The Rude Pundit speaks:
At some point, can someone tell the Republicans to get over the Sixties (and early Seventies)? Can we please have politicians who aren’t still fighting the Vietnam War and the hippies? That’s why 48 year-old Barack Obama’s reaction to the dust-up over Ayers is something akin to “What the fuck?” Because, really, and c’mon, “What the fuck?”
‘Cause what’s a little more important here is perhaps McCain’s absolutely bugfuck insane answer to the question about when we’ll know if there’s success in Iraq: “It’s not a matter of time. It’s a matter of casualties. If we can eliminate American casualties, that’s the key to the success. Because Americans are grieved by the loss of these brave — of our most — sacrifice of our most precious treasure.” There it is: if the war can stop making Americans sad, then it’ll be dandy. Really, the bottom-line measure is “The Iraqis can go fuck themselves.”
The short answer is that we will have politicians that are still fighting the Vietnam War until we no longer have politicians that are still fighting the Civil War, and that’s me being glib, but also: Seriously.
The reality is that in many ways Vietnam led to Iraq, in the way that one war bleeds into another and our discourse is poisoned by the former so that speaking honestly about the latter becomes impossible. How many of our national punditry, especially the “sensible liberal” types, the faux-moderates, the neo-weenie poser assholes who used to be hardcore commie poser assholes, were motivated in their pro-war commentary by a false picture of the 1960s and 1970s painted by conservatives who wanted to silence a successful anti-war movement? Honestly, how many were just out not to look like dirty hippies?
And their banging away on the stupid little drums they’d gotten from their conservative bosses drowned out all the yelling from the streets that, you know, this is a stupid fucking idea and we ought to be thinking a little harder about all of this.
A.