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Jewish World Review Sept. 29, 2003 / 3 Tishrei, 5764
James Lileks
Ah-nold & Clark may be on different sides of the aisles, but their supporters are cut from the same cloth
Who knows what damage Gen. Clark and Howard Dean will do to each
other as they tumble toward the convention; who knows what will happen
in the war? It's reasonably certain that the economy will be better in a
year, and the Mesopotamian theater will be more stable; there will be
footage of Iraqi children skipping off to schools, interviews with doctors
who note that the number of patients who've had their tongues pulled
out by the government is down to zero.
Clark will have to explain why he thinks this is a bad thing.
The main reason his candidacy has zest and vim is simple: He's a
military man. He bestows credibility on the Democrats one might even
say gravitas. Of course, if the Republicans put a retired general on the
ticket, half the chattering classes would take to the fainting couch:
bonjour fascism, au revoir America.
But Clark's different! He's pro-choice, pro-high taxes, at least at press
time. And he wants "a new patriotism," the old one presumably sullied
beyond use by the boot-clicking usurpers who foul the Oval Office now.
"No administration has the right to tell Americans that to dissent is
disloyal, and to disagree is unpatriotic," he said in a recent speech.
Oh, absolutely. That's why we need Clark: Enough of those big banners
in the train stations telling us to SHUT UP AND OBEY, and the endless
mandatory TV shows about our Glorious Leader and his plans to
increase the radish crop by 170 percent for the next five-year plan.
Don't you wish your TV came with an off switch, so you could avoid the
propaganda? Don't you wish you could skip the Tuesday night book
burnings? Don't you wonder if we crossed the line the night John
Ashcroft personally executed Al Franken on "Saturday Night Live"? I
miss America, too.
He went on, unfortunately: "In times of war or peace, democracy
requires dialogue, disagreement and the courage to speak out. And
those who do it should not be condemned but be praised."
OK, then: Gen. Clark, I disagree with you because you're a tool of the
war machine that kills innocent people for the sake of corporate profits
of globalized firms run by Jews who drink the blood of Gentile infants.
Anyone want to praise me now?
Didn't think so. Dissent is not automatically worthy of praise. The act of
dissenting is not brave; dissent is the default position for half the nation.
We don't round up people who vote for the losing candidate and ship
them off to the gulag. And sometimes dissent is overtly un-American. Go
to any anti-globo demo; look at the chanting rabble in Che T-shirts who
want to replace America with International Workers Permanent
Committee for Boiling Rich People in Huge Vats. Dissent on parade, and
un-American to boot.
It's the same tired line: dissent against the dissenters, and you're
quashing dissent.
An interesting line coming from a general, who no doubt encouraged
free and open debate whenever he gave an order.
Well, that's different! He was in the military! True. But according to the
playbook of the angry left, the military is the problem.
It's full of bloodthirsty killbots who long to plunge a bayonet into an
enemy while shouting G-D BLESS RUPERT MURDOCH AND KARL
ROVE! Or they're hapless grunts drawn from the ghettos and barrios,
thrown into the meat grinder against their will by gouty old white men in
Washington who regard war as a novel way to thin the herd. Or they're
planners and gamers who hate this new age of pinpoint weaponry
because it deprives them of the chance to blow up nursery schools and
libraries.
How could the Democrats support a man who comes from this twisted
cradle?
For the same reason Republicans support Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Because he could win.
09/19/03: All Hail the Ninth Circuit Court of Surreal
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