McCain's attacks fuel dangerous hatred
By Frank Schaeffer
October 10, 2008
John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.
At a Sarah Palin rally, someone called out, "Kill him!" At one of your rallies, someone called out, "Terrorist!" Neither was answered or denounced by you or your running mate, as the crowd laughed and cheered. At your campaign event Wednesday in Bethlehem, Pa., the crowd was seething with hatred for the Democratic nominee - an at ude encouraged in speeches there by you, your running mate, your wife and the local Republican chairman.
Shame!
John McCain: In 2000, as a lifelong Republican, I worked to get you elected instead of George W. Bush. In return, you wrote an endorsement of one of my books about military service. You seemed to be a man who put principle ahead of mere political gain.
You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate.
John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surround the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter. You also know we are a bitterly divided country on many other issues. You know that, sadly, in America, violence is always just a moment away. You know that there are plenty of crazy people out there.
Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.
John McCain, you're walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out "Terrorist" or "Kill him," history will hold you responsible for all that follows.
John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.
Change the atmosphere of your campaign. Talk about the issues at hand. Make your case. But stop stirring up the lunatic fringe of haters, or risk suffering the judgment of history and the loathing of the American people - forever.
We will hold you responsible.
Frank Schaeffer is the author of "Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back." His e-mail is [email protected].
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opi...,7557571.story
http://bloggerinterrupted.com/2008/1...ameraon-camera
This little bag, a McCain volunteer at the rally in Strongsville on Wednesday, didn’t want to be on camera when I asked him if he thought Barack Obama was a terrorist. Among others. A lot of commenters have asked why I would put people on camera who don’t want to be on camera.
Here’s why.
I am not a journalist. I am a blogger. Not interested in convening a blogger ethics panel, but I have an agenda. And my agenda is as follows.
People like this fellow have ed with my country for decades. They have made America a laughingstock. They have destroyed our economy with their absurd economic dogma. They have gutted America’s standing in the world. They have reduced my country’s politics to a discussion of genitalia. They have cost my country’s military over 4,000 lives, they have failed to avenge 9/11, they have turned my country’s dream for its citizens upside down, making the little guy beg for scraps from a table built on fraud. They have turned the American Dream into a ensian nightmare.
This guy has no business telling me he doesn’t want to be on my videotape.
We have been subjected to this stupid ’s war on America for decades, and for too long we have left the battlefield to him and his ilk. We have cowered from their increasing insanity, we have given them every benefit of every doubt, until we finally are expected to bend so pathetically to their every demand that they now think they can tell us to go away, when all we do is ask them a simple question.
No more.
If this little turd doesn’t want to be on my videotape, then he’d better get his ass behind a ing tree, because I could give two s whether he is embarrassed by his own image at a McCain rally.
It’s time these people own their record. Time for them to own what they’ve done to my country. Time for them to pay the piper. And if the only price I can extract, myself, is their image on my blog, then I will extract it.
So if you watch a video from my blog, and you feel a bit miffed that some whining Republican thug is on tape without their consent, grow yourself a pair of onions and get the over yourself.
I’m fighting for my country.
Popularity: 1%
Okay, he's a gasbag, but he's right on this:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...ngerous-p.html
For some, a president Obama is simply unimaginable. From a McCain supporter in Wisconsin yesterday:
"We're all wondering why Obama is where he's at. How he got here. Everybody in this room is stunned we're in this position."
There was always going to be a point of revolt and panic for a core group of Americans who believe that Obama simply cannot be president - because he's black or liberal or young or relatively new. This is that point. As the polls suggest a strong victory, the Hannity-Limbaugh-Steyn-O'Reilly base are going into shock and extreme rage. McCain and Palin have decided to stoke this rage, to foment it, to encourage paranoid notions that somehow Obama is a "secret" terrorist or Islamist or foreigner. These are base emotions in both sense of the word.
But they are also very very dangerous. This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire. If he really wants to put country first, he will attack Obama on his policies - not on these inflammatory, personal, creepy grounds. This is getting close to the atmosphere stoked by the Israeli far right before the assassination of Rabin.
