McCain’s Watermelon Strategy [Updated ]
I made a passing reference to this the other day, but now it’s really starting to bug me. The McCain-Palin street rallies really are beginning to take on many of the chilling aspects of what I witnessed from the proto-fascist right-wing in El Salvador twenty years ago.
It was always quite a bladder-constricting experience to be a reporter at a public rally of the extremist ARENA (Rebublican Nationalist Alliance of El Salvador). The cranked up mobs would aggressively threaten us while the party’s security thugs, in dark aviator glasses, would menacingly pat the bulging weapons under their coats. Next would come the party’s hymn blaring over the loudspeakers.
“Homeland Yes! Communism No!
…Tremble, Tremble Communists!
… El Salvador Will Be the Tomb of the Reds!”
This wasn’t just hot air, my friends. Party founder and leader (and big time coke-head) Major Roberto D’Aubuisson was also a leader of the notorious Salvadoran death squads. His high point was organizing the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero as he offered mass in 1980. Major Bob, as we lovingly called him, would whip the crowd into a mighty fury as he raised a machete up above a fat watermelon sitting on a table and then would split it wide open with one thundering wack. As the crowd would stamp up and down, D’Aubuisson would lift a half of the melon up in the air and would yell that this was a symbol of the rival Christian Democratic Party. “Green on the outside,” he would yell. “But Red on the inside.”
Which were pretty strong words for a crowd that just promised to make the homeland the graveyard of the Reds.
John McCain runs no death squads and the GOP is not inherently a fascist party. Nor are most Republicans fascists or killers. But… McCain and his gal-pal Veep are pushing the envelope just about as far as you can within the limits of mainstream American electoral politics. They are openly pandering to and even inciting the most extreme elements among their base. It’s not only stupid and counter-productive. It’s disgusting and dangerous. Below find what will undoubtedly be remembered as one of John McCain’s lowest moments. If he had any sense of decency he would have at least politely shut down the lunatic ranter in the audience– someone who would have fit in perfectly at the side of Major Bob. But no dice.
Major Bob meet Senator John. Birds of a feather. How long until McCain links Obama to a watermelon?
UPDATE: Apparently it’s not just my possible PTSD from covering the war in El Salvador that’s coloring my view. The very mild-mannered John Dickerson over at Slate has just published a similar take titled “A Republican Mob Scene: John McCain’s Supporters Are Madder (And Scarier) Than He is.”
He even has a few gems I missed. Like one of the aroused Palinoids in the audience loudly suggesting that Democrats be “lined up” and…? What? Shot?
Says Dickerson:
“There was a time when John McCain would give it right back to the hecklers at a John McCain town-hall meeting. It was part of his charm: He would confront these hecklers and argue with them about his supposed Republican apostasies on judicial appointments or immigration.
No longer. Now hecklers help stir the room. The candidate and his audience are in agreement about the grave national danger posed by Barack Obama and the media.”
Tremble, you reporters! Death to you Democrats and Domestic Terrorists!
RE-UPDATED: It gets better. Via TPM and others we learn even more about McCain’s aberrant performance in Thursday. In response to one more sweat-covered supporter at his rally, McCain vows to name and prosecute those responsible for the financial meltdown. And then he goes ahead and names them: Barney Frank and Chris Dodd! So, not only are Congressional Democrats and their Presidential candidate “hooligans,” but some of them will apparently be put on trial by a (non-existent) McCain administration. Why not really satiate the mob and promise to waterboard them? As they say on TV: Roll the tape! (and hold your nose).
October 9th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Why are my comments disappearing?
October 9th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Here’s the problem for McCain: he believes after the reaming he got from Dubya in 2000 that the presidency is his for the asking. He doesn’t know how to react to speed bumps, however, and it shows.
If, Deus me perdoa, he manages to make it and gets elected, he will be facing what could be a filibuster proof Democratic senate and an even larger majority in the house. All this after he has been poisoning the well. Should he live long enough for a full term, he will be heading back to Arizona for an early retirement in January 2013 as he will be unable to accomplish anything.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Be sure to watch “the sidewalk to nowhere” on youtube to see more of what Marc is talking about. I mean there are loonies on both sides, left and right, but McCain supporters appear to have collectively lost their minds.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
The chant of “communist fags” is an especially touching moment.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
The Right are more of the authoritarian personality. Been in power since 1980 yet they still have this cry baby victimhood. Middle class slide is a bitch…
October 9th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Without any internal controls – and it doesn’t appear that they have any – as McCain sinks lower in the polls, I expect this type of rhetoric to amp upwards; Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame.
At least the press recognizes a rabid dog when it’s foaming and lunging at them, personally.
Curiously, the major polls are not reporting what the smaller independents have detected; Big Media Websites Can’t Admit Obama Is Over 270 .
