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Eliminationist Dog Whistling and Free Speech

Eliminationist Dog Whistling and Free Speech

“Our democracy is a light, a beacon really, around the world because we affect change at the ballot box and not because of these outbursts of violence.” ~ U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, March 25, 2010

I’ve reached the end of mourning, the occasion marked as I was watching Sarah Palin say she’s a victim of “blood libel.” She’s had days to compose a response, and this is it? There are a lot of things she could have done here, but invoking this charge is amazing. Is she meaning to be the persecuted Jew here? Is it a cluster of associations that aim to function subliminally (something like “Giffords is Jewish, there’s something biblical about bloodguilt or blood libel or something like that, I’ve run across this somewhere, don’t wanna say “guilty,” maybe a Patriot said, “slander” is too eggheady, it’s a really big wrong thing I think, I can flip it back this way”) ? That’s reaching… but how could this have been said, and distributed? I don’t know what she intended, but I’m not buying ignorance.

Blood libel (also blood accusation) refers to a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, almost always Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays. Historically, these claims have–alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration–been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.

Note: The Wikipedia article goes further than the definition and gives a decent summary of the history of the blood libel charge, in case you missed History 101. This hateful and untrue charge has resulted countless persecutions and massacres for centuries.

Maybe she does know what it means. Or maybe she doesn’t know. As a weighted (even “loaded”) phrase you’d be hard-pressed to find better. Crusade, maybe (remember W?). Is it accidental, or is it deliberate? Is she using dog-whistle politics (or, at the higher level, the insights of audience reception theory)? Is she calling out in associative code, like she and others tend to do? What will be her response when people note the actual definition? Will it matter? Will she claim “persecution”?

Dog-whistle politics, also known as the use of code words, is a term for a type of political campaigning or speechmaking which employs coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has a different or more specific meaning for a targeted subgroup of the audience. The term is invariably pejorative, and is used to refer both to messages with an intentional subtext, and those where the existence or intent of a secondary meaning is disputed. The term is an analogy to dog whistles, which are built in such a way that the high-frequency whistle is heard by dogs, but appears silent to human hearing.

Maybe it’s a wishful Freudian slip – or even a cognitive slip. What’s on her mind? My friend Perry commented on this: “Does she even know what “blood libel” is? Blood libel would be, for example in this case, to say that she’s sacrificing Democrats and bathing in their blood to maintain her evil power.”

In contrast to Freud and his followers, cognitive psychologists claim that linguistic slips can represent a sequencing conflict in grammar production. From this perspective, slips may be due to cognitive underspecification that can take a variety of forms – inattention, incomplete sense data or insufficient knowledge. Secondly, they may be due to the existence of some locally appropriate response pattern that is strongly primed by its prior usage, recent activation or emotional change or by the situation calling conditions.

Parapraxis. A reaction to government control by grammar? Nah, I’m just playing with the idea in Glen Beck style. Schizoid style. Connection by emotion, connection by predefined association. Repetition. Repeat.

If I were to give Palin the benefit of the doubt, I’d say she might have meant to say “bloodguilty” but didn’t want to say “guilty.” Cain comes to mind – the stones calling out at the shedding of innocent blood. Murderers are bloodguilty, and also “whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). When I was a Jehovah’s Witness I was taught that leaders have a great spiritual responsibility, and if they lead others astray God will hold them responsible – bloodguilty. Perhaps that’s just their interpretation.

Proverbs 6:16-19
16 There are six things the LORD hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
17 haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
19 a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

It’s not ok to imply or to call for elimination of others, or to invoke a system of eliminationist ideology. If you do, expect to get called on it. Insulting language is simply uncivil, eliminationist discourse is hate speech and functions as incitement, invocation, call to what? Violence. Rabble-rousers can’t expect to be held immune from criticism, no matter how successful rage may be for their agendas. Yes, Ms. Palin, there *has* been a substantial increase in this kind of hatefulness and the incidents related to it, and you were right there egging it on and winking. No, Ms. Palin, we don’t want to go back to settling disputes with pistols. That’s the whole point.

