Glenn Greenwald of Salon has an article up about Romney's manly adventure cheering on the Vietnam War while doing all he could to stay far away from signing up:
More repugnantly still, both the NYT article and accompanying video contain all sorts of quotes from Romney and his co-missionaries complaining about how very hard life was for them in France because it was so difficult to convert people, without any sense of how that "hardship" compared to their fellow citizens' fighting and dying in the Vietnam jungle. It's hard to put into words what twisted self-absorption and lack of empathy is required to wallow in such self-pity -- exactly the same strain that led Romney earlier this year to equate his sheltered sons' work on his presidential campaign with other Americans' sons and daughters who are in the Iraq war that Romney so loves and exploits for political gain.
Romney's draft-avoidance isn't quite as shameful as Super Tough Guy Rudy Giuliani's, whose deferment request was denied in 1969, thus placing him at imminent risk of being drafted, when he somehow convinced the federal judge for whom he was clerking "to write to the draft board, asking them to grant him a fresh deferment and reclassification as an 'essential' civilian employee." The very idea that a first-year judicial clerk, just out law school, is "essential" for anything is absurd on its face. Yet the swaggering tough guy Rudy Giuliani used that blatant lie to ensure that someone other than himself was sent to fight in Vietnam.
But Romney's record is hardly better. Although he claims he was ultimately convinced by his dad that the war was wrong, he spent most of the war cheering it on -- from the same safe and sheltered distance where one finds most of our right-wing tough guy warriors today, the ones who understandably recognize themselves in both Romney and Giuliani. Needless to say, a centerpiece of both of their campaigns is how "tough" and courageously pro-war they are.
10 comments:
Don't dis Romney, do you realize how hard it is to find a magic underwear cleaner in Paris?
I hadn't thought of that. What terrible stress that must have caused...kinda like being in a war.
Do they have special Jesus soap?
No they use latter day suds!
Gahhhh! That would be taking the saying 'cleanliness is next to godliness' waaay too seriously!
No wonder they needed so many wives. Think of laundry day....
For Republicans, "toughness" is not measured by courage, it's measured by meanness and cruelty, which they possess in abundance.
You're right, Eli. They admire lack of empathy, tolerance, understanding. All those things that might make one weak.
In 1978, on the streets of Graz, Austria, two American Mormons approached me for directions. Miraculously, despite having lived there only a month myself, I knew how to get to their destination. In halting, heavily accented English, I told them how to get there. (My girlfriend of the moment, a Seattle native, stood by, struggling to restrain herself from laughing.)
The Mormons complimented me on my English, and asked me where I learned to speak it. Reverting to standard American English, I replied, "Houston, Texas. I've lived there all my life."
I'm sorry, but the bastards deserved it. Condescension to people different from oneself is an ugly behavior, and they exhibited that behavior in spades. Romney is the same way: he's condescending. Fuck him, and I'm not offering to do the job.
The smugness of the Mormon male has been remarked on frequently. I guess being told you'll get to run a planet inflates the ego just a bit....
On reflection, ellroon, that was probably one of my more mean-spirited moments. I do not deal well with arrogant or condescending people, and I especially do not deal well with the whole notion of religious proselytizing. (They did not try to convert me; I was just a convenient implement to be used in the larger effort.)
OTOH, they got their directions and their chance to feel superior, and my little joke in response was probably the pleasantest thing I was capable of saying at the time. Today, I'd probably give them directions in American English and shrug it all off.
I still haven't managed to shrug off Romney. He can go run a world, but not mine.
I wonder how tempting it would be for a Mormon president to proselytize... it's what they're trained to do, you know.
It'd sure add some spice to Arab/Israeli negotiations!
Post a Comment