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The Pied Piper of Crazyland
John McCain, in his latest tirades against Obama, and against Dodd and Frank, has veered off into Crazyland to such an extent that I do not see how he can ever return to reality. 'There is a Happy Land, far, far away.' That is not where John McCain has pitched his tent. John McCain is marching deeper and deeper into Crazyland...he has pitched his tent by the river Styx...
This is known as going 'around the bend' in traditional folk cultures. He used to be a simple liar and a man reckless with the truth--now he is simply a complete Fabulist, inventing his own twisted world as he addresses his supporters, minute by minute day by day, penetrating deeper and deeper into Crazyland.
And the dangerous thing is that he is taking his supporters with him. They have become dangerously unhinged. This is the way that lynch mobs have formed, in the past. The mob doesn't care about justice, about truth, about evidence, or the real story--they want a sacrificial lamb, a judas goat on whose back they may pile all of their frustrations, their anger, their confusion...
I have seen this nation struggle to find its way often in the past 50 years, torn this way and that by people that want to drag it out into the sunshine and fresh air, and people who want to drag it into the darkness and make it dance around a bonfire in a scary mask. But McCain, and his fascist loonies from America's Heart of Darkness--this is the craziest shit I have ever seen!!
Comments (7)
The video from the Palin/McCain rally yesterday in Wisconsin was really frightening--they are playing a very dangerous game, whipping up crowds of angry, scared people who are seeing their life savings wiped out and having McCain/Palin tell them that Obama brought about the financial crisis by voting for legislation that expanded mortgage access for poor people.
Folks should check out Fox News and see what they are pumping out--it involves this group Acorn and William Ayres, and they are asserting that Obama is directly responsible for the crisis. Really stunning, and if you didn't watch Fox or hang out on the right wing blogs you would have no idea what they are talking about. Add in the news yesterday about ACORN submitting fraudulent voter registration forms and you have the following meme being taken up by the very angry right wing:
"Obama, a secret Muslim cocaine addict, conspired with terrorists (Ayres) and communists (ACORN) to undermine our financial system, and he is now using the same terrorists and communists to steal the election through massive voter fraud."
This is really incendiary stuff, and Palin and McCain are going right there.
October 10, 2008 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's not simply the misrepresentation of the facts--its the construction of them into these enormous over-inflated bogeymen that has the crowd chanting for blood. This is not going to go away after the election. I can see his crowds spilling out onto the streets and beating people up. This is what it must have felt like at Nuremberg. Is there anyone in the Republican party that can now argue that there is no line they will not cross, no charge they refuse to make, in their hot blooded lust for power? Are the Republicans fit to serve? What do they want power for? They've had it forever--and what have they done with it? Why do they think they deserve to keep it? It's a sickness with them. It's madness. Madness! I tell you. Madness!
October 10, 2008 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Always darkest before the dawn.
The neoconservative republican party will go out in a blaze of anger and irrational hatred, driving all the moderates to Obama in the process. From its ashes will rise a smaller, more logical republican party that will start the long, slow process of rebuilding itself.
It will take a few voting cycles to really take root, but I think the extremists on both sides of the aisle will be sent packing as Obama raises the bar for all of us. He articulates a message that allows America to be a progressive nation with both liberal and conservative notions of how to achieve our common goals.
We just have to suffer through uncertainty of a transformational election, the dying squacks of the media and the angry howls of a dying party as the first necessary step in the American Renaissance.
October 10, 2008 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I do take some comfort in your remarks. There is the famous scene at the end of Fantasia that celebrates Walpurgis Night with the music from Night on Bald Mountain. The mountain unfolds it black wings, the unclean spirits sweep through the graveyard, the souls of the damned wither and crisp as they slip through his fingers into the eternal fires concealed within the depths.
And then the Rosy Dawn emerges, and the Great Demon folds his wings, and conceals himself, in the light, as a Bald Mountain, once again, and a candlight precessional walks down to the still waters in the calm of the sunrise to the strains of Ave Maria. It's archteypal, of course, and I am hoping this is a similar pattern.
It's a pattern that follows the characteristics of a birth. First there are labor contractions in a closed uterine system, painful to both the foetus and the mother. The uterus contracts and there is no escape. There is no exit. Then the cervix effaces and the foetus shifts into the birth canal, and the struggle intensifies to titanic proportions. It's life and death, do or die--wrapped in the coils of an immense snake, blood pressure ready to explode, skull fusing together, powerful forces of extrusion--and then, emergence, all at once, into the cool air and bright lights and rapid expansion and chill to the skin, and the crisis has passed. Breathe. Your life has just begun.
October 10, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
nice.
October 10, 2008 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ditto.
October 10, 2008 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pragmatic thinking instead of chaos & panic, you have lightened the heart when we need it most. Thank you.
October 10, 2008 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
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