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.