Wow, I'm so impressed by your righteous attack on people dissing Kissinger.... :-)
Look, Kissinger was National Security Advisor during the Vietnam war, including the massive bombing campaigns against, well, pretty much everyone in the area. We bombed Cambodia (not an actual combatant), North Vietnam, and even South Vietnamese villages that had been declared free fire zones. Many millions of people died pretty much for nothing, and a lot of those deaths were in the service of Kissinger's policies.
His policies were failures: millions died as a direct result, and millions more if you count destabilizing Cambodia enough to put the Khmer Rouge in power. And in the end Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam were all communist (Vietnam still is).
I really like this substack but this post would have been more effective hadn't it been written in a way that makes it sound like what you were actually trying to say is that, in fact, you are the cool kid. One of the risks of a comedic approach to political writing I guess.
Also, Kissinger WAS a war criminal and no cringey Gen Z activist post on social media can change that fact. May he rot in hell.
I 100% buy into to idea that the Anthony Bourdain quote did more than any high school teacher can dream of in carving out space in the minds of Millenials and Zoomers about who Kissinger was. It's a well written quote, and very shareable. Plays well into to lefty disdain of American foreign policy and gives it more stakes than a textbook can dream. If someone accuses you of being a dork for being a 35 year old who claims to care about Kissinger, despite the fact that he had little to no political sway throughout your whole lifetime, you can just whip out a quote by a certified cool guy and you are back on the trendy train.
C'mon, have some pity. This is like Christmas come at last to mediocre lefty Twitter comedians. They've probably all had those zingers sitting under a heat lamp like slices at a sketchy pizzeria for near enough a decade now.
(Full disclosure: the lame one-liner I've been using on the topic about something finally happening to his phylactery is no exception.)
Great writing. Kissinger was a brilliant, brilliant mind. He was not the incarnation of evil, he was simply part of the establishment that was at war with an existential threat. Hindsight gets lots of people on their high horses - which is nice for them but unrevealing abut the complexity of global politics at any time.
As someone who had been around as long as Kissinger had been in power (and the NYT obituary says he was still a powerful man even now), yes, he was evil. He did some good, but I think the bad he did outweighs it. I haven’t posted on this, because frankly I don’t care enough, but I think it’s good that people recognize what he was and the influence he’s had on what the U.S. has done in the past, and hopefully will do less of in the future (though I doubt it).
Some of us are old enough to remember wings of F-4's and KC-135's taking off from Hickam AFB to be stationed in Guam or Da Nang ready to bomb the shit out of Cambodia (I was a student at UH Manoa at the time).
Also have a friend (still an FB friend) who was among the troops dropped into Cambodia having been ordered to remove all identifying flashes on his uniform. I do get to say 'Yes, he did some bad stuff'. Maybe I never came under fire but that stuff was done in my name, and I think it was bad and he was at least partly responsible.
Among the offended in these comments, what's most amusing-annoying is the self-important solemnity. Like you would - in all likelihood - hold other similarly bad people to account if it wasn't, yes, the cool thing to do because of what Kissinger represents in our memeverse. And like the ritual right-view-alignment noises make a lick of difference in foreign policy and to the living, impactful dastardly actors of various flavors of dastardliness that infuse geopolitics.
The Zoomers parroting Bourdain could just as easily be swayed to love Kissinger, if only there was an attractive person on TikTok acting as his hype man. "Yeah, dude was evil, but gotta admit, that yid had rizz. He didn't just open China, he opened a lotta vagina!"
Wow, I'm so impressed by your righteous attack on people dissing Kissinger.... :-)
Look, Kissinger was National Security Advisor during the Vietnam war, including the massive bombing campaigns against, well, pretty much everyone in the area. We bombed Cambodia (not an actual combatant), North Vietnam, and even South Vietnamese villages that had been declared free fire zones. Many millions of people died pretty much for nothing, and a lot of those deaths were in the service of Kissinger's policies.
His policies were failures: millions died as a direct result, and millions more if you count destabilizing Cambodia enough to put the Khmer Rouge in power. And in the end Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam were all communist (Vietnam still is).
I really like this substack but this post would have been more effective hadn't it been written in a way that makes it sound like what you were actually trying to say is that, in fact, you are the cool kid. One of the risks of a comedic approach to political writing I guess.
Also, Kissinger WAS a war criminal and no cringey Gen Z activist post on social media can change that fact. May he rot in hell.
I 100% buy into to idea that the Anthony Bourdain quote did more than any high school teacher can dream of in carving out space in the minds of Millenials and Zoomers about who Kissinger was. It's a well written quote, and very shareable. Plays well into to lefty disdain of American foreign policy and gives it more stakes than a textbook can dream. If someone accuses you of being a dork for being a 35 year old who claims to care about Kissinger, despite the fact that he had little to no political sway throughout your whole lifetime, you can just whip out a quote by a certified cool guy and you are back on the trendy train.
Just shocked at how many people here take this to be an implicit defense of Kissinger
C'mon, have some pity. This is like Christmas come at last to mediocre lefty Twitter comedians. They've probably all had those zingers sitting under a heat lamp like slices at a sketchy pizzeria for near enough a decade now.
(Full disclosure: the lame one-liner I've been using on the topic about something finally happening to his phylactery is no exception.)
Great writing. Kissinger was a brilliant, brilliant mind. He was not the incarnation of evil, he was simply part of the establishment that was at war with an existential threat. Hindsight gets lots of people on their high horses - which is nice for them but unrevealing abut the complexity of global politics at any time.
As someone who had been around as long as Kissinger had been in power (and the NYT obituary says he was still a powerful man even now), yes, he was evil. He did some good, but I think the bad he did outweighs it. I haven’t posted on this, because frankly I don’t care enough, but I think it’s good that people recognize what he was and the influence he’s had on what the U.S. has done in the past, and hopefully will do less of in the future (though I doubt it).
Some of us are old enough to remember wings of F-4's and KC-135's taking off from Hickam AFB to be stationed in Guam or Da Nang ready to bomb the shit out of Cambodia (I was a student at UH Manoa at the time).
Also have a friend (still an FB friend) who was among the troops dropped into Cambodia having been ordered to remove all identifying flashes on his uniform. I do get to say 'Yes, he did some bad stuff'. Maybe I never came under fire but that stuff was done in my name, and I think it was bad and he was at least partly responsible.
OMG this is soooo good.
Damn Jeff. 💯
If anyone deserved a gleeful pile-on by people who know little or nothing about him, this is the guy
Among the offended in these comments, what's most amusing-annoying is the self-important solemnity. Like you would - in all likelihood - hold other similarly bad people to account if it wasn't, yes, the cool thing to do because of what Kissinger represents in our memeverse. And like the ritual right-view-alignment noises make a lick of difference in foreign policy and to the living, impactful dastardly actors of various flavors of dastardliness that infuse geopolitics.
If only the people you're talking to could hear and comprehend your words (and sarcasm), that would be super cool!
On the upside, my Twitter feed is no longer 95% impassioned takes on Israel/Gaza.
The Zoomers parroting Bourdain could just as easily be swayed to love Kissinger, if only there was an attractive person on TikTok acting as his hype man. "Yeah, dude was evil, but gotta admit, that yid had rizz. He didn't just open China, he opened a lotta vagina!"
That cool guy seems to be smoking his cool cigarette (I really miss smoking sometimes) out of his chin. Amazing!!