The Price Of Fear (2008)

Curated post, originally published 10-Oct-2008

The lies and bile of the McCain campaign are officially Not Funny Anymore.

I’ve been quietly concerned as I read and participate in various message groups and discussion fora at the level of seething hatred some McCain supporters – I won’t even call them conservatives at this point – have for Barack Obama.  We have seen a few scattered reports over the last week or so, mostly from Palin rallies but at McCain’s as well, of crowd members screaming such unjustified and ugly things as ‘traitor,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘liar,’ and worse.  In one instance, at a Palin rally, even the chilling refrain, “kill him!”

This evening, I read this story, detailing how John McCain got booed at his own rally for saying that Obama is “a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”  The story includes quotes from McCain’s followers at a “town hall” style meeting, complete with ‘socialists taking over this country’ and ‘I don’t trust Obama…he’s an Arab.’  These are clearly the same people that many of us who support the Obama candidacy have been laughing off.  Let’s face it – they’re pretty damned stupid, making political decisions based on rumor, innuendo, and negative ads.  In the exercise of what is, regrettably, a fairly common liberal trait of condescension toward the credulous and naive, we have basically ignored these knuckle-dragging noisemakers because frankly, we find it difficult to believe that anyone is dumb enough to buy in to theridiculous, irrelevant nonsense being churned out by the McCain campaign.

But it’s gone past funny over the last week.  There’s nothing at all funny about an American citizen shouting ‘kill him’ at a political rally.  There is nothing funny about accusing a presidential candidate of terrorism or treason.  

People everywhere, across the political, religious, and ‘class’ spectra, are hurting, angry, and frightened.   As the Obama campaign has worked to stay positive – not always with great success – McCain-Palin and their Atwater-Rove-inspired hate machine have continued throwing the negativity in ever-increasing intensity toward Barack Obama.  The Republican’s haven’t just failed to control the negativity, they have actively encouraged it at every turn.  They intentionally stoked those fires in the mistaken belief that the solution to the ineffectiveness of their negative message is to ramp up the negativity; portraying Obama as a terrorist, someone to be afraid of, someone who cannot be trusted, someone who is ‘different than us.’

And now, it’s spinning out of their control. 

It seems to have finally dawned on Senator McCain that the politics of hate aren’t winning this election for him, and when he tried to rein them in…his own crowd turned on him. 

Frankly, I don’t have enough respect for John McCain any more to believe that his attempt to be less negative toward Obama is motivated by any sense of shame, or of concern at the intensity of the hate he has engendered.  I think he just noticed – after weeks of failure – that his negativity isn’t bringing in the voters.  The problem is that in ‘energizing the base,’ McCain and Palin have given those who would themselves aspire to radical terrorism a sense of validation and righteousness.  

John McCain has deliberately turned the slim possibility of Obama’s assassination into something that is frighteningly plausible.  We are faced with two possible scenarios:  either McCain is just too ignorant to have understood the power he was unleashing, or he understood it and unleashed it anyway because he cares more about getting elected than about the consequences of his filthy, digusting, fear- and hate-mongering tactics.

Now – too late – he tries to put the brakes on, and like the fabled sorcerer’s apprentice, he is faced with the frightening fact that no matter what he does, the brooms continue to fetch water even as the house is flooding.

I’m forced to wonder if McCain or his ‘brilliant’ team of strategists who have engineered this pretty hate machine have considered the fear that’s going through my mind right now…the fear of how big the explosion will be if one of these ignorant, hate-filled, seditious domestic terrorists actually manage to make a meaningful attempt on Barack Obama’s life.

Senator McCain can’t un-ring this bell.  The brooms keep fetching and the water keeps pouring in, even as the apprentice who thought he was commanding the brooms is overwhelmed and drowned.

And that’s a cute, funny little analogy, you know.  John McMickeymouse waving his wand ineffectually at all those disobedient brooms that he’s brought to life.  The problem is, it’s not funny anymore.  It’s getting ugly.  Bobby Kennedy ugly.  Abraham Lincoln ugly.

John McCain has failed, miserably, in his first real test of leadership.  A leader would never have opened this Pandora’s box in the first place.  A leader knows that you do not set loose forces that you can’t control. A leader knows that in a place and time when people are already frightened, angry, and suspicious, to further encourage that and direct it against a political opponent can have dire consequences.

John McCain brought those brooms to life.  The man is 72 years old and has been a national leader for nearly 30 of those years…and yet he lacked the foresight and judgment to consider what sorts of consequences would be in the list of potentialities if he chose to pour gasoline on that fire for the sake of his own ambition.

If for no other reason, this stunning lack of judgment and blind ambition make it clear:  John McCain is not fit to be the President of the United States, and that hate-filled, bigoted, wretched joke of a woman he selected for his vice-president doesn’t deserve the slightest bit of attention or respect from the people of this country.  Time and time again, through poor judgment, through the abuse of power, through the malicious disregard for the sancitity of the offices they hold and seek, they have proven themselves profoundly unfit for service.

Let’s just hope the gun they’ve loaded with such irresponsible avarice is never fired…unlike Barack Obama’s “relationship” with Bill Ayers, the results of such a tragedy are something that is really frightening.