Make Them Own Any Post-Election Violence
I just had a check-up this morning with a doctor who doesn’t know me well. She and I were talking about what I do, and I said I was really looking forward to the election being over. She said she was too–that people seemed really wound up this year. She speculated that maybe it was because more people were involved. I pointed out that in our area, that’s not really true, lots of people were involved in 2004 as well. And that, given that McCain hadn’t really excited the crowds until he picked Palin, there was actually less involvement across both parties until September.
But then I said, no, things are not going to be less wound up after the election. If, as is probably going to happen, Obama is elected–at this point she sort of disagreed, which leads me to believe she has no clue what the polls are showing, perhaps even no clue that McCain has pulled out of MI–then you’re going to have to deal with the aftermath of a month of rallies in which McCain and (especially) Palin have incited anger by calling Obama a terrorist. Digby is (go figure) absolutely right when she points to where this is headed.
This is the kind of thing that really makes me fear for Obama. They are already screaming "terrorist" at Palin’s rallies and shouting "kill him." The whole "Obama is a muslim" thing is bizarre, but with his name and childhood spent partly in a Muslim country — and the fact that he’s black, which makes everyone flash on Louis Farrakhan — the collective right wing lizard brain twitches uncontrollably. They will use this, I have no doubt. There is an entire wingnut industry devoted to stirring up tensions in the middle east and another on devoted to character assassination of Democrats. Obama brings them together in serendipitous loathing and paranoia. It’s going to be ugly.
When I said things were headed to some serious ugliness, on account of the fact that the McCain campaign was deliberately stoking violent anger as an attempt to delegitimize the guy most likely to be President, the doctor got a bit squirmy. She didn’t want to hear this. I’m guessing she’s a moderate in love with the untainted McCain myth of 2000, and she simply doesn’t want to think about her guy fostering this dangerous energy.
It’s time to make McCain’s so-called moderate supporters own this ugly.
Whether McCain thinks he is justified in unleashing this ugliness because he really needs to win, or whether McCain secretly loves being the demagogue at a violent rally, his actions are deliberate, unjustified, and dangerous. I’m not hoping for or guaranteeing that violence will result, but it would be an unsurprising outcome, as unsurprising and tragic as the chemical attack on Muslim children in Dayton following the mailing of the Obsession video.
Friday, September 26th ended a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West — the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail — were distributed by mail in Ohio. The same day, a "chemical irritant" was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain’s supporters has led to — Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.
[snip]
"She told me that the gas was sprayed into the room where the babies and children were being kept while their mothers prayed together their Ramadan prayers. Panicked mothers ran for their babies, crying for their children so they could flee from the gas that was burning their eyes and throats and lungs. She grabbed her youngest in her arms and grabbed the hand of her other daughter, moving with the others to exit the building and the irritating substance there.
"The paramedic said the young one was in shock, and gave her oxygen to help her breathe. The child couldn’t stop sobbing.
With Clinton, the smear campaigns prepped during the election were designed to delegitimize the man–though not the presidency. But the direction where this violence could head–along with the economic collapse the Bush Administration has fathered–could very well delegitimize our government as a whole. And McCain needs to own that–McCain and the moderates who put up with this kind of demagoguery.
I was just thinking about this on my way to work this morning, even before I saw the new Ayers ad. I don’t think this is about the election anymore. This is an attempt to cripple an Obama presidency. They are creating a weird alternate reality mythos about Obama, the crypto-commie Muslim, who stole the Presidency from war hero McCain.
They should know that this isn’t going to work. The textbook case is the 2000 election. Bush lost, the Supreme Court stepped in and stopped the votes from being counted in Florida, and Bush became President. We all bitched and moaned about it (and still do), but it didn’t “cripple” Bush at all.
We weren’t willing to take it to the streets. Some of these bozos are. The biggest risk of political violence comes when there are large numbers of recently unemployed men whose hurt and resentment is fed by a mass political movement willing to make scapegoats out of a religious minority. Palin is straight from central casting to play the new Aimee Semple McPherson/Father Coughlin role if the right decides to go all in on this.
The only good news is that the 30 and under crowd is pretty heavily invested in Obama.
I was willing to take to the streets
if a repuglitarded rent-a mob shows up at my local ROV, they’re gettin BOUNCED pal, that’s all there is to it
in case people don’t know it, in California, ballots are guarded by Deputy Sheriffs
any threat to our local ROV office after an election would be a threat to a PEACE OFFICER
those stupid rent-a-mob repuglitards wouldn’t know what hit them
they want violence ???
bring it on
I ain’t fucked anybody up in a few years, and I could use the exercise
warning, I don’t fight fair
protect yourself at all times, or I’ll put your ass on reset …
I work closely with employees of a very large county in california, and yes they take it very seriously. It’s actually sort of comforting to watch their professionalism. The whole IT infrastructure goes into lockdown 3 weeks before and 1 week after the election – we’re talking about a very large network – 17K employees.
you mean they lock down the whole county IT infrastructure ???
wow
I have a close relationship with several people in the local ROV office, and I sometimes work part time for the county, so I know a lot of stuff that most people never think about
our local ROV has their own servers, and special technicians, and they’re required to attend weekly IT Security meetings.
If they had to secure the whole county network for something like this, we’d have some serious problems (our county government is basically comprised of a hospital, a Welfare office, the Courts, The ROV, and “All of the rest”, and each separate unit has it’s own network and servers, outside the generic county “All of the rest” network”
That is actually really heartening to hear. Thx.
And thx to EW for this post, also.
I’m really glad to see this get wider discussion.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, part of my childhood was spent in Germany.
Makes one take things like Neil’s link VERY seriously.
So randiego, thx for the encouraging bit of info.
Me too. Six months in the Black Forest in Germany in 1968. I was in second grade. And you?
Earlier than ‘68, closer to Frankfurt am Main but parents loved to travel.
In one of my stateside elementary schools, I was called a ‘Nazi’ on a playground one day simply because I’d lived in Germany.
I cannot begin to describe how deeply an insult of that nature can mark a kid, and prompt one to take Modern European History courses, and read Hannah Arendt, as well as European lit, on the side.
