Strainin' Out Gnats and Swallowing Camels
Yesterday afternoon I read a piece posted on Adeimantus titled “Media Matters (Literacy and Honesty Don’t).” The essence of the piece, as I understood it, is that many in the media are now so concerned with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the inroads they have made that they are now swinging wildly, blindly at any veteran who moves or who dares to agree with the “Swifties.”
I linked to the “Media Matters” site and saw what the writer was talking about. After I read a bit I decided to post a comment about a piece titled “Two Military Records – Two Standards.” The piece was replete with complaints about “media bias” against the junior senator from Massachusetts, “case studies to demonstrate that the media has focused far more on the good senator’s record than the President’s, and so forth. It was a classic matter of “straining out gnats and swallowing camels.”
I decided I would respond, using their site’s response mechanism:
I can't say which way this campaign is going to go. I can say this, though. I'm a Vietnam veteran (1964-1965) and I've been silent for close to forty years. Now I have questions that I believe demand answers. Why, for example, won't Mr. Kerry release his FULL military transcript? Why did he implicate over 2.5 men and women who severed our country with honor during those days.
You can say what you want but I know the truth. The truth is that Mr. Kerry used us in 1971 and he's trying to use us now to serve his political agenda. He may win, but he will never, never, never have my vote!
I was surprised this morning when I got the following reply:
To Phil
So Phil, does it matter to you that Bush ran from the war, while Kerry volunteered to serve? Does it matter to you that Kerry wasn't trashing the troops, he was trashing the leadership - who he said perpetuated the troops' atrocities - and trying to get the troops home? Does it matter to you that Bush's idea of supporting the troops is to send them into harms' way without a good reason?
Phil, if you vote for Bush, you're not just a total sucker who doesn't read, you're Karl Rove's wet dream.
I didn’t know exactly how to respond. About the best I could do was “I love it when you talk dirty to me.” I really wanted to say, “Think man, don’t react,” but I saw that it was hopeless. When someone’s “strainin’ out gnats and swallowing camels” they’ve come close to bottoming out.
This morning I turned on MSNBC, hoping that I would get some coverage of the Olympic Games. Instead I got Bill Press ranting about the Swift Boat Veterans. He’d concluded that they were right wing lunatics whose game had now been played out. Poor Bill! He must now be suffering from eyestrain and in need of the Heimlich maneuver after strainin’ all those gnats and trying to swallow those camels.
I got curious to see who else might be straining and swallowing. Well, lo and behold I came upon Eleanor Clift and read a couple of her pieces on MSNBC’s website. The subtitle to one piece titled “Fighting A Phony War” follows:
Is the real aim of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to divert attention from Iraq?
Another follows from a piece titled “Bush’s Sleeper Cells”:
Karl Rove makes Chuck Colson look like a girly man. Colson didn’t have the audacity to go after John Kerry’s military record when President Nixon was looking for dirt on antiwar leaders. After researching Kerry’s medals, Colson, who now heads a prison ministry program, backed off. “Maybe Chuck knew he was going to find Jesus back then because he had a degree of shame,” says a senior staffer to a Senate Republican.
These men fought; they didn’t come home to a hero’s welcome, and they’ll never forgive Kerry for protesting the war and branding them as war criminals.
And another from a piece titled “Faith versus Reason”:
Voters have the choice between a president who governs by belief and a challenger who puts his faith in rational decisionmaking.
What could I possibly say to Eleanor in response? “Strain harder...Swallow harder…Strain harder…Swallow harder!
Why are so many on the left missing the point? I think they were blinded by their own euphoria.
When John Kerry accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination his supporters sensed that the anointing was the first step toward a grand coronation to be held in January. They believed that the race was over. Operation Iraqi Freedom was losing support. The economy seemed to be stumbling. They had issues and a candidate who was “botoxed” up and rarin’ to go. What could possibly go wrong?
The feeling was something akin to what Abraham Lincoln’s enemies must have been feeling in 1863. The war was going badly, so badly in fact that it seemed that Lincoln had no chance to be re-elected. Editorialists blamed him for the mounting casualties. Some portrayed him as a monkey when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. He had even suspended civil liberties. Then came Gettysburg in July and the rest is history.
