The thwarting of Treebeard
There are plenty of bad things one could say about John Kerry: He’s out of touch. He’s not exactly a fount of original ideas. He managed to lose an election against George W. Bush. He’s made of wood. All of these points are worth making.
But what’s the deal with the houpla surrounding his recent “stuck in Iraq” remarks? Talk about shameless electioneering, not to mention poor media analysis. A relatively brief look at his speech (such as this one by Mike Duncan) substantiates Kerry’s argument that he was Bush-bashing, not troop-bashing.
Still, just for the sake of argument, let’s take the extreme point of view: that John Kerry set out to maliciously insult the intelligence of soldiers, despite having been one himself. What sort of actual damage are we talking about here? Do we have the world’s most thin-skinned soldiers? I’m amazed by the variety of ways they’ve been allegedly been “hurt” by idle political banter over the past 3 1/2 years. I just hope nobody says anything about their mothers, because that’d surely make them curl up in their bunks unable to fight anymore.
Politics is all about positionality: put someone in a position (the more evil the better) and position yourself against them. Issues? We don’t need no stinking issues. Gosh. No wonder so many Americans are apathetic toward politics.