Some Stern Inspiration

I’ve been writing tonight over at a site I’d known about for a while, but for some reason hadn’t registered at (SternFanNetwork). Since I debate politics online 95% of the time or more, the connection hadn’t been made until now. Turns out there’s a politics message board over there, and thus far I’ve been motivated to really let it fly, just go on a topic until the trail ends, forget about whether or not I should censor the curse words that my brain thinks I should type, click ‘post’…blah. Came to realize that if a right-winger is a Stern fan, then I assume there’s hope. A hell of a lot more hope than I feel writing on all the GOP sites I’ve gone into battle on and been booted from over the years! And then I remember that Right Thinker was a Stern fan, with opinions that sounded like nails on a chalkboard some days, though at the end of whatever thread we were babbling on, I still considered him a friend and was glad he took the time to read and write on here. Anyways, the one I was responding to tonight was a right-winger named VacateTheWord, in a thread titled ‘Iraqis flock to city for anti-US protest‘:

VACATE,

Here’s the comment of yours that got me:

I’m a liberal wh o volunteered for the piece-of-shit existence that is the life of a US Army soldier, and since the day I got out, started paying attention to politics, nothing has annoyed me more than the standard right-winger attitude that only their side thinks of the country as a whole and only their side has any balls. It’s complete bullshit – and “liberals” aren’t accurately stereotyped as all being hippie-vegans living in the woods playing drums, just like “conservatives” aren’t accurately stereotyped as racist-rednecks telling each other nigger jokes at church.

In your second sentence there, the negative connotation attached to a strategy of withdrawing from Iraq, is why I ask whether you’re in favor of the “I’m gonna fuck you till you love me” strategy. You’re resigned to consider withdrawal from Iraq as being the wrong move. What specifically justifies this point of view? Besides hope…I can’t understand what exactly convinces Republicans that something positive is resulting from this war. I can understand the fear of terrorists taking over our country, but I 100% disagree that it could ever happen.

I think they got lucky on 9/11. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – FDR

I don’t see any evidence that suggests terrorists could take over any western country, let alone the sprawling concrete jungle we inhabit.

You said “(i.e. make Bush look bad no matter what then support their own kind)” – when you say “our kind”, I assume you mean “Americans”…hence the reason why I use the word “traitor”.

Fair enough, but as I see it, the expiration date for “do you want us to succeed in Iraq or not” lapsed in 2005. Vacate, it’s a hard fucking thing to do…to keep up that good faith attitude for all this time. An example…I tried my best a few years back to take an even-handed approach towards the war…let me look for a few samples:

Operation Win The War – spring2005

That one is good enough to prove my sincerity. Vacate, you have to understand how excruciating it is for someone like me (who was 100% behind what we did in Afghanistan and 100% horrified and against war with Iraq), with many friends destined for Iraq, to hold on that long with a “let’s win this thing” point of view.

What caused me to start http://deadissue.com in the first place was the stories that began making their way into my head regarding how badly soldiers were being fucked over…news articles, posts by soldiers, personal stories (I interviewed a handful of soldiers throughout this time, no names used for obvious reasons)…and to truly understand the scope of how badly our Army was shortchanged from the first day of this war, you’d really have to actually be one of those who served 2-4 tours, drove around in unarmored humvees for all four, etc.

The apathetic “tough guy” stance from neoconservatives saying things like “they volunteered, they knew what they were signing up for”, brushing off or simply ignoring the equipment shortages (“you go to war with the army you have, not the army you’d like to have at a future point in time” from the FUCKING SECRETARY OF DEFENSE?!?!?!?!?)…all the billions being pumped into private enterprise to operate in some (unknown in a lot of cases) capacity, month after month, year after year, and we couldn’t get armored vehicles and body armor to everyone over there…

I decided that President Bush wasn’t going to actually “get” this part of it sometime in 2005. I gave up hope during that year. As a soldier, you foolishly assume that at some point the bullshit ends, someone takes charge high up and you get what you need along with an apology. Yet they’ve never even received an apology! Now they’re not getting a fair shake with their medical discharge disability percentages, still no new equipment, inadequate rest time between deployments, inadequate training…articles from last week detailed soldiers who were forced to deploy with injuries, here’s my personal story pertaining to that:

Army Deployed Seriously Injured Stories

The right-wingers who were asking people like me if I wanted us to win in Iraq back in 2005 weren’t buying any of this, and if they believed that soldiers were being fucked over like this, they shrugged it off and said, “they volunteered.”

I think that the lack of faith in Bush is well deserved at this point. His strategy in Iraq has been cruel to everyone involved, and his rhetoric, unwillingness to compromise, his transparency regarding the goal being our energy companies getting a hold of Iraq’s natural resources…it’s high time he gave in and put the country ahead of his own pride. When the embassies in Africa were bombed, I ended up on guard duty Christmas Day, wondering where I’d be deployed to. Headline News (The only channel we got on post in Vilseck, Germany) showed MY PARTY at the time, the Republicans, with closed ranks saying “No War For Monica”.

