Former President Gerald Ford, a key player in one of the greatest genocides of the 20th century, died Tuesday at 6:45 PM.
This holiday season the mainstream media chorus has raised its voices in unison to sing praises of the former president, above all for “ending the long national nightmare” of Watergate. Nationalistic Puppet Radio even aired a segment with the laughable claim that Ford was “the only person” who could possibly have “brought the country together” in that time of crisis.
In short, cloying sentiment and vacuous puffery abound, while critical intelligence and historical insight are nowhere to be found. In other words, it’s the information business as usual in the United States of Amnesia.
As the corporate and state dominated media take their last sentimental walk down Memory Lane with all-around good guy Jerry Ford, the Surregionalist Press Service instead takes a plunge into the depths of Memory Hole to see what it can salvage from the waters of oblivion.
We first dredge up from these Lethean depths the fact that Ford’s greatest historical legacy is in actuality his essential role in creating one of the most horrifying “national nightmares” of the 20th century.
On Dec. 5 and 6, 1975, Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger met with the bloodthirsty Indonesian dictator Suharto in Jakarta and gave the murderous despot the go-ahead for his invasion of the small nation of East Timor. The next day Suharto’s massive war machine attacked that almost defenseless country and began the greatest proportional genocide since the Nazi era.
We also rescue from the amnesic abyss the fact that Ford’s second great historical distinction was his pardon of the criminally insane megalomaniac Richard Nixon.
This allowed the disgraced Imperial President to avoid impeachment and trial, and denied the public any serious inquiry into his flagrant abuses of power. Though Nixon was not, as he imagined, Napoleon, he was, as he vehemently denied to the bitter end, a crook, but thanks to Gerald Ford, a crook who remained at large.
It’s likely that Ford himself acted illegally in making the deal to let Nixon off the hook, but the political class fell in line behind this insider politician and his own high crimes and misdemeanors were also never investigated.
One noteworthy detail that was reported accurately by the mainstream media was that Ford died at his home in the appropriately-named “Rancho Mirage.” This concept is a good depiction of the dominant media’s modus operandi, exemplified beautifully in their handling of the Gerald Ford story: sell the illusion and keep the herd as contented as possible.
What more can we say? Gerald Fraud, R.I.P.
Contact: Max Cafard