So with that background, watching Cheney has really been mind-boggling, though I was slow to recognize that he was driving force behind the criminal conduct that’s affected every American. So the Gitmo stuff… brings back that sense of being defiled — by other people’s choices and actions — that I experienced back on that playground in the 1960s.
But I believe that evil of this nature can only be destroyed by transparent, legally correct, processes. It feeds on violence, secrecy, despair, fear, and innuendo.
Another reason why I believe that what EW, FDL, and the progressive blogs are so important in rebuilding a sane legal infrastructure — as ‘public conscience’ they make a difference. The Germans didn’t have anything like this in the 20s and 30s.
And I still believe that America’s diversity may yet help us avoid self-destruction.
But perhaps that’s because I’ve read a bit too much related to genetics ;-))
Diversity is more robust than monoculture.
Thanks. That means a lot to me.
The good news is that the law is Obama’s specialty. Much more than McCain, and with more incentive, he will intuitively and intellectually understand the decapitation, the evisceration, the hamstringing that BushCheney have done to the DOJ. Unlike McCain, he will know why it’s important to fix it NOW, and know the people who might be able to do it.
They will have their jobs cut out for them. Apart from routine work, there will be resuscitating the civil rights, anti-organized crime, anti-corporate crime groups that the Bush administration has sedated or disbanded. There will be new ReichWing hate groups hiding behind the First Amendment that Bush has done so much to gut.
There will also be the need to redo much of the OLC’s work from the past eight years, especially on national security issues and the law of war, and the need to craft novel fixes to the “known unknown” problems Bush will leave behind. That will include the need to rebuild the federal bureaucracy without himself gutting the civil service laws that Bush has most abused.
The Government motto of this county is “The Noblest Motive is the Public Good”. It’s corny, but I’ve always liked that. I attend a lot of meetings where I see employees that take it very seriously.
I think you are correct that the Right is trying to cripple Obama’s presidency before it gets going, and when you combine this with BushCo’s efforts to do whatever he can in his last couple of months to push through new regulations, let new contracts, and otherwise tie Obama’s hands or create so much extra work that Obama will have to plow through to undo . . .
January and February are going to be quite something.
There’s a disconnect in your statement, I think, between the anti-Islam smears on the one hand and the very domestic issues around Wall Street and DC on the other. The hurt and resentment from economic dislocation isn’t targetted at Osama bin Laden or AQ or muslims in general. It’s aimed at Wall Street hedge fund managers, AIG management and its post-bailout shindigs, and the DC folks that allowed it all to happen.
I’m not saying that McCain and Palin won’t try to tie the angry anti-Islamic sentiment and anti-DC sentiment together and slap it on Obama’s back like a “kick me” sign — but these are two different kinds of anger, and there’s a big gap between them.
That’s a very good point. I think Obama will literally own Wall Street (I’m a giddy optimist right now). I’m coming around to support for Obama’s vote for the bill on political grounds. I think he knew it wasn’t the end of the story, and he correctly wanted to be perceived as decisive and non-partisan, while being seen as being in a forward role in ameliorating the worst of the bill. The news stories today are that 1) the 700 won’t be enough and 2) there will be some national ownership of these institutions.
You are correct that the two are not connected now. Here’s the problem I fear. We haven’t yet seen much in the way of job losses from the credit crisis. Those job losses will start after the election. If the recession is deep (and it sure looks like it will be to me), we’ll have a potentially nasty situation. This crisis will disproportionally affect small and medium size businesses. Unlike the disappearance of the manufacturing jobs during the ’80’s, the people who lose their jobs won’t have a union to help ease the pain. The last 50 years has seen the destruction of many of the community institutions of urban and small town America and the construction of the ’soulless’ suburbs (where I choose to live, but that’s another story). The government safety net, thanks to the last 30 years of Republican efforts, has more holes that net.
A lot of these folks are going to be faced with a job that’s never coming back as small businesses dry up and blow away. This will be a situation that is very damaging to male psyches, especially in the South and West where the myth of American individualism is strongest. The demogogues of the Right stir up violence against ‘Muslim extremists’, the Obama Administration protects the innocent, and the Right screams that he’s showing his true sympathies.
I hope and pray this never comes about, but I believe in putting feet to my prayers, so I want people to be alert for the warning signs. Those Palin rallies are ugly. It could get much worse.
That’s an important unanswered question. What will the time frame for this really be? Why do you say it won’t be felt for at least four months?
I’m skeptical. I get the sense people are receptive to the notion that we are now facing a depression. They’ve already been acclimated to pessimism after seeing their standard of living diminish for eight years.
We are on the way.
This is being fueled hourly by calls to attack and destabilize.
Obama can only say so much because he IS the lightening rod. Biden is great, but we need leaders to stand against this, leaders that these people will listen to.
A statesman, a statesman, I’d give the world for a Republican statesman.
Chuck Hagel?
We could ask.
But you know, there is a fundamental flaw in that logic because there is a fundamental difference between the right and the left. We actually think it is important to listen to people with different points of view and that multiple perspectives make us stronger. They don’t think that. They just said “Fine. It’s a free country. Speak your mind behind that cyclone fence over there.” and then raped and pillaged as they pleased. So by causing a shitstorm, they will probably actually gain some capitulation.
Separate point but still on topic for thread, there was a remarkably prescient article by James Fallows in The Atlantic soon after W’s reelection that I want to reread. Here’s the link. As I recall, he was pretty much right on about the catastrophic situation we would find ourselves in and how hard it would be to find a way out.
I think McCain will try to mitigate the hate he’s sowed at the very end of this campaign when he finally accepts it won’t work. Not a very bold prediction, as most politicians try to concede “graciously”, but there you go. McCain is past the denial phase already — he has known he’s cooked since he signed that bill; it’s why he was so frustrated and deflated at the debate. Now I’m a little surprised that Obama goaded him into another go at Ayers just now; he must have prepared a devastating response for this past debate and regrets not having been able to use it.
I thought he was going there yesterday when there was the brief respite. But I just think McCain’s campaign is in-fighting over whether they should foster violence or try to resuscitate the old McCain myth.
Meanwhile, I got a new McCain mailed (yup, 4 days after McCain withdrew from the state–and it was a multi-color mailer). It was really a Palin-McCain flyer, trying to paint her as a moderate. Perhaps it might work for someone like this doctor–but that ship sailed, Palin wants to be a demagogue, and so she shall be.