Many historians now believe Lincoln was, and perhaps always will be, our greatest president. History records that he was the man who didn’t waiver when he believed he was right. History also records that he was the man who saved our national union and freed millions from the evil grip of slavery.
Would a lesser man than Lincoln have compromised during those difficult years? Thank God that we cannot change that course of events. Thank God that the veterans of that battle, who bled and died on Little Round Top, Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, Culp’s Hill, and other sites along the battlefield, answered that question for us. They did their duty and the course of events in the war changed.
I’ve digressed, but I believe I’ve made my point. The Democrats, once savoring the taste of victory over a HATED political enemy, have run into the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and more than just a little bit worried. And they should be! The “Swifties” and many veterans who support them are now saying things that are resonating with enough of the American electorate to change the course of this election.
The Democrats and their supporters are now leveling counter-charges. We’re right wing lunatics. We’re Rove’s “wet dream.” We’re “Bush’s Sleeper Cells.” We’re ideologues who don’t have the capacity to think rationally.
Well, they’ve really missed the point. They really have “strained out gnats and swallowed camels.” All the attacks on our credibility, all the allusions to us as terrorists, all the rhetoric about our capacity to think, all the insults, only serve to galvanize us. Unlike their champion we aren't going to get lost in translation. Our message is straightforward. John Kerry is using slander and libel as a platform to power and we intend to confront him. And, finally, we're getting stronger. We’re becoming, as statesman Edmund Burke once put it, “little platoons.”
To the Bill Presses and Eleanor Swifts of the world we must seem small. The pope seemed small and insignificant to Josef Stalin too. An advisor had warned him about getting into any kind of conflict with the pope or the Church and replied, “How many divisions does the pope have?” It took a while, but he and the communist party found out!
So, go ahead Bill. Go ahead Eleanor. Keep strainin’ and swallowing. We veterans aren’t going away. This is a battle that’s been forty years in the making. We didn’t choose to fight it; your standard-bearer did. Now that the battle’s been joined we intend to fight it. We aren’t going away!
I linked to the “Media Matters” site and saw what the writer was talking about. After I read a bit I decided to post a comment about a piece titled “Two Military Records – Two Standards.” The piece was replete with complaints about “media bias” against the junior senator from Massachusetts, “case studies to demonstrate that the media has focused far more on the good senator’s record than the President’s, and so forth. It was a classic matter of “straining out gnats and swallowing camels.”
I decided I would respond, using their site’s response mechanism:
I can't say which way this campaign is going to go. I can say this, though. I'm a Vietnam veteran (1964-1965) and I've been silent for close to forty years. Now I have questions that I believe demand answers. Why, for example, won't Mr. Kerry release his FULL military transcript? Why did he implicate over 2.5 men and women who severed our country with honor during those days.
You can say what you want but I know the truth. The truth is that Mr. Kerry used us in 1971 and he's trying to use us now to serve his political agenda. He may win, but he will never, never, never have my vote!
I was surprised this morning when I got the following reply:
To Phil
So Phil, does it matter to you that Bush ran from the war, while Kerry volunteered to serve? Does it matter to you that Kerry wasn't trashing the troops, he was trashing the leadership - who he said perpetuated the troops' atrocities - and trying to get the troops home? Does it matter to you that Bush's idea of supporting the troops is to send them into harms' way without a good reason?
Phil, if you vote for Bush, you're not just a total sucker who doesn't read, you're Karl Rove's wet dream.
I didn’t know exactly how to respond. About the best I could do was “I love it when you talk dirty to me.” I really wanted to say, “Think man, don’t react,” but I saw that it was hopeless. When someone’s “strainin’ out gnats and swallowing camels” they’ve come close to bottoming out.
This morning I turned on MSNBC, hoping that I would get some coverage of the Olympic Games. Instead I got Bill Press ranting about the Swift Boat Veterans. He’d concluded that they were right wing lunatics whose game had now been played out. Poor Bill! He must now be suffering from eyestrain and in need of the Heimlich maneuver after strainin’ all those gnats and trying to swallow those camels.
