Their leading political "intellectual" is touring at the moment, as I understand it. :)
Posted on 08/14/2004 6:06:18 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
'My truth is that I am a gay American,'' announced Gov. James McGreevey to the people of New Jersey last Thursday.
That's such an exquisitely contemporary formulation: ''my'' truth. Once upon a time, there was only ''the'' truth. Now everyone gets his own -- or, as the governor put it, ''One has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world.'' For Jim McGreevey, his truth is that he's a gay American; for others in the Garden State, the truth about McGreevey is that he's a corrupt sexual harasser who put his lover on the state payroll in a critical homeland security post, and whose I-am-what-I-am confessional is a tactical feint that distracts the media sob sisters from the fact that, as his final service to the Democratic Party, he's resigned in such a way as to deny the people an early vote on his successor.
We'll see whose truth prevails in the fullness of time.
In politics, it's helpful if whatever ''unique truth'' the consultants have run past the focus groups bears at least a passing relationship to the real, actual truth -- not the whole truth, but at least a grain of it. That was what was so ingenious about Bill Clinton's ''60 Minutes'' appearance in 1992. He didn't come clean -- he was, as usual, full of it -- but he set in motion his designated ''unique truth'' -- flawed but human. It was designed to get him past Gennifer, but it wound up also getting him past Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita. . . . Whatever goods you got on him, it fit ''his truth'' as he sold it to us on CBS that day. As his attorney Cheryl Mills put it during the impeachment trial, Bill Clinton, along with Jefferson, Kennedy and Martin Luther King, ''made human errors, but they struggled to do humanity good . . .''
Which brings us to John Kerry. What is his unique truth? In 1986, on the floor of the United States Senate, he said:
''I remember Christmas of 1968, sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there, the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory, which is seared -- seared -- in me.''
Though the seared senator peddled this searing memory for a quarter-century, it had evidently been seared into him pretty haphazardly. It turns out at Christmas 1968 he wasn't in Cambodia but was instead 55 miles away at Sa Dec, South Vietnam. So the Kerry campaign's begun riffling hurriedly through its Sears Rowback catalog for more or less watertight back-pedaling of the story: They now say that ''many times he was on or near the Cambodian border,'' which is true in the sense that 80 percent of Canadians live on or near the American border. But most folks in Vancouver don't claim to be living in the Greater Seattle area.
Earlier, senior Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan told ABC News: ''The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol ... in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam.'' For a crowd of ostentatious multilateralists, they can't seem to hold the map the right way up: The Mekong River isn't the border between Cambodia and Vietnam; it cuts through the heart of Cambodia and then runs through Vietnam to the sea.
But this question isn't about geographical degrees of latitude so much as psychological ones. Here's the real reason Lt. Kerry wasn't spending Dec. 24, 1968, on a secret mission in Cambodia: On the previous day, Dec. 23, the U.S. government finally secured the release, after a five-month diplomatic stand-off, of 11 Americans whose U.S. Army utility landing craft had made a navigational error and strayed into Cambodian waters. Prince Sihanouk had rejected U.S. apologies and threatened to try the men under Cambodian law. It's unlikely, 24 hours after their release, anyone in Washington was thinking, ''Hey, we need to send that hotshot Kerry in there.''
So what are we to make of Sen. Kerry's self-seared 30-year-old false memory of Christmas in Cambodia with its vast accumulation of precise details? Of being shot at by the Khmer Rouge (unlikely in 1968) and of South Vietnamese troops drunkenly celebrating Christmas (as only devout Buddhists know how)?
It's not about dates and places. For Kerry, his Yuletide mission was an epiphany: the moment when he realized his government was lying to the people about what was going on. This is the turning point, the moment that set the young Kerry on the path from brave young war volunteer to fierce anti-war activist.
And it turns out it's total bunk.
Thirty-five years on, having no appealing campaign themes, the senator decides to run for president on his biography. But for the last 20 years he's been a legislative non-entity. Before that, he was accusing his brave band of brothers of mutilation, rape and torture. He spent his early life at Swiss finishing school and his later life living off his wife's inheritance from her first husband. So, biography-wise, that leaves four months in Vietnam, which he talks about non-stop. That 1986 Senate speech is typical: It was supposed to be about Reagan policy in Central America, but like so many Kerry speeches and interviews somehow it winds up with yet another self-aggrandizing trip down memory lane.
A handful of Kerry's ''band of brothers'' are traveling around with his campaign. Most of the rest, including a majority of his fellow swift boat commanders and 254 swiftees from Kerry's Coastal Squadron One, are opposed to his candidacy. That is an amazing ratio and, if snot-nosed American media grandees don't think there's a story there, maybe they ought to consider another line of work. To put it in terms they can understand, imagine if Dick Cheney campaigned for the presidency on the basis of his time at Halliburton, and a majority of the Halliburton board and 80 percent of the stockholders declared he was unfit for office. More to the point, on the swift vets' first major allegation -- Christmas in Cambodia -- the Kerry campaign has caved.
