John Wayne Was a Pussy

John Wayne received a deferment claiming that he had a wife and three kids to support while other actors, younger and older, in similar circumstances hurried to enlist and fight for their country. While promising to enlist he ignored additional summonses from his draft board until his studio could intervene on his behalf. Unfortunately, he is held up as the great American man in many people’s eyes.

This type of coward always overcompensates for their spinelessness and unashamedly supports military interventions so they will feel like patriots and men of courage. To further the fake front, it is equally important to label people who avoid service or dissent against a war as cowards and traitors.

By waving the flag and calling for war, they become courageous, strong, and patriotic. By denouncing those who disagree, the dissenters become cowardly, unpatriotic, and weak. Perfect examples of this are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who avoided combat by any means while depicting a true war hero, John Kerry, as an effete namby-pamby.

In my lifetime this tactic has been the republican and conservative strategy since Ronald Reagan, who also avoided combat, attacked Jimmy Carter, who served aboard nuclear submarines. These Reagan and Bush types not only portray themselves as he-men and strong, but their opponents as nerdy, shy, losers. We have seen this bullshit chest thumping and finger pointing over the last couple of years in both our government and in a medium percentage of the population. They spend all of the time that they could be working on the hard tasks and ideas, trying to make others who have done the hard work, look like pansies for not just throwing rocks at a situation.

So here I sit, a liberal with a who understands his weaknesses and thrives on facing difficult challenges; who will no longer put up with being told that I am not patriotic because I don’t support our coward of a president. My heroes do not exist in macho-bullshit stereotypes, but in those average people who choose to face life on their own. It is in them that true strength and courage will always exist.