Wesley Clark is a strange man indeed, and he shows that detachment from ordinary life that I (like many others), as a more junior officer, noticed about admirals and generals generally. Still, is General Clark objectively any stranger than George Walker Bush and William Jefferson Clinton?

A sad thing about our political system since the advent of mass media is the way campaigns for high political office, especially the presidency, have become something only very odd people will subject themselves to. We are guaranteed abnormal presidents by the way we select them. The most “normal” president of my lifetime has been Reagan, but even he was well-known for his detachment. HRS

Let’s include in Mr. Auster’s description the fact of Clark almost palpable egotism, is devouring ambition which essentially justifies any statement, however inconsistent or inflamatory.

I must disagree with Mr. Sutherland: Clark is quite a bit stranger than George Bush, who, for all his foolishness, seems to be a pretty normal man to me.

It is a trait of career military men, especially admirals and generals, to adapt to the political view that their civilian superiors have. That’s how they get promoted. Ever wonder why our military leaders signed on to a feminized military? Those who didn’t had their careers ended. General Clark is an example of the politically-conscious high-ranking officer. By running for president, he carries this even farther. Now he’s a left-wing liberal.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but from the first time I ever saw Wesley Clark on tv, he has reminded me of a science-fiction space alien. It is his too-large, weirdly staring eyes…..”

Yes you are certainly correct about Wes Clark’s appearance. When I first noticed him, I thought he looked like a salamander.

This thread is starting to remind me of David Icke and that lizard-men-are-taking-over theory. ;-)

I think part of his problem is the years in the military. That environment favors straight talk, to a fault. Lawyerly distinctions between things, marketing your ideas, etc.—these are all anathema. Even something as simple as telling subordinates what to do rather than asking is a significant distinction from the civilian work place. I think the idea that he should make gradations between policies and people interferes with his Procrustean notion that the Republicans are now the enemy.

The idea of beings who appear to be men, but are really some kind of sinister alien or lizard-like creature underneath, has been an archetype of our collective consciousness at least since the science fiction movies of the 1950s.

Liberals say it was Americans’ neurotic Cold-War fear of Communism that gave rise to those aliens-from-another-planet movies. But that can’t be an adequate explanation. After all, The War between the Worlds was a sensation in the late 1930s.

I perceive almost a desperation on the part of many to believe in the existence of space aliens. It’s almost as though throwing away belief in God, and the transcendental, leaves an empty space that needs to be taken by something else. In this case, it’s filling vacuum with void. But the need is very much there.

War of the Worlds was a sensation largely because people thought it was a real broadcast. Many missed the disclaimer because they were tuned into Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy. But after their usual comic exchange, Nelson Eddy started to sing, and people changed the channel over to Mercury Theater to see what Mr. Welles was up to and … WOOPS!

There’s truth to Mr. LeFevre’s observation, if we’re speaking of the books and popular movements that actually seek the discovery of extraterrestrial beings in the present or the past, and see this as some great key to life on earth or answers to the cosmos.

But I was only talking about the popular culture, about the fascination with and the terror of the idea of aliens from another planet, which became so big in sci-fi movies of the 1950s.

Offhand, Clark doesn’t seem all that strange to me — just yet another unprincipled opportunist, who, once he decided to switch to the liberal Democratic side, automatically began making the noises that would appeal to the most neurotic, hate-filled liberals.
I would be most interested, however, in hearing Mr. Sutherland expound on what he thinks is strange about Clark, and for that matter, the senior military officers he encountered.

I dislike saying so, but there may be something to the liberal claim that there is a connection between post-WW II insecurities and the onset of science fiction movies about invasions from other planets, along with the belief in flying saucers. (It is interesting to note that in science fiction literature, the theme of alien invasion has generally been a minor one, despite the impact of Wells “War with the Worlds.”) There is an interesting book on this subject by Curtis Peebles, “Watch the Skies.” However, there is no close connection between these things and the problem of belief in life on other worlds. That idea dates back many centuries and, at least for a while, seemed to be validated by scientific observations. It in no way depends on disbelief, or for that matter, belief in the transcendatal.

