It all began with the “Barack-Obama-is-an-Arab” lady at a McCain town hall meeting in Lakeville, Minnesota last week. Responding to what she naturally thought had become the official, cathartic McCain/Palin electoral mantra, the woman, a certain Gayle Quinnell, stated that she did not trust Barack Obama because Barack Obama, she had read (in some McCain/Palin literature), was an Arab.
To which John McCain, in a telling “reap what you sow” moment, responded:
“No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”
What’s troubling in McCain’s answer are a number of dangerous innuendoes which are not immediately apparent to most people, but which are striking to those with enough intellectual sense (Am I being elitist here? Well, hell).
McCain’s answer suffers from a fundamental flaw which, as I said, is not immediately apparent to most people, until, of course, one realizes that McCain did not defend Obama on the grounds that Obama was, indeed, as American as John McCain and Gayle Quinnell themselves were. Rather, he “defended” Obama on the more tenuous ground that his opponent was a “decent” family man and “a citizen.” This, to me, sounded a little bit like the subtle way in which the passports of “naturalized” citizens always contain a mention of their country of origin, which I have always perceived as a subtly coded message to immigration officers, a message which said to them: “Ok, guys, this guy is a citizen, but only a naturalized one, therefore not really an American. Exercise caution.”
Whether intentional or not, such ambiguous messages are often subject to interpretation and, ultimately, can lead to unwarranted abuses against those who are so singled out as “un-American” by virtue of their birth place, skin color, opinion or religion. I saw a similarly coded message in John McCain’s strange defense of Barack Obama.
In John McCain’s world, one senses, there is a big difference between the two. In his eyes, and for some strange reason, Barack Obama is just “a citizen.” Thus, he implicitly suggests, being “a citizen,” even a “decent” one, does not make of one a “real American.” To be a “real” American goes beyond the mere fact of being a citizen. To be a real American is a state of mind which is particular only to those who have been blessed with real American values as defined by… John McCain and Sarah Palin.
And, of course, people like Barack Obama, who are “mere citizens” in the eyes of McCain/Palin, and who, according to McCain/Palin, do not see and cannot see America the way the rest of “real Americans” see it, do not deserve the honor of becoming president of the United States. Because such people cannot really understand what America is all about, they must be disqualified from leading it. In McCain/Palin land, real Americans never find fault with their country, never question the motives of their president when he orders the nation to war, never flinch in the face of common sense, and never seek to redefine the image of America in a way that creates a positive environment for the world. To do so is weak and only fake Americans worry about the image of America around the world. America must be feared, and not loved. It must be loathed, and not respected. It must have enemies, and no friends.
Naturally, this idea of America fits nicely with the narrative which the McCain/Palin ticket has been promoting since their post-convention kitchen-sink strategy. It is a narrative that has sought to divide Americans along the lines of patriotic vs. unpatriotic, citizens vs. Americans, small towners vs. urbano-Washingtonian liberals, Joe-Six-Packs vs. elitists, suburb-dwelling intellectuals vs. gun-loving countrymen, Islamo-Arab fascism vs. Christian republican values, right vs. left, red states vs. blue states, haters of America vs. lovers of America, murderous abortionists vs. God-loving pro-lifers and, ultimately, unpatriotic, terrorist-associating, socialist-communizing, food-stamp wielding blacks vs. Joe-the-Plumbing, hard-working, welfare-hating, small-town white Americans.
All those innuendoes have been apparent and perceptible in the McCain/Palin hate-filled rallies of the past three weeks. And all those fake Americans who ever voted for a black man called Barack Obama, and are now planning to vote him into the White House, must be declared enemies of the nation for selling off America to the Muslims via an Arabo-Muslim embed named Barack Hussein Obama, “The One” or “That One” whom the Moslems of the world had surely conspired to train for years with a view to taking over the White House.
In the McCain/Palin universe, it does not matter that the media, after thoroughly vetting Barack Obama for his past religious and personal associations for the past 20 months, have concluded that he is both a Christian and an American, and that any assertions to the contrary were, at best, based on ignorant, groundless rumors, and at worst, grounded in disingenuous guilt-by-association schemes. What matters to them is the need to win this election, even if that means selling their own souls to the devil. In their world, it does not even matter that their own associations (Alaskan Independence Party, witch-hunting pastor from Kenya, etc.) and ethics (Keating Five, Wooten, Moonegan, etc.) have been thoroughly proven to be more factually problematic. What matters to them is their desire to win this election at all costs, even if, along the way, they ended up pushing America to the brink of civil war.
And Sarah Palin, just yesterday, nailed it fully when, according to an article by Sam Stein on the Huffington Post Web site, she declared at a fundraiser that “she loved to visit the “pro-America” areas of the country — implying, implicitly, that there were some parts of the United States she viewed as not pro-America.”
