Republican Anger

[Myrhaf]

By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Here's the latest silliness among the reality based community. From Devilstower at Daily Kos:

There's something happening here, and what it is, is all

too

clear. McCain - Palin rallies over the last few days have disintegrated into festivals of hate, and the two candidates at the center of this are

encouraging it

.

...

McCain and Palin are soaking in the crowd's anger, amplifying it, and feeding it back.

...

The language McCain and Palin are using: "radical," "palling around with terrorists," "willing co-conspirators" is growing more heated by the day. It's language that's compounded by the "dangerous" commercials McCain is running across the country. It's the kind of language that you use in describing an enemy in wartime. It's the kind of language that not only excuses violence, but encourages it. More and more it sounds as if McCain has inhaled the ghost of Joseph McCarthy and is exhaling the fevered rancor of Charles Coughlin.

...

Whatever it is,

it's ugly

. And getting uglier. Any decent candidate -- any decent human being -- would be working now to tamp down that ire, not raise it.

Hunter at Daily Kos then takes up the theme, speculating that McCain is losing his sanity.

I'm honestly beginning to think that McCain is... unhinged. Not by a lot, but by enough. ...I can't help but look at the McCain/Palin campaign's sudden, apparently random focus on Obama and Ayers -- in the middle of a complete economic meltdown, no less -- and think, what the hell?

...

I also think you have to be more than a little nuts -- or at least very, very bitter -- to be egging on crowds to the extent that both Palin and McCain have been. The last week has seen Republican rallies turn into screaming hate-fests, celebrations of the notion that the other candidate is a terrorist, or is anti-American, or is a danger to the nation or the like: stuff that the Secret Service really, really dislikes, and would generally put a stop to if it wasn't their own damn charges leading the rhetoric. From Palin, I'd expect it. She's proven herself at this point to be dumb as a f--king rock, and has a history of being bitterly, viciously

mean

in service of whatever it is she wants. She probably thinks the rallies are a hoot.

By the time Kagro X throws in his (or her) two cents, the Kossacks are hallucinating "incitements to domestic terrorism."

It's clearly the right thing to do to demand that

John McCain and Sarah Palin's sick incitements

to domestic terrorism must stop.

But it's not going to. This is how they do things. When Republicans are in power, as they are now, they use the mechanisms of government to do their political violence to the constitutional order, as they've done by "normalizing" the existence of the surveillance state, of secret government, and even of nationalization of entire economic sectors.

It's when Republicans fall out of power, or fear falling out of power, that the violence they do to what used to be our system of government threatens to turn physical. And it's the fear of being overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box that's bringing it out in them now.

It's no coincidence that the traditional media is noticing a

disturbing uptick in violent rhetoric

at McCain/Palin events, both inside and out, and from both the candidates and the crowds. It had to happen. Sarah Palin's entire political career is steeped in the same wingnut "black helicopter" militia insanity that manifested itself in the Oklahoma City massacre and other infamous explosions of blood-spattered, far-right paranoia like Ruby Ridge and Waco.

Wading in up to their hips

right at the peak of it all, though admittedly at the far-flung fringes of it all, were Sarah Palin and the man whose

bizarre personal vendettas

she lives to prosecute: Todd Palin.

The madness inspires Andrew Sullivan to a stirring post that needs to be set to music by Wagner.

The McCain-Rove fusion ticket has spent seven days spewing 100 percent negative advertizing, roiling angry mobs, deploying Palin to call Obama a traitor and a terrorist, pushing Fox News propaganda - and they have indeed succeeded in capping Obama's national rise at just under 50 percent. But McCain's numbers

keep sliding

and are lower on Friday than they were on Monday: 41.8 percent on Pollster;

42.9 on RCP

; and a projection of 347 electoral votes on 538. Can you lose an election

and

your soul? McCain is testing the premise. It's a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions - because McCain

did it to himself

.

Angry Republicans! Is it the end of freedom in America?

Leftists have antennae finely attuned to catch any whiff of negative emotion on the right. It sets them apondering strenuously, as we saw above. But to the constant barrage of anger, hatred and fear from the left for Chimpy McBushnazi, they can't be bothered even to yawn.

Need I remind the reader what we have seen on the left for the last eight years? Calls for Bush and Cheney to be tried as war criminals? Accusations of genocide? Calling Republicans Nazis? The hatred and anger on the left has been unrelenting. Michelle Malkin wrote a book about it called Unhinged. Unlike the angry Republicans, when leftists get angry, some of them do commit violence.

I'm angry myself because I have a lot of questions about Barack Obama that I would like answered, but the MSM have decided not to press Obama to answer any questions that might embarrass him. It's outrageous how the media are coddling and boosting Obama.

I'm not sure if the Kossacks (and the very strange Andrew Sullivan) honestly fear that the angry Republicans are a danger to become violent mobs. I picture in my imagination a bunch of country club Republicans throwing trash cans through the window of a Starbucks, then texting their broker to see if their Starbucks stock is still okay. Yes, a Republican mob is something to fear.

I suspect that what they really fear is that McCain will use this emotion to motivate Republicans to vote. And fear this they should, for attacking the other party is all that either major party has in our time. Fear, anger and hatred of the other party is the way both parties rouse their base because neither party has anything positive to offer America. We live in a welfare state in which two gangs -- Democrats and Republicans -- fight over power so that they can control who gets to dole out the loot to pressure groups in hopes that the money will buy more votes in the future.

Every two years we see this spectacle of these two gangs reviling one another, hoping to make voters fear and loathe the other side more than they fear their side. Sometimes the attacks are true, sometimes they are not. Sometimes the emotions are rational, sometimes they are not. Each party's base buys into the attacks from their gang; the independents, who have no emotional attachment to either party, tend to be disgusted by the negativity.

If a party stood for liberty and individual rights, then perhaps it could motivate voters to vote for them out of admiration for their values, not just fear and loathing of the other gang. Such a party does not exist in America.

"It's earlier than you think." --Ayn Rand, 1964

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