I was thinking of that moment in the 2008 campaign where we saw the real John McCain. The moment where the woman in the crowd says Obama is a traitor and McCain responds that he is a good America a decent family man of whom you do not have to be scared.
Welcome to the Revolution
I was thinking of that moment in the 2008 campaign where we saw the real John McCain. The moment where the woman in the crowd says Obama is a traitor and McCain responds that he is a good America a decent family man of whom you do not have to be scared.
http://www.youtube.com/...
That was one sighting among the hundreds of smirks and nods and winks he gave to the insane rhetoric of the right. More, and let’s be clear about this, Sarah Palin started the violent rhetoric against Obama. She mainstreamed it. Until she started the Paling around with terrorists tag line there was a fringe group that was too embarrassed to shout out, kill him, or hang him, or string him up, or traitor, or an of the hundreds of other phrases they have all shouted out since. Sarah Palin, a neophyte, an unqualified hack did something that no pol with more than a couple of months experience would ever do. She incited the base to riot. Here is what I mean by that.
Al Gore could have stood up after the Supreme Court stole the election from him, after they, with no precedent and a conservative majority, stripped the states’ rights of FL from their own codified legislative and judicial process, after they violated the constitution of the united states and basic fair play and decency to jam George Bush into office, Al Gore could stood up and said, "George Bush will never be a legitimate president. He will always be a thief, a traitor, a liar in the face of truth." How many dems would have backed him? I know I would have. How many dems would have spent the entire first year of Bushes term saying the exact type of things that the Tea Party is saying about Obama? That he is somehow illegitimate, that he is a traitor, that he isn’t really President. We could have done the same thing, but Gore, a career pol, and the dems had cooler heads. They believed, deeply, that the nation was more important than personal ambition, that the good of the nation always comes first.
Sarah Palin and McCain to some extent, not the real McCain who actually spoke his mind and believe what he believed, the McCain that Bush and Rove savaged in the 2000 primary where a bunch of draft dodging chicken hawks called a war hero a coward. (Exactly what they did to Kerry) The McCain before that who actually had some respect for himself, was more than a gimmick machine, and whom, if he disliked President Obama as much as this McCain does at least would have done so because of policy more than sour grapes.
Sarah Palin has unleashed the dark seamy underside of America, the deep rich vein that runs through all geographic and socio –economic strata of our nation. The thread that whispers, it is ok to enslave people that burning a cross is a constitutional right, as is burning people and churches. The side that sent small pox infested blankets to the native Americans, the scummy side that whispers "inter the Japanese they might be traitors," that smirks about a time when women couldn’t vote and thinks that a woman’s life, health, welfare, is worth less than a fetus, because the "fetus didn’t rape her" that thinks violence, oppression and isolation in the pursuit of violent, oppressive, isolative goals is a good thing, and that anyone who doesn’t look like he is from Sweden is somehow less. Sarah Palin, maybe because she holds these views herself, or maybe because she was simply too stupid, too inexperienced, to actually realize why McCain and other pols weren’t out talking up this miasma of evil that exists now and has always existed in the un-talked about places of this nation, opened up this box of shit that lurks below the surface of our nation. And now that it is open we can’t close it again, at least not easily.
Protesters called people "faggots" and "niggers" (I am sorry if this use cause anyone pain, I just didn't think the F word and N word would capture the full outrage. If anyone is offended I'll change it)and just about everything under the sun and they spit in the face of John Lewis, a hero of mine who stood against the violence and hatred of the South in the 60s. They did this after the GOP spoke at their rally. This is seen as endorsing and covering them with credibility. They did it because they wanted to, because the GOP told them that what the President was doing was evil. That who the President is as a person is less than who they are as people. They did it because they believe that their hatred is worth more than our love of nation as a community and as a people and as a party. They are wrong. Love wins out.
I love this country. I love our system, even flawed and broken. I love the right to free speech and I defend the rights of my enemies to exercise that freedom. But I demand of our media and of us a response. Someone told me when I was a callow 18 year old kid who thought he knew more than he actually did that the remedy for hateful speech was other speech. That it wasn’t silencing, either the speech you despise or your own, it was to respond to it. As I remembered John McCain acting like he had some GD sense, once, in the long brutal season of the campaign I was heartened. All we must do to stop this madness is speak out. To write, to talk, to educate, to continue with the best part of this nation, love, of law, or justice, of people and difference and strength. We have an obligation as people of good will to resist the hatred and the bigotry and the ignorance of the Tea Party. To demand of ourselves and our community the system of justice, law, governance and information we deserve. This is a wake-up call to me and to anyone ready to satchel up. Welcome to the revolution.
Peace and Love,
JChris