Regarding the 4:20 PM posting by Alan Levine, I don’t know what people believed centuries ago about alien life, but a substantial element exists today that believes in such life as part of an atheistic quasi-religion. The Carl Sagan types reason (entirely incorrectly, as has been shown more recently) that there must be life on countless planets in the universe because there are so many stars, etc. There is a palpable atheistic hope that life can arise by chance alone that motivates the beliefs of many of these people TODAY. I cannot address the notions of centuries ago on the same subject, but if you read the SETI propagandists, for example, you will see what I mean.

Clark Coleman is undoubtedly right that many people today believe in life on other planets for emotional or ideological reasons; nevertheless the idea is hardly as unreasonable as he suggests, and was held by many people long before present-day obsessions.

In response to Mr. Coleman’s request that I expound a little bit about the strangeness of Clark, and senior officers generally:

Officers need, to some degree, to be disengaged emotionally from those they command. An officer, after all, must be willing to order men into situations in which they may well be killed or maimed. Officers also need to be very concerned about the welfare of those same men. There is a tension there, and not every one is equally good at managing it. My own observation (based on spending 1980 through 1994 in the regular Marine Corps and then, quite actively, in the Air Force Reserve) was that as officers became more senior they often seemed to forget lessons they should have learned as junior officers. Lieutenants and Captains often called this the “field-grade lobotomy” (Lts. and Capts. are company-grade officers, Majors through Colonels are field-grade, and the various generals are simply general officers); once I became a Major myself I realized it happens later (I think?). Fearful of being perceived as “familiar,” many more senior officers are distant to a fault with enlisted men and more junior officers.

The armed forces are very political. To some extent that has always been so (never more so than in the U.S. Army of the War between the States). The advent of racial and sexual political correctness and the triumph of feminism in the armed forces - by far the most important thing that has happened to them institutionally since the Second World War - has meant that those who rise to become generals and admirals are very political and willing to subordinate their views to the often diametrically opposed views of often ignorant civilian officials. Among those who rise highest, the habit becomes ingrained.

I suspect that is what happened to Wesley Clark, who does not strike me as a man to inspire loyalty among soldiers, yet who rose to the Army’s highest grade and to one of its highest commands. He became a Clinton protegé, and has adopted their views. Today four-stars are not conservatives; they are believers in big government, where they have spent their professional lives. They believe in federal solutions to all problems, because that is what they know.

America has often turned to generals as political leaders. Some have been good, others not. Conservatives should not look to today’s generals and admirals as standard-bearers. That is most true of the four-stars. Clark is an odd man, but he is not so far from the very model of a modern four-star general. HRS

“I thought so little they rewarded me by making me the ruler of the Queen’s Navee!” - from HMS Pinafore (1878)

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist!) Political control of the military is a long-standing tradition, complete with political promotions, etc. The problem arises when folks like the Clintons (and Bushes) are operating those levers. Gen. Clark is very much the Clintons’ man. He is no doubt every bit the fine military commander that Benjamin Butler was.

Compare the wacko-Left with the wacko-Right on the issue of space aliens. For the left, the aliens do apparently unpleasant things (various body probes, etc.) but are nevertheless benevolent representations of a nurturing intergalactic society which will rule us peacefully. For the right, the aliens are a sinister, infiltrating elite who rule the world secretly and malevolently.

Clearly George W. Bush’s love of space exploration and warm embrace of illegal aliens shows him to be at heart a leftist, not a rightist. Or possibly a lizard himself.

Agricola’s point is correct. Since space aliens stand for what is different, strange and alien, liberals (at least in more recent years) have treated acceptance of space aliens as metaphor for inclusiveness and compassion, with the Other as a wiser being than ourselves, coming from afar to help us. But the sci-fi movies of the ’50s were “conservative,” they saw the aliens as an evil threat.

Compare “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (a great movie about an anti-human force taking over the world) with “E.T.”

I concede Agricola and Mr. Auster accurately diagnose the mentality of some people fascinated with aliens; I merely doubt their analyses apply to everyone interested in the problem of ET life, or indeed, all writers of science fiction. By the way, some 50s movies DO show friendly aliens, notably “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” which however fits the model of benevolent alien rulers all too well! Although there the alien at least looked and spoke like an upper-class Briton…