I would wager most readers of this column know what I mean; that most of us have discussions with people in our families or among colleagues at work about situations that are generally agreed upon by the folks in those circles, but which we would not talk about with outsiders. These discussions might be about a co-worker who is constantly taking sick days to play golf, or one who is ruthlessly opportunistic. We might hear comments around the water cooler such as, “Everyone knows Harry is abusing the sick-day system”; or, “Everyone knows that Suzie is bad-mouthing the rest of us to the boss to get that promotion.”
Nonetheless, if we were asked about these things in a public forum, we would be less forthright, for a variety of possible reasons. Perhaps it would be that we cannot prove what we “know” by the standards of a court of law. That happens. Everyone knew that John Gotti was a criminal long before they got the goods on him. Or we might feel it is not our responsibility to inform on the goldbricking co-worker; that we do not want to “get him in trouble.” It might be that we actually like the goldbricker on a personal level and want to protect him, in spite of his shortcomings.
I think it safe to say that people in the media and government are in the same boat; that they say things to each other about people and events that they would never repeat on Meet the Press or when being interviewed by Larry King — about who is an outright liar, a drunk, taking kickbacks, or sleeping around, for example. I am sure there are things that “everybody knows” about Bill Clinton, John Kerry and George W. Bush, which the rest of us — outside the circles of power — will never hear, until harder evidence surfaces.
Permit me to give you an example of what I mean. It happened when I was a boy in the early 1960s, at a family picnic. One of the guests at the gathering was a man I had never seen before. He was a friend of one of my uncles. It turned out that he was a Washington lobbyist (although I had never heard that term at the time) for one of the building trades unions. After being lubricated by a few beers, the man started to spout off about John F. Kennedy’s dalliances with Marilyn Monroe and a few other starlets at the time.
I said nothing (I was a teenager with little knowledge of public events), but several of the adults took him to task for rumor-mongering. In response, he laughed out loud and shook his head in condescension and proclaimed — you guessed it — that “everybody knows about this stuff. Come on, grow up.” I can remember at the time thinking the man a big-mouth who took delight in pulling down his betters. I can remember decades later realizing how naïve I was, when the truth about Kennedy surfaced.
Where is this leading? Well, it seems to me that there are certain aspects of recent events that “everyone knows” to be true, but which do not get discussed in the public dialogue. The reason why “radical Muslims” hate us is one example. The discussion in the editorial columns and on the talk shows tends to center on how they despise us “for our virtues,” because of what we “stand for,” because we are a secular and democratic open society. Well, if that is the case why aren’t Muslim extremists sending suicide bombers to Amsterdam and Stockholm? Al Quaeda would be able to find all the secular humanists they want in those cities. Why is it out of bounds to say the obvious — that they hate us not because of John Locke and MTV but because we back Israel.
Every informed person in the government and the media knows that our support for Israel is at the heart of the matter, even though you would never think so, listening to the talk shows and speeches in Congress. We would be willing to buy oil from governments headed by Muslim mullahs, and the mullahs would be willing to sell it to us, regardless of Janet Jackson and Hollywood, if it were not for the Israeli factor. Why do so many of the opinion-makers treat that reality as a hot potato? The United States’ commitment to Israel has been public policy for over fifty years. You would think its implications could be discussed in public.
Speaking of oil: why is it that there is no admission by those who back the war against Iraq that oil is indeed central to why we overthrew Saddam Hussein? The wisecrack you get from those who say the war is not over oil is that if we wanted oil we would have invaded Venezuela or Saudi Arabia. That may be an effective wisecrack, but it misses the point. We don’t have to invade Venezuela or Saudi Arabia; they are willing to sell us oil. The leaders of those countries are not likely to use oil as a weapon. Saddam Hussein was. More to the point, we are willing to buy oil from the Saudi oligarchs. We have no sense of mission to bring democratic values to that country. And there would have been no drive to overthrow Saddam Hussein, no matter how many mass graves there were in Iraq, if he was selling us oil and was no threat to Israel.
But who is the greater hypocrite? Those who will not concede that the Middle East’s oil reserves were a major factor in our decision to topple Saddam Hussein, or those who are strident in their denunciations of the war because of the role that oil played in the decision to attack? We all know what would be going on in the country this election year, if there had been no invasion of Iraq and if some turn of events brought about long lines at the gas stations to buy gas at $3.00 a gallon. Everyone knows that the Democrats now most repulsed by the idea of waging war for oil would be tearing apart George W. Bush for “not going to Baghdad and finishing the job his father started,” and “leaving in power a tyrant who disregards United Nations mandates.” I suspect that even the most partisan supporters of John Kerry would concede — in their private discussions — that their man would be leading the charge.
Isn’t it also true that the Democrats and the Republicans on the commission to investigate 9/11 would be singing different tunes if the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had occurred when Bill Clinton was in office? Does anyone doubt that Richard Ben-Veniste would have used every lawyer’s trick he knows to make the case that the Clinton administration could not have been expected to know about Osama bin Laden’s plans on the basis of the intelligence reports available at the time? And, yes, that Republicans in the Congress and the media now defending Bush would be expressing outrage at Clinton’s failure to deal decisively with national security measures. I have no doubt that there would be conservative talk show hosts blaming the success of the terrorist attacks on the fact that we have a “draft-dodger in the White House.” Or shouldn’t we admit to that, even if everyone knows it is true?
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
