Deconstructing "McCain"
Loving McCain
What it means
1. D.Valentine: "Glory Boy or Go-To Collaborator"
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine06132008.html
"Underlying the Jekyll-Hyde reversals is McCain’s hidden past of collaboration. Somewhere in the unplumbed human part of John Sidney McCain III, he knows his POW experience contradicts the war hero image he projects. This essential dishonesty, this lie of the soul, is a sign of a larger lack of character - .
"McCain is not some principled leader, not a maverick cowboy fighting the powerful. He’s a sycophant. He believes in nothing but power and will do anything to attain it. He explodes in anger when challenged because, when a criticism hits to close to home, it goes to straight his deep-seeded shame."
It isn't that there is no "THERE" there, it's that the THERE that there is should not be. Douglas is a military man, pedigree of Hackworth's 'grunts', and he relates what happened to Glory Boy officers in his outfit whose antics got people killed.
2. Tom Hayden: Dr Strangelove -- The Madness THEN and NOW from Kubrick to Kilcullen
("Global Phoenix program")
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/hayden
In the depths of the cold war, Stanley Kubrick created a notoriously mad scientist character, Dr. Strangelove, whose passion was for dropping atomic bombs. Now there is a rising media and Beltway fascination with a new Dr. Strangelove, whose passion is imposing a mad science of counterinsurgency on Iraq. ...
His name is David Kilcullen, an Australian academic and military veteran whom the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks once described as Gen. David Petraeus's "chief adviser" on the counterinsurgency doctrine underlying the surge in Iraq.
Kilcullen advocated a "global Phoenix program" in an obscure military journal, Small Wars, in 2004. For the ahistorical or uninitiated, Phoenix was a largely off-the-books detention, torture and assassination program aimed at tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who were identified by informants as the Vietcong's "civilian infrastructure." The venture was so discredited that the US Congress denounced and disbanded it after hearings in the 1970s.
3. Eric Alterman: Loving cCain
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/alterman
A. ADULATION
...(S)pontaneous testimonials to his character that have gushed from the pens of so many MSM journalists. These would include calling McCain "a cool dude" (Jake Tapper, Salon); "an original, imaginative, and at times inspiring candidate" (Jacob Weisberg, Slate); "a man of unshakable character, willing to stand up for his convictions" (the late R.W. Apple Jr., New York Times); "a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage" (Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek); "blunt, unyielding, deploying his principles.... What he does do is what he's always done, play it as straight as possible.... The maverick candidate still" (Terry Moran, ABC News's Nightline); "worldly-wise and witty, determined to follow the facts to the exclusion of ideology...willing to defy his own party and forge compromise...pragmatic in the service of the national interest...rises to passion when he believes that America's best values are at stake" (Michael Hirsch, Newsweek); "kind of like a Martin Luther" (Chris Matthews, MSNBC's Hardball); "the perfect candidate to deal with what challenges we face as a country" (Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC's Morning Joe); "rises above the pack...eloquent, as only a prisoner of war can be" (David Nyhan, Boston Globe); "the bravest candidate in the presidential race" (Dana Milbank, Washington Post); "an affable man of zealous, unbending beliefs" and "the hero [who] still does things his own way" (Richard Cohen, Washington Post); and who, in "an age of deep cynicism about politicians of both parties...is the rare exception who is not assumed to be willing to sacrifice personal credibility to prevail in any contest" (David Broder, Washington Post).
Believe us, we could go on (and on and on..)
B The "Never Mind" Syndrome
On issue after issue, and from every side of the journalistic political spectrum, a campaign of deception and distortion has helped to ensure that McCain's extreme positions and politically inspired flip-flops remain far from the consciousness of the average voter.
McCain flatters the press in other ways as well. For instance, he is particularly adept at embracing reporters' romantic notions of themselves as tough-minded, hard-charging opponents of power, particularly conservative power. After facing questions from the late Tim Russert, host of NBC's influential Meet the Press, he opined, "I just had my interrogation on Russert.... It's a good thing I had all that preparation in North Vietnam!" One can hardly imagine what it must have been like for McCain to endure what he did as a POW in North Vietnam, but it's hard to believe that it is an appropriate metaphor for taking questions about his main opponent in the Republican primary such as this: "Is Governor Romney waving the white flag?... Is Governor Romney suggesting surrender?"
