- Given its strutting brownshirt quality, here is a slogan
that might well have been coined by America's most articulate political
thug, Pat Buchanan.
-
- But the slogan, with little waving-flag pictures, is
being used for bumper stickers selling John Kerry. Good marketers know
that you want an offering for every niche, so here's Kerry for the belly-over-the-belt,
beer-belching, walrus-mustache set.
-
- Niche marketing also explains goofy pieces about Kerry's
military service versus that of Republican chicken hawks (for those unfamiliar,
"chicken hawks" is an informal American political term for men
who never fought yet advocate sending others off to war, a group largely,
but not exclusively, consisting of Republicans). Never mind the moral obtuseness
of opposing an armchair-psychopath like Bush with arguments in favor of
a man who did his own killing, there's a weird market niche out there to
be reached.
-
- They sell everything in America. I recall the many patriotic
displays of flags, buttons, and sweats in parking lots, supermarkets, and
doughnut shops - all for sale, day and night, right after 9/11. Many claimed
to be at reduced prices or even offered at two-for-one in especially touching
displays of national feeling.
-
- I recognize that Kerry needs all the advertising and
marketing he can get. Every niche counts for one of the most uninspiring
candidates in memory, although competition for the distinction of "most
uninspiring" is tight in America. The nation's political system seems
capable only of advancing con men, bumblers, and paste-board cutouts anymore,
although, occasionally, as in the case of the late Great Communicator,
a single man combines all three identities. A network of powerful interests
much like rivers and tributaries running together to form one roaring cataract
sweeps away any candidate in a major party who might actually stand for
something other than the imperial ethos.
-
- God knows Kerry never has never represented much of substance.
Efforts to sell him are likely wasted. Ask any professional marketer whether
he or she thinks Bud Lite, even with the best marketing effort, can outsell
Bud. If there's a better description of John Kerry than "Bush Lite,"
it eludes me.
-
- Kerry, the boring, monotone moose of American politics,
has hung up his set of Senate-fundraising cummerbunds - or at least restricted
photographers access to the galas when he still hitches them up - in favor
of casual plaid shirts. Well, he isn't completely consistent about the
plaid shirts: it's a matter of which group he's addressing whether he wants
to suggest being a regular guy or society swell. When he does wear the
plaid - always immaculately pressed to make sure no one mistakes him for
someone who actually works for a living - there is more than a passing
nod to millionaire, perpetual candidate, Lamar Alexander, who made a hobby
of running for the Republican nomination sporting custom-made red lumberjack
shirts.
-
- People in struggling or oppressed lands who dream of
being able to vote freely will be distressed to learn that America squanders
her national elections on such costumed silliness, but it really cannot
be otherwise when candidates have almost nothing to say.
-
- Kerry's casual shirts are probably custom-made, too,
with enough of them in each of his wardrobes to provide a fresh change
three times a day. After all, Kerry is a very wealthy man, coming from
a privileged background and having married the fabulously-rich heiress
to the Heinz Pickle and Canned Spaghetti fortune (no, she has no connection
to the company, now part of a monstrous agglomerate, she just sits on mountains
of cash it generated). You can see where Kerry's sympathy and understanding
for the little guy might come from.
-
- There are precedents. George Washington inherited wealth
and also married a very wealthy lady, Martha Custis, probably the richest
widow in the colonies. Washington was famous for his warm qualities, too.
The icy, piercing stare given to anyone for so much as touching his sleeve
unbidden was legendary. His private characterization of early militiamen
in Massachusetts, the men who genuinely had risked everything to start
the revolt against Britain that he and other aristocrats then took over,
was along the lines of filthy rabble.
-
- Now, Kerry is not built of quite the same stern stuff
as the Father of His Country. Washington would never have worn a plaid
shirt, but a lot has changed since his day when maybe the wealthiest one-percent
of Americans could vote. Now, most Americans can vote, so you can't be
standoffish and you must expose yourself to the mob if you want to become
President. The wealthiest one-percent now are limited strictly to determining
with their campaign contributions which candidates the rabble sees on its
ballots.
-
- But Washington did sometimes coyly draw his silk frock
coat over his cummerbund for touching moments when he spoke to people who
weren't fellow aristocrats: he was skilled at acts like removing his glasses
as his eyes went misty addressing the men, whose poor promises for pay
he would in some cases later buy up at severe discount. You wouldn't recognize
his capacity for empathy with ordinary men, though, from the monstrous
bill he submitted to Congress after the Revolution for everything you can
imagine including the wagon trains of wine he consumed at table while the
rabble often did without a decent meal.