I’m not sure this came out the way you wanted. For my part, though, this would strengthen Obama’s presidency the way McVeigh strengthened Clinton.
I think if they really were staking on this they needed McCain to throw in his lot with House Republicans on the bill and demagogue it, but he backed off.
The loathing and mockery of McCain in the press is so overwhelming (George Will calls Palin McCain’s “female Sancho Panza” and says his attempts to bring up Ayers are “surreal” and like trying to “savage (Obama) with a dead sheep”) that it has to wound his vanity. We all know he’s a spayed little bitch who will come crawling and whingeing for approval when it’s all over (I think Obama calling him on Ayers may be like the master rubbing the dog’s nose in the shit he took on the carpet). This is not a strong base on which to try to avenge the supposedly aggrieved standard bearer.
Jon Stewart seems to have hit it, saying that
And that didn’t turn out so well.
Demagoguery and mob violence are among the most terrifying human activities I can imagine.
By then it will be too late.
But John McCain will be, awe shucks, just so darn sad that he unleashed the new American version of the brownshirts upon the land. He’ll really regret it, gosh darn it.
-G
John McCain didn’t “unleash” them; he’s on their leash.
That said, these people might as well be agents provocateurs working to undermine the Republican Party and strengthen Obama.
Xenophobia by race, religion, and political belief has led to horrendous violence throughout our history. Those who incite this violence know that this may result.
Therefore they know or should have known that their actions were in reckless disregard to the safety of those against whom they incite.
I fear for my country at this time.
I agree. This has to be front and center. McCain and Palin have been breeding this hate and based on the grins I see on their faces when they hear the shouting from the crowd, they know exactly what they are doing.
It’s yet another step in the Martial Law plan of attack.
As long as its only bloggers like you, Greenwald, Digby and Jane making this point, it won’t be heard beyond Olbermann and Maddow. How do we put this concern out in the MSM?
Neil,
That is what SPOTLIGHT is for! Start copying and pasting your short introductory blurb into an email that will go directly to Presidents of news divisions and Washington DC – beat reporters!
The Great Orange has a diary up – the second of two – with video from the McCain-Palin wingding in Strongsville, OH.
Some of these people are teaching their children that Obama can only be safely touched when they’re wearing gloves. Sick, sick people.
Looking at the timing of all of this, the economy, the hate speak, the placement of troops on domestic soil…this is just sick and a total destruction of the living document, The Constitution.
And, I think they are hoping for pre-electon violence. “That” will suspend the election.
Why that when they can strike voter by the hundreds of thousands. See the NYT today.
For the wingnuts, it has not been about winning for some time. Rather, they are intending to make the country ungovernable.
It had to be obvious to the theorists and men-behind-the-curtain in the Republican party (calling Newt…) that 8 years of Bush/Cheney would leave a lot of wreckage and a crippled economy. They would have known, possibly as early as 2004-05 when it was obvious to even the oblivious that Iraq was definitely not going to end quickly, that in 2008 the Republicans would lose the election.
Their expectation, then, was that after four years of blaming Democrats for all the problems the Republicans had created in 2001-2009, come 2012 they could regain the WH. The expectation would be that the public would be preoccupied with the problems current in 2012, and have forgotten that the problem was created in 2001-2009. The further expectation was, and is, that Obama (or whoever the Dems elect – the Repugs likely thought it would be HRC, too) would be either too Democratic-soft-hearted/headed to take appropriate remedial action against the Republicans who created the mess in the first place, alongside fixing the underlying problems.
Remedial action including “prosecution” and “prison” as well as “reining in the right-wing media”.
Frankly, they might well succeed. They will make things messy.
In view of the fact that impeachment is off the table, the next Congress should at least initiate some comprehensive Truth and Reconciliation process. They probably won’t, however. It’ll just be “time to move on.” Thus the chance to put a stake through the heart of the malignant conservative movement will slip through the nation’s fingers.
WTKK’s genius hatejocks have called for the 40 to 45% to become a government in exile. They are calling on true patriots to do everything they legally can to go after Obama now
and to begin IMPEACHMENT proceedings as soon as possible to destabilize his ability to govern.
Then these Romney guys will campaign 24/7 for Romney while continuing to stir up hatred and fear.
Hate Radio/Republican Machine
Republicans own these media outlets and they own this mess.
Obama Hatred At McCain-Palin Rallies: “Terrorist!” “Kill Him!” (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | October 6, 2008
LINK
Deeply alarming stuff there, Neil.
One thing the MSM could start doing is interview people who research trauma (Martha Stout comes to mind), and also those who research human development, learning, and the role of emotions in predicting future success (Goleman and others). Because the kind of fear and hostility that are being stirred up have very real biological and social implications, it’s a legitimate topic for the MSM to cover right now when the news is so traumatic.
For anyone interested, a good resource at: http://www.seedsofcompassion.org/default.asp
This post also leaves me thinking that members of the clergy have a huge task cut out for them in coming weeks, talking to their congregations about “putting away falsehood” and why after 2000 years we still need to understand the importance of some ancient advice, “I tell you the truth, as you did to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40) http://www.matthew25.org/
Interestingly, modern research seems to support the wisdom traditions that speak about interconnectedness. The Greek dramatists revised this theme over, and over, and over — which is why they’re still relevant.
What Palin and McCain are inciting is irresponsible, dangerous, and ultimately self-defeating. By conducting themselves in this fashion, the most they could possibly hope to ‘win’ is a damaged, self-destructive Pyhrric Victory. And we’ve all seen how that worked out for GWBush.
The fear card of 9-11 has run out of steam. This is the new fear card but with a full head of steam…racial hate packaged with “terroist” is like icing on the cake for the GOP…
From Hitler’s 1930 Munich speech:
Full speech translation here:
http://www.humanitas-internati…..09-16.html
In the last election, I managed to write a piece comparing the fear language of Hitler’s speeches to Bush campaign speeches. It was chilling. This time around, the language from the GOP is more chilling.
it’s NOT succeeding
people are getting FLAT FUCKING PISSED OFF at the repuglitard party
ever seen a trial where the jury turned against the DA in a violent way (actually shaking their heads no while the DA speaks and such) ???
