Since hearing about John Kerry's cringeworthy "stuck in Iraq" goof I've been Googling away to discover if there is any truth behind the accusation he didn't make. I have to confess I've always believed in the 'stupid grunt' stereotype, but according to some credible studies I'm dead wrong.
I can't possibly imagine how I arrived at this conclusion. These people are perfectly content to be herded into the world's toilet to fight a farcically unwinnable war for no logical reason, under the auspices of an incompetent leadership (who at least have the common sense to never have served in the military themselves) for a salary they could earn flipping burgers in the comfort of their own home town. It should have been clear to me from the start that what we're dealing with here are no less than Einsteins-in-the-making!
Except when you see a group of soldiers holding up a "hilariously misspelled" sign supposedly as evidence that Kerry is clueless about the intelligence of the infantry serving in Iraq, you have to wonder. You'd have to be pretty dim to swallow the GOP-spin that Kerry - at the 11th hour of the midterms - would deliberately set out to alienate the swathes of the American populace who are either serving in the armed forces, are related to someone who is, or who pretend to support the troops while secretly thinking they're idiots for throwing their lives away on a wild goose chase they don't fully understand.
Another myth, I'm told, is that people don't join the army because they quite like the perk of being given free reign to bully and murder foreign baddies, civilians or whoever happens to be available at the time. I expect IT technicians don't choose to work in the IT industry because they like working with computers either. I'm wrong about a lot of things.