Given that McCain and Palin have decided to appeal to the reptilian part of their supporter’s brains, could be it’s fortunate that the big boys have chosen to withhold this information.
The McCain/Plain campaign is clearly not eliciting our best selves. American exceptionalism, indeed.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Republicans have that inarticulate anger thing down pat. That first guy in the clip hit 100 on the uninitentionally hilarious scale, but at the same time I hope he doesn’t hit the bar on the way home and then put his fist into some Obama supporters mug.
Besides that, why is he so against socialism? Its helped to keep the Green Bay Packers competitive. The NFL is the most successful socialist experiment in US history..hee hee
October 9th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
DanO,
Thanks for the youtube link…Note to self: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is not a city I will be visiting soon (though I love the state in general…)…
October 9th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
“John McCain runs no death squads and the GOP is not inherently a fascist party. Nor are most Republicans fascists or killers.”
Wow Marc, I continue to be amazed at your iconoclasm. Pointing out that John McCain doesn’t direct thugs to execute union organizers and then deposit their bodies on road, severed member in mouth is, certainly, as the lawyers say, an “admission against interest.”
Now that you have pointed this out to me, I will feel much safer about accidently associating with Americans who don’t subscribe to the Nation Magazine or go on nude bike rides or deploy satiric puppets of Chimpy Mc-Bush-Hitler at Republican Conventions.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
As usual Sam, you miss the point. Which is, are u proud and comfortable with McCain’s behavior during those moments when the wing nuts in his crowd called his congressional colleagues hooligans? You don’t think the honorable thing to do would have been to tell his crowd to avoid threatening ad hominem and stick to policy differences?
On the other hand, I don’t really care what your answer is. I have no apologies to make about the positions I have taken on this blog which has NEVER flinched from criticizing hyperpartisan or over the edge Democrats.
What’s fabulous is the inability of a single conservative voice on this blog to EVER whisper any significant criticism of the GOP.
That is one reason why you better prepare yourself to live under 8 years of an anti-Chimpy-Bush-Hitler-pro-fag-commie-Bill Ayers administration. It’s coming right at you. And you dont even have a 401K left to lean on.
Good work, boys.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:12 am
[...] media narrative of the hostile crowds at McCain events is beginning to pick up steam, but the partisan media blogs on the left are taking Obama’s [...]
October 10th, 2008 at 6:01 am
I think there has been conservative criticism of the GOP here for not being conservative enough. A reasonable case can be made from that direction, but it rarely is – at least not here. What we mostly have heard – when it’s not simply intimations of the Bush administration’s foriegn policy isn’t quite crazy enough – is that the GOP doesn’t cut taxes, cut services and de-regulate enough.
This world-view is facing a deep crisis in the context of the current economic morass and the increasingly obvious consensus that financial markets were under-regulated and tax policies have conspired to exacerbate income inequality and public debt. The blatant corruption of the GOP, in particular, via their “K-Street” strategy and the manifest incompetence and over-reach of this administration – combined with a phenomenal arrogance (think DeLay, Cheney. Rumsfeld) have shifted the political and even ideological ground fairly quickly.
I know that the Democrats are running on too much good fortune (borne by very unfortunate news) and too little demonstrable willingness to clean their own house, but we are where we are and the only progressives in sight are part of that camp. We’re likely to see more tinkering than creative thinking – but at least we’ve got a Presidential candidate who hasn’t been mired in the Beltway for decades and brings fresher instincts and more incisive intellect than most of his Senate peers.
On the liberal side there is tremendous opportunity to regenerate our political discourse and engage in some serious reforms. On the rightward side, we’re seeing nothing but the fruits of failure and a corresponding bitterness. The sight of Henry Paulson lobbying Congress for a trillion dollars in public funds to use to try to plug holes in the financial dykes was the final nail in the ideological coffin of Reagan-era “conservatism” (which even by their own admission turned into a con game.) Any notion that the key to GOP success in the future is to reconstitute as a party of even more deregulation and even less taxes is sheer fantasy. Reagan may be dead, but he’s getting his final rites these weeks in Washington.
Liberals and progressives have, ironically, inherited the “conservative” task of rescuing capitalism from it’s own excesses (again) and bringing some stability and greater equity to the system. We’re also tasked with restraining the radical, overtly-imperial wing of the “national security” elites and quickly moving the country toward alternative energy resources.
Meanwhile, “conservatives” of the pro-Bush, pro-McCain variety are engaged in nothing more noble than fighting phantoms that emerge from the darker corners of the mind when one is losing control and old behavior patterns have become increasingly self-defeating and irrelevant. There are a handful of conservative Cassandras in the intellectual sphere who liberals should take very seriously – like Andrew Bacevich and Kevin Phillips – but the self-righteous right is increasingly running around in desperation and as their credulous public shrinks, the impact of their lying and lack of seriousness is mostly just to further isolate themselves.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Poor Johnny Rictus.
