Hatemongers

This has been the craziest week I have ever seen in a political campaign.

Crazy and scary, really, sad, pathetic, dangerous.

A month or two ago, a friend of mine, Jack, and I were talking about the campaign. At the time, there was a rhetoric the Republicans had just barely started to use, and they used it very occasionally, consisting in saying that we don't really know who Barack Obama is. Jack thought that this rhetoric was really code language to say "He is black. We can't have a black president."

It made much sense to me when we had this conversation. Since then, though, the economic crisis has been forefront and the question "Who is Barack Obama really?" was dropped.

This week, this rhetoric has come back full swing, and in a very ugly way.

And Jack was right.

Last weekend, as I wrote previously, Sarah Palin started to link Obama to terrorists. The exact quote was: "Obama thinks America is so imperfect that he pals around with domestic terrorists." Since then, she has repeated this kind of attack everytime she had an opportunity, depicting him as someone who is "not one of us," "not a man who sees America like you and I see America."
At one of her rallies, a sheriff talked of Barack Hussein Obama, emphasizing Obama's middle name.

The code is hardly veiled now. Clearly, this whole rhetoric appeals to old subconscious fears and hatred in American people's minds.

Now here is the scary part: it works, it does arouse what the worst in the audience's subconscience (and I am saying it is subconscious only to be polite). When Palin or McCain talked about Obama at their rallies this week, you could hear people screaming "Terrorist!" "Kill him!" or even "Bomb Obama!"

Palin and McCain did not try to shut them up. They can't even tell they did not hear them to justify their inaction, because on one occasion, after we hear "Terrorist!" from the crowd, we can see McCain frown. He frowns in disapproval, he just can't believe he heard that, but he continues as if nothing had happened.
This is wrong, very wrong. Even if the US did not have the history of presidential assassination and of black lynching it has, it would be wrong to let people get away with this kind of outbursts.

And McCain knows it is wrong (I am not so sure about Palin) and he redeemed himself slightly.
Yesterday, at a town hall meeting, after a man in the audience told him he had to "fight" and a woman said: "I don't trust Obama, he's an Arab," McCain actually, albeit awkwardly, defend Obama.
He literally took the microphone from the woman and said: "No, Ma'am, no, Ma'am, he's not, he is a decent family man." Of course, it is a bit awkward since this response to "Obama is an Arab" kind of implies you can be an Arab and a decent family man at the same time. But, McCain reacted in the spur of the moment, improvised, and I am not going to be too picky. To the man asking him to fight, he answered that he will, but respectfully. He said he respects Obama, that Obama is a decent man, with a decent record; he disagrees with him, and he thinks he would be a better president than Obama, but Obama is a decent man.
As he was saying all that, McCain was booed by his own audience. But he went on.

I have to say, I was flabbergasted. These images were riveting, fascinating to watch. Not really because this was beyond who McCain is, but because it was completely inconsistent with the rest of the week.

Here is my theory, for whatever it's worth. I do think McCain is a decent and honest politician. I think his policies are not good, but he is a good guy. And I think he did not control his campaign. I think he was not free to choose the VP he wanted and he is not free to choose the campaign he wants.
The Republicans do not like McCain, he is not their favorite candidate. I think he was forced by the Republican strategists to pick Palin, a woman that he had met once before and who had never been mentioned as a possible pick, who had not even run for the nomination. I think the strategists use Palin now as a pitbull but I think McCain disapproves. McCain lost to Bush in 2000 after the Bush campaign launched a rumor saying that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock! So, I don't think McCain really wants to play that ugly.
Yesterday, when he defended Obama, he became himself again, rebelling against the strategists of his party.
Sure, he might have realized also that people had enough of hearing this kind of crap when they are losing money everyday in the stock market.

What a crazy week this was!
To crown it all, we heard yesterday of the results of an investigation taking place in Alaska to find out whether Palin abused her power when she fired the head of the State Troopers because he refused to fire her former brother-in-law who had given a hard time to her sister. It turns out, she did abuse her power.
Of course, she says now that the investigation was biased. The problem is, the judiciary committee which led the investigation was composed of a majority of Republicans.

Don't throw the first stone, Sarah. The glass ceiling you were talking about when we first met you might collapse on your cute little face.