Let there be no confusion: A criticism of eliminationist rhetoric (and imagery) is not some sort of infringement on the right to free speech. You are free to say whatever you want to say, but you are also subject to criticism for it. In this case, I hope that appeals to the better nature of Americans will cause shame, even guilt.

Eliminationism is the belief that one’s political opponents are “a cancer on the body politic that must be excised — either by separation from the public at large, through censorship or by outright extermination — in order to protect the purity of the nation”. The term was coined by American political scientist Daniel Goldhagen in his 1996 book Hitler’s Willing Executioners in which he posits that ordinary Germans not only knew about, but also supported, the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent “eliminationist antisemitism” in the German identity, which had developed in the preceding centuries. In his 2009 book Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity (English and German Edition), Goldhagen argues that eliminationism is the root cause of every mass murder perpetrated in the 20th and 21st centuries, including:

* War rape in Darfur
* Suicide attacks by Islamic terrorists
* Rwandan Genocide
* Ethnic cleansing during the Yugoslav Wars
* Cambodian Genocide
* Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
* Death marches from the Auschwitz concentration camp
* British concentration camps for the Mau Mau following their uprising in Kenya, and during the Boer Wars

American journalist David Neiwert (note: see The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right) argues that eliminationist rhetoric is becoming increasingly mainstream within the American right wing, fueled in large part by the extremist discourse found on conservative blogs and talk radio, which may provoke a resurgence of lone wolf terrorism.

The statements about it being the same on the left and the right are simply wrong, at least in this context. George Packer lays it out nicely in “Arguing Tucson” at The New Yorker:

But it won’t do to dig up stray comments by Obama, Allen Grayson, or any other Democrat who used metaphors of combat over the past few years, and then try to claim some balance of responsibility in the implied violence of current American politics. (Most of the Obama quotes that appear in the comments were lame attempts to reassure his base that he can get mad and fight back, i.e., signs that he’s practically incapable of personal aggression in politics.) In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous. .. At a minimum, human decency should have led Sarah Palin to express regret for the dog whistle she directed against Gabrielle Giffords, among others. Instead, in Palinland and across the right, the attitude has been: Never apologize. But this has been the right’s attitude throughout the Obama era, with considerable political success, and I don’t expect this tragedy to bring a change.

An example of this confusion can be seen in the projection of many on the far the right, who draw false equivalencies – either as a projection, or as a strategic flipping. Here’s one:

Martin Knight at the RedState blog
Sunday, January 9th at 6:45PM EST Are Liberal Journalists And Bloggers Trying To Have Sarah Palin Assassinated? In A Word, Yes.
By Their Own Standard, Liberals Are Deliberately Trying To Get Sarah Palin Killed (the initial link says “assasinated” – hover to see).

I would certainly hope that this is not what Michael Daly, Markos Moulitsas, Paul Krugman, Jane Fonda, etc. are hoping for deep down. But given their own presumably sincere belief that “reckless” political speech leads to violence, and given the unseemly speed with which they have recklessly decided to heap responsibility on Sarah Palin with no facts to back them up and many to count against them, I am forced to conclude that they are, at best, neutral, and at worst, desirous of Sarah Palin being subjected to serious (even fatal) bodily harm.

There is no call for violence against Sarah Palin, and the argument is specious. He doesn’t link to any articles by any of these people to substantiate or put into context the singular blame (direct cause and effect) accusation, but I would agree that reckless political speech is being criticized, and that this is a good moment to call out on this. There is some strong feeling that the environment created by paranoid and eliminationist ideology and rhetoric is certainly condusive to violence. Even in this specific instance, I think it’s fair to say that the right-wing fanatics have been egged on in their harassment and threats to Gifford and others by radio shockjocks, pseudo-Christian leaders, Fox operatives, candidates for office, and even sitting Congresspeople. That they rely on disinformation and emotional fear-mongering rather than facts and ideas and real arguments is reprehensible. The propaganda, the whisper campaigns, the gun talk and the gun appearances, the reframing of our nation in terms of a new war of independence (or succession), the victimization claims from dominionist and reconstructive “Christians” -all of these demonize our representative, elected government and rationalize bad behavior.