I have
mcsame and the repuglitards have lost the jury
by 2012, princess pandora’s favorable rating will be in bush-nixon territory, but that ain’t gonna stop the fundies from pushing her to the top in repuglitard primaries
look for a new conservative party to be formed in 2011 or so
and the rpuglitards-fundies might make one more futile attempt with princess pandora in 2016
after that, the repuglitards are a part of history
“after that, the repuglitards are a part of history”
I prefer to quote Lenin.”relegated to the dustbin of history” , if I remember correctly.*g*
I’m SO ashamed
I’m not really up on my Lenin, ya know
do I gotta give the ACLU card back ???
I’m keepin the volvo
but You can have the birkinstocks and the lattes back …
(wink)
I live in the bluest of blue states but that doesn’t keep the wing nuts from stirring the pot.
My favorite right-wing idiot is Jeff Jacoby of the Globe…
I’ll have to take a look at him. I don’t have a “favorite” right wing opinion-ator, I just have the ones that get under my skin more than others.
Thanks ew.
digg
Another couple incidental indicators:
Betrayus would be very useful to a strategy (not a tactic, as McCain seems to think) of deligitimizing Obama. But he’s trying to keep his job, the snake.
David Brooks calls Palin a “fatal cancer on the Republican Party”. Of course he doesn’t mind that Palin is inciting violence; that would be fine if she were doing it on behalf of Wall Street or for Brooks’ neoconservative foreign policy ends. The problem he has with her is that he fears that the pensum she learned at AIPAC’s foot can be unlearned and that she’ll be the head of a nativist, isolationist, Buchananite Republican Party. That’s not something I fear; I would welcome it.
I don’t think you offer evidence for this statement:
I almost always disagree with Brooks, but I do think that he often raises interesting points.
I’ve never perceived him to advocate violence in any form.
Banging the drum for invading Iraq wasn’t inciting violence?
Oh, sorry — I was thinking of domestic violence.
You certainly DO have a point.
My husband is a blue collar electrician. Not the picture of political enlightenment. He keeps saying over and over again, “there is no way that the powers that be are going to let this honest man lead and change anything”.
His belief is that they will kill him. There is no other blog in which I would repeat those words or utter that fear…for fear that it reinforce or validate the idea to some crazy head. But I have to agree that the powers in charge right now have worked very hard to get their power and to maintain it. In the course of that journey they have broken laws, they have bodies to hide. In some ways this is more like “beating” a crime syndicate than it is winning a democratic election.
It really will be a test of the power and hold that these greedy fascists have over America…and I fear only time will tell. How much power do they have? We’ll see.
I had the same sad thought…
In an email discussion with friends this week we convinced ourselves that Bush wouldn’t be stupid enough to delay the election. Then one of the group talked to an acquaintance who used to be in intelligence. According to this person, the danger time to watch Bush and his cronies is between the election and the inauguration. I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but the sort of racist mob mentality discussed here would fit that scenario perfectly.
FWIW, I’ve thought of it that way for months.
And with respect to weavpeac, although it’s possible there is some Grand Conspiracy of people who ‘control all this’, color me skeptical. I have several contacts with people who are close to AIG employees, and what I hear is that a few weeks back the NY employees of AIG didn’t know from one hour to the next what was going on — didn’t know whether they had their jobs, didn’t know whether they had medical…
If you’ve never watched “The Smartest Guys in the Room” about Enron, check it out.
The opening image is of a church, and a minister talking about his getting a sense of something wrong at Enron before it suddenly imploded. This may be a similar dynamic on a larger scale. But a whole lot of people are going to have to rethink their behavior, their lifestyles, and their purpose. That’s not all bad.
WTKK blog:
Meanwhile, what are patriots to do? You say “Ok Jay, just in case you’re right, what do I do? Give up?” No. You have a job and I do too. My job, with your help, is to start today, or recommit today, with 29 days left in this campaign, to politically destroy Barack Obama. Our job is to undermine him in every possible legal way, to undermine his upcoming administration in advance, to destroy his ability to reach any governing majority, undermine and destroy his political ability to govern or to have any hope of a successful administration.
We must do this because a Successful Barack Obama administration equals socialism, our government being soft on terrorism, the UN running the defense of our country, our doom as a nation. A successful Obama administration equals higher taxes, racial preferences, liberal judges, and the end of the American way of life. Do you want Bill Clinton as Chief justice of the United States Supreme Court? Hillary Clinton? Barney Frank? You’re looking at it!
What’s your job, what can you do? Join me! Start the 2012 campaign right now. If we can’t impeach Obama then let’s throw him out at the earliest possible moment and that means start stopping Obama now. An attack campaign against Obama is worthy of the timeless principals of all American patriots. Obama is King George and we are the minutemen, and women. The United States of America will be saved only by us, and only by us opposing Obama and everything he represents. That is our duty.
It is a profound task worthy of the patriotic one third. Of this we are capable, and this we must do for ourselves and our family and our country. Start Stopping Obama’s administration now every day, every minute! My job, and yours if you join me, is to start destroying Barack Obama political credibility today and tomorrow and the next day and every single day up until he gets elected on November 4th and, even harder, every day, every minute, and every second after.
—————————————-
http://www.wtkk.biz/blogs/jays…..-Obama-Now!.aspx
– Jay Severin
American “exceptionalism” at work…
This guy is deluded. Declares he is the best political operative and prognosticator in the country. He craves attention. Any attention will do.
He was so repulsive to the Tucker show at MSNBC that he was asked never to return.
He loves Romney, advises Romney, hangs out at the big fundraisers and New Hampshire. He worked tirelessly to get Romney elected in Massachusetts.
I hate to say his name, but I will if I have to. He and the rest of the geniuses are on WTKK’s payroll.
I hold WTKK reponsible.
Severin is an asshole. He sill tries to portray himself as a Libertarian as cover for all his radical, anger-imbued rants.
Wonkette has a feature today called “Sarah Palin Parking Lot”.
I can’t link to it as it’s embedded video and hence blocked for me, but it’s a youtube video by blogger Tim Russo where he interviews people waiting to get into a
naziPalin rally in Strongsville Ohio.Here’s his blog:
http://bloggerinterrupted.com/
It is eye-opening, to say the least.