I got curious to see who else might be straining and swallowing. Well, lo and behold I came upon Eleanor Clift and read a couple of her pieces on MSNBC’s website. The subtitle to one piece titled “Fighting A Phony War” follows:
Is the real aim of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to divert attention from Iraq?
Another follows from a piece titled “Bush’s Sleeper Cells”:
Karl Rove makes Chuck Colson look like a girly man. Colson didn’t have the audacity to go after John Kerry’s military record when President Nixon was looking for dirt on antiwar leaders. After researching Kerry’s medals, Colson, who now heads a prison ministry program, backed off. “Maybe Chuck knew he was going to find Jesus back then because he had a degree of shame,” says a senior staffer to a Senate Republican.
These men fought; they didn’t come home to a hero’s welcome, and they’ll never forgive Kerry for protesting the war and branding them as war criminals.
And another from a piece titled “Faith versus Reason”:
Voters have the choice between a president who governs by belief and a challenger who puts his faith in rational decisionmaking.
What could I possibly say to Eleanor in response? “Strain harder...Swallow harder…Strain harder…Swallow harder!
Why are so many on the left missing the point? I think they were blinded by their own euphoria.
When John Kerry accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination his supporters sensed that the anointing was the first step toward a grand coronation to be held in January. They believed that the race was over. Operation Iraqi Freedom was losing support. The economy seemed to be stumbling. They had issues and a candidate who was “botoxed” up and rarin’ to go. What could possibly go wrong?
The feeling was something akin to what Abraham Lincoln’s enemies must have been feeling in 1863. The war was going badly, so badly in fact that it seemed that Lincoln had no chance to be re-elected. Editorialists blamed him for the mounting casualties. Some portrayed him as a monkey when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. He had even suspended civil liberties. Then came Gettysburg in July and the rest is history.
Many historians now believe Lincoln was, and perhaps always will be, our greatest president. History records that he was the man who didn’t waiver when he believed he was right. History also records that he was the man who saved our national union and freed millions from the evil grip of slavery.
Would a lesser man than Lincoln have compromised during those difficult years? Thank God that we cannot change that course of events. Thank God that the veterans of that battle, who bled and died on Little Round Top, Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, Culp’s Hill, and other sites along the battlefield, answered that question for us. They did their duty and the course of events in the war changed.
I’ve digressed, but I believe I’ve made my point. The Democrats, once savoring the taste of victory over a HATED political enemy, have run into the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and more than just a little bit worried. And they should be! The “Swifties” and many veterans who support them are now saying things that are resonating with enough of the American electorate to change the course of this election.
The Democrats and their supporters are now leveling counter-charges. We’re right wing lunatics. We’re Rove’s “wet dream.” We’re “Bush’s Sleeper Cells.” We’re ideologues who don’t have the capacity to think rationally.
Well, they’ve really missed the point. They really have “strained out gnats and swallowed camels.” All the attacks on our credibility, all the allusions to us as terrorists, all the rhetoric about our capacity to think, all the insults, only serve to galvanize us. Unlike their champion we aren't going to get lost in translation. Our message is straightforward. John Kerry is using slander and libel as a platform to power and we intend to confront him. And, finally, we're getting stronger. We’re becoming, as statesman Edmund Burke once put it, “little platoons.”
To the Bill Presses and Eleanor Swifts of the world we must seem small. The pope seemed small and insignificant to Josef Stalin too. An advisor had warned him about getting into any kind of conflict with the pope or the Church and replied, “How many divisions does the pope have?” It took a while, but he and the communist party found out!
So, go ahead Bill. Go ahead Eleanor. Keep strainin’ and swallowing. We veterans aren’t going away. This is a battle that’s been forty years in the making. We didn’t choose to fight it; your standard-bearer did. Now that the battle’s been joined we intend to fight it. We aren’t going away!
posted by Phil Dillon, Prairie Apologist at 8:55 PM
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