Posted on 08/22/2004 11:16:51 AM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
Something has been bugging me about the whole "John Kerry in Vietnam" thing. I haven't been able to understand the whole anger thing in the press. I can understand Al Gore being angry, I can understand Terry Mcauliffe being angry,the voters of Florida, but the press? That doesn't make sense, what's their dog in this fight? They get a story no matter what happens. Now, I know the press wants a Democrat in office, because, well that's just how the press thinks. Many people in the press are there because of their own spoken desire to "help the helpless, give hope to the hopeless, so on and so forth, and that just lines up with the pamphletts handed out by the Democrat party like the folds in the back of an issue of Mad magazine. The press has always wanted Democrats in office, that's nothing new. What is new is the way that they've gone completely batty in this election, and out of all possible poeple, it's for this guy. It's not like John Kerry hasn't tried to run for President before, and got nowhere, not even out of the early democrat primaries. He's been "unwept, unhonoured, and unsung" for some time, and he's a not exactly a stunning member of the Senate, he barely makes any kind of presence. Example? Name one piece of legislature with his name on it? What comittee does he sit on? Remember any speech of his, ever? Biden? can't get that guy to shut up, Bob Dole, He's still talking, and he hasn't been in office for 8 years. But Kerry? He's been a cypher for years.
As long ago as last December, the press was laughing at John Kerry and his chances to win the nomination. Now, they seem deeply offended that President Bush has even decided to run for re-election. Where it gets really weird is to watch the same people who were deriding Kerry just a year ago, now are willing to "go to the mattesses" for him. So what's the deal with the press and John Kerry? What makes a nice guy like Chris Matthews want to jump across the table and verbally assault a woman on nationwide TV, just because she disagrees with him? What makes newspaper after newspaper assault anyone who even dares say something negative about John Kerry? Thousands of man hours have been spent "uncovering the truth" about President Bush and his time in the Texas Air Guard, but the only time spent on the Kerry-vietnam story is to dig up information on the people who are standing against Kerry. No one in the press has spent more than a glancing look at Kerrys actual record. If there was the slightest hint that Bush had done what Kerry has most clearly done with his record, we would be talking about President Cheneys chances for Re-election right now.
There has to be something more here than just simple "media bias". I can make a pretty easy to prove case that at this point that the press is no longer objective in this election. I think that's easily proveable. I think that is what is different this time than in elections of the past, where it was clear that the press had a bias, but they still did their job, it took some nudging, but during Clintons years they did report on Jennifer Flowers, and the whitewater scandal eventually, If such a thing were to happen in the Kerry administration, I seriously doubt it.
But look at what we have going on now. At Borders Books there are three rows stacked 14 feet high of "Bush is the devil incarnate!" books thats a LOT of publishing companies making the decision to print these books. That's alot of people giving the "OK" to have contracts with authors signed, printed, shipped and so on. For Geroge Bush? Really? does he really deserve that kind of anger and hate? Anger is a passion on a par equal with love, you should be suspicious of the source when either emotion makes its appearance.
I sat back and I thought about it. I then spent some time looking up various things on the internet. After looking around on the web, I came across a set of pictures of John Kerry at the 1970 "Valley Forge" rally, known as "Winter Soldier", where Kerry made some pretty rough statements about the soldiers and sailors he has just finished serving with. Behind him in the picture was the usual suspects, but then I began to pick out a series of celebrities, who at that time were just new and up and coming in their careers. While I was doing this, I had a documentary on the TV :" A Decade Under The Influence". This is the story of the rise of the new breed in Hollywood after the studio system ended. Many of the people in the background of the pictures with Kerry were dead center in this documentary. I was doing digital convergence and I didnt even know it.
And then it hit me.
Vietnam is where the generation that makes up the majority of the press and media decision makers "made its bones". Vietnam established a moral order for that generation, It also was their test of personal validation. You could not be part of the "new order" if you were for the Vietnam war or even the soldiers who fought in it. You could not be a part of the new order if you felt in any way patriotic towards the US, or even favorable to the American culture. How could you back this country after John F. Kennedy , Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. King, Malcom X and so many others were clearly killed and men like Nixon went on living?
Clinton came along at a unique time in history. Had there still been a cold war in 1992, I seriously doubt that Clinton could have ever been a serious contender, but the best way to tell when the Cold War was over, is when for the first time we did not measure our President against the test of "the button". We all used to do it, and it went something like this: " Is this guy someone who you want next to the nuclear button every day". Clinton is the first time we said, "eh, thats not going to happen anymore, so what the hell".
However, the press and media world reacted to the election of Clinton as if it were the liberation of France in 1944, and to people of that" moral order", it must've seemed like it was.