That specific moment made me realize I didn’t have a fucking clue. Not expecting everyone to experience satori over politics, I’m lucky in that regard, and thankful for that specific sequence of events. Maybe the corporate media is responsible for shielding the public from much of the ugly truth (a fact) about ourselves, but there are a lot more reasons to pay attention to all this shit now than there were back then. I didn’t give a fuck about Bill Clinton when the shit went down, but I recognized the pattern by then where these Republicans weren’t about anything other than seeing him fall over whatever bullshit was fresh at the time. Whoever bombed those embassies…there wasn’t a Republican with any power at the time who could have cared in the least. I tried to find out what I was missing at the time, but it’s the sad truth. In hindsight, Clinton was a President…here’s a list of what he didn’t do:

He didn’t allow an entire US city to become a wasteland, its people permanent nomads.
He didn’t allow his minions to corrupt elections or turn the justice system into a one-party sham.
He didn’t outspend every other US President in history.
He didn’t fail to work with the Congress he was provided for the sake of the country.
He didn’t allow the corporations the government is in charge of regulating write the laws or determine policy.
He didn’t destroy and then turn his back on the US Army.

He got a blowjob. He cheated on his wife.

Back in the 90s things were so good that it was actually possible for this country to become collectively trance-like and start viewing politics like a sports fan. I never could appreciate it on that level, and thankfully there seems to be enough Americans today who are getting out of that frame of mind. The Limbaugh types are still going to exist, but they’re growing old as a group with each passing day. Soon they’ll be like the Masons with an average age over 70.

At least that’ll be the case if I have any say in the matter. And as for the Democrats, once they start getting used to calling the shots, I’ll be amplifying their LEGITIMATE fuckups on deadissue (ALREADY HAVE – HARRY REID). At this point in our history though…we can either accept the lie that people like William Kristol, John Bolton, Dick Cheney, Grover Norquist, Tom Delay, Frederick Kagan, Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzalez actually know what they’re talking about – or – wake up and realize it’s time to find out who does!

On the GOP side – how about Chuck Hagel? Besides his unwillingness to play the game as he’s told to (my definition of a leader), what does the GOP base find so unattractive about him? Answering that question and fixing the malfunction would be the type of thing that could possibly bring the GOP to a point where I could ever vote for them again. I’m told by my readers that I have a man-crush on Hagel, as I’ve been writing positively about him since early in 2006, but I think the reason for all of that is how much he stands out amongst the rest of his party during a crucial moment in our republic’s VERY young history.

I want to have leaders from both sides that I can admire. Bush and the 6 years he had a GOP Congress has left me so jaded, the goal of ensuring this period of our nation’s history is never forgotten for the truth of what it was is my thing. And it’s not because of some psychological goof or unreasonable hatred towards Bush because he’s a Republican. I really think it’s because I was a geek who got good grades in school and honestly bought into all the things I was taught that made us different than every other nation of people in the history of mankind. I still believe in all of that. Though the US Government and US History portions, I feel, are being erased right in front of my very eyes…

The other night John Bolton was on The Daily Show and when Stewart mentioned how Abraham Lincoln went the opposite way of Bush by constructing his cabinet with his political enemies, Bolton said “You’re historically wrong about Lincoln.” Having received Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin for Christmas in 2005 and made my way through it twice since then, I literally jumped out of my seat, realized all at once that what he said would have been accepted on any number of media outlets in the country (right-wing radio comes to mind)…yet the very simple historical fact that he’s denying exists is, in my opinion, what allowed our country to even have the chance of becoming what we are today.

This guy was our ambassador to the UN…and who would put it past Cheney to say the same thing if someone asked him? That’s dangerous stuff right there! The sudden acceptance of 200+ million people that the use of force rather than compromise is what makes us the lone world power we are today…widespread ignorance, and something that if gone unchecked, will ensure our slow demise over this next century.

I got way off the beaten path here, but something about the board bearing the name of this guy who I’ve been learning from since I was 11 years old…what the fuck, right? I got to hear Billy West again, some vintage Gilbert/Jackie doing the news…suddenly remembered what all that did for me back then. It’d take 10,000 words and some therapy to make any sense out of this paragraph at this point, but fuck it…I’m an introverted nerd with some powerful fears of what kind of country this will be by the time my sons (twin 18 month olds) are 28, inspired to do something they love on a Monday night…will they have the air conditioner on throughout April?

That I listen to Stern everyday and it took me this long to post on this site is a mystery to me…never considered myself a blog whore, but I’m compelled to post links to my writing here all the time. I figure that a right-winger who appreciates Stern is someone I can see eye to eye with eventually. The amount of fucking assholes on the right AND the left wasting space on this politics board is at a critical mass…there’s a good chance that none of us are patriotic, just full of pride and itching for the chance to throw a handful of doo-doo at someone.

Bush is a disgrace, and I get that you’re in his corner. You responded respectfully and honestly, so you can expect the same from me going forward.

Peace – DI

F JACKIE!