Gasp! Hyperbole on the campaign trail
John Edwards' campaign manager David Bonior says "'no presidential candidate in the history of the country' has worked harder than Edwards has for unions and striking workers."
...
Um, I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and say Eugene V. freakin' Debs, but who knows? Maybe Debs didn't actually work that hard.
"Eugene, how's the class struggle?"
"Remarkably easy! But I fear that all the hard work will be left to my successors, whose Left credentials will be massively and unforseeably attenuated to the point of near unrecognizability!"
"All right then; get out of jail soon!"
UPDATE: I also noticed this, from Fred Thompson's campaign announcement speech: "Our country has shed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other countries in the world combined."
Didn't Russia lose, like, 10 million people during World War II? What's the catch? Were they not actually fighting for the "freedom of other people"?
Also: "In this broader war with this different kind of enemy [sc. "The War on Terror"], our success cannot always be measured by battlefield victories. Success will depend upon the determination of the American people and that’s why we’ll win."
This is like the political equivalent of Rhonda Byrne's flatly bullshit, Oprah-promoted The Secret. "I'm poor as fuck, but I feel like I'm going to be rich soon!" "I'm grossly obese, but my positive thoughts will deliver me from cardiac arrest!"
Experience the magic(ical thinking)!
...
Um, I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and say Eugene V. freakin' Debs, but who knows? Maybe Debs didn't actually work that hard.
"Eugene, how's the class struggle?"
"Remarkably easy! But I fear that all the hard work will be left to my successors, whose Left credentials will be massively and unforseeably attenuated to the point of near unrecognizability!"
"All right then; get out of jail soon!"
UPDATE: I also noticed this, from Fred Thompson's campaign announcement speech: "Our country has shed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other countries in the world combined."
Didn't Russia lose, like, 10 million people during World War II? What's the catch? Were they not actually fighting for the "freedom of other people"?
Also: "In this broader war with this different kind of enemy [sc. "The War on Terror"], our success cannot always be measured by battlefield victories. Success will depend upon the determination of the American people and that’s why we’ll win."
This is like the political equivalent of Rhonda Byrne's flatly bullshit, Oprah-promoted The Secret. "I'm poor as fuck, but I feel like I'm going to be rich soon!" "I'm grossly obese, but my positive thoughts will deliver me from cardiac arrest!"
Experience the magic(ical thinking)!
Labels: historical ignorance, John Edwards, political hyperbole
posted by to scranton at 12:08 AM
2 Comments:
All right, I really enjoyed this post but I'm not going to let this USSR comment stand. Did the people for whom the USSR fought actually get any freedom? I tend to think not.
The Warsaw Pact countries didn't get any freedom, no, but that's not what I'm saying. Insofar as they were part of the Allied forces, didn't Russia de facto fight for everybody's freedom vis-a-vis Germany? Would Western Europe have emerged free from World War II had not 10 million russians died? That's all I'm asking.
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