[Industrialblog,
January 24, 2006]
John Kerry on Daily Kos
Much ado on the conservative side of the blogosphere about this post on Daily Kos. My allies can make fun all they want, but I'm have to say that John Kerry made a lot of sense.
Now, why he would post on Daily Kos, a well-known Web site for only the most rabid of barking moonbats [I say that with love], I dunno. That's a dumb move. I'd rather see John Kerry just start his own blog.
There's something that doesn't sit right with me when, on the day Osama Bin Laden resurfaced in a disturbing audio tape, cable television ends up in a game of name calling as a war protester is compared to Osama Bin Laden.
That's reason to be outraged - but even more outrageous is the fact that in a flurry of sound bites what was lost was a real discussion of the fact that more than four years after the devastating attacks of 9/11, more than four years after George Bush boasted we wanted Osama "dead or alive," more than a year after Osama Bin Laden showed his hateful face in yet another video, this barbarian is still very much alive and boasting of additional attacks against the United States.
Now, why he would post on Daily Kos, a well-known Web site for only the most rabid of barking moonbats [I say that with love], I dunno. That's a dumb move. I'd rather see John Kerry just start his own blog.
Of course, Bin Laden sounded like Moore during his campaign commercial for Kerry back during the election. Sounding like that again now would hardly be news.
But Kerry, of all people, whose motto is roughly, "surrender without dignity", is hardly saying anything significant here. First off, bemoaning what people on cable vision choose to talk about is an early sign of fascist tendencies. The guy obviously wants to control political discussion (recall his threats to, if he won, use his power to attack FOX news?). That's the first thing that I'd take issue with.
Secondly, this is a senator. His job is to legislate. What legislation is he proposing to spend extra money on getting Bin Laden?
Or, for that matter, where's the regocnition of the nuanced difference between "boasting of additional attacks against the United States" and "carrying out additional attacks against the United States"?
If we never get Bin Laden but he's reduced to being completely ineffectual, isn't that close enough for this imperfect world?
All we need to do is raise the stakes of the game to a level at which Bin Laden can't compete: building a better world through cooperation, capitalism, controlling violence, ensuring freedom, tolerance (great American values). We've often chosen the wrong rhetoric and goals. You can't stop every terrorist act or kill every terrorist unless you be starve them of their base. You'll never achieve that by war alone.
Getting Bin Laden seems to me becoming as much politics as necessity. It would have been very valuable if we had gotten him at the beginning, but getting him now matters less. If anything seeing him peter out and rounded up as his movement dies would deprive him of martydom.
PS People should be outraged by equating war protesters to Bin Laden.
I don't think that anyone's equating them. I think that people are noticing that Bin Laden and the war protestors sound an awful lot alike nowadays.
Of course, such similarities often mean nothing. I expect that Bush and Bin Laden would sound a lot alike ordering an ice cream cone. There are lots of reasons for people to sound alike, and even evil people are not thoroughly evil in every detail of their life. Merely sounding like someone who's evil doesn't in itself mean anything. It should give one a little pause, though.
I think it is a bit like throwing stones in a glass house (Kos Link). You can probably find a quote from just about anyone that sounds like Bin Laden. Why would you mention them together without actually being trying to equate them?
First, I thought that it was Michael Moore being compared to Bin Laden, not Kerry. Kerry was merely commenting on the comparison.
Second, I thought that people who dislike Bush are supposed to be so versed in nuance that you can't even make an absolute statement without vomiting five times. Are you really asking me why a person might compare two things without claiming that they're exactly the same? Do you really mean to say that if I make an analogy between, say, people who claim that you can't criticize your country during war and people who say that you can't criticize the driver of a car while going over a cliff, that I think that war and a cliff are exactly the same in every respect? Does making that analogy require that I believe that all wars are carried on in cars going over cliffs, or that all cars going over cliffs are actually tanks?
The entire point of analogies, actually, is that things can share some traits without being completely the same.
And the point of drawing the simile, in this case, is that if Michael Moore were actively the enemy of the United States, he wouldn't have to change what he's saying, since our actual enemies sound just like him. It's up to you whether that means that it's reasonable to question MM's patriotism, his sense, or whether this is just one of those strange occurrances.
Also, similes are less effective the further from the topic they're drawn. MM and Bin Laden sound very similar about the war. When talking about the war and Michael Moore, this is at least mildly relevant. That Bin Laden also sounds like Pat Robertson on whether gay sex is as great as some people make it out to be may be relevant to many things, but it's not relevant to the war. I'm sure that Bin Laden and I agree completely on whether it's fun to have your testicles branded with a hot iron, but (1) it's not remotely relevant and (2) it's also a very common idea.
Citing a disapproval of hot gay sex or cheating on your wife doesn't put Bush and Bin Laden into the same very small basket, it puts them into the same basket which comprises, numerically, most of humanity. Once you start making those comparisons, you're just pointing out that both Bush and Adolph Hitler have noses. So did Ghandi and Mother Theresa.
Neo-Nazis, by contrast, have a lot in common with Hitler that they don't share with other people. Michael Moore's talking points share a lot with Bin Laden's that they don't with an awful lot of other people.
Moore is, however, obviously not Bin Laden and almost certainly has no aspirations to being the caliphate of anything. That two things are similar doesn't mean that they're the same, but it's also not always irrelevant.
I don't like it for the same reason that I don't like people lumping Michael Moore with Bin Laden: I think it harmful for Americans to lump their fellow Americans with Bin Laden and terrorists. I believe it is detrimental to our society, whether you do it, whether I do it, whether Republicans do it, or whether Democrats do it.
Here was my recent statement on the issue.
I hope you'll agree some day.