When Bush was elected in 2000, it came as such a shock and surprise that there were so many people in the United States who didnt want to vote for Al Gore, that it must've seemed like it was a stolen election. What else could it be, no thinking person would actually vote for George W. Bush, can you believe the man actually said that Jesus Christ was the most important intellectual he had ever read? with a straight face! does he think thats going to get him votes?
I think that would have caused the press to look askance at George W. Bush for the last four years, but I dont think it alone was enough friction to generate all this heat.
And then something happened that no one expected or foresaw.
For the first time since December 7th, an outside force attacked and killed Americans at home. Only this time, it wasn't an obscure military base in the Pacific, but Manhattan. Liberal, Libertine, New Yorker Magazine, If you lived here, you'd be home by now, Manhattan.
For the first time, the generation that had rejected war as only a tool of the oppressor, largely used as a club by American business to subjugate poor countries was faced with an enemy that didnt distinguish between the military and civilians, Marines or little girls on their way to disneyland or even the enlightened masses of Mahattan. They wanted to kill us all, left and right, progressives, liberals, men, women, it makes no difference to them, submit to islam, or die. That is the only choice the Jihadis have given us. That wasn't something the people who subscribed to the "Grand Unified Theory Of Vietnam" ever considered in their dogma. Kill us? why? We didnt vote for George W. Bush, They should have attacked Texas!
This act violence and insanity by the Jihadis shook the entire world to the core, but no group more so than those of this new moral order whos rules were established by their views on Vietnam. "Why do they hate us" they said. "It must be our policies" they said, "See! this is the reaction to globalization". This war thing makes no sense, Europeans live with terror, so why can't we, why - its just a pretense for the consolidation of power, THATS IT!.....
The other thing that bothered them was all the flag waving. To that generation, the US flag was exactly equivalent to the Nazi swastika and was waved by exactly the same people. I dont think I've ever seen a Volvo with an American Flag stuck to it, putting a flag on your car, unless its for some other country as if to proclain "I've been there-have you?", is the only way its done in some neighborhoods.
September 11th caused that generation to confront some truths that they didnt want to confront in their well ordered world. The moral certainty that opposition to Vietnam had provided was pulled away leaving them naked and vulnerable and exposed to something that they could not, nor would not accept.
Those ignorant people, whom Gerge W. Bush is just but one example, might be right.
This-cannot-stand.
If George W. Bush is right, then they might have been wrong about so many things for so many years, which means we might have been wrong all along about a great many things.
So, why is the press unhinged and supporting John F. Kerry like crazed moonies?
It's for the redemption from their sins and the return of a moral order that they can understand, more importanly a moral order on which they sit at the top.
By working to elect John Kerry, they can return to the world where Vietnam was wrong, but they can now say that defense of America is right. By working to elect John Kerry, they do not have to confront their bigotry against their very own country and its countrymen. By voting for John Kerry, they can tell their friends abroad that they need not fear us anymore, that they knuckle dragging republicans have been removed from the levers of power, and the men of breeding have returned.
More simply put, by electing John Kerry it let's a generation off the hook for its malfeasance in the defense of liberty.
Just as an aside, a lot of these Bush-bashing books are headed directly for the remaindered bin. I often go to Daedalus Books, a large book warehouse that stocks remainders. They're filled with anti-Bush tracts by the likes of David Corn et al.
And those books aren't moving out the door there any faster than they are at Borders.
you know, you make an EXCELLENT POINT!!!!!
WHY IS THE PRESS SO MAD? THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE UNBIASED
The press's anger is VERY simple, they're full of Socialists, and everyone is NEARLY CERTAIN that one or more of the US Supremes will be retiring in the next presidency.
If Bush is in, all those 5 - 4 liberal splits suddenly go the other way and the liberal National Socialist agenda that they've been pursuing for almost 40 years stops. However, if Kerry gets in, the 5 - 4 becomes at least 6 - 3 and it's the end of the Republic as we know it.!
THAT my friends is the real reason for the over the top insanity in this election cycle. This election TRULY defines America, or Amerika for the coming generations.
The insane lunatic National Socialists know this.
Bill Wood
---Where it gets really weird is to watch the same people who were deriding Kerry just a year ago, now are willing to "go to the mattesses" for him. ---
It's really hard for them too. They secretly detest Kerry especially since they have to talk about Vietnam, medals, and military stuff all the time. Bubba never made them do that. :^)
BUMP FOR THE SUPPORT OF SWIFT VETS HERE... http://www.swiftvets.com/
Didn't three old men who are past retirement age tell us that they had to stay on until after this election--Rather, Wallace, and Brokaw? You think that they thought that they would be essential to unbiased reportage? IMHO, Kerry is the candidate of the press. They sold the Marshall McCluenites in the DNC on his electability.
In the Middle Ages, the same phenomenum in Europe was called the betrayal of the learned...
