The Man Who Sold the World – Nirvana
I got angry about Rudy Giuliani spitting in the wind of historical accuracy on the subject of Vietnam a couple weeks ago. I thought that I would be able to put it behind me, but then our current president, Mr. 27%, had to go and make the same historically inept analogy (in direct contradiction with his past statements that the Iraq/Vietnam analogy should not be deployed):
Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of Americas withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps,’ and ‘killing fields.’
And he topped it all off by referencing Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, a scathing attack on the misguided Western presence in Vietnam, to what purpose I have no idea. But let me just say that I wish Bush had only ever gotten his hands on enough power to do the same amount of damage as Alden Pyle did. Pyle was a bit-character, emblematic of a larger problem. If not for Bush we might never have had the larger problem of Iraq to even deal with.
Anyways, some very good takedowns of this insane Cambodia myth at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Obsidian Wings.
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Scared Straight – The Long Winters
In other news, another Republican who has been pushing anti-gay legislation is caught in a gay sex scandal. Frankly, I’m not even that sure why people are still astonished about things like this. Clearly, some percentage of the people on the right have to be gay. There are a lot of gay folks out there, and not every one of them is going to prioritize sexual identity over every other issue. But you cannot possibly be openly gay and succeed politically with the GOP right now.
Honestly, I find it more sad than anything else. I really think that if a lot of these people felt like they could freely and openly express their sexuality without condemnation of consequence, they could live healthy, normal sexual lives and develop happy relationships. Instead, they’re forced to hide a crucial part of their identity – so no wonder it tends to come out in the most depressing and furtive forms.
I’m not trying to apologize for Craig – I think the fact that he was willing to run campaigns on moral values even while privately violating those principles is despicable and deserves our condemnation. But I wonder if we can make this story a little bit more about the problems with the categorical anti-gay morality that causes people to behave this way and less about playing gotcha with one guy, or even one side of the political divide.
Also, I fear that part of the story on something like this inevitably ends up being people on the Left framing the closeted gay guy in terms like “see, he’s not so moral after all” which only contributes to the idea that being gay is at all relevant to any moral issue. The problem is not that he’s gay, or that he may have solicited sex (and as far as I can tell, the evidence on that isn’t even that great) – it’s that the contemporary approach to issues of sexuality requires people to hide who they are.
Partisan gain is nice, but I’d be far happier if we could just have a world where people of all sexualities felt accepted within the Republican Party.
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Unsatisfaction – Men Without Hats
(“I may not know what’s right, but I know this can’t be it”)
Lots of folks are all ga-ga over the latest speech by John Edwards. Choice quote: “We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other.”
Like most things Edwards I find it hard to put in words what I dislike about it, but it just rubs me the wrong way, with all its implications that the differences between “moderate” Democrats and “moderate” Republicans are not that big. It reminds me a little too much of Ralph Nader.
Plus, he followed all this up with this comment: “Nothing I said yesterday has to do with other presidential candidates. They need to move on from thinking about themselves and think about what’s important to the country.” Which is patently and obviously false, and strikes me as just the sort of smug, self-satisfied mentality that infuriates me about him (and made me so angry about Nader, too).
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t really disagree with him about any of this, and it certainly takes guts to say it. But there’s a difference between me thinking it and him saying it. After all, I’m not running for President. I’m perfectly free to be outraged by systemic things, but I’m just not sure it’s the President’s job.
Mostly this is because I find the obsession with Presidential elections as the pinnacle of all politics to be a little disheartening. We’ll win some, they’ll win some – it’s just the way of things. But these cultural and social realignments which really drive basic institutional questions of justice and fairness stem from something far broader than which privileged rich person manages to get elected.
I’m not saying who is President doesn’t matter – of course it does. But it mattes a lot more to me that it be someone from the Blue Team than which particular person it is.
I like Edwards just fine, but I’m not sure I approve of a campaign premised on trying to make Democrats feel bad for supporting a different Democratic candidate. But that’s just me. And if Edwards does win the primary, I’ll support him wholeheartedly, and hope that his vision of a transformed America does take place.
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Oh, and Alberto Gonzales is quitting, about six months too late. Whatever.