C. "IT'S IN THE MAN" as personal container of split-off sacrificial 'good' of Vietnam
According to an extensive Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken in early May, only 27 percent of voters have positive views of the Republican Party, the lowest level for either party in the survey's nearly two-decade history. A clear majority of voters in the same survey said they wished for a Democratic President. And yet, in what the Journal reporters termed a "remarkable" finding, McCain remained in a dead heat with Obama and Clinton in head-to-head match-ups. The authors' explanation: "McCain's image is trumping negatives such as the war and the economy."
The fact that his approval ratings tower above those of the party
shows it is split, even contradictory on such issues as immigration, foreign policy, abortion, gay marriage. His strong championing of the vertices of their cube agreed on as national agenda -- taxes=evil; enemy=evil squared, liberals =the enemy -- .
.
Loving McCain Squares the old cynical canard that Image trumps everything. All the media has fallen in line. What choice does the Republican party have? The ex-candidates, cable news media punsters and pundits, Bible and borsh belt talk show hosts will each find something approbative they can go with, all the while splitting off the rest to 'extremists'. One man's extremist is another man's Goldwater. A true Union of Opposites is McCain -- a walking, talking contradiction.
D. CONCLUSION: LOVED because he 'stands for' what we HATE (blame, would punish) in ourselves. The name "McCain" predicates a unity of his-our matching self-contradictions. "President McCain" Squares this double self-hatred with a predicate of highest level approbation. Love For The Highest channels Hatred For the Lowest.
CONCLUSION^ THAT IS THE LOOP-WORK OF THE BIG GLITCH.
VIETNAM> WAR> (Disapprobative content reversed by the Zionist Jews) < HERO > JOHN McCAIN
BELOVED Political Journalist TIM RUSSERT died 6.13.'08
LOVING McCAIN
From Hating Vietnam
to Loving McCain
via the Big Gliltch
and Reagan
What it means
1. D.Valentine: "Glory Boy or Go-To Collaborator"
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine06132008.html
"Underlying the Jekyll-Hyde reversals is McCain’s hidden past of collaboration. Somewhere in the unplumbed human part of John Sidney McCain III, he knows his POW experience contradicts the war hero image he projects. This essential dishonesty, this lie of the soul, is a sign of a larger lack of character - .
"McCain is not some principled leader, not a maverick cowboy fighting the powerful. He’s a sycophant. He believes in nothing but power and will do anything to attain it. He explodes in anger when challenged because, when a criticism hits to close to home, it goes to straight his deep-seeded shame."
It isn't that there is no "THERE" there, it's that the THERE that there is should not be. Douglas is a military man, pedigree of Hackworth's 'grunts', and he relates what happened to Glory Boy officers in his outfit whose antics got people killed.
2. Tom Hayden: Dr Strangelove -- The Madness THEN and NOW from Kubrick to Kilcullen
("Global Phoenix program")
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/hayden
In the depths of the cold war, Stanley Kubrick created a notoriously mad scientist character, Dr. Strangelove, whose passion was for dropping atomic bombs. Now there is a rising media and Beltway fascination with a new Dr. Strangelove, whose passion is imposing a mad science of counterinsurgency on Iraq. ...
His name is David Kilcullen, an Australian academic and military veteran whom the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks once described as Gen. David Petraeus's "chief adviser" on the counterinsurgency doctrine underlying the surge in Iraq.
Kilcullen advocated a "global Phoenix program" in an obscure military journal, Small Wars, in 2004. For the ahistorical or uninitiated, Phoenix was a largely off-the-books detention, torture and assassination program aimed at tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who were identified by informants as the Vietcong's "civilian infrastructure." The venture was so discredited that the US Congress denounced and disbanded it after hearings in the 1970s.
