At Amazon.com, users add tags terrorist, socialist, and liar to a listing for a Barack Obama Halloween mask.
In the London London Daily Telegraph, Republican insiders warn of a coming "civil war" within the party and call for a Stalin-esque purge of moderate voices.
And in a Washington Post article headlined "Gun sales thriving in uncertain times," we read that many expect "large scale civil unrest" if Barack Obama is elected.
How afraid should we be?
More after the fold....
While Springoff the Fifth often says I'm a pessimist because I don't forecast a quick or easy end to our economic woes, I think even she would concede that I'm not a fearmonger. I think living in fear is both bad practice and bad policy. Psychologists tell us - as if we needed them to - that living in fear is bad for our health. It's also bad for our decision making. Decisions made in fear are often more irrational, even when made by people who are usually very rational thinkers. (The link critiques the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dennis v. United States, a widely-criticized 1951 'Red Scare' case.) When we are afraid we tend to overweight risk and underweight opportunity: we focus too much on what could go wrong, and overlook what could go right. So I am not a "running around with her hair on fire" kind of woman. Still, I do tend to flea-hop around all sorts of possibilities, however unlikely they might seem, and ponder them if only briefly.
So in light of the GOP's campaign of terror against Barack Obama - and it is difficult to deny they have waged one - and the growing rage within the GOP as the "permanent majority" of 2005 seems poised to plunge into mere regional fringe status in 2008, and now a spike in gun sales, I ask:
How afraid should we be?
In my Saturday diary I explored how civic values - what we think America ought to be and who we think America ought to work for - have much more influence on our political views than do mere historical facts. One need not be "uneducated" to long for a return to an "original" America, one that worked for white males and the rest of us got the leftovers. One need not be ignorant of history to hope for a return to that vision of America. One need only be white, male, and exclusively self-interested. It is entirely possible for a voter to be fully aware of the civil rights movement, its causes and course, and wish it had not happened. Indeed, the GOP's core message since 1968 has been precisely about criticizing the civil rights movement and trying to roll back gains made by women and non-whites, returning to an "original intent" America: one that works for white males and the rest of us get the leftovers.
"Real" Republicans like Jim Nuzzo, in the Telegraph article, suggest that support for Sarah Palin will be the party's new litmus test. That is, they want a party that rejects intellectualism, theory, even policy, and focuses on "small town" (translation: white) values. They believe there is a "silent majority" of disaffected whites who are longing for the GOP to return to its hardest of hard core roots: racism and white power.
Are they willing to take to the streets with guns, if they cannot win at the ballot box? Are we facing the imminent threat of disaffected, gun-wielding whites storming the White House, or Congress, or local offices, a belated launch of Timothy McVeigh's campaign to "recapture America for real Americans?"
I don't think so.
Consider today's New York Times article that explores the values and intentions of rural Pennsylvania voters. Many are at least somewhat racist, and unsure about electing a black man. And yet many of those same voters say they will vote for Barack Obama, because they believe Obama is better able to lead us in a perilous economy. They are, as some have told canvassers in a most ironic turn of phrase, "voting for the nigger."
And Barack Obama is likely to have a substantial mandate. Nate Silver projects Obama to win 350 electoral votes, with a nearly 50% likelihood of a 375-electoral vote landslide. Ought we to fear that will trigger a widespread, violent uprising that could grow into "civil war" proportions, when even people who admit to racist views say they will vote for Obama?
Yes, this has been a tough and bitter election campaign. It has been, by far and away, the most bitter in my lifetime. The embers of bigotry and xenophobia have been stoked as rarely before. The GOP is indeed running a campaign of terror.
But we've been terror-ed out. As winterbanyan eloquently diaried yesterday, we are a nation crying out for calm. We saw that calm in Barack Obama - sharply contrasted with the anger and panic of McCain - as the economic downturn burst into the headlines in the week before the first debate. We watched Obama be "a steady hand on the tiller," while McCain ran around the deck of the ship of state, arms flailing, telling us he would somehow transform himself into "a steady hand on the tiller." Ultimately, I think, we as a nation are choosing calm in this election.
So how afraid should we be? How many simultaneous dots should we try to connect, infering causality and conspiracy from coincicence?
Not at all. We Americans may be distracted at times, but we're not stupid. We know what we need, and we know what we don't need. And what we don't need is an armed revolution. That won't fix our economy, get us out of two quagmirous wars, help us get health care, make sure our kids can stay in college, improve our schools, or restore our standing in the world community.
And I think even the wingnuts know it.