Americans live in a tumultuous time, an age in which the
hypocrisy and blindness produced by political tribalism have been laid bare in
much of the country.
A new movie – highlighting a part of our history which is
nearly half a century old, but owns timely connections to the present day –
offers younger generations a great opportunity to understand what it means to
fight for principle in season and out of season, when convenient… and
especially when not.
“The Post,” the new Steven Spielberg film, will naturally
grab attention for the Washington Post’s role in the publication of the
Pentagon Papers. However, one must not forget that before the Post and the New
York Times went to court, someone leaked the documents. That person? Daniel
Ellsberg, a consultant to the makers of “The Post.”
When Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, Richard Nixon was
President of the United States. The presence of Nixon in the White House is
significant for many reasons, but within this discussion, it is primarily
important because it was easy for the American left to oppose Nixon.
I was not alive when the Pentagon Papers were leaked, but part
of my life’s work – specifically at a soup kitchen run by the Seattle Catholic
Worker – gave me an awareness of Philip and Daniel Berrigan and other peace
activists in the Vietnam era. Ellsberg gravitated toward these circles in the
course of his life. Leaking the Pentagon Papers marked the biggest product of
his personal, moral and spiritual epiphany.
In his earlier professional years, Ellsberg served in the
Marines before moving to the RAND Corporation, which worked with the Pentagon.
As the 1960s unfolded, Ellsberg -- once a proud member of the
military-industrial complex – evolved into a person who realized how dishonest the
government was, and how dangerous U.S. military policy had become. Ellsberg
wasn’t the first American in the Vietnam era to experience such an awakening
and conversion, but he became the paramount military whistleblower of his time.
That he was at odds with a Republican administration makes
it easy for contemporary American liberals to regard Ellsberg as the hero he is
and – moreover – deserves to be.
This is where hypocrisy and blindness enter the story.
One would naturally look at Edward Snowden and Chelsea
Manning – people Ellsberg has praised as heroes – and draw a straight line to
the Pentagon Papers, which “The Post” will explain to generations of younger
Americans.
Yet, among many establishment Democrats, Snowden and Manning
are viewed as malicious wrongdoers, not principled whistleblowers resisting the
Military-Surveillance State. One does not need a grand explanation for this
political reality: A Democrat – also the first African-American President of
the United States – was in office when Snowden and Manning (morally) broke laws
as Ellsberg did.
Snowden is an easy target because he has taken refuge in
Russia, which Democrats now oppose with more vigor than Republicans, in a tidy
inversion of American politics relative to the anti-communist fervor of the
late 1940s and the 1950s. Democrats – while having legitimate and urgent reason
to support Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump White House – have gone well
beyond a reasonable and measured approval of specific FBI activities. They have
supplanted Republicans as cheerleaders for the Deep State, for institutions
which (in the FBI’s case) once urged Martin Luther King to kill himself, or (in
the CIA’s case) brought about violent, anti-democratic coups such as the one
which toppled Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973.
Democrats and liberals are entirely right to accuse
Republicans of being hypocrites on family values and Christianity. “The Post”
will hopefully make Democrats recognize their contemporary blind spot on two
whistleblowers Daniel Ellsberg regards as heroic, but receive a fraction of the
praise Ellsberg is accorded.
Perhaps the next Snowden – taking the torch from Daniel
Ellsberg – will be viewed in a more positive light. “The Post” has a chance to
remind American liberals what they are supposed to support and oppose… no
matter which party occupies the White House.
