November 1, 2006

• Political Satire

  It seems to me that it gets harder and harder to parody politics, now
  that the politicians appear to be creating their own satire.  The
  silliest thing about it all is that they have every appearance of being
  serious about it.

  A couple of years ago, jibjab.com generated half a million (daily?) web
  hits and a little flurry of litigation with their “This Land” joke
  video, in which Bush called Kerry a liberal sissy and Kerry called Prez
  Shrub a right-wing nut job.

  This week Kerry, speaking to a group of students, recommended that they
  attend to their schooling or get, “stuck in Iraq.”  The White
  House’s spin machine jumped on it, called it an insult to our troops,
  and demanded an apology.

  I think Kerry only compounded the gaffe by saying it was a “botched
  joke” on Bush.  Is it a slur on the troops to truthfully suggest
  that many of them got there because of their limited career choices
  with a less than sterling educational background?  Couldn’t he
  have found some statistics to support his statement?  Maybe he is
  a sissy.

  Is the administration really trying to deny that a substantial portion
  of their all-volunteer army accepted that path as an alternative to
  incarceration, or for the promise of vocational training that the
  recruiters offered? 

  Here in this Alaskan valley, I know several young men who went into the
  military because they lacked either the tuition or the grades to get
  into college and couldn’t find lawful employment around here. 
  Some of the ones who didn’t go that route are now operating meth labs,
  growing bud, or sitting in jail.

  At one end of the military system, we have recruiters cheating, forging
  and faking records in order to squeeze in some unqualified recruits,
  while the Commander in Chief is up there at the other end boasting
  about how “smart” his cannon fodder is.

  They are not necessarily stupid because they grasped onto one of the
  few promises of economic survival they were offered, but their current
  predicament suggests that they might have lacked forethought, or the
  foresight they could have gained from a closer study of history and
  current events.

  Here in my home state, the families of a National Guard unit are making
  a lot of noise over the fact that their service men and women have had
  their Iraq deployments extended.  I have heard some sound bites
  from those very same National Guard troops, back when they were
  originally about to be deployed, saying that when they joined the
  Guard, they never expected to go to war.

  Were they lied to by recruiters?  Did they fail to read the
  contract they signed?  Were they listening to what they were
  parroting when they were sworn in?  Was their education so
  deficient that they never quite caught onto the connection between the
  military and war?

  I’ll cut them this slack:  they are young.  I’m not.  I
  am a lifelong student of history and current events.  I was born
  during a war — World War TWO, the next big war that came after the
  Great War to End All Wars.  I grew up amid men of my father’s
  generation with hooks for hands and psychological quirks that people
  called “shell shock” behind their backs.

  A major formative event of my youth was the Vietnam “conflict”, an
  undeclared war against which my subcultural cohort protested. 
  From that war many of my current friends returned minus a few body
  parts.  The addictions they acquired in that jungle still plague
  them.  Many of them are certified nut jobs, in and out of jail for
  their violent outbursts.  Even the ones that don’t have it that
  bad carry psychic scars that still cause them nightmares. 

  This deplorable debacle in Iraq is to me just another war, caused by
  just a different set of madmen, flexing their muscles, trying to prove
  their manhood, outdo their fathers, and make their fortunes all at the
  same time.  I am offended by Bush’s calling his troops “smart”
  while using them this way, putting them in harm’s way.  Just
  saying something doesn’t make it so, dammit!

  

  • 12:37 pm
  • 9 Comments