John Kerry, delivering a blistering, fierce, loving, rambling, inspiring farewell address to the Senate today:
I came to the National Mall in 1971 with fellow veterans who wanted only to talk to our leaders about the war. President Nixon tried to kick us off the Mall. We knocked on door after door on Capitol Hill, but too often couldn’t get an audience with our representatives. A precious few, including Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, came to where we were camped out and heard what we had to say. And I saw first-hand that our political process works only when leaders are willing to listen — to each other, but also to everyone else.
That is how I first came to the Senate — not with my vote, but with my voice.
This guy fought in the nastiest war the world had to offer at the time and, age 27, came home and took the immensely unpopular stand that this war was bullshit and had to end, and he acted on it. Nobody particularly liked that then.
Nobody particularly likes it now. Look at the way we treat the anti-war movement in this country. Look at the contempt with which we treat those who stand up to power in this country. Look at the way we justify others’ suffering by using our own: I went through this, so why should you be spared it? I fought, so why shouldn’t you fight? I killed, so why shouldn’t you kill? I was wounded, so why shouldn’t you bleed?
How many times do we hear this? I got hurt, it toughened me up, so why are you being such a baby about it? I survived, so quit whining. I don’t talk about my problems, so why should I listen to yours? You don’t understand what I went through. Maybe you need to suffer some, so you do. How many times do we hear this? How many times do we say it? It poisons us day by day.
Very, very rare is it said that I suffered, so that youshouldn’t have to. I fought, not so that I could rest but so thatyou could. During his confirmation hearings Kerry talked about working with McCain, who had every reason to hate the Vietnamese, to normalize relations with Vietnam. He understands that the tests aren’t when all things considered you could give a damn. They’re when you loathe the prospect with every fiber of your being and lay down that loathing anyway. It’s not a burden if it isn’t heavy, but forgiveness isn’t for others, it’s for you, and learning that makes you a grown-up, and these men grew up together.
We have an embassy in Vietnam right now because John Kerry (and, to be fair, John McCain) got the United States to look at Vietnam as a country, and not simply as a war. (If people had done that same thing in, say, 1965, neither Kerry nor McCain might be in the Senate right now, and millions of other people would still be alive.)
And if we had elected him in 2004, if we had managed to be just a little bit less shit-stupid and scared, we’d have a better country now. I felt like 2004 was our chance to stop it; for all my joy in the good things Obama has done and in the prospect of further Democratic gains and more importantly progressive Democratic gains, I felt like 2004-2009 was a time when all the horrors got cemented and maybe some of them might not have been.
The late great Steve Gilliard put it best, ina pieceI keep going back to whenever the “Kerry was a shitty candidate, blah blah blah” argument comes up:
I do understand the frustration of liberals who wonder why they can’t run a real liberal for the White House. Of course, these liberals miss the point that Kerry IS a liberal, a real, bona fide liberal with one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate’s history to match. He’s far more liberal than Bill Clinton. In fact, if a few of these people were less reflexsive and contemptuous, they might find that Kerry was to theleft of Howard Dean on many issues over his career.
I’m also tired of the lesser of two evils crap. Kerry isn’t evil, he isn’t a crook, he doesn’t bang interns in his office. He’s stood for most of what the left wing of the Democratic Party has stood for since 1972. Unlike many rich people, he didn’t stick his money in his pocket and walk away.
Now we have four years of him as Secretary of State. And after that? I still have my Kerry-Edwards sign. Just saying.
A.
Kerry actually came down to the Gret Stet in 2004 — Kathleen Blanco hosted a rally at the Governor’s Mansion. I shook his hand and he signed a Kerry sign they’d given me to wave. Made me think he might even make a bit of a race down here. But, unfortunately, no. Shrub carried Loosiana by almost 20 points. Sigh.
Watched the returns that night at a friend’s house, drinking to forget instead of drinking to remember. So it goes. I do remember spending the next week mostly staying away from the internet and watching Wag the Dog a number of times…
“I suffered, so that you shouldn’t have to… That’s why I’m sending you to go fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
I drove to the Isleta Reservation south of Albuquerque and stood around with others waiting to see John Kerry and John Edwards on their campaign train in 2004. Kerry stood at the back, waving at all of us, cool despite the heat in a light blue shirt.
I totally love you for saying you still have your Kerry/Edwards sign. So do I.
That was a good, accurate post by the late great Gilliard. I miss Steve.
Once more with feeling: Fuck the fucking Yankees.
Kerry certainly is more deserving, if you actually *know* the song, of the title “Big John” than is Cornyn (who rather infamously stole it for a campaign ad).
A big, big man.