How To Destroy George W. Bush, Part 2 -- Make Him Vomit Out His Guts:
This week, the Rude Pundit is offering advice to the Kerry/Edwards campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and all the "shadowy" 527s on how to crush George W. Bush as a President and as a man. Remember: nearly every other pundit and campaign advisor is wrong. Only the Rude Pundit is right. And remember: Karl Rove fears the Rude Pundit; when Rove beats his leather slave every evening in the basement of the White House, right next to a Teddy Roosevelt sculpture, the one with the big stick, Rove commands the poor hunched-over queen to scream, "I'm the Rude Pundit" 'cause it's the only way he can get to the Rude Pundit.

Today, we're gonna deal with the questions of wars, old and new. The Rude Pundit's gonna show how, with sublime simplicity, Kerry can fuck with and destroy Bush by turnin' that ol' Swift Boat into the coming fire. And, once again, George Soros and all those other bill- and millionaires, open your coin purses - this is gonna cost . . .

Vietnam: The whole "who did what" in Vietnam thing is nearly played out. More and more, because of the blindness of the media in not being able to see that there's a difference in trying to prove if Kerry bled enough versus whether Bush even showed up, the voting public is getting sick of 'Nam. But that doesn't mean it's going away. It's time for Kerry to use Vietnam for more than proving that he knows how to take a bullet. By running from part two of his Vietnam experience, Kerry the protester, Kerry is denying himself a chance to take Bush's Guard experience and use it to show Kerry was right to protest the Vietnam War.

Why did Bush "join" the Guard? For the same reason nearly everyone did during 'Nam: they didn't want to risk dying for a fucked-up, bullshit, mountain of lies that added up to a worthless stack of corpses and coffins. And it was the same reason that men ran away to Canada or knocked up their wives in order to get a parenting deferrment. In essence, Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard was a kind of protest, a way of saying that the Vietnam War was not worth fighting. Bush's own words confirm that: "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."

In other words, the point of Kerry's 'Nam service is not that he went and fought. It's that he learned that what others did to avoid serving wasn't wrong. And that means everyone, from draft dodgers to the deferrers to the over-privileged sons who used family connections to weasel out of the draft. Kerry should embrace his postwar role in stopping the insanity that forced kids to make these kinds of decisions. He should embrace his role in helping to stop the mass murder of Americans by the Nixon administration. Kerry should embrace Bush's National Guard service and use it to counter all the assholes who believe that Kerry's protesting was a kind of "betrayal." And that puts Kerry in the best position to talk about . . .

Iraq: Look, the vast majority of Americans don't give a rat's ass about dead Iraqis. We don't give a shit when hundreds of Iraqis are carbombed, children or otherwise. As far as many, if not most, Americans are concerned, the Iraqis should be giving American soldiers blowjobs in the streets of Baghdad to than them for getting rid of Saddam Hussein. And that same many, if not most, Americans think that an Iraqi's as good as a Palestinian is as good as Osama Bin Laden and fuck 'em all, they should be dead. Middle-Easterners are the newest niggers, and that's a racial reality that needs to be dealt with at some point. By invading Iraq, Bush essentially affirmed these racist beliefs.

All we really give a shit about is dead Americans. It doesn't matter how many markets, police stations, or streets are blown to bits. It doesn't matter how many armless kids there are. It doesn't matter how many mothers and fathers scream in that not-quite-human ululation that they call language. No, what matters is when a couple of contractors, who went to Iraq to carpetbag for cash they couldn't get back in the U.S., are torched and hanged like ducks in the window of a Chinatown meat market.

Kerry needs to both play to this prevalent racism (subtly, oh, so subtly) and demonstrate that he will save American lives. Kerry needs to make clear that Iraq is a fucking mess (and that becomes easier and easier), and that he'll clean it up. And that's where his experience after the Vietnam War comes into play: he knows that Presidents send people to die for no good reason. His life after the Swift Boat makes that clear: Kerry is committed to saving American lives. Bush is not.

Kerry needs to say a "truth" about Iraq, and this can go in a couple of directions. 1. People in Iraq are better off without Saddam Hussein; American is not. Or 2. Getting rid of one man does not solve the problems of a nation. Either way, Kerry has to start using the words "Saddam Hussein" more often. (And he needs to make goddamn sure that he never, never says that Iraq is part of the "war on terror." In fact, he needs to make goddamn sure he makes them two distinct things.)

In other words, on both wars, Kerry needs to control the language more. He needs to do the defining. Just like Bush succeeds by revising history, Kerry can succeed by re-defining the words themselves. "Iraq War" should be associated with "Vietnam," endlessly, in the same way the Bushkoviks associate "Iraq" and "al-Qaeda." It's a simple linguistic trick, to give new meanings within your own context. The beauty of it is it means that when your opponent speaks those same words, they have the resonance you have given them. And if "Iraq" can become synonymous with "Vietnam," then Bush looks more and more like the corrupt, abominable stepchild of the vile Richard Nixon (not the fantasy Nixon trotted out for the Republican Convention).

Co-opt the war language. That's destructive tool number two. Tomorrow: Fear factor. Later this week: the ultimate tool.

Kerry/Edwards campaign, DNC, 527s, want more? You know how to get in touch: rudepundit@yahoo.com.