Capitol Ideas / Solidarity No More

...The Washington Post, be it said, was taking a much harder line by the end of the week, moving to Reagan's right and worrying that at his press conference " h e let the Soviets off s c o t - f r e e . . , there is something gross about not putting the blame where it most belongs, the Kremlin...

...And on the front page of the Times a small popgun had at least been uncorked...

...by Tom Bethell As the world now knows, military rule was imposed on Poland on December 13 and at that point I suppose "the Polish crisis" became a defensible usage (but why not "counterrevolution...

...9 1 'riedan has achieVed a tot...

...O 0 4 Q 6 ~ m * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Q ~ O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ g ~ . . . . . . 9 6 0 q ~ 9 4 1 ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ . . . . . ~ Q 4 . . . . . ~ o ~ . . . . . . . . 4 ~ o C A P I T O L I D E A S SOLIDARITY NO MORE The foreign affairs columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, who returned from a visit to Poland shortly before the imposition of martial law there, told me that the Poles she met talked about the rise of Solidarity as the Polish "revolution...

...Solidarity incorporates several ideological strains," he wrote, "some of them contradictory...

...Jaruzelski) was in control, the Soviet news agency Tass was there to warn us not "to interfere in affairs that lie within the competence of the Poles only," the British government was reported to be observing "a policy of strict nonintervention," while the West German government was "following strictly a policy of noni n t e r f e r e n c e . " (And indeed why should one interfere with leaders who stabilize East-West relations...

...There have also been plenty of veiled allusions to the threat to world peace caused by hotheaded or unruly Solidarity leaders, resulting in "instability" and the concomitant danger of Soviet in, ervention...

...A conspiracy...

...What was needed in the USSR was "change," but "witfiout upheaval...

...Many of its members evidence outrage at the inequalities that have grown up [and] want to eliminate them...

...Similarly, the Times editorially looked for "evolutionary change in the Communist system...

...He had detected that "something is deeply wrong with the Western alliance," resulting in " a major reappraisal" going on either at the White House or Reston's desk, one couldn't tell which...

...The next day there was a sad little New York Times editorial, in the form of an imaginary dialogue between Jaruzelski and Lech Walesa, which was a veiled appeal to the Poles to knuckle under and stop destabilizing East-West relations...

...The system must be ended, not mended...

...But that word is used in the West to dignify and glamorize political change in the direction of increased state power over the lives of individuals...

...Later in the week Lewis complained of "bayonet socialism...

...In our age, basic stupidity has replaced talent and learning as the engine for intellectual achievement...

...The problem, as she saw it, was that during Brezhnev's rule "Soviet society has been congealed...

...he~T1 common denominator of such comments is the refusal to criticize Communism itself...

...But surely firmness is preferable to rage,' rectitude, and excess...

...Very few people here think," he concluded, perhaps accurately, that "the foreign policy decision-making process in the Reagan Administration is working...

...In the Times's Tuesday news columns, "the Polish leader" (Gen...

...Bayonets are present in all socialist states, of course, but only unsheathed when the people refuse to do what they are told...

...But deeper into the story he let us know, none too subtly, that bad as Communism may be ( " i n the eyes of the workers"), capitalism could xurn out to be worse...

...And Tom Wicker contributed a shameful column, telling us the Polish situation was "frightening" because it was "a reminder of the nuclear abyss at whose edge the superpowers stand poised...

...and no freedom under a system which prohibits voluntary transactions and exchanges between individuals outside the supervision of the state...

...I do not believe that she could have achieved so much had she not been so invincibly stupid through all these years...

...What, no leaders...

...In his opening paragraph, William Safire brought out some of the rhetorical armament that has been mothballed for the sake of East-West relations: "On orders from Moscow," he wrote, " P o l a n d ' s puppet Communist regime has declared war on the Polish workers' bid for selfgovernment, jailing thousands and beginning a crushing military control comparable to the Nazi occupation...

