On Obama and the Fears We Dare Not Name, Revisited

Shortly after Barack Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses, I wrote a piece called, “On Obama and Fears We Dare Not Name.”

It’s time we named those fears, because something dark is afoot. Bev Conover, editor and publisher of Online Journal nailed it in a post that found my Inbox Oct. 10.

“Never before in the history of US presidential campaigns has a candidate incited violence against an opponent until Sarah Palin came along, passionately telling rallies, in that screechy voice of hers, that Barack Obama ‘pals around with terrorists’ and ‘I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America,’ causing someone in the Clearwater, Florida, crowd to yell out, ‘Kill him!’”

The fact that several men caught driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver were intent on doing just that should’ve served to remind all—especially those in law enforcement—of the importance of minimal civility when it comes to politics.

Yet at a rally in Estero, FL, Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott showed up in full uniform, took the podium and warmed the crowd for Palin by sarcastically barking ‘Barack Hussein Obama!’ wrote Conover. “Palin poured on more fuel Tuesday in Jacksonville, telling lies to a pumped up crowd bearing ‘No communists!’ and ‘Palin’s Pitbulls’ signs, ‘Our opponent voted to cut off funding for our troops… And he said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, air-raiding villages and killing civilians. I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women are doing….’

“A man in that crowd angrily shouted, ‘Treason!’”

Yet here’s Obama’s full quote: “We’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”

How’s that different from this sentiment uttered by McCain some years ago?

“The most obscene chapter in recent American history is the conduct of the Kosovo conflict when the president of the United States… refused to have air power used effectively because… he had them flying at 15,000 feet where they killed innocent civilians because they were dropping bombs from such high altitude.” (www.ThinkProgress.com)

Now consider the charge that Obama “pals around with terrorists.”

In the words of Robert Kennedy, Jr., posted Oct. 10 at www.huffingtonpost.com, Palin herself has been known to “pal around with a man–her husband, actually–who only recently terminated his seven-year membership in the Alaskan Independence Party.

“AIP’s creation was inspired by the rabidly violent anti-Americanism of its founding father Joe Vogler,” Kennedy wrote. “‘I’m an Alaskan, not an American,’ reads a favorite Vogler quote on AIP’s current website, ‘I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions….’

“Vogler was murdered in 1993 during an illegal sale of plastic explosives…. The prior year, he had renounced his allegiance to the United States explaining that, ‘The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government.’ He cursed the stars and stripes, promising, ‘I won’t be buried under their damned flag… Palin has never denounced Vogler…”

Kennedy goes on to document how Palin herself attended AIP’s 2000 Convention, “agreed to give a keynote address at the AIP’s 2006 convention and recorded a video greeting for this year’s 2008 convention.”

But “paling around with terrorists” is not confined to the bottom of the ticket.

John K. Wilson documented in an article at Huffington Post, Oct. 9, how McCain personally donated $400 to Contras, a group in Central America who engaged in rape, mutilation, bombings, assassinations and more, and how McCain voted to fund Iranian terrorists and paled around with acknowledged criminals and enablers such as Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy.

Some call such men freedom fighters, “But what about McCain’s associations with former Sixties radicals?” asks Marc Cooper in an Oct. 5 article at Huffington Post. “Indeed, until just a few years ago, McCain openly boasted not only about his passing friendship but also his deep collaboration with one of the most prominent of Vietnam-era student radicals, David Ifshin… who denounced America on Radio Hanoi (my italics) as McCain sat locked up as a POW.”

This story of friendship trumping culture wars could be regarded as a story of redemption, but if McCain and Palin have proven anything, it’s that any story can be twisted into a damning indictment to incite spectators to get angry, even to the point of championing murder.

So far, only one candidate has gone that far. As Conover wrote, “It’s bad enough that right-wing talk show hosts call for people’s deaths–and we saw how that played out when Jim D. Adkisson shot up the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, killing two and wounding five, because he hates liberals… but for a vice presidential candidate to hurl verbal bombs that could lead to a man’s death is not just over the top… it’s criminal.”

If McCain has any integrity left, he should tell Palin to tone down the rhetoric or go back to Alaska. I don’t see that happening. Rather, I see things getting more incendiary as the election draws near.

As I wrote last winter, I truly hope such fear is a function of my age and false wisdom grounded in the often dark times that shaped me. I couldn’t bring myself then to speak the horror that’s counterpoint to a song Obama inspires in the heart of many Americans, and I suspect others have been slow to invoke it as well.

But now it’s time to say it aloud because, should Obama come to harm, America could well explode into such violence that it destroys what’s left of our republic and our Constitution. Our leaders had best do everything possible to see that doesn’t happen lest we reap the whirlwind.