By Lee Cary —— Bio and Archives August 2, 2017
The currently-running 2017 movie version of the World War II events surrounding Dunkirk did not address how Allied forces ended up surrounded by the Germans in late May 1940.
Here’s one explanation: Britain and France expected a static war with Germany patterned after World War I, but Germany’s army was mobile and flexible. Two different sets of war rules were at play.
The soldiers who were heroically, some would say miraculously, rescued from the beaches by small, civilian craft were the victims of outdated strategies and tactics.
There’s a parallel between the Battle of Dunkirk and the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign.
The Democrat Party, the media, and many Republican politicians expected the 2016 campaign to be modeled after other, recent, “silly seasons.” Half the combatants – namely, the Democrats – and most of the Republican candidates, played the campaign battle as it had been done before.
Repeating their past behaviors was not an unrealistic strategy on their parts.
In the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, the Democrats, aided by their allies in the liberal media, attacked the GOP candidates – McCain and Romney – and McRomney offered little return fire.
The ’08 and ’12 GOP nominees hesitated to criticize the first African-American Presidential candidate (2008), who then became the first African-American Incumbent Candidate (2012).
It was reasonable for Democrats to expect the ’16 GOP nominee to not be too critical of the first female Presidential candidate of a major political party. Hard to imagine Jeb Bush saying, “Lock her up!”
The Democrat candidate’s money-machine, added to her supporters’ oft-publicized enthusiasm, plus the Democrat’s well-oiled campaign organization – the legendary “ground game” – convinced Democrats and the media that Hillary had a lock on a November victory. A near sure thing.
The holy trilogy of victory – money, enthusiasm, organization – was conventional political wisdom going back, at least, to 1972, when renowned historian and Georgetown University Professor Dr. Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) wrote an article entitled “The Mythology of American Democracy.” Quigley taught at Princeton University and Harvard before joining the faculty at Georgetown where he taught in the School of Foreign Service from 1941-1975.
In the context of providing “an {sic} historical view of the American democratic tradition with analytical overtones showing how democracy has changed over the course of our history,” he wrote:
“[T]he New Deal ran its course, and since about 1950 or so we have had plutocratic control…[T]hree things were necessary to win elections: money, enthusiasm, organization. The role of money has increased to the point where it’s more and more difficult to offset the lack of it with good organization and enthusiasm.
Organization must be super-efficient and enthusiasm has to be sustained and widespread. Because the costs of elections, what with TV airtime, air transportation, and all the rest of it, have climbed sky-high…[W]e now have a plutocratic system, and many politicians see it simply as a matter of buying elections.”
All the media masters of political punditry – including those on FOX – predicted a one-sided Clinton victory. Established conventional wisdom, pushed by on-air producers speaking through their ear buds, programmed them to say so.
So what did they all miss? Mostly, that the world had shifted while, and where, they weren’t looking.
So…there they are today, lined up on the beach of defeat – the Democrat Party, their media allies, and more than a few professional Republicans.
Huddled together, surrounded by a strange and hostile political environment.
Shocked by complete surprise, with no small boats on the horizon, they chant “impeach him” to the gulls, while blaming the Russians.
Four years after Dunkirk, the Allied armies landed on the beaches at Normandy. They had learned from their Dunkirk.
Will Democrats learn from theirs?
The Allied Forces that landed on Normandy four years later had learned valuable lessons from Dunkirk, as well as Dieppe and North Africa.
Since November 2007, Lee Cary has written hundreds of articles for several websites including the American Thinker, and Breitbart’s Big Journalism and Big Government (as “Archy Cary”). His work has been quoted on national television (Sean Hannity) and on nationally syndicated radio (Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin). He is quoted in Jerome Corsi’s book “The Obama Nation,” in Mark Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny.” His pieces have posted on the Drudge Report and on the website Real Clear Politics. Cary holds a B.S. in Economics from Northern Illinois University, and a Masters and a Doctorate in Theology from the Methodist seminary at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. He served in Vietnam with the U.S. Army in Military Intelligence. Cary lives in Texas.
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