We’re he running against Romney or Giuliani or George W. Bush I would sprint, not jog, to the polling place to punch a hole by his name.
But, alas, he is left to wallow in the putrid political excrement left behind by Ronald Reagan and his political spawn, W.
There are quite a few decent, respectful Republicans. But they are staying away from rallies these days, slightly ashamed of their party and its leaders and too worried anyway about whether to sell the house and start renting or sell off the Escalade that’s now worth less than a third what they owe on it so they can get health insurance that covers more than gout and scurvy with a deductible that costs less than seats for the whole little league team in the luxury box at the new Yankee’s stadium.
McCain is left with the teeming fringe of Sam Stott’s who have been inhaling their own rhetoric on blogs and talkradio where RNC talking points get steroid injections and grow from annoying fibs to alien-abduction level conspiracy theories faster than you can say Pajamas Media.
I wouldn’t be too hard on poor old Johnny. It’s not really his fault that most of the people willing to show up to his rally are still trying to get even with the “glib” gal who made them feel stupid in high school social studies class.
And cheer up, Sam. Look at this way. After a couple of decades of having to come up with increasingly baroque quasi-supernatural excuses and misdirection to explain why things were going so badly, if Obama wins, at last you can blame the state of the state on the people who are actually running the state.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:15 am
I will say it again: McCain has poisoned the well. Should, God forbid, he win, he will face an augmented Democratic congress loaded for bear and fed up with his nastiness. He’ll make the right long for the days of Jimmy Carter.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Oy!
history runs in circles.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:31 am
“Americans who don’t subscribe to the Nation Magazine or go on nude bike rides or deploy satiric puppets of Chimpy Mc-Bush-Hitler at Republican Conventions.”
Hey, what happened to the Rosenbergs?
And Alger Hiss; don’t forget him.
Also — about those nude bike rides — I mean just from an anatomical point of view …
October 10th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Christopher Buckley endorses Obama.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:49 am
The rally scene Marc describes was depicted terrifically in `Salvador’, of course, and every time I
watch that film, I picture Marc hanging out with Richard Boyle.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:57 am
On the subject of El Salvador, Marc, there is this bit of good news:
Time to stick the proverbial fork in ARENA.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Sorry for the unclosed tag.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Something I didn’t know.
From The Politico:
Jeebus! Such an adult approach, eh?
October 10th, 2008 at 11:33 am
The recent vitriolic attacks from McCain supporters, fuelled by Palin, and cynically disavowed by the campaign, strike me as more than just an election year blip and the desperation of a drowning party.
Our political community depends on some common bonds shared and acknowledged by the members of that community. We often disagree, sometimes, even, with a lot of heat, but at the base, we tend to presuppose certain facts about the opposition–namely that they, at the foundation share the same set of core values, even if we regard each other as misguided.
But starting with Bush’s assault on basic constitutional conventions, that understanding has begun to unravel. The “left,” who for example, simply didn’t like Bush Sr.’s policies have come to regard Bush Jr. as a dangerous usurper. Signing statements are not just an interpretation we disagree on, but a full-on assualt on Congress.
McCain’s recent moves are dangerous because they continue this assualt on our basic bonds. He wants to go scorched earth by casting Obama out of the pantheon–he wants to suggest that Obama ate the apple. Rather than principled differences over ideas, or even character, we now have a strictly manichean view of candidates with one of them cast as Satan.
The combination of anger over a disintegrating economy, residual (or very live) racism, the permissible hatred of Islam, the ressurection of old 60′s political wars (in the form of Ayers), and a parochial turn inward is a combustible mix, and fuelling this, as the McCain camp is doing, is definitely disgusting and probably dangerous. You’re on the stump, and you can whip it up or tamp it down, and the McCain camp has got their egg beaters out.
They assume that the bonds don’t exist, and take every chance to darkly suggest either that Obama broke those bonds, or never had them in the first place, and that he represents a fifth column about to be elected to the highest office in our land.
October 10th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
The McCain campaign against Obama is not all that different from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s in some ways. Obviously her supporters didn’t react so maniacally (because unlike too many people showing up at the McCain and Palin rallies, they didn’t start out as paranoid psychotics), but they did react with unusual anger and bitterness against their party’s nominee, Obama. And they did blame the media for HRC’s plight.
The causes of the behavior (by the campaigns, at least) seems rooted in a common cause: the candidate and his core advisors just can’t believe they are losing to this semi-unknown with the strange name, and cannot believe that the next change in strategy isn’t going to be the one that returns him to the Senate’s back bench. And even though HRC did pick up and won some primaries, she never executed the “kill”. The campaign’s frustration was reflected in the bitter, quixotic campaign against Obama by many HRC stalwarts leading up to the convention, and to an extent, after.
