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John F. Kerry: "Just Another Goofy Ensign"

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The Grand Unified Theory Of Vietnam

Noah Cross: You may think you know what you're dealing with, but, believe me, you don't.
[Jake grins.]
Noah Cross: Why is that funny?
Jake Gittes: That's what the District Attorney used to tell me in Chinatown.

Something has been bugging me about "John Kerry in Vietnam" thing. I can’t understand what the whole ANGER thing is about in the press. I can understand Al Gore being angry, Terry McAuliffe being angry and, perhaps, the voters of Florida-- but the press? That doesn't make sense, where's their dog in this fight? They get a story no matter what happens. Now, I know the press wants a Democrat in office, because, well that's just how the press is. Many of its members are in the press because of their spoken desire to "help the helpless, give hope to the hopeless and so on." And this sentiment lines up with the pamphlets handed out by the Democratic party as neatly as do the folds in the back of an issue of Mad magazine. The press has always wanted Democrats in office, that's nothing new. What was new in this election is how they've gone completely batty, and for all possible people, it's for this guy. It's not as though John Kerry hasn't run for President before and gotten nowhere, not even out of the early Democratic primaries. He's been "unwept, unhonored, and unsung" for ages, and it’s not as though he's a stunning member of the Senate, he barely makes any kind of presence. Example? Name one piece of legislature with his name on it? What committee does he sit on? Remember any speech of his, ever? Biden? You can't get the guy to shut up. Bob Dole? He hasn't been in office for 8 years, and he's still talking. But Kerry? He's been a cypher for years.

The press, last December, was laughing at John Kerry and at his chances to win the nomination. Now, they seem deeply offended that President Bush decided to run for reelection. Where it gets weird is to see the same people, who derided Kerry just a year ago, are now willing to "go to the mattresses" for him. So what's the deal between the press and John Kerry? What makes a nice guy like Chris Matthews to want to jump across the table and verbally assault a woman on nationwide TV, just because she disagrees with him? What makes newspaper after newspaper assault anyone who even dares say something negative about John Kerry? Thousands of man hours have been spent "uncovering the truth" about President Bush and the Texas Air Guard, but, on the Kerry-Vietnam story, time is only spent to dig up information on people against Kerry. The press didn’t give more than a glance at Kerry's actual record. If a hint had surfaced that Bush had done with his record what Kerry clearly did, we would be talking about President Chaney chances for reelection now.

There must be more here than just a simple case of "media bias." It is pretty easy to prove a case that the press is no longer objective. What is different from past elections is that it was clear that the press had a bias, but that they still did their job. It might have taken some nudging, but during Clinton years the press did eventually report on Jennifer Flowers, and the Whitewater scandal. But, if something similar were to happen in the Kerry administration, I seriously doubt that they would.

Look at what is going on now at Borders Books. There are three rows of shelves each stacked 14 feet high of books signifying that "Bush is the devil incarnate!" Why have so many publishing companies made an independent decision to give an "OK" to authors, so that these books are printed, shipped and stacked? For as inoffensive a person as George Bush? Really? Does he deserve that kind of anger-- that kind of hate? Anger is a passion on a par with love; you should be suspicious of a source when either emotion makes its appearance.

I sat back, thought about it and then spent some time on the internet. I eventually came across a set of pictures of John Kerry at the 1970 "Valley Forge" rally, known as "Winter Soldier," where Kerry made some pretty rough statements against the soldiers and sailors he had served with. Behind him in the pictures were the usual suspects. But then, I began to pick out a series of celebrities. Celebrities who were new at the time-- up and coming in their careers. While I did this, there was playing on the TV in the background,a documentary, "A Decade Under The Influence." This is the story of the rise of the new breed in Hollywood after the studio system had ended. Many people in the background of Kerry’s pictures were also in this documentary. I was doing digital convergence and didn't know it.

Then it hit me.

Vietnam is where the generation making up most of the press and media decision makers "made their bones." Vietnam established for that generation the moral order. It also was a test of their personal validation. You could not be part of the "new order" if you were for the Vietnam war or even for the soldiers who fought in it. You could not be a part of the “new order” if you felt in any way patriotic towards the US, or even favorable to the American culture. How could you back this country after John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. King, Malcolm X and so many others were assassinated. And people like Richard Nixon went on living?

President Clinton came at a unique time in history. Had a cold war still been going on in 1992, I doubt that Clinton would have been a serious contender. What confirmed that the Cold War was over was that for the first time in thirty years we voters did not measure a candidate against the test of "the button." We all used to do it, It went something like this: "Would you want this guy next to the nuclear button every day?" Clinton’s election is the first time we said, "eh, that's not going to happen anymore-- so what the hell?"

