Wow, I Am So Impressed By Your Righteous Dancing on Henry Kissinger's Grave!!!
It turns out you're really cool!
To be honest, I’ve never been sure if you’re awesome or not. On my list of people who are dope, you were always a “maybe”. Sometimes, I thought I was underestimating your radness, but other times, the very idea that I considered you even mildly swell seemed absurd. However, that ambiguity has been permanently cleared up by your righteous social media posts dunking on Henry Kissinger’s death.
It turns out you totally rock! That has been made clear by your catty, aloof, and — most of all — thrillingly RIGHTEOUS anti-Kissinger posts! Your status as a cool, boss, daddy-o shall never be questioned again — not by me, at least! Your posts are incontrovertible proof that you are an informed and compassionate bad-ass who thinks for themselves and — quite obviously — doesn’t give a “d” about anyone else’s opinion.
Where did you even get the idea to post about Kissinger? From literally everyone else in your timeline? Possibly, but it must be said: Your pithy, incisive bon mots rose above the trillions of others that hit social media like a gamma ray burst the second Kissinger was pronounced dead. If you hadn’t called Kissinger a “war criminal”, I wouldn’t have known what to make of the scores upon scores of identical accusations. Finally, someone had the guts to say exactly what everyone else in their peer group was saying! And then to also put a little Cambodian flag at the end of their tweet — that was the flourish that made me think “truly, this person is a scholar and a wit.”
I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know that you were a student of mid-Cold-War geopolitics. I must have missed your posts about the SALT Treaties, the Apollo-Soyuz project, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. But that must be an oversight on my part, because, clearly, this epoch of history is a passion of yours! Your posts — in which you misspelled “Kissinger”, by the way (darn autocorrect!) — make it beyond dispute that you are well-informed about the complexities and tradeoffs of that era. After all: How else would you know that Kissinger = evil? It’s not like you could just hear someone — probably Anthony Bourdain — say “Kissinger bad” and assume that they probably know what they’re talking about! That would make you a facile, credulous lemming! And we all know that you are actually a fearless, worldly truth-teller.
Have you received an impassioned “thank you” from the people of Cambodia, yet? If not, I’m sure that’s only because they’re working on a commemoration worthy of your momentous deed. Perhaps the Cambodian Prime Minister is personally carving your face into a mountain, or maybe the children of Southeast Asia are learning a song of thanks while their parents work through the logistics of joining hands and spelling your name so that it can be seen from space. That seems likely, and — in my opinion — wholly appropriate. You are, after all, their witty, kick-ass, meme-retweeting savior.
I’m embarrassed that I ever questioned whether you are groovy or neat-o. You quite clearly are. Your Kissinger posts were so urbane, so grown up! Do you smoke tobacco cigarettes? You probably do, ‘cause you fuckin’ rule. Your glass-shattering thunder-dunks on a man who somewhat surprisingly became a figure of intense ire among a generation born several decades after he was relevant prove your status beyond any shadow of a doubt. Henry Kissinger may be dead, but your standing as a nifty, marvelous, truly hunky-dory crusader for justice will live forever.
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 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.