The McCain-Palin Mob video 4 mins.
It was disturbing to watch the Palin-to-Base stirring. But something that disturbed me even more was a bit from The Corner that got some circulation after the debate. It was circulated with some crowing (McCarthy is recognizing that the debate was a disaster for McCain) but what I read wasn’t anything to crow over, it was really, truly, deeply disturbing.
You had Andrew McCarthy, someone who had been an AUSA for years and year, someone who has worked on terrorist cases, someone who is paid to postulate but has been in the middle of work where he has had to see, over and over, the direct results of spewing hate speech – his background, his training, his credentials, and what is he upset over?
That McCain didn’t incite Americans to rise up against Obama as a “terrorist” Oh, and that McCain didn’t tie being a “lefty” and being a “terrorist” together tightly enough. Beyond creepy, and such an insight into the current DOJ.
McCarthy is purpleprint livid that McCain didn’t spend the debate making sure that “the left” was tied to Pentagon bombings and anti-Semistism:
And then he gives his “memo” to the McCain campaign and makes the “conservative (nay, the American) case” that:
Got that? The left are all Pentagon bombing terrorist sympathizers (not to be confused with the Hussein hand shaking, napalming, Phoenix Project generating, civilian bombing, cab driver killing, pedophile protecting, evidence destroying, court order violating, closet fans of and advocates for Syrian torture and Geneva Convention deniers who are, of course, not terrorist sympathizers bc, well, just bc).
And we all know, under the MCA and the Yoo/Philbin memos, what’s supposed to happen to people that some raging lunatic decides to declare “terrorist sympathizers,” don’t we? Leave the beaten body dangling, tied in a stress position while you disappear the children, right?
McCarthy’s piece really was an anguish filled cry for McCain to make “the public” (not those “lefties” of course, especially not the Jewish lefties who manage to be more anti-Semetic than the Catholic and Evangelical churches that condem Jews to eternal hell) DO SOMETHING about that terrorist sympathizer, Obama.
Even Frum (and I don’t usually read the Corner, because it is usually nonsense, but the personalized venom in McCarthy’s piece was really shocking to me) seems to be wanting, without tackling what was said directly, to want pull people back from the incitements to lynching led by former AUSAs.
When even the ex-DOJ lawyers are pushing for an “incite the mobs against the terrorist lover” tactic,
and aren’t just pushing for it as a tactic but seem to have entered a state where they actually believe in reality where Bush, who abandoned the hunt for Bin Laden in favor of an abortive attempt to hand the Iraqi oil fields over to Exxon and BPI, is a hero and Obama is Bin Laden’s pen pal and BFF,
when THAT is the state of “conservative case” that the party wishes would be made, we are in bad times and sad times.
God help and forgive.
This was hyped all morning – McCain did not do enough to tie Obama to terrorists and the true racists. All morning, with the afternoon shift starting from 3 on.
Well, it’s certainly nice to know that with all the crazy stuff, there is something about America that is consistent: We have a really hefty percentage of people here who are racists…and also possible thugs. God bless America.
I heard an economics professor from Hillsdale college on the radio recently. He said that even if the $700 billion dollars for the financial bailout ends up being totally wasted, it would still be a good thing since then it would not be available to Obama for social programs. This is a sick inhumane individual.
So, in other words, there is a fairly large group of people in this country that even given what is going on in the economy this year and what will possibly go on in the near future…they’d rather lose their jobs and home, not have food for their kids to eat, and possibly end up on lines at a soup kitchen and living under a highway overpass…just because then it would balk anything that a new Democratic Administration could do to put the country back together? And they think that is somehow a good thing? That that is somehow BETTER? We have some seriously delusional people in this country. And we also have people with access to the media who frankly are inciting hate crimes and as far as I’m concerned, I’d like the Justice Dept., the FBI, the Secret SErvice, and local and state law enforcement to start doing their jobs to ’serve and protect’.
That’s probably why most Republicans support the Iraq War.
What radio program treated Hillsdale as a reputable college from which to get a speaker?
Add to concerns the fact that we have no idea who some percentage of the CIA are loyal to. There is drug money financing militants who-knows-where.
Also there will be backwoods attacks on black people. A black person walking alone when a group of these angry simpletons drives past is a scared person. RIP James Byrd Jr.
Isn’t this how the genocide in Rawanda got started?
The Brooks Brothers rebellion seemed Ivy League, dapper. There is a book in the works about similarly controversial elections, e.g. NY Gov Geo Clinton v J Jay 1792. It was interesting a few days ago reading the AssocPress archive clips from Reagan administration timeframe early involvement in national politics of McCain, with respect to the passage of the October 1984 Boland Amendment, and slightly prior to that watershed congressional refusal to provide ongoing support for covert war, McCain’s bowing out of an organization which had worked to support contras. I had wondered what precipitated McCain’s interest in that exit’s timing. It was long ago, though it probably is a fair predictor of how his later congressional career would develop, conservative side of political spectrum, perhaps with an enhanced sense of timing and vigilance toward associations. I tend to agree with the commenter who recognized the traditional gentility of transitions from one administration to the next, in the US.
This network has two redundant data centers (out of state) – no local servers. Hospitals, law enforcement, dog catchers, everything is on the network. Only the courts are separate. Any IT changes upstream or downstream from ROV are locked out during the blackout period – except for breakfix of course. By ‘lockdown’, I meant ‘changes’. They don’t want anything breaking the ROV part of the network during the election period.
Have they really thought about what an enraged Biden in the Oval Office would look like?
I work exclusively with trauma survivors of domestic violence and rape. We are starting “the peace center” which will treat military people and their families for ptsd. (since there is a high correlation between serving in war and ptsd, domestic violence and substance abuse) I use DBT for personality disorders, emotion regulation skills, EMDR, Exposure therapy, and TF CBT. I am trained in all of these techniques.
One of the first parts of the human mind to be affected by trauma and invalidation is emotion regulation. There is some research linking bi polar disorder, ptsd and trauma as the cause. Of course the clear cause and affect link is not there as of yet. However MRI’s are getting closer to being able to document before and after’s of the brain in regard to trauma and in regard to damage to the hypothalumus.
