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Recently, an aquaintance asked me to google "Colliers International C. Stewart Forbes" and tell him what I thought of the results. I want to share my response to him with any DU readers who might be interested:
I googled as per your suggestion, Jim, and noticed a few common threads running through the websites that came up. First, they were exclusively "movement conservative" and/or partisan Republican in nature. That one can find anti-Kerry information on conservative/Republican websites is, of course, to be expected. But there's something about these anti-Kerry websites that set off yer old pal Jerky's Bullshit Detector.
If you check for yourself, you'll see that the information from page to page correlates in a way that goes far beyond what mere research convergence could produce. It's obvious that these right-wing bloggers and lower-scale op-ed writers are getting their information from a very limited pool of sources. This whole "Kerry Colliers Forbes" tempest could easily be radiating from a single teapot; say, a "talking points" blast-fax from RNC headquarters, or stories planted by anonymous operatives at simpatico websites, or leaked galleys from an upcoming right-wing hatchet-job book from the infinitely conservative-biased Regnery publishing house. A cursory investigation should be able to trace this viral meme and reveal its origins. The possibilities are endless, as are the resources of those whose agendas are helped by such anti-Democratic whisper campaigns.
Of course, it doesn't help that there are people who still think the unconscionable slaughter in South-East Asia never should have come to an end, or that "America would have won that war" if it hadn't been for lousy finks like John Kerry spoiling it all by exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to argue against it. To the unthinking, reactionary shit-goblins who are currently impugning Kerry in the vilest terms, there was nothing wrong with sending fifty-eight thousand men to die - and countless others to be physically, mentally and spiritually butchered - in a hopeless war to "rescue" a country that, by and large, didn't want or need to be rescued. According to these people, opposing such unmitigated madness was treason. Which means thrice-wounded Vietnman war hero and long-time public servant John Kerry is a traitor. And probably a communist, to boot!
Paradoxically, this same howling cult transforms into a bunch of sycophantic cyphers at the merest sight of their draft-dodging Hero-Preznit, Emperor Dubya. In him, a certain segment of the population sees the Throbbing Cock in the Right Hand of God. They hold their Dear Leader in the very highest esteem, because they identify with him on a visceral level. Heidegger would have described Dubya's appeal as "volkish." And the "volk" see themselves reflected in his pharmaceutically hyper-dilated gaze. They see their native wisdom made manifest in his messianic homilies. Never mind that this perceived wisdom is, in reality, a fetid cocktail of TV Guide listings and fast food restaurant jingles. They have invested their egos in Dubya's success. And because they have invested their egos in his success, they are prepared to do anything to make sure he wins. Part of that includes spreading rumors about his most likely rival, John Kerry.
You might as well get to know these rumors now, because you'll be seeing a lot of them for the next few months. Here they are, in no particular order:
"John Kerry pays an awful lot for a haircut!"
"When nobody's watching, John Kerry speaks FRENCH!"
"John Kerry fucked an intern!
"John Kerry has prolonged the suffering of American POWs and MIAs still being held in bamboo cages in Vietnam!"
"John Kerry once killed a retreating Viet Cong soldier just so he could get a Silver Star to use as a prop for the Senate run he was already plotting at the time! The lousy sneak!"
"John Kerry's wounds were very slight! It's like he wasn't really wounded at all!"
"And then, after being only slightly wounded three times, he had the unmitigated audacity to request the Stateside transfer that was his due! HE ABANDONED HIS MEN!!!"
"John Kerry once came within thirty yards of (GASP!!!) JANE FONDA!!!!!"
Yes, dear reader, you read correctly... they're already trotting out good old "Hanoi Jane." Still the Birchers' favorite Jezebel/Matahari hate-sponge, even though the Birchers have long since gone the way of the worm. Each of the above-listed rumors - and many more - is currently floating around on the web. The Powers That Be have been busy grilling red meat for the hard core.
It's becoming ever more obvious that, emboldened by the revolutionary revisionism of Dubya's preznitcy, many conservatives wish to once again take up the Vietnam argument they lost so many years ago. As the party of reaction, the modern GOP is defined by its grudges. The eight-year campaign to destroy Bill Clinton - a national drama that history will one day recognize as a tragic farce on the scale of the 50's Red Scare - was payback for the Watergate humiliation of Richard Nixon, who was out to avenge a few hundred long-standing grudges of his own.
Yer old pal Jerky fears the conservatives are going to get what they wish for. A replay of the Vietnam era, complete with civil unrest, riots, violent party conventions, angry shrieking mobs blocking courthouse doorways, fire-hoses turned against women and children, roving gangs of deputized fat racist bastards dispensing vigilante justice in the Homeland... the works.
Oh well. Maybe a heroic dose of undiluted chaos is exactly the kind of salt this zombie nation needs right now.
Cheers,
YOPJ
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