in American history. All things -- history, literature, art, religion -- must be viewed through the lenses of youth -- their youth (not yours or anyone else's). But that youth, as our rising medical bills and sagging bodies show, was 30 or more years ago.

This would be a subject for pathos were it not for their influence on national policy. In their backward-looking posture, these illuminati resemble the diviners, astrologers, and magicians in the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno. Because in life they impiously claimed to see the future, in death their heads are twisted around so that they must walk backwards through eternity. It wasn't a terribly effective way to predict the future in the fourteenth century, and it's no better today.