Right Wing Working the Refs Through Victimization After Tucson Shooting
By: David Dayen Tuesday January 11

This actually fits into the conservative worldview. They embrace victimization as fully as they embrace tax cuts. No matter the words of the political opponent, a conservative will take them to mean an affront, telling their followers that liberals “look down on you, presume they’re better than you, and think you shouldn’t have the rights that they have.” It’s a classic technique and it has held throughout this incident. Everyone’s just being terribly unfair to them, even those making utterly generic statements about coming together in a time of tragedy.

We have real problems, and we need the participation of reality-based people to help solve them. Evidently, the priority is to condemn those who point out hatred and bigotry, rather than addressing the reality of intensified hatred and bigotry. No-one is using eliminationist rhetoric against Sarah Palin (or if they are, tell me and I’ll be happy to criticize them for it too!). The people who are criticizing her and others don’t set up shooting events in a political arena, like this one by Gifford’s opponent in the last election:

Jesse Kelly, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to be bothered in the least by the Sarah Palin controversy earlier this year, when she released a list of targeted races in crosshairs, urging followers to “reload” and “aim” for Democrats. Critics said she was inciting violence. He seems to be embracing his fellow tea partier’s idea. Kelly’s campaign event website has a stern-looking photo of the former Marine in military garb holding his weapon. It includes the headline: “Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.” The event costs $50.

Right Wing Hopping Mad Over Culture of Violence They Have Wrought
By: David Dayen Tuesday January 11, 2011

Right now, the public isn’t ready to believe an argument that Jared Loughner was motivated by right-wing rhetoric. Fortunately, nobody has said that, because it’s the wrong claim to make. Nobody has claimed that crosshairs on a map or talk of “Second Amendment remedies” is specifically to blame (some on the right have blamed heavy metal music and a skull in his backyard, and that’s just as silly). The main claim is that the toxic stew of noxious rhetoric, particularly in Loughner’s home district and home state of Arizona, creates an environment that amps up a lunatic fringe. Loughner couldn’t help but trip over that, and indeed his writings do have a cockeyed resonance to some of the really far-right groups like Posse Comitatus and the Patriot movement. That doesn’t make those practitioners of angry rhetoric culpable, but it sure doesn’t mean what they’re doing helped, either.

But even if you throw all of that away – and mind you, I think Loughner bears more resemblance to a Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris and Cho Seung-Hui than anyone else – I don’t think that the trend on the right is particularly deniable. Consider that, in the wake of the shooting, the feds arrested someone threatening Sen. Michael Bennet, Rep. Danny Davis received an email over the weekend saying he was next, and a leader of the Minutemen responded to the Tucson shooting by writing “Too bad Traitor Raul Grijalva wasn’t with her! He won’t be missed!” All three of these politicians are Democrats.

When Clarence Dupnik gained national attention by spotlighting the role of violent rhetoric (“We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry”… “pretty soon we’re not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people willing to subject themselves to serve in public office”), he didn’t actually mention any political party or movement in his statement. The fact that conservatives moved swiftly to marginalize and demonize him and his words, that was a tell. They didn’t like what Dupnik said because they’re afraid people would get the idea that he’s right. And right-wing talk radio hosts, for whom bile and anger is the coin of the realm, they felt the need to rebut Dupnik right away:

What does it say about the paranoid, dangerously volatile environment built and stoked by the right, that gun sales went up immediately and substantially in Arizona? Oh, and it wasn’t only guns in general.

“Arizona gun dealers say that among the biggest sellers in the past few days is the Glock 19 made by privately held Glock GmbH, based in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria, the model used in the shootings.”

And what say you to the Joe Wilson guns inscribed with “You Lie“?

“People tend to poo-poo this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American people by people who make a living off doing that. That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.” ~ Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik

Some in Congress are proposing some baby steps, such as limiting the number of rounds in a single magazine for assault rifles – for this, vilification ensues. The NRA is activated. Sigh.

