SERIES: What's your point?

Editor’s note: Uyless Black’s four-part series published last week generated lots of feedback on cdapress.com. Here’s a comment from someone identifying himself as Kirby, followed by Mr. Black’s response:

Your fourth installment has devolved into the usual patriotic, propagandist nonsense.

The enemy is us. We are the country completely controlled by psychopathic oligarchs hell bent on ruling the entire world and willing to sacrifice us all to achieve it.

Henry Kissinger (war criminal) and John Bolton indeed, why don’t you quote some Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz for us as well? Surely using their words to support your position would be a piece of cake.

Uyless Black replies:

Dear Kirby, I suspect the vast majority of readers would disagree that my suggesting America forming alliances with Russia and China is patriotic! One reader called me un-American for making these kinds of comments. Propaganda? I certainly offered opinions to sway the reader, which is indeed propaganda.

I did not address (in these brief writings) your idea of “The enemy is us.” I spend much of my book, “The Nearly Perfect Storm: An American Financial and Social Failure” on this very topic. The purpose of these articles was to make the case that the real enemies of America are not China and Russia, but pollution, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, poverty, and so-called terrorism. I agree to an extent that the enemy of America is very often Americans themselves, but that was not the purpose of my writing these articles. I had enough to bite off with what I did write.

For quoting Kissinger and Bolton, I made no reference about my opinions on these men. For Bolton, I disagree with his ideas and used them as a backdrop for some of my points. For Kissinger, regardless of one’s view of his record, he offers valid points. I have disdain for the views of Perle and Wolfowitz, but they had nothing to do with my specific points. Nor did Brzezinski.

I have tried to address your complaints, but I cannot figure out what they have to do with what I wrote.

UYLESS BLACK

Coeur d’Alene