One theory is that the pathway between the frontal lobe and the hypothalumus get damaged as a result of trauma. The trauma overwhelms the brain much like trying to put water in a wine bottle from a fire hydrant. The result is that the hypothalamus goes into over drive and the pathways to the frontal lobe shut down so that the human mind can react quickly and almost without thinking to survive. If this action occurs over and over again chronically over time the pathways between the frontal lobe and hypothalamus weaken. The same occurs with alcoholism. The frontal lobe is utilized less and less and the person begins living and making decisions from emotion mind instead of the frontal lobe. THis results in mood disorders as the emotions become the leader for thinking instead of the frontal lobe.
This is one of my great interests because I believe that there is a collective reaction to trauma that can become “culure” over time. Working with Israeli’s who live with constant terrorism, working with Palestinian people who are very, very reactive to invalidation. Seeing what happened to the african american culture after slavery, what happened to the American Indian culture. Basically, the consequences to the human brain and to all of humanity can at the very least be correlated.
My big life thesis is linking violence to certain mindsets, certain behaviors, certain personality disorders and sequelaes that would predict future violence. Of course the turn around for that would be whether or not we could teach the skills for peace to countries, cultures that have been greatly impacted by violence. I fantasize that maybe we can solve the problem of world peace by teaching more math, encouraging emotion regulation skills, (emotional intelligence per Goleman)and teaching a nonjudgmental stance to keep the frontal lobe engaged in interpreting situations and creating emotion.
Anyway….sorry if I got off on that but world peace is an ideal that has always fascinated me and my thesis is that violence just increases and validates violence. Trauma creates behaviors that lead to the use of violence whether it be toward the self or others. If we don’t stop the cycle and teach the mind tools of peace, we will never be able to choose it as a way of solving world problems.
May there be a wave of peace. So to speak.
Thanks. Thomas Merton (my favorite writer/poet) is cheering for you.
Have you read the Rolling Stone piece on McCain? Take a look on page 2 at the section entitled Navy Brat:
I had read that quote somewhere and thought about how these traumatized children are then drawn to war and to the military. What a perfect marriage. Perhaps a way to face the fear and finally beat it. His emotionality really reminds me of the research by Dutton on men who are violent.
I really would love to interview his first wife and would be willing to bet that he has relied on power and control in his marriages and in his relationships with his kids.
Obedience=love
Security=control
peace=silence
yes bmaz…a wave of peace!!
It’s interesting that he blames his shitty control of his temper on the fact that he’s short, see, that way, it’s not his fault.
His reason is really full of it.
His height is an excuse, and a bad one. What he is, is a frustrated bully. If he’d been a larger kid in the crowd, they’d have been afraid of him, because they’d never know when he was going to attack.
Thanks for this … do you use meditation to treat PTSD or other disorders ?
yes, the meditation peice is part of DBT dialectical behavior therapy. I use components of DBT if someone doesn’t have the full blown personality disorder but just characteristics. Meditation is foundational.
I feel that way about meditation as well, although I am not an expert in your field as you are. Violence increases and validates violence is an excellent summary. Peace is the way.
Good Luck with “The Peace Center”, I would like to volunteer in a place like this when time and $$$ permits …
there was a time i waited for ew’s book
now i’m waiting for yours
As an historian, cross-cultural mediator and peace educator/historian once said regarding peace, “You must start teaching peace when their minds are young.”
-Charles Chatfield
http://www.peacehistorysociety.org/
My mentor…
I’ll second what Mary said–fascinating comment. Why not expand it some and post at Oxdown?
And a third on that from here in the peanut gallery!
A powerful post, Marcy. Thank you!
Just this morning I finished reading Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (just in time to bike it back to the library on its due date). Everyone who cares about the future of this country should read, at the very least, the last two chapters of this book. (By this I mean Chapter Ten, “Win Win Corruption”, and what’s labeled “Conclusion: Reaching for the Pillars”, which has no chapter number.) Your post is a variation on the themes that Frank emphasizes.
We no longer have a polity in which the two leading parties compete in a marketplace of ideas, as we did in the 40s and 50s when I was growing up. One party does still, sort of, try to compete on that basis, but the other has been taken over by elements who are intent on destroying that intellectual marketplace with whatever it takes to do so. The end justifies the means. In his “Conclusion”, Frank writes the following powerful sentence:
The author discusses at length the fact that the conservative movement knows that they could not sell their agenda if they were candid about it with the American people. So, they resort to all sorts of “creative” forms of vandalism. It’s time to begin aggressively emphasizing that the ongoing economic meltdown is far more than just a result of failed conservative policies. It is that those policies were part and parcel of an overarching objective of vandalizing the American state. Would it be too much to dare to call it treason?
http://allanerickson.wordpress…..n-america/
I am just doing a quick drive-by, but this post touches on something I have been concerned about for a long while. Last week, I was in Baton Rouge and heard a radio moron talking about all the riots and unrest that will happen if Obama is elected.
IANAL, and I don’t care if the persons involved are Republican, Democrat, black, white, orange, or whatever — but it seems to me that what is happening, and what they are encouraging, is almost tantamount to insurrection. Looking at it another way, though, if Obama had this kind of thing happening at his rallies, or if he was trying to stir it up, he would wind up as a grease spot and a fly-speck in history. The same should happen to McCain / Palin — to my way of thinking, they are trying to stir up something that they cannot control.
44 – I can almost “get it” when the people putting it out there are assinine pundits with no experience with, or vision of or for, the fallout from that kind of incitement. But when you have someone who is an attorney, was a AUSA who dealt with the ideologues who were getting just that same kind of pump up, and who has some lingering obligation to the law – when someone like that makes the “conservative case” for lynching anyone on the left – and stripping the evasions, that’s what it clearly was, so clearly that even Frum had to comment – when that is the mindset of the Bushie lawyers, it pretty much explains all and vies equally for a claim to terrifying and sad.
There was a clip that Sullivan and several others put up, showing some informal “interview” with some very educationally and informationally disadvantaged people.
Ta Nehisi Coates with The Atlantic put up a piece dismissing that clip as being unrepresentative,saying, “This is the enemy? Really??”
Read McCarthy’s piece and watch the video and see if you can really distinquish all that much of a difference in intent and connotative content. Presumably he has his teeth, isn’t hiding from the camera, and hasn’t tied the tails of his shirt up to bare any midriff, but to answer the question from Coates, – umm, yeah, really.
