We’ve crossed some more lines, in other words — in a long series of lines that have made it increasingly difficult to distinguish between the ultraconservative wing of the Republican Party and an explicitly fascist political movement. And John McCain and his political handlers appear to have no moral compunctions whatsoever about whipping this movement into a frenzy and providing it with scapegoats for all that hatred, simply to try to shave a few points off Barack Obama’s lead in the polls.
Anyone who didn’t think it was gonna go this way has not been functionally awake for the last two presidential election cycles. I think in large part the hatred the last two times was mitigated somewhat by Republicans winning those elections, and thus able to say that though the forces of vegans and aborted gay babies aligned against them were mighty indeed, God and the Baby Jesus in a Flag Diaper prevailed and thus there’s no need to go on a shooting spree. Put it more succinctly, as I did to a Republican aquaintance who was actually spitting mad at me about “those liberals,” “You all won. Why can’t you just enjoy your victory? What do you have to be so pissed off about?” I came to the conclusion that he was just cheesed off that in the face of one stolen and one narrowly won election, all liberals everywhere did not just shrivel up and magically die.
To that end, in two and a half weeks, I intend to enjoy the victory without spending too much attention on the spewing of the right. Without concentrating overly much on how vicious and nasty were the forces arrayed on the opposing riverbank. Without working msyelf into a crazy frenzy over there still being some hateful fucks alive in the universe, because it doesn’t matter, becausewe were better at this than they were this time.
But we’re not there yet, and I do want to concentrate a little on what exactly John McCain is doing here. I spent the weekend on the road with a very smart friend, who talked about how McCain really ought to have gone ahead and become Kerry’s running mate in 2004. And we speculated that probably he thought about it, and maybe somewhere in there George W. Bush’s people came to McCain and said, “Why do you want to be VP for eight years, at which time you’ll be old as fuck with no chance of being POTUS, when if you hang out for another two and a half years here in the GOP, we can make you president?” I’m completely making this up, but the way McCain acts on the trail, it’s like he’s pissed off that he even has to fight for this. Like they ought to just be handing it to him. Like it was promised to him. Maybe it was.
Privileged, simple assholes think lots of things are their birthrights. They think lots of things are due them, simply because they got up in the morning. We all know people like this, who go to the grocery store and want a medal for it. We all know people who think anybody who crosses their path is doing so just to fuck with them, andoh God how dare they make me stay on the line for English and it’s always about them and what they’re due, and if they don’t get it, it’s not their fault they failed, it’s that their lives were stolen from them.
Anyone who didn’t think they’d howl wasn’t paying attention at all. They howled in 1960; hell, they’re still howling about 1960, don’t think McCain’s ad bringing up the name of Daley was some kind of accident. It’s further reinforcement of the theme of the last eight years, that your hard-earned shit is being taken from you, and it surprises me not at all. McCain is being worse about it, more explicit, more virulent, for only one reason: he is further behind Barack Obama than he ever expected to be. You don’t haul this shit out in close elections. You don’t haul it out when the nation hangs by 5,000 votes in Florida or even 100,000 in Ohio. You pull this shit out when you’re losing, and losing badly, and that’s McCain right now.
And I don’t intend to be horrified every minute by these jackholes in two and a half weeks. We can win, we can win crushingly, we can win so decisively that the conservative movement, were it a rational group of thinkers and not a bunch of dicks waving foam fingers and pennants and shit, would magically shrivel up and die. They won’t. Don’t be shocked, nor unreasonably pissed off, at whatever they yowl about. They’ve decided that honorable defeat is no more an option than was honorable victory, and I for one can imagine no greater punishment than to give them exactly what they want. They want to lose ugly.Fine.
A.
Damn, A – you rock the keyboard! Thank you!
Elspeth
I was listening to a writer of hard boiled detective fiction today on Fresh Air.
He made a comment about how the bad guys get away with it in his books just like they are getting away with it in real life. There is no justice anymore.
The right wing has “gotten away with it.” On This American Life there was a interview with a guy talking about the financial instruments that were behind a lot of the problems. The guy doing the piece ask, “Who if anyone, is to blame?”
And the guy was very hesitant about it. And rightly so. He is part of the industry he didn’t want people who were doing legal things to get blamed. But then we need to go all the way back to the people who made things legal WITH NO OVERSIGHT. My friend says it’s Greenspan to blame. I like to go back to Phil Gramm. But no one wants to pay the price of responsibility.
They want it all defused and spread over a “Group”. The right likes to focus on a few group that they can blame and a few individuals, Michael Moore. Cindy Sheehan. People who really only have influence power, verse actually make things change power. But the right doesn’t want people to know the names of these people. What are the people going to do if they don’t know names? March on Wall Street?
