Car Conversations with a Kerry-ite
I recently discussed Bush with a Kerry-ite in my car. While we agree on many things, we don’t on the following issues.
About Iraq: She believes that people need to politically evolve on their own “like we did”. I ask her if that means that forcing democracy upon people is wrong, and she said “yes”. I then asked if that means people have “a right to oppression.”
I also pointed out that her logic was incredibly reactionary: Might was right, and you were on your own if you were on the wrong side of that equation. You can slap as many “Free Tibet” bumperstickers as you want on your car, but you will not dislodge China from the province it killed 250,000 people and has called “Xijang” for 45 years.
She responded that well, she was talking about the ideal world and that in such an ideal world people would be able to throw off their oppressors themselves. I pointed out that Bush didn’t have the luxury of being president in an “ideal world”.
By her reasoning, it would be immoral to stand up against any of the great genocides of the past 100 years. The Turkish slaughter of Armenians. The Holocaust in Europe. The Killing Fields in Cambodia, the Rwanda Genocide, the “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkans, and now Darfur in the Sudan.
On Afghanistan: She says that even though the people are happier today than they were three years ago under the Taliban, there are without a doubt some older people who long for the past. I point out that the Taliban came from the Madrassas in Pakistan in 1995-96 and laid siege to Kabul – in which the Taliban killed tens of thousands of people by shelling the city indiscriminately, so the nostalgia for the past would no doubt be limited.
She’s openly gay, and doesn’t like the fact that Bush wanted “to criminalize her personal life in the Constitution.” I told her that the FMA was Bush’s playing to his base, Kerry’s position wasn’t that much different from Bush’s (depending on the group he was talking to), and the bill had a snowball’s chance in Havana of getting passed. I then pointed out that the Taliban collapsed walls on homosexuals, and that while Bush may disagree with her lifestyle, there are terrorists out there who would like nothing more to behead her and her partner for it.
She stated that what really bothered her then was Bush’s stupidity for not being able to express these ideas without “getting all defensive”. I warned her “you underestimate Bush at your peril.” Stupidity was Bush’s schtick – the same way feeling people’s pain was Clinton’s. For Bush, it keeps him in power. For Clinton, it allowed him to cop a feel.
I then reminded her that I disagree with Bush on most of the issues. Deficit spending to Bush is like Wendy’s Triples to Michael Moore: he just can’t get enough. His compassionate conservativism is even more oxymoronic today than it was 4 years ago. His offshoring position seemed crafted by CEOs in their boardrooms in Bermuda.
But I lived through the Carter years once, and I’m having nightmares that I’m about to do so again.
She’s a registered voter in Pennsylvania.
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