And so the threats begin to go beyond nasty rhetoric and shouted obscenities.
Today, the Obama campaign office in South Philadelphia was the target of a mailed threat that also contained a white powder. It was found by a volunteer opening the mail and resulted in a full scale hazmat and police response. The office was evacuated and containment and testing instituted to find out what the substance was.
Fortunately, the powder turned out to be sugar and all staff and volunteers are fine. Since the letter was actually sent through the mail, the matter is now a federal investigation, as it rightly should be.
This is a highly disturbing, though hardly unexpected, escalation in the current nastiness coming from radical fringe of the Republican party, only three days after Barack was in Philly. It looks like the "black helicopter" devotees are coming out of the woodwork and desperation is driving them to more extreme action.
The real question now is: how much more? Will the next delivery be a package instead, with more than a couple of spoons of sugar in it? It's the logical effect of the hatred that's been whipped up by the McCain/Palin campaign, including right here in Pennsylvania this very day. Hatred breeds this sort of extremism as surely as carrion breeds flies.
The most alarming thing about this is that it points out a problem we tend to overlook in our worry about Obama's personal safety: it's not just him at risk from this. It's a simple matter of the availability of targets and the psychology of anyone who could be moved to such extremism. Barack simply isn't easy to get at if you intend him harm, the Secret Service has long since seen to that (because you better believe none of them wants to be the agent who "lost" him.) But campaign offices are easily approached, open to strangers, as they must be to do what they need to do. That makes them vulnerable to nuts who want to do what terrorists do: dissuade people from the actions they don't like by violent acts. It's all too easy to see the thought process; if they can't stop Obama himself, they'll stop his supporters.
I'm not writing this to scare anyone away from working for the campaign, quite the opposite. This should give us even more resolve to not be intimidated, to give these right-wing radicals the worst possible outcome they could imagine: President Obama.
UPDATE:
Here's the link to the local FauxNews station's story. They were first up with this, but that may only be because they run the news an hour earlier than anyone else.
UPDATE II:
Holy Mackeral! Rec list! Thanks all, I just hope that we can get through these last weeks without anyone getting hurt. Be strong, keep up the fight, and we will prevail over fear and ignorance.
Yes We Can!
UPDATE III:
As requested, here's the link to Digg it.