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When I saw the yowling mob of rabid Rs whipped to a frenzy by the crescendo of McCain's acceptance speech in St. Paul, with a concluding quote like this:
Stand up! stand up! stand up and fight! Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans, and we never give up! We never quit! We never hide from history. We make history!!!!
delivered with a truly bloodthirsty passion to a crowd eager for blood -- not having seen enough of it spilled from cracked heads outside the convention hall ("1968" was not quite re-created...) -- it was clear the McCain campaign was likely to, intending to descend into little more than attack and burn Warrior Mode.
The candidate and his running mate are now whipping their fans into greater and greater frenzies with stronger and stronger appeals to bigotry and contempt, and with barely concealed -- or not concealed at all -- urgings toward racism and violence.
Oh fine.
As others have pointed out, this isn't much different from the calls to violence and frenzies against their enemies that so characterized Fascist and Nazi parties in Europe before they seized or claimed or were elected to power.
Who know just how rabid the R-frenzy is going to become. They are working themselves up (they say) for the coming debate between McCain and Obama, at which they expect Obama to be Destroyed by the Wrathful Righteousness of Brave St. John. Be that as it may, those who are pointing out how dangerous by its very nature all this hysteria is do well to expose it all.
It is The Ugly.
The problem for us -- The American People -- is that so few know what to do about it.
