It was pretty impossible to miss tonight's most recommended diary,"BREAKING Glass: Texas Thugs Trash Obama Supporter Car on eve of Early Voting". Normally, the all caps "BREAKING" headline is reserved for new poll numbers coming out of North Carolina that show Obama ahead or maybe a diary about Donald Rumsfeld being sent to The Hague for a tribunal...his tribunal. (That's my dream diary!) But this "BREAKING" was about the actual breaking of actual glass.
An automobile having its back window smashed with a 20 lb rock is USUALLY vandalism. Some idiotic thugs are out one night and bored, or drunk, or pissed at something, or just total losers and decide to throw some rocks and break something that is not their own. The classic definition of vandalism pretty much describes this situation.
van·dal·ism (vndl-zm)
n.
Willful or malicious destruction of public or private property.
However, what happened to Bekosiluvu's car is not JUST vandalism. Mere vandals do not steal your Obama bumper sticker, throw a 20 lb rock through your windshield and then spray paint "OBAMA" on the side of your car.
What happened to Bekosiluvu's car is terrorism. Pure domestic terrorism. In case you are wondering, here's the definition of terrorism:
ter·ror·ism (tr-rzm)
n.
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
Was the attack on Bekosiluvu's car not violence by a person against property with the intention of intimidating or coercing the owner of that property (and their fellow Obama supporters) for ideological and/or political reasons?
Even the FBI defines a terrorist incident as "a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, in violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state, to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social goals."
It appears to me that the current batch of terrorists acting up here in the United States are against Barack Obama, rather than with him. They didn't state on the car whom they ARE with, however it's becoming more and more clear that John McCain, Sarah Palin, the Republican Party, and the entire conservative movement are gonna have to answer some questions if this bout of domestic terrorism continues and gets worse.
They need to realize that if this gets worse, it's only going to harm Republican efforts to make a comeback someday. Someone with a brain in that party (other than Colin Powell) needs to speak out and show some decency and smarts and try to put a stop to it now.