Camille Paglia: Why Has the Waco Fiasco Been Forgotten?

An excellent question:

Surely, given Hillary’s claim of expertise on the basis of her service as first lady, every major or ambiguous episode in her husband’s two presidencies should have been systematically reexamined by the media. I for one have renewed questions about the 1993 suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, Hillary’s former law partner and longtime friend, whose files were purged by Hillary’s staff before they could be examined for evidence. One must always be skeptical about Web rumors, but my interest was piqued last year by claims that Foster was shattered by the role he had played three months earlier in the outrageous order for federal agents to attack David Koresh’s ranch at Waco, Texas, producing a conflagration that led to 76 deaths, including 21 children. Why has the Waco fiasco been forgotten? It triggered the worst case of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, the 1995 revenge bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

It’s been forgotten because Americans like to forget their tragedies as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the motivation for that forgetfulness does not have healthy underpinnings. It’s supported by an unholy combination of insidious consumerism and intellectual laziness. Even if concern does creep in it can’t take root in brains trained on decades of flashy, noisy, meaningless content. Next week doesn’t matter unless it’s the scheduled release date for a film or video game, and Waco is ancient history. You can’t expect them to remember Waco when they’ve already forgotten 9/11.

There are other factors too. The media, for most of Hillary’s political career anyway, has tried to avoid making her uncomfortable. The bombing of the Murrah building also had an effect. It transformed concern about the events in Waco into a fringe activity. It became an issue associated with kooks and far-right militias. Ask a random American about Waco and they will tell you that they weren’t real happy with the way it unfolded but push beyond that, into the greater political and moral implications of that decision, and they’ll just shrug. It’s just easier to forget.

Related posts:
Not Forgotten
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