Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Netroots Slam the Troops on Memorial Day

While calling our military service members "war criminals" is nothing new to the left-leaning blogosphere, you'd think we'd get a day of respect on Memorial day. There couldn't be a better day for pundits and anonymous commenters to put aside their political slandering of the U.S. Armed Forces and honor the fallen. While most lefties didn't have overt disgust of the military on Memorial Day, there were a significant number that did. These low-class thugs are so blinded by their hatred of the current administration that they don't even comprehend the offensiveness towards those that give them freedom of speech (note: getting called "low class" on this blog is impressive, since my ultimate goal here is to get some rich lady to marry and then divorce me so I can cash in on palimony). My dumpster-diving through the liberalsphere unearthed more tastelessness than Sharon Stone saying a karma-quake killed a bunch of unsuspecting Chinese people. Below is a small sampling.

Abu Muqawama is a well-written blog that focuses on COIN, and Kip had a post about Americans needing to have more respect for what Memorial day is about. It didn't take long for some anonymous commando to liken modern day military members to the Nazis:

The last honorable war was World War II. Members of my family fought in that war and members of my family also died in the camps. The insurgents were the underground, the partisans and the resistance. COIN was Germany.You people are the army of mercs Westmoreland worried about. I have pity for today's recruits, but no respect for their leaders.

Notice how anonymous guy drops the hint that he has a relative who had served in the military. This gives him the moral authority and courage to make asinine comments that have no basis in reality.

Nicole Belle of Crooks and Liars had a nice post of a girl in pigtails putting a flag in a fallen soldier's combat boots. Unfortunately, some of the commenters didn't see it that way:

The facts are out there, and if people volunteering for the military don’t bother to educate themselves on what THIS administration is going to do with them, what honor is there in serving? What honor is there in killing or being killed, for the enrichment of the oil industry, Halliburton, and the likes of Blackwater? Like I said: mixed feelings.

And:

Happy Memorial Day? Are you perhaps just a little careless with these hard word thingamabobs? Or do dead U.S. soldiers make you happy? Would more dead (wounded, maimed, PTSD-shattered) soldiers for Mr. Bush’s oil war make the day more happy? Or did you just speak a little poorly?

Yikes, and even more:

Can I ask how these futures are won when Pres Fudnut has made the world a more dangerous place AND shredded our Constitution to boot? I like dictatorship! And so do you, if you know what’s good for you! (Kos Link to a rambling, nonsensical diary about the military breaking into the author's house to steal his children was provided free of charge with this comment).

There seems to be some discrepancy on how the netroots are running their propaganda campaign against us. They can't decide if we are Nazis, sheisty mercenaries, armed sentries of the Bush dictatorship, or "damaged goods" as a commenter at Firedoglake points out. My advice to them is to stick with one phrase (e.g."warmongering shock troops of BushCheneyBurton") and use it repeatedly to increase the value of its jingoism in the groupthink echo chambers of places like Daily Kos and MyDD.

Since I understand that anonymous comments are not always a good barometer of the site's opinion, let's take a look at some front page posts that were served up with uber-class on Memorial Day. A Democratic Underground post shows a gentleman sporting the latest "Fuck The War" style T-shirt, the genre which is often found worn on liberal college campuses where students are heavy on the idealism but incredibly low on life experience. This youngster has a shirt depicting a veterans grave, which implies that if you sign up for the military to get help with college...you're gonna die! The shirt advertises the GI Rights Hotline, which is a cornball left-wing front group, evidenced by the aging hippie douchebags gracing us with their profile pictures on the "About Us" tab.

Of course, the site that gets me the most angry on a daily basis, had the most tasteless front page posts. The Huffington Post informs us that people join the military out of economic necessity and not so much patriotism.

We are, in fact, eternally indebted to all the men and women who choose to voluntarily serve our country because they: (a) believe it is their patriotic duty; (b) have limited economic opportunities; (c) cannot afford to attend college (see b); or, (d) all of the above. The fact is that financial necessity compels many of our soldiers to enlist as much as patriotism.

This ensures we can breathe a sigh of relief and not care for a young soldier who succumbed to his wounds in the battleground of Sadr City. He wasn't serving his country (despite the fact that the uniform actually says "U.S. Army" on it), but rather he was just some hick from the south looking to make a quick buck. Martha Burke perpetuates the myth on HuffPo that if you're a female soldier/marine, you will be raped repeatedly in the "macho" military world:

The Marine Corps is no doubt trying to attract women because it is stretched for recruits for George and Dick's war. All I can say to those women reading the new ads is: Buyer beware. On the same day recent stories about the new "woman friendly" pitch ran in newspapers, NBC Nightly News reported that the U.S. military is now so desperate it is accepting felons, some with convictions for sexual assault.

Instead of honoring our sisters in uniform and those who have fallen, Martha Burke has relegated them to a pathetic victim class subjected to a crass advertising scheme. Perhaps Martha should've taken the time to talk with female vets, instead of holding such ridiculous assumptions.

I wager that most of the netroots are actually supportive of veterans issues, but I fear that tune will eventually change. Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings offers a good model for humiliating offensive participants of the lefty blogosphere, but she is the exception and not the rule. Due to the inherent lack of criticism for bullshit on the left, the Leviathan of collective outrage will continue to grow and become more powerful. Soon, anyone who doesn't support a Stalin-like approach to health care and changing the Department of Defense to the Department of Re-education will be chastised as the incarnation of Josef Mengele (with poor spelling and tons of exclamation points included). You stay classy, guys.

The Leviathan of Military-Hatred Takes Over the Blogosphere

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