The right is fueled, as it often is, by an uncontrolled but focused outrage, the same sort of outrage they often directed toward Bill Clinton. The right couldn’t just argue he was a trimmer, a closet liberal or even an adulterer, they had to sell that he was a coke dealer, a rapist and a murderer. With Obama, it’s not enough to argue that he is untested or too liberal not specific enough, the leaders of the pitchfork parade characterize him as pro-gang, pro-terrorist, perhaps even a terrorist himself.
It is terribly ugly, and we all know it’s worse because of Obama’s ancestry, whether it is purely racial or just xenophobic.
It is, on one hand, sad to watch McCain fumbling with his pitchfork. When he was pointing the crowd to Barney Frank’s house, I thought there was a moment when he did one of those double-takes he does, where it hit him just how little he believes in the sort of ugliness he promotes. Then he goes ahead and lights the torch.
The anger we all feel at the horrifying economic future we may be facing just feeds the anger and frustration of the bloody-eyed partisans. That makes it worse, but it doesn’t make it right.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
“…You’re on the stump, and you can whip it up or tamp it down, and the McCain camp has got their egg beaters out…”
And I think we all know that these attacks will not stop on Nov. 4th. Any little screw-up by the Obama Administration and the right-wing media will attack. It will be unrelenting…
October 10th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Why are you sad? It’s only 8-5 Phillies in the sixth!
October 10th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
McCain is bad for America. Honestly.
October 10th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
This is all part of Right Wing Victimhood. These angry white men are ALWAYS the victims. For a party so into accountability, not a single CEO or Bush lackie has even apologized let alone get fired.
October 10th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Marc, I posted this sentiment right after her introductory speech at the RNC convention. I sent letters to papers.
I saw the glint of Nuremberg in the eyes of those hearing her scripted demagoguery and their responses when questioned about their reaction to her speech with gushing insensible gibber stating: “shes a maaaaaaawm and will keep America safe”.
I mentioned this in your comments section. NO ONE even bothered.
I have been screaming about it in the other thread re Woody’s being able to post vile racist garbage and that his mentalityis linked to a collective phenomenon not unlike the 30′s in Germany.
Palin is being used as a catalyst to whip up the neo fascist frenzy that has always been at the heart of the American sensibility.
Just because Obama wins doesnt the atavism unleashed is going to quietly slink back into its lair.
You are day late and a dollar short buddy. As are all the other pundits just now discovering this.
October 10th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Twist: McCain forced to defend Obama to his minions.
October 10th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Marc: “the GOP is not inherently a fascist party. Nor are most Republicans fascists or killers. ”
Well… honestly the only thing they lack is means and suitable pretext.
Thank God for NASCAR and High Fructose Corn Syrup.
October 10th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
A.C., now I stayed out of this until you mentioned my name. Since you have likened me to Hitler, you lose.
You might consider, however, that many people liken Obama’s popularity to that of the Fuhrer. I spent most of the day with some older Germans who actually are fearful about the similarities between the two.
How do you feel about Marc linking Obama and watermelons?
October 10th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
“the neo fascist frenzy that has always been at the heart of the American sensibility.”
Hardly.
The heart of American sensibility ended slavery, acknowledged women’s right to vote, ended the war in Vietnam, ended Jim Crow, made Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and The Clash superstars, and not for their love songs, created a university system that is the world’s most open and highest ranked academically, created and enshrined Medicare, banned above-ground nuclear weapons testing, made K-12 public school a right, not a priviledge, apologized for slavery, apologized for the Vietnam war, institutionalized the 8-hour work day, helped rebuild Europe after WWII, occupied Japan without turning it into a colony or an economic dependent of any kind, voted against Bush in 2000 and is poised to deliver a landslide to Barack Hussein Obama and a whole lot of Democratic congresspersons, Senators and Governors.
The ideological litter blowing into heaps at Palin-McCain rallies are far, far from the heart of America and, as poll-after-poll shows, represent a small, shrinking minority of voters.
Their paranoia and self-loathing projections are indeed a long-running theme in American politics, but they have always been, and will always be, a fringe element in America.
Obama’s coming victory will not only restore sanity to the White House, it will also extinguish the notion, shared equally on the fringe right and left, that loud identity conservatives are some kind of political juggernaut that can’t be ignored.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Bunkerbuster:
Your posts in the last few weeks have been especially good. I have felt shivers of the same fear that Anna C is expressing, but I return to the same conclusion as you. Entertaining the unreasonable delusions of right-wing nutters really just enables them and makes them more important than they are. Freud said it best: “The voice of reason is soft, but persistent”.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
bunker, every thing you just typed is oh so easily refutable .
Your maudlin post yearns unabashedly for a jingoist all-powerful Democratic party while shilling for sugarcoated 20th Century US Empire nationalism and capitalism===> fascism..