...Joseph Kraft, on the other hand, defied editorial etiquette by calling Jaruzelski "the Polish strongman," a title last applied in the Washington Post to Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines...

...The spectacle has fortified the prejudices o f every misogynist...

...a ruler has a rod of iron...

...Post editors were ignoring the simperbefore-tyranny message of Jimmy Carter, reported elsewhere in the paper that day, in which he urged us to recall that "only the Soviet Union has the capability to threaten our very existence, and for that reason alone the superpower relationship must always be foremost . . ." New York Times foreign affairs columnist Flora Lewis thought that "whatever h a p p e n s . . , the nascent arms reduction talks with Moscow must bepreserved," a message she repeated three days later, with the observation that the crackdown was "all the more reason" to stop the arms race...

...They hope only for e u t h a n a s i a - - a painless death...

...Lewis is smart enough to know that moral arbiters must get to the front of the indignation line...

...6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1982...

...One of these days, I suppose, our media trendies will see that this cannot be...

...It is the wisdom of our pop thinkers, the yahoos who liven things up on college campuses, in foundations, in the churches, wherever nervous breakdowns are admired and the growingchanging-experiencing ethic prevails...

...The plangent stupidity of this egregious pest, then, is not unfamiliar...

...On Monday, December 14, Washington Post reporter Bradley Graham, who was in Poland at the time, reported from Warsaw that there was "a military council now ruling Poland...

...On the same day, a Washington Post editorial perceived that " t h e problem" with Solidarity has been ("along with the rage and the rectitude") a "tendency to tactical excess...

...This I think was more accurate than John Darnton's version in the New York Times, according to which Poland's "new military leaders issued a decree of martial law t o d a y . " A leader, one senses, has willing followers (the consent of the led...

...Mary McGrory opined that the Communist overlords "fear" the Poles so much that Moscow "dare not send in the tanks," despite "the greatest provocation Solidarity has yet displayed...

...A headline read: ARMY RULERS SAID TO BREAK SOME MAJOR STRIKES...

...Pinochet...

...No, editors and writers themselves are for the most part hardly conscious of such details, They merely respond to the dictates of intellectual fashion, the defiance of which would be perceived as a "gaffe" more nearly literary than political...

...In most areas of male endeaw)r there ave no more female prodigies than ever b e f o r e , and in some areas of endeavor, for instance international athletic competition, American women have lost their edge to the women from the least liberated lands of all...

...Therefore it defies rhetorical etiquette to use it to characterize a diminution of such power (which is what Solidarity has tried to achieve), however "revolutionary" such a diminution might be...

...Anthony Lewis in the New York Times, on the other hand, took a distinctly hard line...

...A prize for any reader who can spot an instance of a Soviet bloc dictator labeled as such...

...Sometimes to be sure it is guilty of " e x c e s s e s , " sometimes socialism wears bayonets...

...She has no more bugs in her coco than any of the other philo sophes who write those moronic books about body language and future shock and the rights of puppy dogs...

...For that matter I do not believe that Irving could have written so many novels were he not so stupid...

...Philip Geyelin struck an even more inept note in his Washington Post column a few days later with the following remarkable paragraph: "The grimmest outcome is obvious: a breakdown of public order, a refusal of Polish army units to carry out orders to shoot rioters or strikers, sabotage of vital Soviet communication links through Poland to West Germany, a form of civil war, Soviet military intervention and suppression by f o r c e . " This would lead to "anarchy, bloodshed, starvation and repressive Soviet r u l e , " and (you guessed it), "incalculfible" effects on "East-West relations...

...Repression is the familiar Soviet method of dealing with resistance to illegitimate regimes in Eastern Europe...

...Now Friedan suggests the gals have babies, but that the carping continue not only against men but also against the corporations...

...This in turn would harm "East-West relat i o n s , " the neve term for dgtente...

...theless will eat us last if we are nice to it and don't provoke it too much...

