Crooked Timber has two posts up about Ann Coulter and Mark Steyn’s smears against Max Cleland, one by Ted Barlow and a followup by Chris Bertram. Both drew a lot of Bush and Coulter apologists trying to excuse the smears; reading them made me think about how Bush and co use patriotism.
What I (once again) realised is that Bush and his apologists for the most part only use patriotism as a political weapon, rather than being genuinely patriotic. A genuine patriot would respect Cleland for going to war for their country and would respect him even more so for the sacrifices he made by doing so: the loss of three of his limbs. Genuine patriots would not belittle these sacrifises in order to glorify their own side.
But clearly, this is what Bush and co have been doing. Bush and very many of his cronies have never had to make the same sacrifices as Cleland made and in fact have gone out of their way to avoid having to do so. At the same time, they have also gone out of their way in creating the image of Bush the uberpatriot, while bludgeoning political opponents with it.
Which is why John Kerry and Max Cleland are so dangerous to Bush now. Because they have made sacrifices and their patriotism is more than skindeep. Because they’ve learned their lesson when Cleland lost the Georgia senatorial election in 2002 when he was smeared as anti-American. Kerry and Cleland know that Bush will again try this strategy and as recent events have shown, they are ready for it.