Poll-based (!!??) feelgoodism in the blind service of the spineless and bloodthirsty Democrats of the last century gives me no “priviledge”.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Jim H: I didnt know Richard Boyle when he was in El Salvador, unfortunately. It might have been fun to drop acid before going to the weekly US Embassy briefing — though it wasn’t really necessary.
I did however know and had the privilege of working with the real-life photographer who in the film was strafed and killed by Savadoran planes. That was based on John Hoagland — who wroked mostly for Newsweek, and who was killed by troops in a town called Suchitoto.
he was truly a hero and took absolutely stunning pix. You can see a few of them here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/salv-o28.shtml
And here’s a great homage to John
http://members.rennlist.com/tweedt/johnH.htm
October 10th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
P.S. Here’s an archive of some of his Salvador photos. Amazing, really.
http://thedagger.com/archive/elsal/
October 10th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Oh yea, referring to Sergio’s comments. Yes, it’s been a while since I knocked around Bunkerbuster. It’s sort of like punching a 3 year old. But…yes…he embodies everything that is so repellant about the Official Democratic Party.
It’s going to be a very interesting four years… a whole generation of folks whose political lives began in 2000 are about to live for the first time under Democratic hegemony. Im hoping that Obama will make it worthwhile… but that’s all one has to rely on: HOPE. And hope alone.
The atrocities of the Republicans makes it easy for some to forget the rather tainted record of American Democrats. Let’s hope, as I said, that we are about to experience one of their better patches.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Randy: Thanks for the update about El Salvador. I’ve been vaguely following it but not in great detail. I do know that ARENA is one the ropes and that the FMLN has a real chance to capture the presidency. That will be no silver bullet, and the FMLN still has a long way to go to modernize itself. But it has to be better than ARENA.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:58 am
Sorry Sergio, but those are the historical facts, whether you like them or not. And there’s so much more where that came from.
The true heart of America welcomes immigrants, be they rich, poor, economic or political refugee, and always has.
The true heart of America has created the world’s most open, vibrant, dynamic and varied popular culture, in no small part because there are people from every corner of the earth that have been welcomed here.
This is not to suggest that a loud, sometimes powerful, minority of Americans has not opposed the true heart of the nation. To be sure, there have been setbacks and we’ve just been through a rather terrifying one with the invasion of Iraq and the destruction of economic order and the weakening of Constitutional authority in the executive branch of government.
But this too shall pass and the heart of America will prevail, which is exactly why Obama is poised to win this election.
It would not be easy to refute what you typed, Sergio, because you make no factual assertions.
Unless I’ve misunderstood, you offer only polemic characterizations of the facts I presented. You’ve chosen different words to describe my claims, but haven’t written a word that challenges their veracity or substance.
I’m sure you are correct about how the facts I offered made you feel, leaving nothing to refute.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:20 am
It will please you to read what a friend of yours and all Democrats alike says about my country.
You would agree if you believed in God.
I suppose that makes the Democrats’ block of funds to the freedom fighting Contras all worth while.
October 11th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Sorry Marc, but nattering about American “fascism” – which triggered that bb commentary – is a sure sign that one’s political brains are scrambled. Sergio is clearly the “3 year old” in that exchange.
And the implication that most of Obama’s base started their political lives in 2000 is nonsense. One of the things that gives Obama an edge is the collective memory of the Clinton years, which were – you and Christopher Hitchens nothwithstanding – hardly “the horror, the horror” for most people. But nothing is static in politics and the fact that Obama utilized “movement politics” to win the nomination and the Presidency is going to have an impact going forward. I can’t predict with any precision, but Obama’s active base will inevitably come into play and effect the way he governs. I’m convinced this is part of his strategy.
Of course he’s going to “disappoint” (I assured myself of that well over a year ago), but the fact that he’s brought so many people – new and old – back into the political process and gives them a stake in his success (or failure) is going to make an Obama era much more interesting and unpredictable than Clinton redux could have been.
I’ve been shocked by your enthusiasm as Obama prevailed, frankly, but now is not the time to sit back, fold your arms and resume a reassuring cynicism. As a serious journalist, this whole unanticipated turn in electoral politics is like a gift (what better candidacy to launch your “Off the Bus” efforts ?) Believe it or not, I have almost as many problems with the majority of Democrats as you do, but won’t it be a pleasure to at least be able to follow the contours of a Presidency without getting distracted either by his dirty laundry or his obvious lack of any depth ? And to measure the impact of millions of people actually giving a shit as a young, smart President- who authentically exudes a measure of idealism – takes office.