The Right is working hard to focus the blame on people that their audience knows. The Mexican on the street corner looking for day labor vs. the Fed Chairman and Senator. With Enron we had some real villains and they were getting punished, but had it not been for the “Burn baby burn” and “Grandma Millie” tapes the public wouldn’t have got a real sense of the complicity behind it. Hating a Person or someone who is a different color is easier than to hate a group of math and financial players sitting in a office designing schemes to bet on bets of bets of mortgages.
I want to find the people responsible and bring them to justice. The destruction of the justice dept by Karl Rove was and is a horrible act in a presidency filled with horrible acts.
I remember thinking that after 2000 or 2004 when they got EVERYTHING THEY WANTED they would shut up. Especially Rush Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest of the Right wing radio people. But they didn’t. And when we win in the fall they won’t shut up. They actually LIKE to be the whiners. They bitch and moan and lie for ‘entertainment’.
You know how the talk radio people are pushing hard this whole deal with who Obama associates with? I think that needs to be used on them with their advertisers.
“Why are you associating with this man who says these terrible things? They will tell you themselves that people should not associate with bad people.”
What I’ve noticed is that the right wing are trying to say that “A few bad apples at a rally don’t represent us.” because they don’t want to be held responsible. They will even bring up “free speech” as their excuse for someone yelling “kill him”.
What happens when someone spills blood over this? I’m sure “No body could have anticipated…” Then I want to know how do the people responsible ever pay a price for revving up the hate? Will national figures in the media and “statesmen” decry and deploy these people like they did the DFHs?
No. They will be some strange reason that they aren’t really the party. They are some bizarre offshoot, instead of the party.
It is going to be hard not to let the anger boil over whether Obama wins or loses. If he loses, of course the anger will boil over. But, if he wins, we are apt to think we don’t have to be nice anymore.
And, that reminds me: remember how for 8 long years we have been griping because the press refuses to report on the misdeeds of the administration, acts largely as a cheering section for the administration. Well, if Obama wins, we will get our way, finally. The press will stop cheering, and start reporting every single wart, pimple, scratch and stain they can find on the new administration. Now, isn’t that special?
Y’know, this is likely to make me insanely unpopular, but as you well know, A, I’ve been unpopular so often, I’ve had my mail forwarded there.
I was watching the weekend reruns of the Daily Show and they did the whole roster of shots where JMac was speaking and he said something about Obama and some jackhole near an open mic screamed “TERRORIST” or such. And there was that clip with the little old lady who called Obama a Muslim and JMac had to do the whole, “No ma’am, he’s a good family man with whom I just happen to have some disagreements” line (as if the two things were mutually exclusive).
Here’s the strange thing. In each of those clips, there seemed to be a pause to him. A moment of self-realization, some what akin to that scene in Boogie Nights when Jack Horner asks Kurt how the video production is, knowing full well he sold out his vision for video profit and that he’s now producing shit. Kurt looks up a brief moment with resignation and says, “It is what it is.” I often wonder if JMac wonders, how the hell did I get here? Pandering to a bunch of nut-jobs in desperate hope that I won’t make Walter Mondale look like William the Conqueror…
Perhaps I’m reading into this too much, but even when I’m being drilled with ad after ad after ad after ad that does everything short of say, “Y’all don’t want one of THEM in the WHITE House, does ya?” I find that when JMac has to say, “I’m John McCain and I approve this message” it’s like he has to swallow before he can approve it. Like someone is there telling him, “Look, just say it. We all know you don’t mean it, but it’ll appeal to the base and keep you from losing by a whole lot.” So he guts up and swallows hard and approves a message that casts his lot with the fools who will eat it up and cheer that he’s done everything short of calling Obama a terrorist or a communist or some other -ist.
Yes, he’s run a horrible campaign. Yes, he’s thrown in with the worst of those who populate our land. No, in no way do I want him to be our president now or four years from now or ever. But, I have this nagging moment that makes me wonder how much of this tilt toward the worst of everything is a gambler’s desperation. That weird moment that makes someone not even think twice when they put the deed to their house on the roll of a dice because this is what it’s all come down to.
I don’t like him now, but I guess once he’s vanquished, I’ll have a little pity. I think that’s maybe the better part of valor.
PS- Fix “msyelf” in the third graf. Once an editor… 🙂
The best response to the tactics and spewage of the right these days is RIDICULE. Which is why I think we should begin referring to those really wacky nutjobs yelling horrible things about Obama during Palin rallies as…
PINKSHIRTS!
we bitch too. we’re just quieter.
We’re not quieter, but we can spell better. Mostly, anyway.
Works for me, A. I think there’s a real possibility we can indeed bury the Repub power structure. Unfortunately, we’re likely to have to put up with the punditry for some time, and that should be thoroughly nauseating.