The infamous nazi photoshop version of Time's man of the year cover just will not go away. The idea that our soldiers are myrmidons is profoundly unserious, the entire enterprise is juvenile, hateful, and hurtful. The problem isn't so much that some austrian thought a few death's head logos and a swastika would be a good idea to slap on some american soldiers, it's that the original comments were so positive among Indymedia's regular readers.
If our solders were myrmidons, merciless, heartless thugs who never question orders, why haven't we had a coup yet? Why haven't the dark forces that created these unthinking military monsters used this tool to destroy the constitution and establish an empire? Here, the leftist is logically stuck. He can't say that the military would refuse. They wouldn't be myrmidons if they would refuse an order, by definition. Nor could they concede the basic humanity, decency, and honor of the center right politicians who have controlled the Presidency for so much of the last quarter century. They're the myrmidon makers after all, the remakers of our citizen soldiers into such horrible tools.
If Al Sharpton was consigned to the presidential candidate freak tent currently inhabited by Lyndon LaRouche, I wouldn't worry so much. If the leading candidate for the Democrat party nomination for president didn't seem so often to subscribe to the Indymedia ethic, I would be a lot less worried. But conspiratorialism, race baiting, purveying hate and libel seem to be a mood sweeping the party. They myrmidon photo is just one glaring example.
Can they reverse themselves before they disintegrate as a major party? It's not looking good.
Posted by TMLutas at January 13, 2004 03:54 PM