There are those who proudly claim to love America but seem to hate its inhabitants or at least those who are darker, different, educated, enlightened or sophisticated. These people will find comfort and warmth in the predatory language of the McCain/Palin campaign. The Fascists are coming hard. The 4th Reich in America is on display. The language, role players, surrogates and mainstream media professionals, seem so eerily similar to another time and place in history.As I have written previously, the rhetoric emanating from McCain/Palin campaign events of late is reminiscent of lynch mobs during the rise of the KKK in the Confederacy, the Salem Witch Trials and the rise of Nazi Germany where the rallying cry was "Fear the Jew." You can almost hear the sound of the dueling banjo's playing in the background at McCain/Palin's race rally's. A positive may be that McCain may have finally found his campaign's theme song, as McCain and Palin open up the racial underbelly in America. As aptly stated by Jon Stewart:
"Have you noticed how [Palin's] rallies have begun to take on the characteristics of the last days of the Weimar Republic? In Florida, she asked 'Who is Barack Obama?' Hey, lady, we just met YOU five f-ing weeks ago."
Only now, the rallying cry is to fear the black man because "Obama is a terrorist":
another McCain/Palin rally
In an interview with The Atlantic, respected conservative New York Times columnist, David Brooks, decrying Sarah Palin's anti-intellectualism, stated the following:
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
Undoubtedly, Mr. Brook's statement reflects that reasoned conservatives are troubled by the growng anti-intellectualism on the right. Or as Jeffrey Sachs said, American "anti-intellectualism could end up getting us all killed." On one hand, intellectually, they cannot fully endorse McCain's tactics. But on the other, they also seem to want to finesse the obvious, that Obama is simply the more conservative (i.e., reasoned), responsible & credible choice at this most perilous crossroads of American history. These uncertain times would seem to require serious, earnest, intellectually capable forward thinking leadership. This is not a time we can or should entrust the leadership of our country to a man operating in a questionable mental and physical state or a hockey mom. So what do folks like David Brooks do? They seek cover for the coming change that Obama will bring. They rationalize away the aggressive racist GOP politics stoking white fear as a small problem, like a tumor that can be excised easily: "it's really only Sarah Palin. McCain made a poor selection." But, "my friends" I would argue that Sarah Palin is merely the symptom. The disease in GOP Politics is more widespread. McCain has simply gone further down a dangerous road of preying on racial resentment that another Arizona Senator, the godfather of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater once did in his losing presidential campaign. Goldwater, however, redeemed himself in his later years, in my estimation, by challenging the religious radicalization of conservatism. Recommended reading for thirsty conservatives looking for a way out of this blackhole is Andrew Sullivan's "The Conservative Soul, How We Lost It, How to Get it Back."
America needs a colonic to detoxify itself of the stench of the GOP's 4th Reich Politics under Karl Rove and his protege Steve Schmidt. Sadly, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan, simply don't go far enough. McCain/Palin must be condemned and they must lose in a landslide for America to have any chance at salvation.
About Sarah Palin
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