We live in a world of mixed messages, most of them originating in our own culture. This flip-flopping has greatly weakened our country, because much of the rest of the world doesn’t grant the forgiveness that we so willingly offer.

For example, let’s step way back from life for a minute and take a look at the raising of our children here in the good old USA.

We teach our children that honesty matters, but the dishonest are rewarded in the adult world. We tell our kids to “just say no,” while we suck on cancer sticks and get drunk every night. We want to tell others that the problem with their children is that they don’t spend enough time with them, and we do so while taking our own kids from aftercare to soccer practice to piano lessons. Like the Apostle Paul, we know what’s right but we do what’s wrong. And since we do what’s wrong, we assume everybody else is doing likewise. Our mixed messages are more about them than us.

We tell our kids to study hard but shrink in fear when new technologies come our way. We bitch and complain about the way things are done in our communities, but we don’t get involved. Instead of helping to fight crime, we move away from it.

It will come as a shock to most of my friends that I’m not voting for John Kerry, and it’s due to the issue of mixed messages. A man opposed to war simply cannot fight one, and I want no part of that mixed message, because I think we ARE at war.

I’m liberal in most ways and conservative in some, but ideology has nothing to do with this decision. I also have roots as a Democrat, but the party has changed so much that I’m not swayed by that kind of loyalty anymore. Being a liberal today is much different than it was in my youth.

I think we need change in Washington and especially in the White House, but I cannot bring myself to support the Democratic team this year. In that sense, this isn’t an endorsement of George Bush, but an explanation as to why I won’t vote for Mr. Kerry.

I am not alone in this thinking.

Firstly, I don’t believe Kerry’s position on national defense is the right one, and that’s an overriding issue for me. But more than his position is his history on the matter. I can’t cast my ballot for a man who denigrated the service of myself and my friends and contemporaries 35 years ago. As Murrow wrote so long ago, “We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.” I will not vote to put into the most powerful position on the planet a man who used the tragedy of Vietnam to further his own political goals at the expense of our country.

I grew up in the 50s and got my draft notice in the summer of 1965. I spent 5 years in the service during the Vietnam era. My classmates and friends were those who went away and did their duty during a difficult time in American history. MY contemporaries. MY friends. MY generation. I escaped direct conflict, but I was proud of my service to my family and my country.

People who didn’t live through it simply cannot understand what life was like back then. We lost our belly for war and it has never come back. Hell, I’m one of those who believe Johnson was elected in ‘64 because people were afraid that Goldwater would drop the H-bomb on Hanoi and trigger the dreaded global nuclear war. We should’ve nuked Hanoi. Why wage war if you don’t intend to win it? We didn’t lose Vietnam. We simply gave it away.

Vietnam was the first television war, and moms didn’t like what they saw. Hell, nobody did. But here’s the real kicker. The country took it out on the soldiers who — like their fathers before them — were serving faithfully and honorably. There was a while there where even once proud soldiers put their uniforms in the closet and didn’t engage in conversation about the war for fear of being shunned. That is absolutely true, and we have, among others, John Kerry to thank for that.

As a fledgling reporter in the early 70s, I covered events of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I didn’t think much of them then, and I think even less of them today. They didn’t speak for me or any friends and classmates that I knew. This was a small group of exploitive and destructive individuals, an organized mob bent on disruption and destruction of anything and everything, so that they could draw attention to their cause.

I’m not suggesting the VVAW was disingenuous. They just didn’t deserve the visibility they received, and their tactics were an affront to the vast majority of the men and women who served with nobility and honor. It grieves me to see history using words like “movement” to describe their ilk or recording the idea that “even the soldiers who served there were against it.” Bullshit. If history’s eyes were truly open, the VVAW would be rightly seen as a scruffy band of renegades who took advantage of a press eager for conflict at a time when our country needed it least.

The VVAW used John Kerry’s clean-shaved face and eloquence to give them an air of legitimacy, but John Kerry used the VVAW as a platform for his own ambitions. And now you’re asking me to put him in charge of our military? I just can’t do it. He might make an outstanding commander-in-chief. He’s proven bravery in combat, hasn’t he? He even proved a willingness for preemptive action when he went after an enemy grenade launcher in Vietnam. But that is irrelevant to this veteran, someone who understands that behavior has consequences, and that the Biblical dog always returns to his vomit. Kerry’s desires were demonstrated when he ran for office immediately following his leadership of the VVAW. If he wins this election, I’ll willingly support him, but I won’t be one who puts him in office.

Secondly, I don’t want a trial lawyer a heartbeat from the Presidency. I’m on the record about this political group. Trial lawyers are a huge part of the problem in our country. Their reason for being involves dividing people. Claiming to be for the common man, their real motivation is transferring wealth from deep pockets to their own.

Trial lawyers have the deepest bench in the quest for the legislatures that run our varying levels of government, and they write the laws that line their own pockets. I don’t think that should be permitted, but I’m just a voice crying in the wilderness. So how could I flip the knob and put a man like John Edwards a breath away from the top administrative job in the world? I can’t.

When it comes to war, I am a hawk’s hawk. That’s because history teaches you can’t negotiate your way to peace and freedom. Human nature gets in the way, but I guess if you believe that we’re all just goodness personified, then you can reason that talking is the solution. Again, think about what Murrow said. We can deny history, if we want, but we cannot escape the consequences of so doing.

I don’t give a shit if Osama didn’t dine regularly with Saddam or that the dictator didn’t have any nukes. When the country declared war on terrorists (and we all did), Iraq was fair game, as was Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and anybody else who stood in the way of our own peace and safety. We don’t have the belly for war anymore, and that will be our downfall. We don’t like people getting hurt, but people do get hurt in war — many of them unjustly. But like Bush, I’d rather those unjust deaths occur elsewhere, not here.

I don’t like George Bush. I’ve never gotten along with his personality type, but I cheered during his address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001. “Our enemy,” he said, “is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.” Now, you may not be at war with terror, but I am, and I think the second half of that statement is more important than the first.

I’ve not written this to change anybody’s mind about November 2nd. I believe in author transparency and am posting this for that reason alone. Voting is a private matter. My thoughts and biases may have nothing to do with yours, and if I grant you leave to vote your conscience, then please grant me mine. Like the PoMos about which I write, I trust my experience and my gut in important matters, and I do so above all the so-called experts. That’s a privilege that comes with growing older — you have more life experience upon which to draw.

I can’t and won’t send a mixed message about that experience.

So where was all the bias in the Sinclair broadcast of A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media last night? Either all the pressure from the political and media institutions — and, most importantly, Wall Street — successfully transformed what finally made the air (likely) or Sinclair was speaking the truth when they said they never planned to show the entire film, Stolen Honor, in the first place. I watched it, and here are my observations:

Sinclair News Central anchor Jeff Barnd needs a jacket that isn’t two sizes too big.

The script was written as if the audience was a group of 8th graders. The audience wasn’t given credit for knowing anything about the subject, and I think that was demonstrative of Sinclair’s desire to be fair. However, it produced a prose that was an inch deep.

In trying to be fair, I actually came away thinking the thing had a pro-Kerry spin.

The editing was effect-driven, which is something you do when you’re trying to match audio with video instead of the other way around. It usually produces an amateurish product, which this was.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »