Barring another stolen election (ironic given the white noise being made about acorn), Barack Obama is heading towards a decisive victory in November.  The stakes are as high as the passion and personal investment being poured into both sides of this campaign.

While there has been much focus on both candidate’s pledges to fight foreign terrorism, right-wing domestic terrorism has remained off the campaign radar.  This is deeply problematic given the anticipated likelihood of an increase in anti-liberal, anti-gay, anti-women and anti-minority violence come November 5th.

The source of that violence comes from the level of legitimacy we afford the ignorant and hateful dehuminization of target groups.  The Republican party has straight up embraced the crazier elements in their ranks for fear of losing their last vital reserves of faithful supporters.  Faithful being an apt word to describe the sheer lack of knowledge or reason informing their tenous grasp of reality.

The following video comes by way of Majikthise and Dana Blankenhorn:

I think its safe to say this is not a group of voters the Obama campaign will win over.  It is however a group of people who should not be left to their insane notion that their ideas are even valid.  Leaving these views alone to fester leads to closed door decisions like the one to install a nativist on the Prince William County, Virginia Board of County Supervisors (Hatewatch).

The outpouring of hate is not hard to understand given the games the McCain campaign is playing (The Guardian):

The Republicans have played on those fears and prejudices extremely well over the past week or so, but with the escalating hatred and disturbing language that has been espoused by some of their supporters at recent Republican rallies it seems that even McCain – forced this weekend to backtrack and start telling people what a “decent, family man” Obama is – now realizes that they may have gone a step too far.

At the most recent rallies, Republican supporters have cried out “kill him!”, “bomb Obama!” and “terrorist” in reference to Obama. Shouts of “treason” and other racial epithets have also been hurled.

I don’t think there is any solid indication McCain’s campaign realizes they’ve gone to far.  I think they’ve simply locked up a section of the vote at the cost of future political stability, a price they are all too willing to pay.  So much so their slogan “Country First” takes on a whole new meaning.

What we need to do is smash the lies and reason-like-substitutes being pushed around as firmly as we can.  This level of willful ignorance and anger will only be exacerbated by a Democratic win.

Posted under Politics