Well thank God for some rationality
John McCain assures a crowd that you shouldn’t fear an Obama presidency and he’s a decent man. The crowd boos and makes shocked noises, but he pushes it more and they come around. They can take it as an empty proof of their mistaken views on his character, make it into a “look how noble John McCain” is, whatever. I’m just glad he actually seems to be doing something about the angry crowds he was starting to create.
This has been scaring me. And a lot of other people, judging by the blogs I read. Imagine you want to see a movie, but it’s only playing in one theater in the city, so you go. But when you get there you see it’s not a good neighborhood, you’re even kind of concerned about parking your car and the walk to the theater, but you think nah, it’s probably okay against the advice of your subconscious, and you go in anyway. The theater’s packed. A lot of talking, occasional yelling. Ten minutes into the movie the screen goes dark, people yell. The lights don’t come back on. Voices are getting raised. You hear a lot of shuffling. Somewhere deeper in the theater, a glass bottle breaks.
That’s the feel of the tension I’ve been getting about this recently. And damnit I had a great example of an editorial that I was going to point to, it was someone writing in shock with exclamation points about how he was actually worried, a sort of open letter to McCain saying “Senator, you must put an end to this!” But it turns out all you have to do is google “must stop!” mccain rally to see what I’m talking about. Note that these are not generally Obama supporters saying “McCain should stop attacking Obama”. These are people saying “the McCain campaign has to stop bringing people to the edge of violence.” Or Republicans warn McCain he may soon have blood on his hands. I wonder if the Secret Service asked him to take it down a notch.
So to see him start to actively push back makes me feel a little better. Of course that just means I upgrade my opinion of him from “shit” to “shit with a marshmallow on it”, but still.
Two things: one, apparently I was wrong about the results of the VP debate, and two, holy crap I missed the whole raging discussion in there. I’ve been in Java training all week, hadn’t paid a lot of attention. I’ll have to read through it this weekend.
October 11th, 2008 02:52
What I find ironic is the McCain campaign inciting fear and hatred and potentially violence, and his supporters are calling Obama a terrorist, the whole thing making me and I’m sure many others genuinely afraid that someone might just take it upon themselves to assassinate Obama.
Ah, wait, right, what was I thinking? Terrorism isn’t spreading terror or inciting threatening behavior — it’s only terrorism to serve on some educational committee with a former jumped-up hippie who set off some non-fatal bombs forty-some years ago when you were eight years old (whose actions you made clear you condemned) who has since had any charges against him dropped and has gone on to win some Citizen of the Year award in Chicago.
October 11th, 2008 10:46
Good post. Thank you. I was busy yesterday and did not see till late last night McCain had said this at a rally. As someone on CNN said, is it too late to try to put the genie back in the bottle? But for me, at least McCain changed his rhetoric. I was truly upset and disturbed by what was going on.
I once witnessed some mob mentality so I know what can happen. And the mob don’t have to be “bad” people, that’s what so scary. But rile up people’s prejudice and anything can happen. I’ve been worried these people will leave the rallies and someone will end up getting bashed on the street, whether it’s the same day or even the next day.
And J Crowley is right. Terrorism can be inciting fear and hatred in others, no matter what form it takes or under what guise.
A blog I follow posted this video yesterday. Very topical:
http://deannaizme.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/racism-sexism/
October 12th, 2008 18:46
I find it conspicuous that none of these linked articles (well, that I’ve seen so far) have pointed out Senator McCain’s failure to ask what it would matter even if Senator Obama WERE an “arab”. Not that I blame him. It was a heated moment and he was acting fast, and all in all I’m very glad he said what he did. But at times it seems like we’re scootching down a slope toward normalizing “arab” as a naturally negative thing. Try to imagine some bizzaro world where Senator Obama is a Saudi and this frumpy woman is asserting she heard he’s in fact black (and clearly phrasing that as something awful). It seems like something that’d touch off a firestorm, doesn’t it? Why doesn’t this?
October 12th, 2008 18:50
Why HASN’T this, I meant to say. The use of “he’s a good man” as a rebuttal to “he’s an arab” seems to suggest something seriously wrong.
October 13th, 2008 00:34
I don’t disagree, Bosch, but if you notice the crowd was having a hard enough time coming around to the idea that Obama might not be a totally evil, America-destroying, freedom-hating, puppy-eating, baby-raping, scum-sucking, flag-fucking monster simply because he happens to be a dark-skinned Democrat and dared to run against their guy. Trying to wrap their tiny, frightened little brains around the larger issue of racism and why it is wrong was probably a little more than he had time for.
I have to say, it was refreshing to hear what he said after so much vilifying. A little glimpse of the John McCain I used to like and respect. Unfortunately, that’s kind of negated by the fact that he himself was responsible for perpetuating so much of it to begin with.
October 13th, 2008 17:35
http://blogs.laweekly.com/fish/2008/10/12/Motherfucker.jpg
October 13th, 2008 20:51
You make a good point, Gawain. I’m not sure if it’s reassuring or unsettling that perhaps Senator McCain realized this and tailored his response to that level. I agree it was kind of a nice moment though. I know human civility shouldn’t be some kind of special event, but for better or worse, in politics it is, so it’s a nice wakeup. I hear you on your opinion of McCain, by the way. It’s not so much that I’ve accrued a personal dislike of him beyond political disagreement. It’s more what he’s allowed to run amok in his campaign and its shadowy peripheries that’s really disappointed me. There was a time where I was sort of excited about the idea of an election where I was kind of fond of both candidates, but that seems to have slipped away.