I think there's one major difference this time around, re: replay of Nixon years, dirty tricks and all.
The folks who went and the folks who protested against the Vietnam War all had parents. Now those parents had a tough time impressing their parents that there was no legitimacy of the Vietnam War, the prideful grandparents of those who went to war and those who protested against the war. Most of those grandparents are gone now, thus the need to impress them about war is now also gone.
The elder generation today is that generation of parents who saw their sons and daughters march off into a needless war to kill and die and come home tattered, they are now part of a generation of people who make up about three-quarters of the nation who came to understand Vietnam was a wrongful war. And so the parents of the Vietnam War protesters learned from their children also.
And then when you factor in that about 200,000 of 700,000 who fought in the first Gulf War are today impacted by illness, the parents of those soldiers also hold feelings. Those soldiers today have feelings.
Were America truly invaded by an enemy nation army, few would protest. Were America in a just war the nation on the whole would be united. But this didn't happen. This hasn't happened. And those haunting memories and real life experiences from Vietnam, those haunting memories and real life experiences from the first Gulf War, will not work to GOPwinger advantage.
Now come today's new Gold Star Mothers who've seen their children die in the current Iraq War, yet again, a war waged for the wrong reasons, a wrongful war. They haven't yet knocked on the White House door. But they will. And when they do, the media will become harder on GOPwingers. Much harder.
Bush-Cheney, in the end, when facing re-election, will only have their base of Christians who are full of fear, so much fear that they still cling to the reasons the Administration gave for going to war.
Even the NRA will see this election differently than it has in a long time. Why? Because many who are fighting the current war do not return to home military bases; they are guardsmen and reservists who are returning into their home communities. Their voices will be influential. They will encourage their card-carrying NRA friends to turn away from this administration which has wrecked so much needless havoc on so many lives, especially their own.
GOPwingers might do better to become real Republicans again and attempt to unite behind a ticket other than Bush-Cheney. The way they won the last election was America's shame. And that shame has grown much worse today. Ask just about anyone in the world! |
