Mickey Z

Cool Observer

Monday, November 06, 2006

Botched or not, the joke's on us

Every now and then, a series of events (and the reaction to those events) converge to effectively illustrate just how deeply the indoctrination runs in the home of the brave/land of the free. Senator John F. Kerry was the catalyst for the most recent such convergence. His “botched joke” laid bare the passionate cult of the soldier, America’s enduring military fetish. It has been and remains career suicide for any public figure to even hint at criticizing the men and women in uniform. Consider Kerry’s apology: “I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform.” It’s not even an issue of actually being critical of the military. Among a war-loving people, you must be cautious to not even “wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform.” Kerry himself said people were “crazy” to think he would denigrate America’s military. As profound as this may be, the realities exposed by the “stuck in Iraq” affair go much deeper than that.

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