Who is John Kerry? What is his ''unique truth?'' Consider this vignette from New Hampshire primary season as retailed in a recent 8,000-word yawneroo puff piece in the New Yorker:
'' 'He'll often thrash around in the night,' the filmmaker George Butler, who is one of Kerry's oldest friends, told me. 'He smashed up a lamp in my house in New Hampshire, in the bedroom where he was staying. Most Vietnam veterans go through this.'''
''Most?'' Whether or not John Kerry ever entered Cambodia, he seems unable, psychologically, to exit it.
Flip-flopping?
LOL!
By the way, we can now add another couple of "Fs" to Kerry's "truth": Flip-Flopping, (teller of) Flagrant Fish stories, Flailing and Failing. He isn't called F'n for nothing. Perhaps his next tall tale will be that he was once a behind-the-scenes writer for F Troop.
BTTT
Their leading political "intellectual" is touring at the moment, as I understand it. :)
Similarly, if, when the Lawinsky affair was exposed, if Bill Clinton had admitted it to the public and pointed out that both parties were over 21 years old, the political damage to him would have been negligible.
It was the lying, purjury, attempts to fix a court case, intimidation of witnesses, and other evidence of corruption that outraged President Clinton's critics.
His defenders intentionally misunderstood the cause of this outrage and for purposes of propaganda attributed it to other, less than honorable causes, e.g. prudery.
Thus, to a considerable degree, they deflected the criticism of his behavior from its true cause to an absurd invention that they created to serve their purposes.
Weighing on his conscience?
NOPE...it's not conscience, it's UBRIS.
Here's how it works:
1- You're born privileged and unloved. Mom and Daddy are too busy being socialites (and socialists)so..
2- They send you to special schools in Switzweland and you're still desperately unloved but believing that you are special. You got to find a way to think you are superior because inside you feel like s..t.
3- You try to get attention, so "Please. please, will someone look at me and love me." To do that you have to sway to the wind of those that surround you...you learn flip-flop is the way to go...talk a lot but say nothing.
4- You go to Yale another special school but rather than partying a la Bush, the "inadequate YOU" cannot let go. Still trying to get love by impressing others...grades are not even as good as "despised party boy" but you still think you are better.
5- No deferment and you're stuck going to Nam.
6- You don't fit. To lead men in battle, you must love them. Still inadequate, cannot bond, you peers and your superiors know you are phony. They reject you after 4 months. You couldn't wait to get out of there.
7- You get back at them, because they didn't love you either. Call them criminals.
8- Become special again, marry rich. Again and again. Fake love, Fake superiority.
9- Must show power, depth, and be ponderous as a politician.
Make up stories to impress. No substance. No achievements. You still know you are hollow.
10- Circumstances (Dean implosion) land you in the "Most powerful man in the world" race. Why don't they love me, please, love me. Flip-flop. Still Hollow.
Now the lies will catch up and they will all know..He is hollow. You must be terribly afraid and thrash in the night...It's not your conscience, it's your UBRIS!
OH geeeeeeeeez. That is sad! Pathetic, and oh so sad.
I totally agree. But you know what the Dims will say: "but they were not on his boat".
(in fact I think that many of the people on his boat support him to collect their trifling 15 minutes of fame)
I find it breathtakingly, shockingly traitorous (we are at war) and cannot believe that the people of New Jersy-dems, repubs, independents are not CRYING FOR THIS CREEP TO GET THE HECK OUT OF OFFICE---NOW!
This story may be safe...only because gerbils don't write books.
"if snot-nosed American media grandees don't think there's a story there, maybe they ought to consider another line of work."
FMCDH(BITS)
Thanks for the complete post.
L
Of course, at the time he was in Vietnam he was not a traitor. He was merely a less than adequate sailor and commander.
That said, the awarding of combat decorations has built-in safeguards spelled out by regulation. It seems in Kerry's case these safeguards either broke down or were circumvented by Kerry himself.
Two of his purple hearts and both his bronze and silver stars appear to have been "gamed" by Kerry, who had a working plan to get himself heroically decorated in a short time. False Situation Reports by Kerry himself seem to be involved in all of these as well as going outside of his chain-of-command in the case of his first purple heart.
The unit itself seemed rather lax in the factual vetting and eye witnesses required in the verification required for combat awards. It seems his superiors relied wholly on Kerry's self-serving reports - which is not the normal means for awarding decorations. It would appear to me much of the normal oversight was lacking at his unit level, which permitted Kerry to "cheat" his way to his citations.
Kerry did it very quickly as he was only in each unit for short periods of time so he was never caught at his lies and evasions. Apparently, he was clever enough and his short time at each assignment no doubt helped him to hit-and-run with these lies and evasions and nobody was the wiser. They were on to more important things (to them), such as fighting the war. Being a liar and a cheat is so much easier when nobody is paying attention.
What's scary is almost half of the people in the electorate believe the dems lies.
They swallow all this stuff........hook, line and sinker!
bttt
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