Turn Back, O Man, forswear thy foolish ways. Look at the history of the last year.
Go back, with fresh, open eyes.
It’s long past time to stop this.

Listen to our court jesters. Lately, it seems they have a better handle on things than the general population.

Be blessed and blessed be.

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – The Fox News Channel today attempted to bust what it called a “mainstream media myth” by reporting that there was no link between matches, gasoline and fire.

Jon Stewart’s take:

I do think it is important for us to watch our rhetoric. I do think it is a worthwhile goal not to conflate our political opponents with enemies. If for no other reason than to draw a better distinction between the manifestos of paranoid madmen and what passes for acceptable political and pundit speak. You know, it would really be nice if the ramblings of crazy people didn’t in anyway resemble how we actually talk to each other on TV.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Arizona Shootings Reaction
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook
Something good about Palin and the Tea Party Folks

Something good about Palin and the Tea Party Folks

I’m going to let all the things I could say about Palin’s speech pass today, and let FactCheck.org (and Media Matters and The Progress Report) point out lies and distortions, of which there were many. There was a whole bunch of snideness, and even more dishonesty. But… I’m on board in one way.

Why? Because there is one thing she said that gives me long-term hope.

She encouraged people to stand up and speak, and if some do, so will others. If there’s an energy to participate in the democratic process, maybe it will encourage more Americans to do the same. We’ve become timid and fearful and paranoid about our freedom and our duty as Americans.

Rather than parroting what some leader says, look up your own concerns and issues and the things that make a difference in your life. Really look. Really research. Really think.

And speak… and work… and think… and vote for your interests. And talk to your friends. And clear the air with realism, not paranoia.

Politics is messy – but democracy allows all to speak.

Update 2/8/10: FactCheck.org’s analysis: http://factcheck.org/2010/02/tea-party-fact-checking/

Aerial Hunting of Wolves

Aerial Hunting of Wolves

Sarah Palin enthusiastically defends the cruel practice of shooting wolves from the air.

Palin has proposed legislation – and even cash incentives – to encourage this practice. She offered aerial hunters a state payment of $150 for every wolf killed before it was defeated by the state superior court as an illegal use of bounty payments. Back in 2007, she had already approved spending $400,000 of state money to counter a citizens’ initiative at halting the killing of animals from the air. I’m guessing much larger expenditures of taxpayer funds have accrued since then.

Defenders of Wildlife has some pieces on this issue that you might have seen already, one including actress Ashley Judd.

Many hunters oppose the aerial kills as cruel and unfair. Interestingly, the stomach-churning film that is circulating on YouTube (it was produced by Defenders of Wildlife), in fact depicts government hunters shooting wolves with tranquilizer darts, in order to study them. “The reality is much more gruesome,” says Toppenberg. “They get hit with buckshot, it goes right through and their blood splatters all over the snow.” The hunts often take out alpha males, leaving younger animals that don’t know where to make dens or find ungulates at certain times of the year. “Then you have them going into rural villages and eating dogs,” Toppenberg said. “You’re creating wolf problems rather than solving them.”

There are responsible, ethical, and scientific practices of wildlife management. Sadly, Palin and others have no interest in this. There’s not even an acknowledgment that federal law bans airborne hunting. They don’t even realize that much of a wolves diet depends on scavenging, not hunting. Their methods are not only barbaric, but they are also ineffective – even for the tourism they wish to promote.

Any argument about providing food for Alaskans is ridiculously deceitful. If it’s about putting food on the table, then how are these questions from Eye on Palin to be answered?

  • Why are sport hunter groups the biggest advocates of aerial hunting as opposed to advocates for the poor or hungry?
  • Why does the Palin administration allow out of state hunters to hunt and directly compete with rural hunters for supposed limited resources in most of the areas where aerial hunting is done?
  • Why does Palin oppose what is called “rural preference” which would give true rural subsistence hunters priority access over sport hunters to the areas where aerial hunting is conducted?
  • Why did she file an appeal in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to block the Cheesh-na Tribal Council from expanding their subsistence hunting in key areas?

This has much more to do with Palin’s political ties, and with their interest in entertainment, than with even the questionable wildlife management theory that has been proposed.