Today it is the betrayal of the half-educated journalists...
They believe they are above the crowd... But what they are is simple: traitors!
I am very impressed with this Varifrank website. I'd like to know more about this author.
and that
"By working to elect John Kerry, they can return to the world where Vietnam was wrong........"
You may have a point to some degree. But I think the real explanation is perhaps even simpler. It is "Bush Hatred" pure and simple. Before kerry was even in the media spotlight there was Bush hatred - it was first picked up by Howard Dean and the other crazies on the far left (including algore) and aided and abetted by Michael Moore. Kerry "voted for the war" before he latched onto the theme that was first tapped into by Dean.
The Bush hatred is composed of equal parts of Florida angst, anti-Christian bias, anti-Southern bias, and evil calling good evil. It's deep, it's irrational, it blinds them and it's their only issue. When you listen to a response to any attack on any RAT politician or issue, you hear "well that doesn't matter and Bush....".
I'll go way out on a limb here and say that Jesus was treated in much the same way as Bush is now, and probably for many of the same reasons.
I think what is really going on is that first there was Bush Hatred, and then there was Dean, and then there was kerry.
Once kerry came along, he brought Vietnam into it as he apparently has done with EVERY election he has ever participated in. And that brought in the SwiftVets and now we have the current debate.
But in my opinion, first there was "Bush Hatred".
Just my $.02.
Thanks, glad not to have missed that, and to know about this varifrank for future enlightenment.
"But Kerry? He's been a cypher for years."
I would ask, 'But WHY Kerry?'
Surely they could have come up with a bullet-proof, more viable candidate from their stables. Did the media actually believe it could to bury the past and pull the wool over the people's heads again as it did with Clinton?
I think the media has blinded itself to the speed and power of the internet and talk-radio and other alternate media. A serious mistake -- one I'm sure they will correct after November 3rd when they will be forced to face their folly and re-assess their self-appointed status as the only guardians and disseminators of 'truth to the masses.'
. . .
"It's for the redemption from their sins and the return of a moral order that they can understand, more importanly a moral order on which they sit at the top."
. . .
"By working to elect John Kerry, they do not have to confront their bigotry against their very own country and its countrymen."
Keen insight. Self-redemption means no penance. No penance, no change of heart. I expect they will retreat and re-group after their reality crumbles on 11/3. But like any good presstitute, they will get off their backs, put on new lip-stick, powder their faces and ply their trade us usual after they recover from their self-abuse -- but will no doubt walk the streets with their eyes a little lower to the ground for a while, feeling a little less confident about their appeal, as an aging prostitute might.
If the lamestream has to face how they fought so well for the other side in Viet Nam, their entire platform of moral superiority over the majority of Americans will collapse and they sense it. They have kept up a big lie about the Viet Nam War for over 30 years and it is great danger of being exposed as a lie.
Hey Cannoneer:
You have a good arguement buried in this post.
The whole idea that sKerry is running on this record is absolutely astonishing, but since we are in a new kind of war, it makes more sense that the party that has fought the military industrial oomplex with every fiber of their being are now touting themselfs as Tough on Terror.
It is a topic that definately needs claification.
Good writing good effect. You need to sharpen it and condense it, but I think you have a winner here.
Sure they hate GW Bush for the sins
of being Christian (never minded Clinton carrying a bible or Gore making speeches in black churches) and Southerners (dittos on Clinton, Carter, Edwards, etc.)
Nah, it's nothing to do with Bush; like when Kerry opposed the troop deployment *he supported two weeks prior* just because Bush proposed it: They hate Bush's attribute because the attributes are attached to a man they hate.
And - seriously - they dont just hate Bush, they hate Ashcroft, Cheney, Rumsfeld, DeLay, Guliani, the whole lot of 'em.
Before there was Bush hatred there was Newt hatred.
Before Newt hatred there was Quayle and Clarent Thomas hatred.
Before that there was Reagan hatred.
Before that there was Nixon hatred.
... Which does indeed get us back to Vietnam.
This horrible politics of personal destruction goes back to then, and even before then, when Nixon was hated for ... BEING A STRONG ANTI-COMMUNIST.
This has been a long and slow process, but the acculturation of professional elites with the mind-set of the Left is what we are talking about. It creates a scorched-earth type politics and politics of personal destruction; it puts agit-prop over truth and consensus. It tries to slime rather than understand. Some (like FR, David Horowitz) respond in kind; most Republicans dont understand it and do not (eg Bush wont push personal attacks on Kerry, the way Terry McAwful pushed the AWOL story).
They hate us, all of us, because we are not Leftists.
Bingo WOSG, pick up your prize. This is it, the Last Battle, the Left knows if they lose, they are relegated to the trash heap...they will not go easily, keep your powder dry.
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