-
- It's true that wealthy people sometimes make inspired
leaders - F.D.R. comes to mind as does the greatest prince in Europe's
history, Elizabeth I - but such people give strong signs of their remarkable
talents long before they've reached Kerry's age. You don't hide your light
until the near approach of senility. More often than not, you get Bushes
or Rockefellers from the likes of Kerry, people with no more motivation
for serving than capping their family's list of achievements with the nation's
highest office.
-
- Kerry rarely speaks of working people or the poor, rather
he speaks of "the middle class," feel-good language adopted by
contemporary politicians to cover just about everyone in the country down
to McDonald's employees with more than one-month's service. You are not
supposed to speak of class differences in America. Everyone there is middle-class,
unless extremely wealthy like Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney or Mr.
Rumsfeld, something not to be mentioned, or so poor as not to be worth
mentioning. Economically-marginal Americans like to be called "middle
class," just as they like to brag about their kids "going to
college," even when the kids are working towards a degree in playground
supervision or fast-food management in one of America's countless sleazy,
for-profit diploma mills.
-
- Mr. Kerry, of course, didn't attend a diploma mill. Only
the best for him, the Yale of George and Daddy Bush. Incidentally, Bush's
graduating Yale is often advanced as an argument for his actual intelligence
being higher than the public's perception. But those old schools just love
accepting the sons and daughters of rich patrons, and they manage to graduate
them virtually always. You don't build fat institutional endowments by
flunking guys like Georgie Bush. Even Oxford and Cambridge in England follow
the practice, accepting and graduating some of the most mediocre members
of the Royal Family.
-
- America's love affair with everyone's being middle class
nicely serves the establishment's belligerent foreign policy. It just doesn't
count for much when you kill peasants somewhere on the periphery of the
empire, it's a bit like stepping on ants while doing your gardening, and
Kerry knows, firsthand, about killing peasants. He and his merry band of
men buzzed up and down the rivers of Vietnam in a boat shooting people
too poor and ignorant to understand the great blessings of liberty being
offered them.
-
- That experience may equip Kerry to handle the revolt
of Iraqi peasants against American occupation. After all, in Vietnam they
didn't bother with stripping prisoners naked and smearing excrement on
them. That was a war for real men. They took prisoners up in helicopters
and threw them out from several thousand feet if they didn't give the right
response, and frequently even when they did give the right response. It
just made for one less gook (the affectionate nickname American troops
bestowed on the locals). When America's good old boys tired of such vicious
games, they just napalmed whole villages instead of bothering to find out
what should or should not be attacked. That's how you build a "body
count" of about three million.
-
- Kerry's statements on foreign policy indicate, as they
are intended to do, that he is ready and willing to kill and maim for whatever
are America's interests of the moment abroad. Of course, he doesn't say
just those words, but what he does say carries those implications. Never
mind any emphasis on diplomacy, international institutions, or cooperation
- that's all sissy stuff. On the issue of Israel's bloody occupation of
the Palestinians, a dreary, deadening reality at the heart of much of America's
current trouble in the world, Kerry sounds even more fanatical than Bush.
-
- Of course, the one comforting thought about an idiotic
slogan like "These colors don't run," is that it is so plainly
false. The colors ran like a cheap dye in Vietnam and Cambodia, leaving
a trail of death, disillusionment, and broken promises. And the colors
ran again in Somolia where an arrogant people busied themselves more with
trying to shoot-up the bad guys than they did with feeding desperate people.
-
- A stark summary of what actually has occurred over the
last few years highlights the slogan's goonish nature. The only attack
on America was by nineteen fanatics with virtually no weapons who all died.
It is positively inspiring that Old Glory, imperial symbol of the world's
mightiest country, didn't run on such a challenging field of battle. Old
Glory also withstood the heroic assault and occupation of two pathetically-poor
countries whose combined capacity for defense was roughly comparable to
the state of Missouri.
-
- How could you lose with cruise missiles, stealth bombers,
high-tech fragmentation bombs, the poison of depleted uranium, plus all
the money and means imaginable to bribe officials and reward disloyalty?
It was indeed a shining achievement, and if you recall John Kerry's voice
standing against any of it, you heard something the world missed.
-
- The examples are countless of headstrong people like
Americans learning hard lessons only by banging their heads into walls.
A second dose of Bush's truly destructive leadership will likely do more
for America's ailments than taking a placebo like John Kerry.
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