However, the press and the media acted as though Clinton’s election were as important as the liberation of France in 1944, and to people of that "new moral order," it must've seemed so.

When Bush was elected in 2000, it seemed like a shock to the Media that so many people in the US didn't vote for Al Gore. This was so improbable that the only reasonable explanation was a stolen election. What else could it be, no thinking person would actually vote for George W. Bush, can you believe the man actually said--With a straight face! --that Jesus Christ was the most important philosopher he had read? Does he think that's going to get him votes?

This alone would have caused the press to look askance at George W. Bush, but was it enough friction to generate all this heat?

And then, something happened that no one foresaw.

An outside force, for the first time since December 7th 1941, had attacked and killed Americans at home. Only this time, it wasn't at an obscure military base in the Pacific, but was in Manhattan, Liberal, Libertine, New Yorker Magazine-- If you lived here, you'd be home by now-- Manhattan.

For the first time, the generation which had rejected war as a tool of the oppressor, used largely by American business as a club to subjugate poor countries, was itself faced with an enemy that did not differentiate between the military and civilian, between Marines and little girls on their way to Disneyland and worse, between the real enemy and the enlightened masses of Manhattan. This generation was faced by an enemy that wanted to kill us all, left and right, progressives, liberals, men, women; it made no difference to them. The only choice the Jihadi's gave us was submission to Islam, or death. This generation had never concided this dogma in their "Grand Unified Theory Of Vietnam." Kill us? Why? We didn't vote for George W. Bush! The Terrorists should have attacked Texas!

The Jihadi's act of violence and insanity shook the world, but no group in it more so than the generation who’s "moral order" was established in Vietnam. "Why do they hate us?" They asked. "It must be our policies." They said, "See! This is a reaction to globalization. This war thing makes no sense, Europeans live with terror, so why can't we? Why - it’s just a pretense for the consolidation of power, THAT'S IT!.....”

One other thing that bothered them was all that flag waving. The US flag, to this generation, was an equivalent to the Nazi swastika and was waved by the same people. I've never seen a Volvo with an American Flag stuck to it. Putting a flag on your car was only for other countries as if to proclaim "I've been there-have you?" That was the way it was in some neighborhoods.

September 11th forced this generation to confront truths that didn't belong in their well-ordered universe. The moral certainty that opposition to Vietnam had provided was pulled away leaving them naked, vulnerable and exposed to something that they could not, or would not face.

That those ignorant people, of whom George W. Bush is just but one, might be right.

This-cannot-stand.

If George W. Bush is right, then the Media might have been wrong about other things for years, which meant they might have been wrong all along about the event that defined their moral order-- Vietnam.

So, why has the press become unhinged and supports John F. Kerry like crazed Moonies? While simultaneously defending their objectivity?

It is as redemption from their sins and for the return to some moral order that they can understand. It is, more important, a moral order where they still sit at the top.

By working to elect John Kerry, they can return to the world where Vietnam was wrong, but they can now say that defense of America is right. By working to elect John Kerry, they do not have to confront their bigotry against their very own country and its countrymen. By voting for John Kerry, they can tell their friends abroad that they need not fear us; that knuckle dragging Republicans are removed from the levers of power, and that men of breeding have returned.

More simply put, by electing John Kerry it allows a generation to escape its malfeasance in the defense of liberty.

Evelyn Mulwray: What were you doing in Chinatown?
Jake Gittes: Working for the District Attorney.
Evelyn Mulwray: Doing what?
Jake Gittes: As little as possible.
Evelyn Mulwray: The District Attorney gives his men advice like that?
Jake Gittes: They do in Chinatown.

Update I: So, I go to bed, thinking its just a piece for little old me and I can edit it in the morning. I wake up in a full on "Insta-lanche" and my unedited peice is now in the hands of over 10,000 internet readers. The lesson here is similar to the lesson the big Media has, "theres not such thing as a closed mike or a camera that off when you are on stage". My Sincere thanks to reader Louis Wheeler for providing his editing services on this piece. My sincere thanks to all whom have visited from Instapundit.

Update II: Christopher Hitchens says that the left has succeeded in doing something Reagan and Kissinger could never have accomplished, the rehabilitation of Vietnam as " a noble cause"! See Wikipedia for "law of unintended consequences".

The Grand Unified Theory Of Vietnam

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