You’ve pronounced the Democratic Party as beneath your contempt and incapable of anything resembling a revival of progressive, “small-d” democratic politics. The fact that since 2004 Howard Dean’s insurgent, grass-roots vision of the Party has steam-rolled the Clinton’s more static, top-down version of Democratic politics shows at least elements of your analysis as wrong or reductionist. Thank God that post-2000 generation you refer to, or any of the rest of the Obama “base”, didn’t also simply assumed Democratic electoral politics were utterly hopeless. (Or worse, that they haven’t reveled in the leftish hiptard nihilism regurgitated by Sergio – who apparently thinks watching Bill Maher is some sort of political statement but making phone calls or knocking on doors for Obama leads down a path to sugar-coated fascism. That clown is pure political incoherent and irrelevance – nothing but barely articulate barbs and cliches.)
October 11th, 2008 at 9:13 am
BB bubi says:
“The true heart of America welcomes immigrants, be they rich, poor, economic or political refugee, and always has.”
>>yeah thats why America turned back Jewish refugees cause the pure hearts of its citizens were so welcoming and pure; put signs in windows saying “Irish or Catholics need not apply”; and lets not forget the pure true heart of its racism—exemplified in Woody’s true, pure heart post vile racist tat that might be forgivable if done by a school boy, but now a grown “man” (I use the term loosely).
“The true heart of America has created the world’s most open, vibrant, dynamic and varied popular culture, in no small part because there are people from every corner of the earth that have been welcomed here”.
>>That open, vibrant, dynamic popular culture that transfers to the world at large is BLACK AMERICAN CULTURE. And the need for transcendence that forged the music, argot and sensibility was the true heart of American racism
The MYTH of America and the planet’s collective need for a “varied, vibrant, dynamic” culture is what made America the lightning rod for the idea of a “New World”
We are an experiment that isn’t finished and the planet is vested in the outcome. Everyone is part of it.
Misjudging the fascist element here is naive.
Germany was considered the most civilized country in the world…
There will be another civil war after this election.
It will be the revenge of the inarticulate, gibbering goons whose cumulative IQ is less than a plastic stacking deck chair.
They are the relatives of the denizens of Hartlepool who hung a shipwrecked monkey washed ashore during the Napoleanic wars
believing he was a French spy.
October 11th, 2008 at 11:55 am
The day after an Obama inauguration, folks – i.e. Dem netroots and grassroots – need to start strategizing seriously to improve the Democratic Congress in 2010 – both numerically and qualitatively. The more new blood the better. Obama isn’t a savior.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
The demonizers and the exceptionalists are both being reductionist. There is no true heart of America– it has three hundred million hearts and they’re beating the strange tattoo of a thousand different pulses in some inexplicable, and irreducible, polyrhythm. It is a complex and contradictory nation because of the complex and contradictory nature of the human beings that comprise it. And I say this as someone who lives and breathes pure seething misanthropy.
October 11th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Anna and I are working from more or less the same set of facts and priorities, just interpreting them differently.
The essential difference between her view and mine is that she bases her analysis on the identity conservatives’ conceptual frame of America as exceptional. In their view, and Anna’s, America is best understood by its own standards of perfection. This is how she comes to believe that because American history shows fascistic impulses prevailing far more often than any humanist should desire, it is fundamentally fascist.
I reject the identity conservatives’ view that America is an exceptional nation that cannot be compared with others. American history is best understood as an integral part of world history and best compared against and put into the context of the histories of other places.
Gospel music, jazz and rock&roll didn’t originate in Britain or Arabia or Portugal, all of which enslaved Africans. They grew up in America and still thrive here.
Racism and fascistic impulses are an important part of American history and there is never a good reason to deny or downplay the facts. But these facts don’t define America. Every nation’s history is shaped by racism and fascistic impulses. Racism and fascistic impulses define us as humans, not as Americans.
What is definitive about America, and therefore its heart, is its commitment to human rights and equality under the law. This is what has, more than anything, made the history of America different from all others.
Our history shows that again and again, these commitments to equality and human rights prevailed. America isn’t unique in this. Other countries as well have every right to point the fruits of their commitments to human rights as evidence of their true spirit, but it is impossible to look at America honestly and not come away with the idea that its heart truly believes in freedom.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
“yeah thats why America turned back Jewish refugees”
Not exactly.
New York is home to more Jews than any other city in the world and they didn’t come over on the Mayflower.
Jews have thrived in America like nowhere else, including Israel.
American humor is, primarily, Jewish humor.
American Jews, primarily, built the entertainment industry and while Afro-Americans, primarily, created jazz, soul and rhthym and blues, American Jews, primarily, produced it.
Where else have Jews thrived to the extent they have in America?
October 11th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
bukerbuster@8:10 & 9:38 Excellent posts!
October 12th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Marc, you’ve really become unhinged by this election.
You’d think your guy was about to lose. Take a Valium.
October 12th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Bunkerbuster: are you aware that FDR had the JEWISH QUOTA reduced at Harvard?