By allowing sport hunters to hunt predators from the air, the state wildlife agency aims to boost the numbers of other game animals such as moose and caribou so that these animals may in turn be killed by sport hunters. Alaskans have twice stopped this circumvention and banned the cruel and unfair practice of shooting wolves from aircraft and twice the legislature has ignored the will of its citizens and overturned the law. Animal advocates, environmentalists and hunters agree. Shooting animals from the air or chasing them to the point of exhaustion and then shooting them violates all standards of fair chase hunting. It is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Last year, 172 scientists signed a letter to Palin, expressing concern about the lack of science behind the state’s wolf-killing operation. According to the scientists, state officials set population objectives for moose and caribou based on “unattainable, unsustainable historically high populations.” As a result, the “inadequately designed predator control programs” threatened the long-term health of both the ungulate and wolf populations. The scientists concluded with a plea to Palin to consider the conservation of wolves and bears “on an equal basis with the goal of producing more ungulates for hunters.”

Palin’s response was to introduce legislation that would further divorce the predator-control program from science by transferring over the program from the state Department of Fish and Game to Alaska’s Board of Game, “whose members are appointed by, well, Palin.”

It was partly because of the issue of the aerial hunting of wolves that the Humane Society Legislative Fund endorsed a president for the first time in their history: Barack Obama.

My dear amazing friend Amanda is livid about all of this. Take a look:

Take action!

Tell Congress to support the Protect America’s Wildlife (PAW) Act, legislation to close a federal loophole and curb Alaska’s brutal aerial hunting program — and prevent programs like it from spreading to places like the Greater Yellowstone region.

While you’re there, find out how your Senators and Representative have voted on conservation issues this year.

And, as always, you can – you can – write to your newspaper, make a video, tell your friends, and contact your congressional representatives.

Revamped for the Election

Revamped for the Election

Too bad I couldn’t find the custom canines, but I think the fangs are clearly implied.

I am so very happy that I can celebrate such things. Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups who can’t find the spirit in Hallowe’en are really missing out.

As the photos de-monstrate, I embraced my shadow and it was as thrilling and as unnerving as always. Found a few more worthy bits to reposition, save and integrate. Such exploration is palpably good for the soul (despite appearances).

I call attention to the construction of the word “demonstrate” with a hyphen. Why?

Latin dēmōnstrāre, dēmōnstrāt- : dē-, completely; see de– + mōnstrāre, to show (from mōnstrum, divine portent, from monēre, to warn).

To divinely portend, to call out a warning, to make manifest or apparent, display, evidence, evince, exhibit, manifest, proclaim, reveal, show, authenticate, bear out, confirm, corroborate, endorse, establish, evidence, prove, substantiate, validate, verify.

To demonstrate is thus also to un-conceal, to dis-cover.

Truth as endorsed warning and as authentic manifestation of such warning AS truth – but also holding a warning about that very act. A complete showing that warns about itself, like an Angel of Annunciation. But do not fear.

Oh, it’s a lovely emblematic truthing, but with a warning about that truth, too. The truth will set you free, but it’s not always easy.

The word “demonstrate” also suggests something to the ear – “demon-straight.”

Damned straight! Straight to hell! It shows what we most demonize, but what we demonize is also sacred to us because there is an attraction at the heart of the repulsion. It’s inherently unstable with regard to anything but its power.

Such signage can be archetypal and playful identifications can de-“monster” – precisely by letting the demon-monster live for a little while, so that one can pick up some of the good monster traits while letting go of elements that have been recognized (but no longer denied or forgotten).

I am not free of the vampire. Where is that body? Where is that blood? Gimme communion. Gimme carnality and spirit. Gimme unrepressed gratification of my desires. I would love to swoon. I would love to take a walk on the dark side. Of course, I pass out at the sight of blood, but I do love vampire novels. It’s all a dream, and to pick out the parts that really can be integrated into me, into my life, into my own sense of ethics and my own spiritual journey, is always enlightening. It reminds me a lot of the way I used to collect rocks.

