McCain/Palin Mob, Part 2: more aggressive ignorance

Truly amazing and scary

One question though:

When did lying lose it's status as a sin?

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by: bkmn @ Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 08:34:38 AM CDT

About the same time as...

gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

The real shame is that the Christian Reich is so wrapped up in those six plus hate (the oft-ignored eighth deadly sin) that they can't tell the difference between lust and love.

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Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.

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by: tavdy79 @ Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 12:07:13 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

It's cognitive dissonance

If they admit that Obama's not a terrorist, and might actually be a pretty good president, then they're admitting a Democrat could be more qualified than the Republican.  If they admit that, then they could possibly be wrong about supporting Republicans blindly.  If they admit that, then they could possibly be wrong about something else.  Their whole lives are built like a house of cards that would come falling down if they questioned any single aspect of their lives.

# Duty, duty -- honor is, is --
Honor, Creideiki -- alertly
# Shared, is -- Honor #

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by: MileHighDawg @ Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 09:11:14 AM CDT

Race

Watching this and the Strongsville clips, it's clear that McCain and the RNC have decided to dig as deep into subconscious racist fear as they can.  I don't think all of these people are extreme racists, until they are encouraged to express their deepest fears in a nice, safe crowd of white folks in the guise of "Country First."

What I see happening is the McCain/Palin ticket is tapping into the fear these people have of the country changing in ways they can't control and which scare them.  The economy is part of it - where will these people get or how can they keep good-paying jobs?  Money is tight for these folks, but they can't admit that the Bush-Cheney bus willfully ran them over.  They also are scared of the reality that whites like them won't be the majority for long.  That scares the bejesus out of them, and they sure aren't going to help that trend by putting a non-white in the White House!  They can all be in these McCain/Palin rallies together, a nice white, familiar crowd, and express their fear as a group and be rewarded for it.

I don't understand how that black man wasn't scared for his safety.  Unless he figured he's a "good black man" in their eyes, and they wouldn't project their fear and hatred onto him.  

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by: OH les @ Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 09:47:10 AM CDT

Wonderful quote about how low McCain has gone...

"I think McCain is down to seeds and stems"  - Rick Hertzberg

These folks don't appear to be the fundie base.  One wonders if their demographic is intentional - this looks like a white flight area (per Wikipedia):

The racial makeup of the city was 94.18% White, 1.26% African American, 0.05% Native American, 3.21% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.28% from other races, and 1.03% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.27% of the population.

The African American guy interviewed scares me the most.  Did he grow up amongst these idiots and if so is he blind?  Perhaps he is the secret love child of Alan Keyes and Armstrong Williams?

I shed a tear when I found the rednecks4obama.com site last night.  It's nice to know that not everyone fits the profile of these sheep.

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by: gnushell @ Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 10:00:36 AM CDT

You could do a cartoon...

A bunch of sheep holding "vote for McCain" banners and a podium with McCain and Bible Spice as wolves.

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Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.

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by: tavdy79 @ Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 12:16:12 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The tip of the iceberg

Bigotry and bigots are so interwoven into every aspect of US history that it's no exaggeration to say that American society is a cesspool of bigotry.

McCain is using racism and islamophobia in his campaign against Obama but it didn't start with him: it began with a whole series of racist appeals made by Bill and Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries.  

If the Republicans are experts at playing the race card Democrats are best known for their homophobia. Obama and Biden are sabotaging the same sex marriage battles in Arizona, California, and Florida every time they make bigoted statements about our right to marry. The Democrats, especially Bill Clinton, gave us DOMA and DADT, and they all gutted ENDA and trashed the hate crimes bill. The Republicans supported all that, even crafted some of the laws but it was the Democrats who pushed them through Congress.

People who fear a mass fascist movement in the US are being more than a little premature. One may grow in a few years because the winner in November, Obama, cannot win an unwinnable war and doesn't have a clue how to deal with the Carter-Reagan-Clinton-Bush economic collapse. He favors imposing harsh austerity measures on working people. NAFTA, exporting jobs and union busting cmae first and how the grand theft of $700 billion dollars and nearly doubling the debt which will force even more austerity on working people. The finale will be increased authoritarianism along the lines of the Paytriot Act and FISA, which Obama supports.

As Obama's presidency fails and it becomes clear that neither party has answers for the interconnected crises or war and economic failure large segments of the population will break left or right. Basic ideological shifts have occurred several times in American history and left broken and failed political parties in their wake. It's not unlikely that the Democrats and Republicans will be weakened so much they'll end up in the garbage heap of history.

The seeds of what will likely become a mass fascist movement can be seen in the dormant racism reawakened by McCain and the Clintons.

The seeds of a mass socialist movement can be seen in the civilian and GI antiwar movements and in a new youth radicalization, especially among LGBT youth.  

The looter rich much prefer working with Democrats like Obama and the Clintons - they're greedier, they fool more people and they're able to get away with a lot more than Republicans.  

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by: donal1944 @ Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 12:12:20 PM CDT

As usual, Donal,

I agree with you completely.  

Any sort of gay rights legislation will be slighted or watered down (if not killed outright) by a Democratic administration + Congress.  And we will hear all the usual excuses from Barney Frank and the rest.  I'll bet they're already rehearsing their speeches about how they're working on the economy (or the war, or the gumball subsidy or whatever), so they can't do gay rights just now, but they'll get to us real soon now.  We've been hearing real soon now from the Democrats since the first Clinton term.  It won't change.  They've got their script memorized to a T.

Every single scurrilous campaign tactic McCain has used was used first by the Clintons.  (Why he thought they'd be winning tactics for him is something of a mystery.)  Every single one, without exception.  The horrific language used by McCain/Palin rallies differs in degree, not in kind.  Remember all those videos of Hillary supporters talking in alarm about "an unqualified black man"?  Remember Geraldine Ferraro making similar comments when she functioned as a Clinton surrogate?

As for Obama himself, Democracy Now has reported that he's been having lunches at Jack Abramoff's old lobbying firm.  Change?  Yeah, right.

I am no happier about all of this than anyone else.  But what's the point of deceiving ourselves?

Cynic, n.  A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.  
-Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

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by: QScribe @ Sat Oct 11, 2008 at 16:38:02 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Thanks, QScribe

Now it's just a question of waiting.

After the election the antiwar movement plans on taking off with afterburners attached. The National Assembly to end the Invasions and Occupations has already laid plans for an antiwar offensive that will politically challenge Obama's promise to continue wasting the lives of GIs and civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

http://natassembly.org/thecall/

UnitedENDA or one if its successors, and LGBT groups that advocate laws against hate crimes and hate speech are sure to rekindle those campaigns and if the Democrats continue to sabotage them then they'll just create larger and more militant movements. We're not going back to the dark ages.

And unions have no plans to end their organizing campaigns. In fact they'll be spurred by the inevitable failure of the economy.  

http://www.kclabor.org/

Those developments will heat up after Obama's inaugural on January 20th. And soon after that, as the election hysteria gets tossed in the garbage with the buttons and lawn signs and reality sets in I plan to stick to a tough regimen of re-reading history books and following a purely escapist schedule of reruns. I did PBS's Claudius the God last week and I've got Ken Burns Civil War on tap beginning Tuesday. A few more series like that and I can ignore the regurgitated election hysterics and ride it out until people get sober and start getting angry again.

The looter rich much prefer working with Democrats like Obama and the Clintons - they're greedier, they fool more people and they're able to get away with a lot more than Republicans.  

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by: donal1944 @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 22:51:33 PM CDT

[ Parent ]