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.