Stephen Zunes has a piece in FPIF pointing out that John Kerry is a lying warmonger. He writes a great deal about Kerry’s support for the Iraq invasion, for Israeli aggression, and he writes of an extremely duplicitous record of clear deliberate deception.

Despite all the good he may have done in the 1980’s John Kerry’s role, even in the days of Winter Soldier, was marked with dishonesty. His antiwar activities at that time was perfectly consistent with deliberate co-optation as a means of self-empowerment and could also be viewed as subverting or discrediting the GI resistance movement. His attempts to procure false testimony from individuals could, if successful, have greatly undermined the Winter Soldier investigations. This is especially obvious in light of the effect that false testimony from people such as “Chuck Onan” [sic] had on the perception of testimonies detailing atrocities. The existence of a few fabricators has allowed widespread dismissal of well-documented atrocities even to this day.

As to Kerry’s anti-imperialist activities in the 1980’s, it is more difficult to characterise them as disingenuous. I know from Zunes’s recent interview on Flashpoints that he finds this inconsistency evidence of sincerity, albeit only the sincerity of being a genuine lying warmonger. Yes he lies, but his lies are real lies not the fake lies of those bought out by the Israel lobby. The silliness of that characterisation does indicate a real problem, though. How can one ever know, or even make informed judgement on a known deceiver’s inmost self. The same problem applies to Kerry as applies to certain Straussian neocons who (rather quietly) advocate complete deception in public life – the adoptation of a false persona and a method acting approach to politics. Such behaviours are normal in sociopaths and, to use an alternative psychological paradigm, “social dominators”.

There is also a sense, worth considering, that major political figures in the US are incorporate more than simply the individual at the centre, and that the rules of the game force sociopathy on each of these enterprises. Take Obama Inc. – obviously there is an individual at the centre, but there is also a team. Part of the way such entities seem to function, now, is to build up political capital by siding with the people against the political establishment, but only when such “maverick” behaviour is futile and harmless. This may coincide with the dictates of conscience (as with McCain’s stance against torture), but a conscience which is switched on and off according to dictates of tactical advantage is no conscience at all. The effect can be seen by looking at Obama’s opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an opposition which changed absolutely nothing in concrete terms. When it came to campaign time in 2008 that one vote was capitalised on and made disproportionately significant over an otherwise hawkish voting record.

Back to Kerry, there is also footage worth reviewing of Kerry’s blasé reaction to a dissident student being brutalised and tased in front of him.

The cops in that video showed the reality of the situation better than any discussion of his life of privilege and manipulation. They knew by instinct that the questioner was transgressing when posing his questions because of his lack of deference. In the end they took him down for the crime of lèse majesté (or at least its aristocratic equivalent). US culture is one of virtual worship of elites – political elites, military elites, celebs, it doesn’t matter. There is a genuine belief abroad that these are superior beings and that being impolite to them, gainsaying them, being angry at them is a form of crime. The irony is that most of them, like Kerry, are lowlife parasites far less worthy of respect than the average person.