Are you aware of how many institutions and organizations and companies would not hire Jews?
Your whole use of the word thrive is forgetting an entire universe of context. I suppose your argument is that since African Americans have forged a unique culture that is loved all over the world and is probably one of America’s ONLY admired exports that would lead you to say African American’s have THRIVED?
Columbia University and NYU Charged with Antisemitism (The Nation, 1921)
A short paragraph from 1921 in which the editors of The Nation level a charge at the admission departments for both New York University and Columbia University as having both taken steps that would reduce the number of Jewish students enrolled each year. The editors believed that the admission tests had been rewritten in such a way as to produce predictably lower scores among Jewish candidates:
“…Columbia authorities have not denied that in the two years following application of the new tests the percentage of Jews admitted fell from 40 to 22.”
Harvard University Charged with Antisemitism (Life Magazine, 1922)
Although Abbott Lawrence Lowell (1856 – 1943) enjoyed a long tenure as the president of Harvard University (1909 – 1933), his reign there was not entirely free from controversy. Among the few unpleasantries associated with his term was one in which he stated that Jewish enrollment to the university should be confined to an admissions quota that should not exceed the 15-percent mark. This brief article addresses the topic (and seemed to side with President Lowell) bringing up an exchange of letters that passed between Lowell and a Jewish alumnus, who is simply identified as “Graduate Benesch”.
October 12th, 2008 at 7:05 am
To DC Sniper: Yes, there are 300 million hearts beating and 600 million feet (give or take a few) and many of them are in lock step in a goose step. I do take your point. But you still miss the point of the consensual nature or natures as cyphers here.
However: Events have conspired to create a tipping point. Between the Deus Ex Machina (for Obama) of the economic crisis which then caused McCain to blow his circuits and the miscalculation of unleashing Palin on the stump—its the old law of enantiodromia. Self preservation kicked in for a great deal of what would have been Republican voters.
go to http://www.thenation.com
click on:
Voting the Fate of the Nation
Chalmers Johnson : Presidential Election 2008
This can be a transformative election. Will economic meltdown, race or regional loyalty be the trump card?
October 12th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Anna, anti-Semitism is a global phenomenon. There’s nothing uniquely or definitively American about it.
You point out that both The Nation and Life magazine criticized anti-Semitism. Why aren’t they they heart of America?
How did you arrive at the decision that the opponents of The Nation and Life are more definitive of America?
Firstly, The Nation’s and Life’s critiques were consistent with the fundamental ideal of llegal equality among religions/ethnic groups, a key American ideal.
Secondly, they prevailed. There is no formal anti-semitism anywhere in any American university today. The true heart of America can’t count the destruction of legalized anti-semitism as yet another achievement.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:06 am
BB–there were the convenient citations. Many more on the Google page.
You are splitting hairs.
Another interesting note: The McCarthy era was not about routing commie pinko anything. It was about smashing the union movement to secure a stranglehold on the economy, profits and markets.
I have lived abroad. I know what the difference it is to live in a country that has universal health care and wages that allow for real paid time off; maternity leave and understand that protecting workers is protecting the economy.
Just the union busting antics over the past 100 years would support my thesis of the dark heart that beats in this country.
That so many people here vote against their own self interests is fact enough.
You are constructing a filigree of rhetoric rather than staying on the ground.
This country is still only an IDEA. I understand that. I understand we have a righteous mother fucker of a constitution that allows for redress of any injustice and that that process is subject to the people and sensibility working it at any given time.
I understand where everyone was coming from when they decided they needed to get “here”.
You starry eyed view of this country’s history of the last 150 years is jaw dropping.
The monumental venality that infected the whole seething enterprise. My God.
From the cesspool that was New York to the mad German-Scandanavian-European wagon loads that littered the way west and the crazy isolate sensibility that informed those who were no more than human detritus deposited across the plains.
Eee gads, man. Its in the details. The dust bowl years dislocated so many who were already only marginally literate—little real education offered the majority of Americans for years dispersed across the plains and the West. Generations of almost culture-less people shaped only by the forces of bare knuckle survival.
Yeah…that lends itself to a real civilized populace.
Thats what we are up against.
I
October 13th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Anna: You say unions were busted but your conclusions conveniently ignore that Americans established them in the first place.
A lot of people fought like hell to establish unions and won! They were smarter, more committed and more American than their opponents.
Now you come along and offer the view that Joe McCarthy is more of an American than Joe Hill?
What separates you from Ann Coulter?
Sure, you root for the different side, but your view of America is essentially the same as Coulter’s.
She sees Joe McCarthy as the real heart of America, fighting to prevent the seizure of private property by unionists and communists.
You appear to agree with Coulter’s historical frame for McCarthy as the representative American and only disagree on whether seizing private property is a good or bad thing.