...Given a bit more intelligence, he would have reread his first novel and shot himself...

...a system in which there will be no profits or profiteers, and no inequalities of wealt h or income...

...Let us take a look at some of the rhetorical nuances and opinions express-ed in our leading newspapers in the few days following the military intervention...

...That she w a s - - a s Anne Crutcher points out in these pages~asked to lecture at the United States Military Academy against manliness and on behalf of an army populated by "sensitive and yearning and vulnera b l e " George Pattons is but an indication of how far this doltishness has been allowed to travel in modern America...

...Wicker sought to dissociate himself from the word "disease" by putting it in quotes, but at the same time he let us know just how "frightening" he found Solidarity...

...It is hard to resist the conclusion that "dictator" is a term reserved exclusively for allies of the United States...

...In the unlikely event THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY I982 5 that Jaruzelski turns out to be Polish patriot rather than Soviet puppet-there is still speculation on this score as I write--I imagine that he will come in for harsher media treatment as he would then become the agent ofrenewed "instability" in "East-West relations...

...Such commentators view the world as occupied by one very dangerous beast, the Soviet bear, who never...

...As far as I know, you will find no reference to "the Polish revolution" in our leading newspapers during the 1980-81 period...

...In an adjacent New York Times column, David Binder in Washington compounded the problem by describing Wojciech Jaruzelski as "Poland's soldier-leader...

...So Solidarity may have got what it deserved after all...

...Was there a hint of concern in James Reston's column the next day...

...Others favor an expansion of private enterprise that, ultimately, would lead to further inequalities...

...She has spoken to an en, tire generation of young women and left them miserable, filling housewives with doubt and embarrassment while sending the p r o f e s s i o n a l gals out to scrimmage for t h e i r daily grub...

...Why not "military dictator," the epithet so frequently attached to Chile's Gen...

...Geyelin must be hoping that Polish army units "carry out orders to shoot rioters or strikers" to avert such terrible consequences...

...that there can be no equality between those who give and those who receive commands...

...On the same day the Washington Post editorially detected that Jaruzelski, "leader of the army, government and Communist P a r t y , " had suspended "with great firmness" the liberties that Solidarity had tried to create...

...Provocative" is a Tass-word, implying that the West has a moral duty to appease the Soviet Union...

...trivial, but they are important be, cause they are all but invisible and so can influence our perception of events subliminally...

...This y e a r ' s Coogler laureates are characteristic of their time...

...that it will never happen...

...If the Polish people "resist," Wicker the Timid went on, "or if the Polish 'disease' breaks out elsewhere in Eastern Europe or in the Soviet Union," then there are "real dangers of East-West conflict...

...Military economics depends upon military threaL In a long Times dispatch on the Polish economy, Darnton told of "the failure of Communism, in the eyes of the workers, to deliver on its promises of a better life...

...On the other hand you will find many allusions to "the Polish crisis," a striking example of the way our media heavyweights see the world as though through Soviet eyes...

...But if only "evolutionary change" is permitted, then we will have a nice friendly Communism, wearing a human face...

...Rhetorical nuances may seem Tom Bet/sell, The American Spectat o r ' s Washington correspondent, holds the De Witt Wallace Chair in Communications at the American Enterpmse Institute...

...Though the working gals have multiplied in number, they have not multiplied .in any achievements not directly tied to politics and to government coercion...

...Back at the Post George Will did well to point out that "in a national radio broadcast a Post editor put much blame for the crisis on . . . you guessed it: the Reagan Administrat i o n , " while at the Wa// Street Journa/Hodding Carter III surprised us all (and no doubt his former bosses Cyrus Vance and Jimmy Carter) by observing, accurately, that there had been "in some quarters" a "seemingly irresistible temptation" to explain the crackdown as a response to "excessive demands" by Solidarity, and to admonish us to be quiet lest vce "rock the boat of international stability...