Saturday, July 18, 2015

From The Archives, And With a Special Dedication To A Certain Mr. Trump.

We've reached bottom now, right?

Surely we have. I've said that so many times over the course of the last decade, and been proven wrong every single time. But tonight it has to be true.

Because let me recap for you where we stand in the political life of this country right now. A commie, left leaning, profane half crazy blogger who calls himself a monkey and would call John McCain a butcher of innocent lives in the service of empire, who would have surely taken part in any and all demonstrations against the stupid, unjust, illegal dance of death this country was responsible for in Vietnam.....

....who wouldn't have hesitated to shout in John McCain's face what he thought of his career choice had he been 20 years older and ever had the chance....

....still has more respect for John McCain.....

Than the man who was at the top of the last set of national polls of likely Republican voters.

Surely we can't sink any lower.

Original blogpost airdate  November 05, 2008

A True Story About John McCain I Can Tell You Now That The Election Is Over.


I don't have to tell most of you that John McCain was a fighter pilot in the Navy during the Vietnam War. I don't have to tell you that he was shot down, captured, held prisoner and tortured by the Vietnamese for 5 and a half years.

And I don't mean the kind of torture that we do in Guantanamo where we're careful not to leave any marks. The Vietnamese didn't care anything about leaving marks. They beat the living piss out of John McCain and then would hang him from the ceiling in his cell by his broken arms when they were done. That's why you never saw him raise his arms during the campaign. He can't. At one point during his captivity he weighed less than a hundred pounds. That's not the story I want to tell you though. The story I want to tell you starts in that prison cell, with the voice of a person named David Ifshin.

Ifshin was president of the National Student Association, and in 1970 he went to Hanoi to urge American troops to turn against the war. His words were broadcast over Radio Hanoi repeatedly and into the cell that was John McCain's living hell.

You might expect that the two men would have gone on to become bitter lifelong enemies. You would be wrong. Ifshin went on to be general counsel of Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, a fact that didn't sit very well with many of the veterans of the war Ifshin had railed against. Some of these veterans heckled the president during his first Memorial Day speech, waving signs that read "Tell us about David Ifshin"

John McCain gave a speech on the floor of the Senate that day. “Let me tell you about David Ifshin…" McCain said. "David is a friend of mine.”

"I wanted the protesters to know that they were bearing false witness against a good man." McCain said later."His friendship honored me and honors me still."

 You see, although both McCain and Ifshin came to radically different conclusions, both men passionately believed in doing what was best for the country. Both men came to see that in the other and to respect the others' commitment.

I was going to write a tongue in cheek post tonight about kicking the Republicans when they were down. It would have been really funny. But after hearing Obama's victory speech tonight, I decided to tell you this story instead. Because my friends, I can't help but feel there was a tectonic shift in this country tonight. A much welcome shift in the tone we are going to get from our leader over the next 8 years. After hearing the man I had hoped so long for, finally making the speech that I so longed for him to make, well, a post about kicking the Republicans when they were down just seemed so.........Bushy.

And Bush already seems like ancient history, doesn't he?

I'll be dammed if there isn't a little hope in the land tonight.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's as simple as that. Mr. Trump is only interested in protecting his self-interests in the definition of unamerican American, he is what Americans despise in their leaders underneath it all. Like Sarah Palin in one of the last elections, her goal in protecting her self-interests helped define just whom we Americans wanted to represent our country, our spirit, and the will of the majority.

A man who would go so far as to hide a bald spot with hair the color of his bald spot can best be described as deliberately evasive in his intentions.

A man who boasts of his personal wealth in a presidential election clearly indicates that no problem will be too big that money cannot be thrown at it, nor will he work on dispensing his wealth in attempting to solve what he deems as 'small' or 'insignificant' problems. Have you ever seen Mr. Trump volunteering in a soup kitchen, somewhere, anywhere?

I think a lot of this schtick is an outdated model of parallelism, by someone close to his dotage. Mr Trump thinks his act is good enough for the American people, but it is fluff of no substance.

A man who shoots himself in the foot at every opportunity with his seemingly overwhelming arrogance because he cannot bother to learn how to think about what he says to a disparate audience is a bulldozer of a guy, forceful, not interested in consensus, nor conscious-raising.

In his heart of hearts he may think of himself as a decent human being, but he is not a leader of a nation.

And, that is what I think about it.

Sunny said...

Lord help us if Trump is elected to anything let alone the presidency.