McCarthy was nothing near the “heart of America.” He was an alcoholic demogogue out to save his failing political career by any means necessary. The man was feckless — a joke within and without his own party. His political fame and fortune was very short-lived and he his name and legacy are to this day synonymous with ANTI-AMERICAN demagoguery.
Coulter looks at America and says, because America has done many good things, it is defined as a good country and anyone who questions that is therefore anti-American.
Anna looks at America and says, because America has done many bad things, it is defined as a bad country, therefore rational, humanist people will also be anti-American.
Both are the product of dull, binary thinking.
The “the mad German-Scandanavian-European wagon loads” you despise included the ancestors of Albert Schweitzer and Joe Hill and George Carlin and Father Berrigan and Eleanor Roosevelt and Woodie Guthrie and Samuel Gompers and Bella Abzug and on and on and on and on — millions of real heroes known and unknown who fought against fascism and won.
Every place, every people has a dark side and America is no means exceptional in that regard. But if you’re going to define something, you need to focus on what makes it unique, not what makes it the same as everything else. And in America’s case, that’s the legacy of freedom, free thought, free speech and free people.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
BB are we on the same page?
do you have a comprehension disability?
McCarthy was a sick fuck—where do I state otherwise?
I said the commie witch hunt was a smoke screen for union busting.
do you have no idea of the tragic history of the union movement in this country?
and you need to take a deep breath and understand that because someone criticizes something—this is a public forum for invisceration–that doesnt mean they throw the baby out with the bath water.
and “dull binary thinking” is your prob, not mine.
your inability to follow a thread and then turn the intended meaning on its head to satisfy YOUR point of view rather than follow what someone is trying to express….
oh well. tant pis. doesnt matter.
Your bizarre arguments that keep stating because x is true y and z automatically follow is bad algebra, baby. bb.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
[...] do not expect the Obamabots to get it. I do not expect the Obamabots to cease their ugly snapping, in fact, I expect it to get worse in the next three [...]
October 13th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
“that doesnt mean they throw the baby out with the bath water.”
Simple question: who is a better representative of real American values: Joe Hill, or Joe McCarthy?
You talk about the “tragic” history of the union movement, but there is triumph as well. And what are you comparing America’s union history to? Spain? Denmark? Mexico? China?
Yet again, you seem to want to look at America’s history in isolation, outside the global context.
If you’re going to define the union experience in America as a tragedy, you have to explain what your criteria are. What are you comparing it to?
October 13th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Joe McCarthy.
The unions are dead in this country. Wal Mart closed a store in Canada recently that had successfully unionized.
Have you lost your mind not connecting the loss of American jobs to the quick buck fuck strategy of corporations ripping the rug out from under thousands upon thousands of workers and stripping communities?
Wal Mart to this day holds management meetings telling managers how to threaten employees over unionizing.
If you want the history of the unions in this country and their lack of achievement and the fact wages and benefits have gone while corporate profits up—try reading the paper.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:32 am
I wonder what you, Anna, make of Margaret Chase Smith. She was the first woman to be elected to both the U.S. House and the Senate, and the first woman from Maine to serve in either. She was also the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the U.S. Presidency at a major party’s convention (1964 Republican Convention). She was a moderate Republican and, while a cold warrior like so many others, she was also the longest-serving female senator in United States history.
More to the point, she was one of the first in the Senate to oppose McCarthy. In her “Declaration of Conscience” responding to McCarthy’s outrages she wrote that the basic principles of “Americanism” were:
• The right to criticize;
• The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
• The right to protest;
• The right of independent thought.
Smith strongly voiced concern that those who exercised those beliefs at that time risked being labeled communist or fascist.
In what country in 1954 do you find female senators at all and in how many countries in 1954 was anyone on the right, the left, the center, male or female saying things like that?
Smith espoused American principles in an American way. Surely she represents what is different about America far more than McCarthy, whose base demagoguery is to be found in many countries in many eras throughout history.
Again, I think you are comparing America against perfection, not reality.
If Smith doesn’t represent the real heart of Americanism, what does he represent?
If McCarthy represents the real America, an assertion you share with Ann Coulter and her ilk, why did he die a disgrace with fewer than half of Americans approving of him in opinion polls? Why did members of his own party vote to censure him, a very rare act in the clubby U.S. Senate.
Your view gives very short shrift to the real heroes of America, and there are many and they often win. At the same time, you use exactly the same binary frame of reference that brings people like Coulter to describe McCarthy as a real American and Obama, for example, an anti-American.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
There are quite a few decent, respectful Republicans. But they are staying away from rallies these days, slightly ashamed of their party and its leaders and too worried anyway about whether to sell the house and start renting or sell off the Escalade that’s now worth less than a third what they owe on it so they can get health insurance that covers more than gout and scurvy with a deductible that costs less than seats for the whole little league team in the luxury box at the new Yankee’s stadium.