Appearing in Pasadena on behalf of California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, Kerry quipped to a crowd of students: "You know, education - if you make the most of it - you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
That's right. Watch out kids, and don't go into the army, or a US senator will blame you for being un-educated... Sheesh.
I'm waiting to hear the explanation: "Actually, I respect our troops. I respected them before I insulted them."
Kerry is not the only one on the Left who is stuck somewhere.
ReplyDeleteWhen I fretted about the next elections several months ago, a friend pointed out that the Left is "Still the Gang that Can't Shoot Straight." In fact, starting right after the 2004 elections and continuing through Kerry's latest favor to the Republican party, this has been a pattern
The other day another friend remarked that it looks like the Democrats will make strong gains in the next two elections. I countered that while the Republicans have troubles I'm not so sure their prospects are that bad. The Republicans have the assistance of a very powerful group of allies--i.e., the Left themselves.
It's amazing. Conservative speakers are being harrassed off college and other stages in the most flagrant brownshirt fashion, and no Democrats are seeking to either control this or at least distance themselves from this. They seem to neither care about the principals nor understand how it's damaging their position. Blind, stupid hostility like Kerry's recent insults, is paired with attempts to woo what they seem to perceive as the Religious Right--attempts so stunninly hamhanded and ignorant they do more harm than good. Hillary Clinton paying visits to church groups and saying how hard things could be for Biblical Christians like them and her. I have read a whole string of reports right in church bulletins combining annoyance with a kind of bewildered amusement at this cluelessness.
Okay, I ask myself; Kerry, Clinton et al. are not retarded; they are experienced and savvy. How could they be THIS stupid?
Well, first of all, as one friend pointed out, to really see what they have done wrong would be to confront the bankruptcy of decades of their own policies and principals, and admit they are not quite the savvy, caring, compassionate cognocenti they want to think they are. Part of that is that their actions, personally as well as collectively, have often been rather, well, ugly and selfish, and they only keep their consciences at bay by maintaining as a firm bulwark the fantasy of their own moral superiority. Now to do that, to see their own faults as "insignficant by comparison", they have to maintain a very strong picture of such greedy, selfish, fascistic, knuckle-dragging bestiality among Conservatives that their own faults seem unimportant. Being a manifestly false picture, it requires emotional and not logical arguments to support it. "Jargon, not logic," to quote "The Screwtape Letters". They are so hostile and so reluctant to admit their faults because they are on the defensive, and deep down they know it. Doubt and fear both eat at them. They have committed themselves too far for too long. Hillary Clinton has plenty of supporters, but even among her supporters there is a great deal of distaste and doubt about her character and values. An Afghan woman army General (the only one in a Muslim country today, apparently) was asked by a female Western reporter if she liked the idea of Hillary Clinton as President of the United States. Wouldn't that be good for woman's rights? The reporter asked. The General was blunt and disdainful. "Woman's rights? She can't even protect her own marital rights."
Finally, they are hugely out of touch, not only with conservatives, orthodox Christians, and American soldiers, but with the public in general. Lord Mountbatten, Jinnah of Pakistan, Nehru of India, and, for God's sake, Gandhi himself, were all taken totally by surprise by all the violence which sprang up literally the very hour that India became independent of Britain. These were all worldly, savvy people, but they, supposedly the top leaders on the spot, were so out of touch with the people on the ground that when the crisis came they were scarcely distinguishable from Louix XVI or Nicholas II.
This is where the Left is heading, if they are not already there; a Versailles-style remoteness and unreality, utterly alienated from their own country while they spend their time fighting phantoms and in their own court intrigues in their own unreal world.
Kerry might as well have said, "Let them eat cake."
--LogeyedRoman