The world of McCain/Palin is a dangerous world, indeed. The two characters have managed to create, in the minds of Americans, a sense of paranoia very similar to the one that one finds in countries with dictators such as Zimbabwe or Iran, countries in which neighbors do not trust their neighbors, friends spy on friends, and everybody’s motives are questioned when they are not fully in line with the ideology of the dictator. John McCain and Sarah Palin’s world is already looking more dangerous, more extreme than the world of George Bush. To the image of a McCain/Palin rally at which “real Americans” are led to believe that there are “fake Americans” out there who are considered traitors for having dared to (re)think America differently, one can easily superimpose the image of a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rally in Teheran with extremists shouting “death to the infidels!”
The Birth of American fascism?
You betcha.
Scary.
Especially for immigrant people like myself, who have come to love this country so much for the incredible opportunities that it has offered us, but whose citizenry and love for this country suddenly find themselves so cruelly repudiated and de-Americanized by the McCain/Palin rallies. The McCain/Palin world is a scary world, indeed.
In layman terms, John McCain’s (re)formulation of the Obama character in his encounter with Gayle Quinnell can be summarized as so:
- Barack Obama is not really an American; he is a citizen running for president;
- He is not an Arab because we can all see that he is a decent family man; if he were an Arab, he would not be decent because Arabs cannot be decent family men;
- He is not an Arab because an Arab citizen of the United States born in America would not even dare to run for president of the United States. It would simply be unacceptable and intolerable.
So goes the America of John McCain, folks:
- it is an America in which the children of naturalized immigrants (blacks, Asians, Hispanics, etc.) should never dream of becoming president of the United States;
- it is an America in which any Arab or son/daughter of a (native) Muslim American should automatically be disqualified from seeking the presidency of the United States. One never knows. When s/he was eight years old, his/her parents may have had ties with a Muslim with the name of Osama bin Laden who, in 2001, sent two planes on a suicide mission to destroy the very heart of American capitalism.
- it is an America in which anyone with the middle name of “Hussein” must be seen as a threat to America because whoever gave him that middle name 50 years ago must have been a Muslim enemy of America, probably born in some Muslim country that still hates America.
- it is an America in which a man born of a Christian white mother and a Muslim black father is necessarily mischievous and dangerous for America, and cannot, as a result, be absolved by the simple fact of having had a white mother who, furthermore, was so ashamed of her own country that she had to go and sleep with a black Muslim from Kenya and, as if that was not enough already, ended up marrying an Indonesian man, and raising her children in a Muslim country.
John McCain’s America spells trouble for most of the law-abiding, America-loving immigrants and sons of immigrants who ever came to this country in search of those values and dreams that America had managed to instill in them.
He spells trouble for all those Americans who are now (mis)led by his campaign into believing that, to survive, America must go to war against itself, and cleanse itself of all those treasonous people who had dared to love America differently.
To all those naturalized Americans, and to all those “fake” Americans (whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, native Americans, etc.) who have associated themselves with, voted or intended to vote for, Barack Obama, John McCain says they do not, and cannot, know how to love America the way he and Sarah Palin do.
And when, under the command of John McCain and Sarah Palin, the America-loving citizens who attended their rallies finally heeded their patriotic call and started to shout their infamous “kill him,” “terrorist,” and “off with his head,” John McCain and his Sarah “Barracuda” Palin became satisfied. No wonder, then, that John McCain, during and after the Wednesday debate, proclaimed triumphantly how proud he was of those great Americans who attend his rallies. It does not, therefore, matter what they say or do. Their American-ness trumps any calls to the murder of the fake Americans who pal around with terrorists.
In my mind, a bell has begun ringing and I can hear John S. “McSame”McCain and Sarah “Barracuda” Palin shouting: “Apocalypse now!”
Apocalypse now for all those fake Americans who do not live where the best Americans live, that is, “in these small towns that [McCain/Palin] get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what [McCain/Palin] call the real America, being [there as they have been able to be] with all of [those] hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.”
And soon, when the real Americans unleashed by the McCain/Palin frenzy finally rise up to defend America against all those fakes who cannot see America the way McCain/Palin do, there will be blood, and perhaps a few lynchings here and there by lynch mobs looking for disguised terrorists, embedded Arabs and treasonous liberals and darkies with Obama/Biden signs on their lawns. And, who knows? With some luck, there will be some mass repatriation to Mexico or some national security consignments to Guantanamo Bay.
The worst in all this is that unrepentant John McCain does not even appear to be conscious of the dangerous forces that the McCain/Palin speeches have begun to unleash, forces which, down the road, could cause this country to regress into chapters of its history as dark as the ones which we have all been trying to erase from our memories. Only, this time, it is America as a whole that will suffer.
In the world of John McCain, it is Apocalypse Now, my friends…
Brought to you, and authorized by, The Barack Obama Unofficial Advisory Council (ourselves)
Original link: Click Here:
Dr. Daniel Mengara
The author is the founder of the Barack Obama Unofficial Advisory Council. He is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Montclair State University (New Jersey). He is also the leader of Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go), a movement of expatriated Gabonese citizens opposed and seeking an end to the 41-year-old dictatorial regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon.