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Kerry mythohistoricus

By Michael J. Smith on Sunday April 23, 2006 03:36 PM

Seems that War President Wannabe John Kerry has seen the light -- in a speech at Faneuil Hall in Boston he appears to be calling for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by year's end.

Wonder what this means. Is it that he doesn't mean to be a candidate in '08, so he can play the Judas goat who will keep antiwar Democrats in the fold? Or does he think that the war ship is sinking and it's time for the rats to desert?

Either way, I guess it's good news, as far as it goes. Strange that I feel so obliged to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. Maybe I'm so profoundly convinced of Kerry's inveterate, invertebrate pliancy that I can't imagine anything he would do could possibly be a good thing.

Kerry's speech had some amusing moments. My favorite, I guess, is this:

Even during the Cold War--an undeclared war, and often more a war of nerves and diplomacy than of arms--even the mildest dissenters from official policy were sometimes silenced, blacklisted, or arrested, especially during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s. Indeed, it was only when Joseph McCarthy went through the gates of delirium and began accusing distinguished U.S. diplomats and military leaders of treason that the two parties in Washington and the news media realized the common stake they had in the right to dissent.
Ponder that last, wonderful incoherence: McCarthy had the temerity to attack "distinguished US diplomats and military leaders," so all of a sudden the establishment realized the importance of the "right to dissent"?

Here's another:

America has always rejected war as an instrument of raw power or naked self-interest. We fought when we had to in order to repel grave threats or advance freedom and self-determination in concert with like-minded people everywhere.
This from a guy who's just finished prosing on for a quarter of an hour about Vietnam.


Comments (14)

Senator Weathervane strikes again! Kerry's bloviating is fine and dandy, but with his track record I'll wait to see if he actually does something before regarding this as anything but lip service and empty promises.

J. Alva Scruggs:

Senator Kerry has had principles and ethical conduct explained to him in very good schools, and has been the beneficiary of them in his dealings with other people. He even maintains versions of them himself; they're that useful. He can give speeches without twitching or smirking hebephrenically. He believes strongly in the desirability of due process, has an impeccable grasp of procedure and yearns for a world in which everyone who needs them has reasonable access to clean underpants.

Unlike the neocons, he thinks the demos may one day be ready to have full knowledge of the government's dealings and doings. If elected again, he will do his level best to bring that day closer. But he's also aware that some things simply can't be said and is committed to repudiate the cruelty of shattering vital illusions. Hence the odd, some would say delusional, take on history.

When I become filled with doubts about his wisdom, I think of reasonable access to clean underpants and find comfort.

jsp:

kerry is a sadist's otion of disappointment
i might add
his latest swivel
was on the aniversary
of his scene stealer back in
the high 70's

nixon had his 5 o'clock shadow

kerry
again and again
with the chin

On a related note:

http://pandagon.net/2006/04/23/al-gores-evolution-on-same-sex-marriage/

Honestly, I shouldn't rant and rave so much, because A) It doesn't help anyone and B) Nobody is listening. But I just can't seem to stop myself...


I'm not going to bother waiting for him to change his mind again because-let's face it-he's going to do it at least one more time before he comes out and announces the Vengeance of the Stick for the 2008 election, sending millions of already abused Democrats reaching for medication (antidepressants, Pepto-Bismol, et cetera) and party whips of all official and unofficial persuasions scrambling for a larger shovel for the pile of freshly microwaved BS that would be a Kerry campaign, and some way to try and avoid the stench.

Mark Crispin Miller reports that Kerry came out and said the election was stolen-so Kerry turns around and denies saying it publically.

This, as far as I'm concerned, says everything that needs saying about Kerry's 'character'-or lack of such. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but it seems like the hole where Kerry's commitment to anything but chronic tepidity exists without any problems whatsoever.

J. Alva Scruggs:

It's a good rant. Especially this:

Oh, please. As if DP die-hards didn’t say every fucking election that things are as desperate as they’ve ever been, now is not the time to cause trouble, etc. etc. Bullshit. As more and more citizens find themselves crushed by a monkey wrench made up of perpetual war economy and harsh repression of alternatives, you will find more and more people who decide they have little to lose through what you perceive as rash behavior.

That permanent state of emergency must satisfy them somehow. Handy excuse to do nothing of any real susbtance.

jsp:

alsis:

"Anybody who couldn’t forsee that pandering to Right-wingers emboldens Right-wingers is a damn fool "

the DLC's secret motto
eaten alive

thank you

jsp

It helps convince them that they're part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

MJS:

I'm a great believer in ranting and raving. Get enough people ranting and raving and things will start to happen.

That permanent state of emergency must satisfy them somehow. Handy excuse to do nothing of any real susbtance.

Yeah, J. Alva. I just wish they'd stop treating me like I had no long-term memory. I remember all the threatening, insulting bullshit from '00 like it was yesterday. None of it matches up that same crowd's current assurance that they were handling us stragglers with kid gloves back then, understood that we were just misguided and not mean and evil, etc.

Ah, but MJS, lots of liberals can rant and rave with the best of them. But they're on a tether and it's always stretched to its limits without being broken. Frustrating.

[passes JSP a bromo.]

MJS:

sez alsis39.75:

lots of liberals can rant and rave with the best of them. But they're on a tether and it's always stretched to its limits without being broken.
True, very true. Maybe the point is to get 'em ranting and raving about something different?

Well, MJS, if you check back on that thread cited earlier, "something different" doesn't seem to be coming any closer. You've gotta' love Dabo's assertion that we must use ALACRITY when sucking the cheese out from between the DP's toes, however. What money could buy so apt a description of the divide between cranks like us and liberal team-players ? It's bad enough that we won't serve them, but surely it's our lack of ALACRITY that is the true crime. Why can't we just look on the bright side of impending doom ?

Excuse me. I need more coedine now. Stupid quasi-viruses. [scowl]

(Looks like my last response got munched. Oh, well.)

MJS, check out that thread again to appreciate the true nature of what we're up against. Note Dabo's insistence that we must not only hold our noses for the next hundred years, but display ALACRITY while we do so. Somehow this contradictory Steppin Fetchit routine is going to give us all what we want. Suck the cheese out from between the DLC's toes, treat it like nourishment, and show ALACRITY.

We're doomed. >:

jsp:

just noticed this
after the train left the station

kerry on our
historic reasons
for foreign entanglements :

to "advance ... self-determination in concert with like-minded people everywhere"

what in hell does that refer to?

the late 40's
'captive nations '
parachute drops
behind the iron curtain
hungary in '56

the franco colonials
of indochina and algeria

the pretextual
invasion of cuba
and dozens of carribean
fandangos thereafter

we never
helped anyone on this planet
for their own sake

at least
before the civil war
we rarely tried
to cover this up

we even froze out
our own countrymen

look at texas
circa 1836

and thank the lord we did

too bad it didn't last
past
kettle hill teddy

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