Why is it that whenever the White House begins a full-scale character assassination on anyone who disagrees with their invented view of the world, they fall all over themselves to make it clear they're not attacking that person's patriotism?
'While I believe Madam Speaker would serve tea to the 9/11 hijackers, piss and shit on the American flag, and drown every American veteran since the Spanish-American War in boiling oil, it's not her patriotism I'm questioning, it's her judgment.'
I mean, why hold back? If you can call John Murtha's bill to prevent under-equipped and unrested GI's from going back into Iraq 'anti-troop,' if you can question the validity of John Kerry 5 medals of valor, if you can call Cindy Sheehan a traitor and Nancy Pelosi an al-Qaeda sympathizer, aren't you in fact questioning their patriotism, but are just too chickenshit to say so?
Why not just go all the way? Why is their patriotism off-limits? It's like the beltway is one big playground filled with children slinging every insult in the book except, 'your mama's a bitch,' which is of course the straw that breaks the camel's back; 'you shut up about my mama.'
Well, let's take the plunge; I question Bush and Cheney's patriotism. I question the patriotism of two arrogant tyrants who have never served in the armed forces sending American GI's without proper training, rest or protection into a war for corporate profits. I call not attending their funerals when they come home dead and having Rumsfeld sign their death certificates by machine unpatriotic. I call cutting their benefits in budget after budget unpatriotic, and I call not bothering to know what a dump Walter Reed hospital is unpatriotic.
Finally, I call forbidding wounded patients in that hospital from speaking out not only unpatriotic but also unconstitutional--and how about inhumane? Because if you're legless in a hospital bed and need your pain killers and you're told you'd better not talk to the press about the shitty care you're getting, what do you think the implicit punishment is? How bad do you want those pain killers, soldier?
This patriotism dodge is all part of the linguistic contortions that have become accepted sport in the government and in the media, although they've always been mainstays of the neocon and fundamentalist movements. Inside the beltway it's called playing politics but the rest of the world--the other 4 billion of us--know it by another word; hypocrisy.
Since we've taken the gloves off, can we go after a few more of these shibboleths? How 'bout 'Support Our Troops?' Isn't that just a passive/aggressive way of saying 'I love our troops and you hate them,' which is of course absurd? Can any member of even the Coulter Crackheads honestly believe a single sane American ---left, right or indifferent---actually wishes harm upon our troops? Isn't this little slogan, while posing as a nice little neutral statement of support, really intended to divide us in a time of crisis? Can we just cut this shit out right now?
While we're at it, how 'bout 'extraordinary rendition?' Isn't that really just 'kidnap and torture of civilians?' And doesn't 'may have overstated the nuclear capability of North Korea,' really mean, 'once again lied through their teeth to the American public on an issue of global significance'?
'Protecting American interests in the region?' Doesn't that really mean protecting the salaries and stock options of corporate CEOs that export jobs, cheat on their taxes and get government bankruptcy bailouts without giving a shit about average American workers?
How 'bout the great act-tough, pissing contest catchphrase you can't go more than an hour these days without hearing; 'no options are off the table.' Doesn't that really mean 'we may drop a nuclear bomb'?
And there's my personal favorite--'anti-PC.' Doesn't that mean whining about not being able to dis the Spics, Gooks, Niggers, cocksuckers, cunts, homeless and poor? Isn't it a nice little euphemism for 'gee, I miss the Dark Ages'?
What happens when we tolerate these lies, er diplomatic terms, is that foggy bottom gets so, well, foggy and filled up with euphemism nothing means anything anymore. So a presidential 'spiritual advisor' can also be 'addicted to a meth-rattled gay hustler' and the vice-president can be anti-gay rights while welcoming the child of his pregnant lesbian daughter into the world.
And so we're forced to listen to a conservative front organization--not unlike the Swiftboaters and Talon News, which employed gay hustler/White House correspondent Jeff Gannon--attack Al Gore for having too many bathrooms in his house instead of remembering he won an Academy Award and is nominated for a Nobel Prize for alerting the world to an imminent disaster that could wipe out humanity. A disaster, by the way, acknowledged by 99% of the world's scientists while being dismissed by mensas like Bush, Cheney, Rush and Hannity as 'liberal PC drivel.'
And just last week, deeply religious Mitt Romney claimed he wanted to bring Americans together from the same podium where Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot. What's next --twice-divorced Rudy praising the sanctity of marriage after Coulter calls Hilary a poo-poo?
But the big cheese in this euphemistic cavalcade of bile posing as diplomacy is the concept of 'revirgination', which makes even the Christian Right's claims of pterodactyls still flying over Mexico and the Earth being only a few thousand years old seem quaint.
Focus On The Family's James Dobson and Left-Behind series author Tim LeHaye have been mid-press juggernaut for weeks about how the big GOP guns for president aren't crazy enough--er, I mean, conservative enough---to get their backing. This is after Rudy claims on Larry King--with a straight face --that cleaning up civil war in Iraq is just a bigger version of clearing Harlem of crack dealers, and McCain gives the keynote address at right-wing 'think'-tank the Discovery Institute, America's top evolution-denier.
Suddenly, these two men who just a few years ago proclaimed their deep belief in the rights of women regarding reproductive freedom, equal rights for gay couples and the rights of illegal immigrant workers to go to an emergency room were out-contorting each other in the euphemism sweepstakes to 'clarify' their former tolerance as actually intolerance, and 're-positioning' their previous progressive ways as actually carefully nuanced regressive hatred.
Isn't this just lying? If Rudy supported abortion rights as mayor but wants to repeal it as president, doesn't that mean he was either a liar then or is a liar now? If McCain thought in 2000 Falwell was 'an agent of intolerance' but now decides to speak at Falwell's Liberty University, doesn't that make him either a liar six years ago or a liar now?
Is this flip-flopping, lying, euphemism, spin, diplomacy, or hypocrisy? It's hard to decide when everything means nothing, which is of course the point; if you can't rely on facts, you have to rely on bullshit---like 'your gut,' which really means 'how their spun image makes me feel.'
When words no longer have meaning, nothing can be discussed or debated. Good-bye, Democracy!
It's kind of like claiming you're a pregnant virgin, which, it turns out, is the exact advice Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax reform--who believe the rich shouldn't pay taxes---gave to McCain, Rudy, et al if they want to win over the Christian Right.
Instilling hope in the GOP contenders that they still might win over the skeptical conservative movement, Norquist advised all it would take is a few 'right promises,' not unlike the abstinence pledges students take--even after they've had sex.
'It's called secondary virginity,' Mr Norquist told the New York Times. 'It's a big movement in high school and is also available for politicians.'
Oh, ....okay. So appealing to conservatives is like claiming you're a virgin after you've done the deed. Isn't that, you know, lying?
I remember plenty of secondary virgins in High School--many of them former pregnant virgins--and their lying didn't really win too many people over. But there they were, terrified they'd be seen for what they really were--dumb teenagers, really---shamelessly asserting they were something they weren't. And to convince whom, exactly?
Anybody stupid enough to buy it.