Put any of them in Brooks Bros or Armani and hand them the finest of educations and experience within what had once been one of the most respected wings of govt, give them an obligation to law and decency that they undertake voluntarily and as an oath, and still what you get is, with very little morphing, what McCarthy just spewed out.
I agree that McCarthy is perhaps the more irresponsible of the righty pundits–and he has been pushing the terrorist line as much as anyone.
Jeebus, doesn’t he see how unhinged McCain is?
Mary,
Boston and the whole of highly educated Massachusetts elected Mitt Romney.
WTKK had a lot to do with that election.
I am duly concerned.
This city is full of lawyers who understand hate speech.
I listened to a WTKK genius advocate using snipers and machine gun nests at the border to pick people off.
When a man with a Spanish accent called to defend himself against this, the hatejock said he couldn’t understand him – the caller made machine gun noises in the background before he hung up.
When another man called to say the he was an immigrant, the genius said: Are you legal?
What?
Are you legal? Cuz I’d hate to have to take you out.
This went out over the airwaves to well educated Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
As you know, I am not a lawyer, but I filed the case.
With Kevin Martin at the FCC.
I brought it to Michael Sullivan, US Attorney.
I alerted Ted Kennedy
John Kerry
Barney Frank
Not long after this, people were rounded up from work, separated from their kids, terrified to call friends or family for fear of getting them in trouble.
We’ve had other round ups.
These things are cheered on, day after day by the media, radio, media that some people listen to as their only source of information.
These people probably have their teeth and have different accents, but WTKK won their attention by calling them the Best and Brightest. And they are being whipped up to ruin Barack Obama.
I am concerned for precisely the same reasons you are.
God help us.
64 – Very interesting stuff. More worthy of a book than just a comment, but I am glad you shared the comment – that must be fascinating work to the extent you can separate the observational from the trauma of dealing with so many of the traumatized. And draining work when that barrier falters.
71 – I think you lay out a lot of the historically and quantitatively proven factors there and in your earlier post too WO.
If Obama doesn’t go in with an FDR style – get them to work, train them in a job for their future, create assets for the nation – approach, the risk will increase. The complexities of the economic disaster (not a few loans to underqualified subprime borrowers, but the whole evolution of and risks related to the shadow financial system) don’t translate nearly as well nor as easily as saying, “a bunch of lefty (you know them, the terrorist supporters) Democrats made Fannie Mae loan OUR MONEY to a bunch of deadbeats under an affirmative action program (that drumbeat is already underway) and now “that one” you know, “one of those” is running things for “them” and leaving us all without jobs and having to pay more taxes and he’s a Muslim terrorist too – hate, hate, hate.
Oh, and More Hate.
Hate’s a lot simpler sell than education.
I’ll wager the AIG junket and the footage of Fuld, to take a couple of examples, resonate with voters, and carry more explanatory power, than McCain’s Fannie Mae red herring. As will lots of white people underwater on mortgages themselves.
NSA spying on American to American conversations…
http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=5987804
Can we impeach them already. Seems like they are going to try it on Obama.
We need to find a group to put out some Public Service Announcements on the airwaves right away that promote that violence is never the solution. Who should we contact?
So is McCain/Palin/GOP leadership in each state going to be charged with inciting a riot? Would it be tossed out of the courts as a politically motivated charge?
As stated before, this is gonna get ugly.
78 – isn’t that “special”?
This is prime: “The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), called the allegations “extremely disturbing” and said the committee has begun its own examination. “
Russ Feingold has been flat out saying this was going on for how long now? Rockefeller got all the briefings on it, but he only just now, after cramming through amnesty, finds it “disturbing”
It’s incredible to me that someone as feckless and void of leadership as Obama moves the likes of The Corner crew to such fury.
And how long have we known Hayden lied, in uniform, under oath, but the Dems in Congress still treat him like he’s spun gold?
Good for them for coming forward – as much as the military has been brutalized in this administration’s attempts to reshape it into something shameful, it is always, over and over, from the ranks of the miltiary that the people who are willing to do the right thing come – somehow, never the the Dept of Justice. The Swifts, not the McCarthys. The Volkers, not the Goldsmiths.
The link to this commenter’s website, full of right wing falsehoods and bile about Obama, has been deleted. Since it was the only thing in the comment, there is nothing left. C’est la vie. – bmaz
But there may be hope:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20…..lFyLOs0NUE
When Barack Obama’s campaign bus made a swing through Missouri in July, the unlikeliest of supporters were waiting for him — or rather two of them, holding the banner: “Rednecks for Obama.”
In backing the first African-American nominee of a major party for the US presidency, the pair are on a grassroots mission to bridge a cultural gap in the United States and help usher their preferred candidate into the White House…. Rednecks4obama.com claims more than 800,000 online visits. In Denver, Colorado, Viessman and Spencer drew crowds at the Democratic convention, and at Washington University last Thursday they were two of the most popular senior citizens on campus.”
Neil and Reader of Tea Leaves: I lived in Werden, near Essen, in 1937. My Canadian family came to know a number of German families in the small town. Many were shocked by the rise of Hitler and did not support him or his party. Their stance was rather, “my country, right or wrong,” which I supposed might be partly attributable to the aftermath of WWI and its peace treaty.
The prospect put forth here is very disturbing. I am inclined to agree that a rapid, FDR-like program from day one of the new administration might be effective in disarming the hate mongering.
In ‘37, wow. It’s easy to live one’s whole life being completely detached from politics and not miss it at all. 9/11/1 turned the tide for me.
Fear and loathing is exactly where the post-McCain campaign GOP is headed.
It despises being out of power. It despises those who have it in their stead. It despises government when it doesn’t act like an overheated ATM machine for corporations gorging on government business. It despises government most especially when it works well for the majority of voters, because that empowers them and makes them just slightly less dependent on the institutions they control — banks, employers, military recruiters.
