Richard Baraniuk: Open-source Learning
Black Cab Sessions: Brian Wilson
Playing With Fire
Georgia congressman and Civil Rights leader John Lewis, reacting to the increasingly incendiary atmosphere at McCain-Palin campaign rallies, condemned the GOP for using tactics that are creating a mood not unlike the one created by George Wallace, the former segregationist governor and presidential candidate. Lewis accused the Republicans of “sowing the seeds of hatred and division,” and warned the McCain campaign that they are “playing with fire:”
Huffington Post | Nicholas Graham | October 11, 2008
He’s right. The Huffington Post has a great collection of stories and videos on the pattern of callousness and hints of violence. I think many of us have had this question in the back of our mind since Obama launched his campaign: when will the more overt racist attacks start, and what form will they take? Now we seem to have our answer. In an early stumble, Obama seemed to see this coming, of course.
In many ways the Midwest, where I live, is ideal; no long commutes or pollution, nice people. The Midwest is also a culture of white racial enclaves, small towns and regions that have maintained monoculturalism against all odds. It can be a very harsh environment for young working class families. Many small towns have long ago emptied out, ghost towns created by corporate, large scale farming and globalization; it’s not just apple pie and ice cream, it’s crank and militias.
This seems to be the natural environment for the anger and resentment that Palin taps into at her rallies, and it’s not surprising that it has taken on this flavor of a strange xenophobic racism. The foreigner, the Arab, and the urban, sophisticated black are all wrapped up into this neat, creepy fear-mongering package. The real American terrorists, of course, were the lynch mobs that Palin toys with so dangerously.
Republican (Empty) Rhetoric
In recent elections, the Republican hate word has been “liberal,” or “Massachusetts,” or “Gore.” In this election, it has increasingly been “words.” Barack Obama has been denounced again and again as a privileged wordsmith, a man of mere words who has “authored” two books (to use Sarah Palin’s verb), and done little else. The leathery extremist Phyllis Schlafly had this to say, at the Republican Convention, about Palin: “I like her because she’s a woman who’s worked with her hands, which Barack Obama never did, he was just an élitist who worked with words.” The fresher-faced extremist Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator, called Obama “just a person of words,” adding, “Words are everything to him.”
by James Wood, New Yorker, October 13, 2008
We all have this tendancy to say, “politicians are politicians,” which means, roughly, that politicians as a class will generally say anything if they think that it will get them elected. We like to think, too, that this is a non-partisan complaint pointed at Democrats as much as at Republicans. To some extent, that is true, but I think this election offers a startling contrast.
It’s true that both sides are getting ugly, but the McCain side has begun to draw on a deep well of the ugliest sorts of political rhetoric, actually stooping to accusing Obama of associating with terrorists, if not being one himself. McCain’s crowds are yelling bloody murder, literally, and the candidate is either unaware, or unwilling to challenge them.
I think Wood might have a good explanation for the deeper sources of the McCain campaign’s slide into emotionally charged, even violent rhetoric and xenophobia. (They’ve starting using Obama’s middle name at rallies again, as if to suggest that he is “foreign,” or alien in some way.) For one thing, as I heard a Pundit say the other night, it’s an old political adage: if you don’t have ideas, pick a fight.
Even more profoundly, though, McCain has had to attack the very idea of logic, of words and reasoning and debate, since the start of his national campaign. If people think their way to the election, rather react, he’s lost. That means his rhetoric has to be as dramatically Orwellian as any I have every seen, and as utterly empty. It’s all fists in the air and meaningless chants: drill baby drill!