"Senator John McCain never misses an opportunity to remind people that he spent over five years as a POW in Hanoi. What he fails to see is that every middle class American has been a POW for the last eight years, in a class war waged by the Bush administration."
-Posted by mdb on Daily KOS, August 27.
I am amazed at the levels that some people will stoop to in order to discredit a political opponent. In a recent post by mdb, entitled "Middle Class Americans Have Been POWS for Eight Years", my level of incredulity in the juvenility of the political discourse has been irked. Are the politically active members of our society really willing to make such incredible claims just to make an attack on their political opponents? The middle class are not POWs in any valid sense of the word.
First off, this is disrespectful to real Prisoners of Wars and the trials that they have endured for their country. Unlike much of the middle class, these men and women have actually served their country in an active way. Even though many were drafted for their respective wars, they still stood up and accepted their responsibility to serve. They knew that they had a duty to serve their country and their fellow countrymen. They had the courage to act when this duty called. They paid the price for the rest of the country when they were captured by enemy forces. A vast majority of the middle class today does not know what this duty is or why it is important. Some do, but most don't. By comparing these people and their level of service and sacrifice made for their country to a largely complacent middle class that often doesn't know or even care what sacrifices have been made for their sake is disrespectful to all service men; especially those that ended up as prisoners of war.
The level of suffering that POWs have gone through compared to the middle class is another striking difference. What does it mean to be a member of the middle class for the past 8 years? It would seem that for many it would consist of a life of luxury: wake up in a warm bed, eat a nice breakfast, go to work in an air-conditioned office, come home to their family and dinner, watch a few hours of television, and go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Now compare that to a POW: wake up chained to the floor when the guards kick you awake. Get yelled at in a language that you probably don't speak then hit with a rifle when you don't comply with the command you didn't understand. Torture and starvation are regular parts of your life. There is no air-conditioning; their might not even be toilets. It goes on and on. Many POWs still suffer today from mental/psychological ramifications resulting from their internment. These two styles of life simply don't compare. Saying that the entire middle class of America has suffered through the same thing as real POWs because they didn't get tax breaks is disrespectful. Its not only disrespectful to the prisoners of war that were captured, its disrespectful to their families and friends and fellow service members.
I do agree that McCain seems to use his status as a former POW as a political crutch. He brings it up to deflect lines of questioning that discredit him. For example, When Leno asked him about his many houses, McCain responded that he didn't even have a house when he was a captured. While a true statement, it doesn't actually answer the question being asked. McCain's heavy use of this answer shows how little substance that he actually contains. If he did know what was going on, or had an answer for the question being posed, he would answer it instead of deflecting back to his POW status.
The problem is that this type of knee-jerk juvenile piece discredits anything else that is said by anyone on Daily KOS. Orson Scott Card used to be a highly respected author of both fiction (his Ender's Game series) as well as an essayist (his Civilization Watch series). Although not everyone agreed with his views all the time they at least read his material and considered the points made. This is no longer true. Earlier this year he turned his attention towards gay marriage. For those that don't remember, basically his argument was that because the Church of Later Day Saints says that homosexuality is a sin, practicing Mormons cannot participate in homosexuality without it being a sin. It is hypocritical. He also extended this beyond his church to American society at large.
There was, and still is, a huge negative fallout from this series of articles. Even though they were mainly targeted towards members of his own church, the articles were read by many non-Mormons. These are the people who seem to have taken the most offense and were the spark that turned a simple expression of Card writing about his opinions into a huge public-relations disaster. Many who disagreed with Orson Scott Card thought that his arguments were old fashioned and juvenile, a remnant of a less accepting world that has no place in today's society. Card has now been labeled as homophobic. While he has refuted this and actually says that he has no problem with homosexuals as long as they don't get married, the label as stuck. Now many who otherwise agreed with him and listened to his viewpoints in the past dismiss his essays and articles due to his lack of credibility. People actively choose not to even read his material or listen to his opinions based upon a preconceived notion that they hold of him and his homophobic ways. In their opinion, he is no longer a credible source of ideas.
The same can be said for this blog entry. mdb is saying some things that probably weren't that well thought out. By saying that the entire middle class has suffered the same level of atrocities as a real POW, mdb is alienating an entire subset of the population. Anyone who has been a POW, knows a POW, or has any idea of the hardships that POWs have had to endure will probably lose respect for mdb and see mdb as no longer a credible source for ideas. This subset of the population includes a large percentage of people who have served or are currently serving our country. The real fallout won't even be about this article. Many will read it, not comment, and move on; but in the back of their mind whenever they see another article or idea that has mdb's name on it, they won't take it as seriously if they read it at all. This post discredits any future entries that mdb might post. Look at Orson Scott Card's example. His credibility was all but ruined.
So what could have been done different? It seems to be obvious that the point of this article was to bring up and discuss the taxes that Bush enacted in his terms as president; specifically how they affected the middle class, how they benefited the upper class, and to point out that McCain's tax plans will be more of the same. Instead of making a wildly irrelevant and disrespectful conjecture that links McCain's POW status to his economic policies, mdb could simply have talked only about McCain's economic policies. It isn't like there isn't an avalanche of evidence that shows that McCain doesn't know what he is talking about. His stance on the economy and what he wants to do about it is are two of his weak points.
It might even have been better to split this article into two separate articles. One would talk about how McCain's constant use of his former POW status as a political crutch both makes him less credible as a political leader and is disrespectful to other POWs. The second article could have talked about his tax plans and how they will affect the middle class in a negative way. These two articles would have allowed for more in depth reasoning on a specific topic and would have prevented any alienation of any subset of the population. By showing respect for what a POW is and what they have gone through mdb might even have been able to bring a number of people over from McCain's camp to Obama's! That surely would have been a preferable outcome than any loss of credibility or alienation of a subset of the population.
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