I think McCain and some of the Republican Party are vampires, and that is what I despise about them. I do love to despise their bloodthirstiness, their preying upon the sub-millionaires among us, their cynical manipulations of the public, their disregard of what it takes for people and countries to thrive. And it’s true – so true – that they are vampires in these ways.

But Barack Obama is right, I think, not to manifest and feed that set of truths because it can’t be taken playfully or dissipated with court-jester humor that speaks truth. It’s too real, and the consequences are too important. The alternative is to recognize, but to lead with an different vision, one that refuses to demonize others. We are all Americans, after all, and a President should think of just as many of the people as he or she can.

I think it is wise to have elections a few days after Hallowe’en, and it is especially important this year. It works the same way as a picture of Cheney as the Evil Emperor with George W as Darth Vader; the fear that is inspired by the recognition of a deep truth in it is – at the same time – dissipated through its very manifestation. They really ARE those characters, and thank goodness they really aren’t.

I have been fearing that what (at least a subset of) the Republicans are trying to catalyze will work, and that hatred and violence will escalate. I am hoping that projections of evil otherness must at some point become so obvious, so de-monstrable even to the far-right wing, that they will just fall down and implode. It looks a little better now for the latter scenario than it did even a week ago.

After such playful shadow-work as seems inherent in the celebrations and rituals of Hallowe’en, I am less angry, and much more hopeful.

Disturbing Lies, Hate, Incitement to Violence

Disturbing Lies, Hate, Incitement to Violence

I’ve been profoundly disturbed by seeing certain kinds of beliefs and accusations that I’m observing – not only from under-informed folk at rallies, but even from so-called christian blogs and in emails from people who should really know better.

We have a deep need to feel better about ourselves as a nation, but lying to ourselves isn’t the way to do it, and neither is hate or fear or scapegoating or any of those other strategies that have been used here and elsewhere to such destructive effect. Smears, lies, hatred and incitement to violence do not reflect well on anyone. Can we agree on that?

My prayers today are for the ones who consider themselves christians, but are participating in this kind of thing. I sincerely hope that you will be able to receive the guidance that you seem to need, and can re-attune to the deepest message and source of your faith from where you are right now.

Regardless of who you decide deserves your vote, it’s time to get back on speaking terms with the best within you, not the worst.

The state of this country right now can be (at least partially) attributed to the successful demonization of anything and anyone remotely left-wing, liberal, progressive – even centrist Democrat – by the increasingly off-track right wing and its public propagandists. I have been resisting the idea that any significant number of Americans could be taken in by these machinations, but I’ve been thrown off by some of the stuff that I am seeing today. I’m sure you’ve seen some of it, too.

It is not only unseemly and depressing that some Americans can be so easily propelled by the worst that is within them, but it also brings an ethical responsibility for the results. Be careful of what you bring on, Palin and McCain (and all of the surrogate voices).

All of this talk about Barack Obama being an Arab or a Muslim or a terrorist (and don’t all those words start to kind of blend together?) really bothers me on a number of levels.

First, it reveals our national prejudices in a particularly nasty way. Does it not occur to you that there are American Arabs and Muslims? What’s wrong with you?

You can’t conflate these things. All Arabs aren’t bad. All Muslims aren’t bad. Just as all Christians aren’t bad. Think on that. Remember the Crusades, and the Inquisitions, and the way some contemporary Christians want to turn this nation into a kind of theocratic dictatorship that completely misses Jesus’ call and message. The militant and controlling delusions of the super-authoritarian fringes among ALL of the “people of the book” is very troubling.

And then, there’s just the plain facts that Obama is not an Arab. He’s not a Muslim. He’s not a terrorist.

He’s not anti-American.
He’s not a traitor.
He’s not a mole.

I cannot believe I’m seeing this kind of thing.

Barack Obama is not a socialist, either. He’s a capitalist – just not the kind of capitalist that will exploit and plunder our economy or our environment because of rampant corruption and greed. He’s not the kind of capitalist that will appoint former industry lobbyists as directors of the organizations meant to oversee those industries. He’s not going to put the interests of the top 5 percent over the interests of the 95 percent, but he’s not talking a revolution of the masses either. Obama is actually rather centrist, fair, practical and level-headed. His plans call for a strengthening of the middle-class, the backbone of our nation. If the middle-class falls, multinationals will simply take their business elsewhere.