For God's sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.
They sound like our resident conservatives.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmi...a.html?showall
Jonathan Martin notes a new sense of "fear and loathing" among Republican activists at the prospect of an Obama presidency.
That new mood is, I think, a reaction to a new fact about the contest: There's a strong, strong assumption across party lines that Obama is going to win. Intrade, a fairly reliable metric of convention wisdom, puts the odds at 75 percent. Behind the scenes, few Republican operatives think McCain will pull it off. Some Republicans are starting to make the case that a few years in the wilderness are just what the party needs, and that the presidency amid this economy is a poisoned chalice in any case.
That new conventional wisdom — true or false — means that many Americans are now really coming to grips with the notion of an Obama presidency. On balance, that's probably good for Obama. He always needed to pass a threshold at which Americans could plausibly see him as president. He needs people to get used to the idea, and if they're doing it in early October, they may be more comfortable pulling the lever a month later.
But the sense that his presidency is imminent appears, to some minority of Republicans, to be essentially unacceptable. Whether because of his views, his race, his life story or his partisan affiliation, Obama doesn't fit their model of a possible president of the United States. And so there's a new urgency to the reaction against him.
McCain's questioner in Wisconsin today put it clearly.
"We're all wondering why Obama is where he's at. How he got here. Everybody in this room is stunned we're in this position," he said.
Hatred is confined to conservatives.
Sincerely,
Michael Moore
another bs liberal thread. Democrats corner the market on hate-filled speech. They're just so pissed off that anyone is daring to question their messiah. And I wouldn't be surprised if those people shouting "kill him" were Obama plants. Just trying to stir up things and make conservatives look bad.
Nice dodge. Way to condemn this.
Yes, it's all an evil liberal media elite conspiracy to make conserva s look bad.
Nice dodge. Way to condemn this.
I condemn this. Happy?
P.S. LIberals are the most miserable, hate-filled people I've ever met.
Problem is he already answered their questions. This attack on Obama is similar to an argument for the Iraq war. We gave Saddam an ultimatum to prove he didn't have wmds. Obama now has to prove he's innocent on bogus charges. When he doesn't respond to the bogus charges he's then criticized by those who brought up the bogus charges. The guy can't win either way. he has to prove a negative
Yes, it's miserable and hate-filled to not approve of wishing for Obama's assassination, real or character-wise.
Making a movie about assassinating Bush is good?
It's a movie?
Who did that? Michael Moore? Why are you changing the subject?
It wasn't one or two yahoos at McCain's rally, it was pretty much a standard characterization of his supporters. And McCain and Palin are doing nothing to check it, they are inciting it...at least until the Secret Service told them to cut it out.
That's the difference between liberal hate directed at Bush and conservative hate directed at Obama...Democratic politicians would never condone it or tacitly encourage it.
Find me ONE example of Democrats encouraging their liberal supporters in the same way that Palin calls Obama an unamerican terrorist sympathizer out of the mainstream. Find me ONE example where Democratic politicians encourage the idea that 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush Administration, which is the vilest lie ever made about Bush. Find me ONE example.
Some fringe congressmen or state assemblyperson doesn't count, I want an example of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or some other prominent Democrat engaging in similar behavior. Find me ONE example.
Last edited by Findog; 10-10-2008 at 09:48 AM.
Dude, after 10 years of a Republican Congress and 8 years worth of a horrible presidency, "liberals" are pissed, because they have been on continuously as the root of all evil in the right-wing press.
Can you reallly blame them, after being subjected to the kind of daily diatribes by Limbaugh and the like?
Beyond simple condemnation, surely you see the toxicity of such attacks, right?
This kind of demagoguery is getting scary.
What happens when/if McCain loses? Are all of these people who think he is some kind of terrorist going to jump up and say "he's my president now, I have to support him?", as they have criticised liberals for not doing with Bush?
Where are the examples of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi whipping up liberals into a frenzy against President Bush and inciting hatred?
<crickets chirping>
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