I forgot T. Coates. And so I looked up his Atlantic blog to see what's up. It has been a little corner for people who can't stand and cannot respect Republicans.
As usual, there are several million Americans, who have decided that this whole enterprise boils down to one thing. It never does, but then not many people can focus on more than one thing at a time. I'm going to talk about one of those boiling points in this post, and that is race. What is interesting to me is how McCain/Palin has, for so many supporters of the other guy, come to represent 'the racism of the Republican Party'.
Coates notes the nexus and has it both ways. One of his commenters says:
It's not contradictory to say that McCain has lost control of his campaign and to say that he is responsible for it. It's entirely predictable that you will have some ugliness out there, but that means that you plan for it and make provisions against it. Not only did McCain not do that, he poured gasoline on the flames, and expressed surprise when he got a big fireball. And now he has insubordination within his campaign.
I have heard the phrase 'coded message' so many times in conversations with the opposition. It's a cleverly stupid logic trap. All that's necessary is for them to perceive that some dog whistle politics are going on, which doesn't take much because they always suspect it. (Confirmation bias), and then they wait for the 'other shoe' to drop.
I don't pay attention to all that, quite frankly. I do more writing at my blog than I do reading widely, I read to research what I say here. So when I occasionally venture out to Booker Rising or some other public joint to add comments, I am invariably called a stooge for the racists, and sometimes they send a link to the latest outrage. But I can't say that I follow the zero-tolerant troops sluething up more evidence of Republican racism.
Given that it's Obama who is the democratic nominee, I wonder if they would be just as adamant that Romney would be the 'leader' of Republican racism if he were the nominee instead of McCain. There are a bunch who have obviously had it in for Giuliani, and Ron Paul has his own dicey history. You would think that the racial fear of Palin would have its own Jena-sized incident. But there is none, its just that Palin reps her hood, and her hood is full of them. As I mentioned at T. Coates' joint, this is merely a proxy war. There is us and there's them. They hate us, so we must therefore disrespect them - because obviously they are wrong because we are moral. Thus, any and every moron, racist, crackpot and Snidely Whiplash whose head pops above the blogospheric or major media radar becomes prima facia evidence that they are wrong and that their leader must be destroyed at all costs. It's not what the man says, it's what he signals to his dogs.
I would laugh. I never heard 'snowbilly' before this campaign. I never heard 'post-racial' before this campaign. But apparently some Americans, ironically many who cheer when Obama says 'we must all work together' have decided to fear, hate, distrust and disrespect those who support the McCain/Palin ticket. And those haters have the floor because it is the people of America that can't stand the people of America, and the people must be heard.
How many more days left?
I am not in McCain's gang. I'm just going to vote for the man. It has come down to a choice between two, and I like him better. I don't associate with people merely because I pop out a piece of chad in the same place as they do once every four years. I don't get to feel vindicated if he wins, I don't get to feel stupid if he loses. I just do my part as a citizen - I'd be blogging whether or not an election was happening. And I'm still going to mix it up with people who do more than merely vote, but think about the issues facing the nation every day. But I'm noticing how all the roaches are coming out of the woodwork in this overlong season of bile, and seeing how they vent their private hatreds into public spectacle and call it democracy. It is something awe-inspringly detestable. It is fear and ignorance made plain. Fear and ignorance of self, of home and country.
Today I don't have an answer. I only hang my head in shame.
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