Thursday, September 4, 2008

Would You Please Let It Go?

I only want to put up one quick post about the McCain speech tonight, it is late and I'm too tired (the time at the end of the posts for this blog is in Pacific time, where the other two authors are, but I'm on the east coast) to go into full rant mode at all the dumb crap he said tonight.

I just want to say that I am so sick and tired of being forced to fight the Baby Boomers' battles from 40 years ago. Would you please just go away? We've been bored with you ass-holes for twenty years now. You didn't change the world nearly as much as you think you did.

How many sovereign nations have we interfered with for no reason since Vietnam? How much bigger has the gap gotten between the rich and the poor? How much smaller have those polar ice caps gotten since the Summer of Love? Yea, see what I'm sayin'?

And now we've got McCain (technically not a Baby Boomer I suppose) bringing all of this crap back up for yet another election cycle. Why the hell have the last five presidential elections been about the Vietnam War?

I think 80% of tonight's convention speeches were about McCain spending 5-1/2 years in a box being tortured.

Dear Senator McCain: I DON'T CARE.

Look, I'm sure it was horrible going through what you went through and nobody should have to deal with such a horrific experience, even if you had been dropping bombs on innocent civilians.

Torture is an evil act and I would love to see it disappear from this earth. But you having gone through that experience 40 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with this election and your credibility as a candidate or even as a human being.

But the way you bring it up every time you get asked a difficult question, even about something as unrelated as the housing crisis, does say a lot about your credibility and character.

Or lack thereof.

6 comments:

the beige one said...

In general agreeance, though I want to point out two things:

1) If he truly believes that the torture he went through is that abhorrent, he wouldn't agree to let it happen under the US name. No matter the circumstances. What he went through was horrible, and there's no reason on Earth to do it to others. Particularly when it has been proven to not be effective.

That is one of the flip flops McCain underwent during the last eight years.

2) I believe his whole "I have that record and I have the scars to prove it" bit was a failed joke about being embattled by the political process (he seemed to chortle at the line). The speech was so fraught with references to his torture, however, that it sounded like more wood on the fire.

JJisafool said...

It just underscores Roves two biggest legacies to the political discourse: Swift Boats and double-standards.

I know some Republicans that are willing to say in hindsight that the Swift Boat attacks on Kerry did no honor to their party - they were going to vote W anyway, but would rather honorable service not be impugned.

But, now, when Wesley Clarke merely points out that being shot down in a plane and tortured doesn't make one qualified to be president - not that it disqualifies, not that it isn't honorable to have served one's country and sacrificed so much, just that it isn't sufficient qualification - he gets raked over the coals for attacking a serviceman.

That's their strategy. Launch an unreasonable attack, and cry foul when a reasonable version tangentially-related to the first attack is pointed at them.

I agree with Deni - I don't care, McCain. Not in this sphere. It was bullshit that you didn't defend a fellow serviceman from unfair attacks, and its bullshit that you then hold your service up as a sign of character.

And here's my admission. The reason Obmama and the Dems should run an issues-centered campaign and not get into a rhetorical, mud-slinging slugfest is that the Right is just better at it. Sorry, but Ann Coulter can kick Al Franken's ass, and to more unified cheers from her supporters. Not only do pols on the right fight nasty better, but their base eats it up, has been primed to for a decade.

Deni said...

"Not only do pols on the right fight nasty better, but their base eats it up, has been primed to for a decade."

That's a damn fine point JJ.

the beige one said...

Okay, but that's, in essence, the same campaign strategy that has cost the Dems the election in '00 and '04, so what do you all recommend?

the beige one said...

And I'm sorry, but O'Biden's no slouch at the jab. Let the right bellyache all they frikkin' want, it's time to stop flinching at their attacks and stand up for our own.

I think O'Biden could pull it off, especially with the disenchantment in the air.

JJisafool said...

Y'know how when it comes to bar fights, it ain't the size of the man so much as how far he's willing to go?

I'm frankly not willing to go where they are. It's a weakness, this insistence on fighting fair.

Think Tai Chi. It actually is a martial art, which we forget when we watch yuppies moving slowly, and devastating when done well.

What it most requires is patience. The willingness to wait for the right outcome, and weather the wrong.

We have to crowd the discourse with rational response, and let our pols stay clean-ish and vision/issue-oriented. And we can't get so mad we make it a street fight. Cuz we lose that.

This here is a tiny but important step. Don't let them shout us down, just keep cutting their attacks down to nothing, free up the pols to actually make policy.

Y'know, like community organizing before firing people and taking hypocritical stands.