Now, Barack Obama isn’t a messiah either, and those who either over-idealize him or criticize him (on the basis that some people are pretty desperate for such hope as he could represent) exaggerate his importance. However, I think he could do some real good for Americans, for America, and also for world stability. He does make me feel hopeful that we might be able to start to undo some of the terrible damage that has been done.

People have used the methods of terrorism for a long time. Wake up! If you want to fight terrorism, don’t be terrified and manipulated!

Do you really think it’s a coincidence that our friends and allies – after dealing with Bush for 8 years – would overwhelmingly prefer to see Obama elected than McCain? Are they all evil then? Have we become that insular and self-centered and frightened that we can’t take a good hard look at what has happened to our status among the rest of the world’s population? They think the populace here must be stupid and crazy, living in a dream world.

I think that Barack Obama and Joe Biden have a much better chance of helping us to navigate through the next few years than do John McCain and Sarah Palin. I am very disappointed in how McCain has changed, and I’ll be nice and not give you my list of Palin criticisms today.

We really are in a huge mess on a number of different fronts – both internally and externally – and we need the best we can get. My vote is for Barack Obama. As we find out more and more about what the Bush/Cheney administration has really cost us – and I fear we’ve not even seen the half of that yet – we need someone like him.

Brief Notes on Politics

Brief Notes on Politics

There is much to say, but I’m not in the mood.

REMARKS BY SUSAN EISENHOWER AT THE 2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION – INVESCO FIELD AT MILE HIGH, DENVER, COLORADO AUGUST 28, 2008

I stand before you tonight not as a Republican or a Democrat, but as an American. The Eisenhowers came to this great country in the 18th century, settling first amid the hills of Pennsylvania and later on the plains of Kansas. Like many of your ancestors, they built our nation and served it in times of national crisis and war.

I grew up in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where my parents and grandparents, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, chose to live after Ike’s retirement as Supreme Commander, Europe, and as President of the United States. It was also in Gettysburg where Abraham Lincoln gave his historic address.

On the killing fields of Pickett’s Charge our country came of age and assured our nation would survive as one.

Yet today the divisions in our country are deep and wide. Our cohesiveness as a nation is strained by multiple crises in finance and credit; energy and health care.

At the same time, we have knowingly saddled our children and grandchildren with a staggering debt. This is a moral failing – not just a financial one.

Overseas, our credibility is at an all time low. We must restore our international leadership position and the leverage that goes with it.

But rather than focus on the critical strategic issues, our national discourse has turned into a petty squabble.

Too many people in power have failed us. Belligerence has become a substitute for strength; stubbornness a substitute for leadership; and impulsive action has replaced measured and thoughtful response.

Once during the Eisenhower administration, Ike was under fire from his critics for moving too slowly in responding to political pressure. After a visit to the Oval Office by Robert Frost, the famous American poet sent the president a note of support. “The strong,” he wrote, “are saying nothing until they see.”

I believe that Barack Obama has the energy, but more importantly, the temperament, to run this country and provide the leadership we need. He knows that we can either advance on the distant hills of hope– or retreat to the garrisons of fear. He can mobilize and inspire all of us to show up for duty. Discipline will be required; as will compromise, flexibility and quiet strength.

The task before our next President will be overwhelming. But no undertaking can be more critical than bringing about a sense of national unity and purpose, built on mutual respect and bi-partisanship.

Unless we squarely face our challenges, as Americans—together– we risk losing the priceless heritage bestowed on us by the sweat and the sacrifice of our forbearers. If we do not pull together, we could lose the America that has been an inspiration to the world.

On December 1, 1862, in his Annual Message to Congress, Abraham Lincoln immortalized this thought when he said: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

Let us respond this November to President Lincoln’s challenge. Let us restore the hope, and bring the change, that our nation so desperately needs.

Yes we can!