Not since Nixon’s “silent majority” of the sixties have we seen the voting public more alienated from the opposing party’s ticket.  Red states, blue states, Sean Hannity, O’Reilly, Olbermann( sorry Keith, just trying to be ‘fair and balanced’), we no longer strive for an intellectual discussion or understanding of the issues that we face, but are driven by sound bites/talking points spoken over the interviewer’s questions in an attempt to drown out any interruption of the infomercial all ready in progress.  Please just reinforce whatever prejudices and predilections we all ready have in our cranial goop.  This is the legacy of Rovian politics with which we are left to try to publicly debate the most complex issues of our day. 

In the current election the McCain supporters are not either a majority or silent.  Witness Gov. Palin in Florida admonishing her supporters, “I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America”.   It is Us against Them, and they are not part of our America.  This Baiting of the attendees of Gov. Palin’s speeches in the last 24 hours led to at least one of her supporters shouting when she asked, “Who is Senator Barack Obama?”, “He’s a terrorist!”.  We are speaking of a United States Senator.  He’s taken his oath of office, while some undereducated thugs are projecting their own vigilante fantasies.  This is the result we get when we elevate politicians to a national level who are wholly unqualified to hold national office, least of all in the executive branch.  Later that day Palin’s supporters responded to her agitation by shouting, “Kill Him”, as well as calling an African American media employee the N word and shouting for him to “sit down boy”.  *    

At what point will John McCain realize his personal ambitions to the presidency should remain secondary to refuting this polarization he so readily embraces, a polarization which can most accurately be described as rascism?

* I could have linked this to various sources, but I found the title of this article, “Sarah Palin makes a pit bull look nice”, irressistable.