3. Eric Alterman: Loving cCain
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/alterman
A. ADULATION
...(S)pontaneous testimonials to his character that have gushed from the pens of so many MSM journalists. These would include calling McCain "a cool dude" (Jake Tapper, Salon); "an original, imaginative, and at times inspiring candidate" (Jacob Weisberg, Slate); "a man of unshakable character, willing to stand up for his convictions" (the late R.W. Apple Jr., New York Times); "a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage" (Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek); "blunt, unyielding, deploying his principles.... What he does do is what he's always done, play it as straight as possible.... The maverick candidate still" (Terry Moran, ABC News's Nightline); "worldly-wise and witty, determined to follow the facts to the exclusion of ideology...willing to defy his own party and forge compromise...pragmatic in the service of the national interest...rises to passion when he believes that America's best values are at stake" (Michael Hirsch, Newsweek); "kind of like a Martin Luther" (Chris Matthews, MSNBC's Hardball); "the perfect candidate to deal with what challenges we face as a country" (Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC's Morning Joe); "rises above the pack...eloquent, as only a prisoner of war can be" (David Nyhan, Boston Globe); "the bravest candidate in the presidential race" (Dana Milbank, Washington Post); "an affable man of zealous, unbending beliefs" and "the hero [who] still does things his own way" (Richard Cohen, Washington Post); and who, in "an age of deep cynicism about politicians of both parties...is the rare exception who is not assumed to be willing to sacrifice personal credibility to prevail in any contest" (David Broder, Washington Post).
Believe us, we could go on (and on and on..)
B The "Never Mind" Syndrome
On issue after issue, and from every side of the journalistic political spectrum, a campaign of deception and distortion has helped to ensure that McCain's extreme positions and politically inspired flip-flops remain far from the consciousness of the average voter.
McCain flatters the press in other ways as well. For instance, he is particularly adept at embracing reporters' romantic notions of themselves as tough-minded, hard-charging opponents of power, particularly conservative power. After facing questions from the late Tim Russert, host of NBC's influential Meet the Press, he opined, "I just had my interrogation on Russert.... It's a good thing I had all that preparation in North Vietnam!" One can hardly imagine what it must have been like for McCain to endure what he did as a POW in North Vietnam, but it's hard to believe that it is an appropriate metaphor for taking questions about his main opponent in the Republican primary such as this: "Is Governor Romney waving the white flag?... Is Governor Romney suggesting surrender?"
C. "IT'S IN THE MAN" as personal container of split-off sacrificial 'good' of Vietnam
According to an extensive Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken in early May, only 27 percent of voters have positive views of the Republican Party, the lowest level for either party in the survey's nearly two-decade history. A clear majority of voters in the same survey said they wished for a Democratic President. And yet, in what the Journal reporters termed a "remarkable" finding, McCain remained in a dead heat with Obama and Clinton in head-to-head match-ups. The authors' explanation: "McCain's image is trumping negatives such as the war and the economy."
The fact that his approval ratings tower above those of the party
shows it is split, even contradictory on such issues as immigration, foreign policy, abortion, gay marriage. His strong championing of the vertices of their cube agreed on as national agenda -- taxes=evil; enemy=evil squared, liberals =the enemy -- .
.
Loving McCain Squares the old cynical canard that Image trumps everything. All the media has fallen in line. What choice does the Republican party have? The ex-candidates, cable news media punsters and pundits, Bible and borsh belt talk show hosts will each find something approbative they can go with, all the while splitting off the rest to 'extremists'. One man's extremist is another man's Goldwater. A true Union of Opposites is McCain -- a walking, talking contradiction.
D. CONCLUSION: LOVED because he 'stands for' what we HATE (blame, would punish) in ourselves. The name "McCain" predicates a unity of his-our matching self-contradictions. "President McCain" Squares this double self-hatred with a predicate of highest level approbation. Love For The Highest channels Hatred For the Lowest.
CONCLUSION^ THAT IS THE LOOP-WORK OF THE BIG GLITCH.
VIETNAM> WAR> (Disapprobative content reversed by the Zionist Jews) < HERO > JOHN McCAIN
BELOVED Political Journalist TIM RUSSERT died 6.13.'08
LOVING McCAIN
From Hating Vietnam
to Loving McCain
via the Big Gliltch
and Reagan
posted by Sid Thomas | 11:58 AM
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