That government can work well, often more efficiently and less expensively than the private sector, is as frightening to today’s GOP as telling a fundamentalist there is no God. That McCain is already taking the GOP down in flames with him — his sixth lost aircraft — leading to a possible long-term Democratic ascendancy, will only make the GOP angrier and more bitter, traits that McCain will lace with bile. Playing the victim card is a GOP specialty. They will hide behind it, especially when an Obama administration pulls back the rug and exposes even a portion of the political dirt, mold and carcasses left behind by CheneyBush. They will do their utmost to pretend that the mess — and the cost to fix it — is the Democrats’ fault.
Most alarmingly, the GOP’ers will be left with little more than an angry base, chock full of fringe characters: fundamentalists, Southerners who yearn for Dixie and who confuse God with white supremacy, forsaken rural whites and angry anti-intellectuals, some of whom still think the best neckties are made with hemp. We have raised angry demagogues before; they are not just the fruits of right wing Dutch, English, French, Austrian, German, or Latin American brown shirts, racists and extremists. We’ve grown and nurtured our own, sometimes with the help of senior government leaders; sometimes they’ve been senior government leaders.
McCain is an angry man, that’s his defining characteristic. He doesn’t think, he ignores consequences, one reason he’s not a retired admiral like his pappy and grandpappy. He inherits the leadership of a party, primed by Cheney and Bush, that nourishes itself on retribution.
As Cheney’s secret prisons and his torture regime demonstrate, violence is an essential part of ”their game”. Gots to show ”that guy, that one” who’s boss. In the ante-bellum South, when slaves heavily outnumbered whites, but whites were dependent on them for their wealth, their livelihood, their social order, paranoia was made law and punitive over-reaction was condoned. McCain and Rove’s GOP will follow that model.
The Right has spent eight years saying, ”What class war?” They will now sell race and class war. They hate giving up power, they will want it back, and they will have little but their base to appeal to. Obama should call McCain on this now, at the next debate, in this instance, telegraphing his punch. He needs to make clear that those who nourish and incite violence for political gain will be exposed and held responsible. Bush’s intentional evisceration of the DOJ will not endure, it will be reborn, and it will do its job without fear or favor.
I’m starting to wonder if McCain is going to be able to keep a lid on his anger at the next debate. Have you seen Obama calling out McCain for not having the courage to ’say it to his face’ about the Ayers crap?
And Biden too:
Obama now has a line in his stump speech about McCain being “erratic and uncertain”.
While his campaign implodes, I expect McCain to explode. We may see a rather unbecoming meltdown from Senator McCain.
All the quotes courtesy of TPM.
My fellow prisoners,
For five long years I experienced an excruciating personal transformation as violence was remorselessly visited on my body. Loathing, fear, endless agonizing pain, and a hot enduring hate formed the crucible in which my truest and best self was remade. The innocence of childhood, all the sentimental and positive aspirations, the sense of an inherent goodness in the world — all put away with the toys of childhood, for good. Only hard, hot, bloody vengeance would matter any more.
Now, my friends, it’s your turn.
I’m John McCain, and I bitterly resent that circumstances forced me to approve this message.
[Paid for by McCain ‘09]
So, We’re seeing a disturbing trend towards incitement to riot by the Right, and We’ve sounded the Alarm. That’s Good.
Now, imvho, We ought to return to Our seats – and develop a Greater Understanding of these events, so that We can adapt to them in such a way that We draw the Rational and Sensible members of the Right towards US.
We’re not going to ‘Win Over’ the hardcore Ideological Right – all the Extremist, Separatist, ‘Exceptional’ True Beleivers with Narratives Featuring Apocalyptic Endings. They are like members of Cults unwelcoming of clear thinking and sensible action, instead locked into Ideological Frameworks that posit thier Privately Subscribed Narratives as the Literal Truth for All of US. When their Narratives separate from the Facts of Our Living Circumstances, they View this as “the End” and – like lemmings – fling themselves into the Irrationality of their End-Beliefs.
But, They are Small in Numbers as against the Rest of US – those of US who do take into account Our Circumstances as a Basis of Action. And, yet, amongst Them, there are many, many who have strong reservations and fears regarding Martyring themselves for Something that Doesn’t Really Make Sense to Them – but they are stuck ‘acting like Romans in Rome.’ They, it would seem, would welcome an Opportunity to Get Out.
Imvho, We should think about how We can reach-out to those on the Right who can ’see’ what is happening, and are Horrified by it, but don’t know what to do.
In the meantime, We’ll ’see’ what the response will be to the alarm raised on incitement – Our Country needs to Come Together in this Time of Crisis, and not Cut And Run:
– Let’s see if the McCain/Palin Campaign addresses the issue – in words and deeds, and
– Let’s see what the State of Readiness is of Our National Counter-Terrorism organizations
Nobody’s worried about any real insurrectionist activities by the Left – we don’t generally have guns, we prefer Peace, and have great faith in talking through Our Problems under a Big Tent of Inclusion.
So, for all practical purposes, those Troops are here to protect US.
And, if the Extremists think that the Government’s Response – in the Time of an Election – will be Weak, well that’s Just Crazy-Talk. They are Badly Underestimating Our Support – the 70% Majority of US – for the Rule of Law, as embodied in the Constitution. Together, US and the Constitution represent Stability, itself, in the Affairs of Men and Women. The Beliefs of 30% will Not Prevail. Chaos will not be allowed to beget Chaos in the Land of the Free and Civilized.
So, imvho, while all that Ideological Anger is absorbing the True Believers, We ought to figure-out how to throw Safety-lines to the Shocked amongst them, Horrified by the Crazy-Talk, and at least Try to give them an Opportunity to Get Off the Bus…before the Edge comes into view…and the doors are locked.
While ago I read this article which helped me for a better understanding of many conflicts, here it is:
http://left.ru/inter/2006/blind.phtml
you know, i’ve been wondering why it is the secret service is not trying to assert some kind of control here.
i mean, it is the same secret service that protects mccain that protects obama, correct? i would think they’re having some difficulties determining just how to deal with all this. especially in the immediate situation where palin is riling up the mob against the media that is right there in their midst.
such behaviors cry out for discipline, someone imposing the rules of grownup civility on the unruly brats. the way this sort of thing has become “acceptable,” the way the threshold has been lowered so far, is through all the hate talk shows on radio and tv.
this situation brings up so many human issues, but perhaps it will force us to deal with the dangers it exposes. i just pray, as we all do, it won’t involve bloodshed.