“Um...yeah, Master? About that 'Your wish is my command' crap?' Um...Nope!”
It's the age-old parable. Man creates uncontrollable monster. Man uses uncontrollable monster for his own selfish gain. Uncontrollable monster is of course, un-controllable and does heinous things. Man tries to bring uncontrollable monster to heel. Uncontrollable monster says “Fuck that!” and it all goes downhill from there. From the legend of Frankenstein, to tales of lamp and bottle-chucking genies going for theirs, to the attempted “taming” of King Kong and Disney's in-over-his-head Sorcerer's Apprentice it's a well-worn story where ego-fueled “masters” grossly underestimate the destructive forces they unleash when they tamper with that which no man can truly harness.
We spoke on the original “Three M's” from last week—“McCain, The Mattresses, and Menace”, his campaign's harsh and incendiary words. And thanks to John McCain's desperate, reckless political gambit, we find ourselves reminded of three other “M's”, linked through tales we all know, and as noted above, once released, nigh impossible to re-contain—Magic, Monsters, and Murderous Rage.
The play backfired. Badly for him. Shakily mounting the Ayers stalking horse himself like some city-poser playing cowboy-tough, and with Sarah Palin doing the vile scut work of trawling the depths of wingnut fear-mongering and regurgitating that crap with such dippy glee that folks wondered if she was medicated...it all seems to have come apart. He has stoked his crowds—his racist, hate-filled republican base crowds to such a high temperature of intolerance that the news media felt that ugly heat a mile away and reported on it, and ol' Johnny boy himself took some third degree burns to whatever prestige remained attached to him.
He may have also helped to crispy-critter his party's brand with this reach into the realm of ugly. And his in-party co-horts are pissed.
Senior members of the Republican party are in open mutiny against John McCain's presidential campaign, after a disastrous period which has seen Barack Obama solidify his lead in the opinion polls.
And as disputes raged within the McCain camp yesterday, Democrats took another symbolic step towards healing the party after their bitter primary battles, as Bill and Hillary Clinton made their first joint appearance in support of Mr Obama.
From inside and outside his inner circle, Mr McCain is being told to settle on a coherent economic message and to tone down attacks on his rival which have sometimes whipped up a mob-like atmosphere at Republican rallies.
Two former rivals for the party nomination, Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson, went on the record over the weekend about the disarray in the Republican camp. And a string of other senior party figures said Mr McCain's erratic performance risks taking the party down to heavy losses not just in the presidential race but also in contests for Congressional seats. Mr Thompson, a former governor of the swing state of Wisconsin, said he thought Mr McCain, on his present trajectory, would lose the state, and he told a New York Times reporter he was not happy with the campaign. “I don't know who is,” he added.
GOP'ers love to trot out the old “11th Commandment” of Ronald Reagan: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.”, as evidence of their party unity. Evidently there was a little-discussed “Commandment 11A” scrawled at the bottom of Saint Ronnie's jellybean jar that only a few read back then, but many seem to know now. Said addendum reads...“unless the idiot's gonna blow our shit sky high.”
And Johnny's fucking with dynamite, kids.
It was evident he was rallying the nutbar base of his party as independents have begun to tune him and his cave-bright co-hort the hell on out. A desperate ploy, this going all native, you see. But this
Of course, he didn't realize that until the external poll numbers began fleeing away from him, and didn't even hint at changing up until the internal numbers clearly (although they'll NEVER admit to it) imploded. The sane among us saw those crazies at his rallies—the “He's a terrorist!”, “Bomb him!”, “Kill him” crowd and didn't have to make a Bob Beamon leap to see the dangerous place that anger was going. Those lunatics are that hard-nut core who will back the worst, most retrograde shit, and cannot stand the very idea of being either called out on their obvious biases or being out of impactful power. Both of those things trigger a pathological response in these “people”—a misplaced, transferred play at victimhood. The same kind of victimhood” seen in D.W. Griffiths' “Birth Of A Nation”, where beleagured Whites were forced—forced I tell you!—to take up arms, sheets, coned hoods and blazing crosses against the Black menace that post-emancipation “threatened” the country.
The unnervingly bitter folks in these videos speak volumes.
Yes, I said “bitter”. What turned these moments into a pro-Obama springboard was their clear validation of a painful early Obama campaign narrative come a' cropper...namely that “bitterness” he spoke of during the primary season. It manifests itself in these brusque moments and the countless others chronicled since John McCain decided to beat the whackdoodle beehive with a tree limb and think he could tell the bees that swarmed out what to sting and when. It plays to Obama's not only having been right, but also sagely prescient about how these folks will “go to ground” when the shit hits the fan.
And for them it is clear, a Black person at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and not working in the kltchen is the shit hitting the fan.
McCain and Palin knew exactly what they were doing when they played these cards with the crazies across from them at the table. They just didn't figure on everybody else instead of following these sad lunatics, standing back and disassociating themselves from the bigoted batshittery. And in isolating those morally sick people with the candidates who amped them up, and then puiblicizing the stupidity of their words, McCain's gamble wound up crapping out. “Regular” folks didn't want to be lumped in with “those” vicious goons who sounded like the loudmouth sidewalk bystanders from old newsreeels screaming invective at civil rights marchers.
Shame is a helluva thing. When the polls worsened for McCain after this ill-thought-out / ill-timed tack, the situation in fact, blew up so badly that McCain had to beat his “monster” back with a flaming torch alá Frankenstein's Monster by talking his most insane “supporters” down from dementia as noted above. The stumped “No?” from the crazed anti-Arab woman is priceless. It's as if she's saying “But that's what I got from what you were saying, John...”
McCain even had to issue a press release disavowing the wild rhetoric he sired, and worst of all for him—for once he had to publicly acknowledge Senator Obama as a human being with feelings in trying to clean up after his 'followers' hateful verbal diarrhea.
And then, it put wingnuttia's most prominent shills on the defensive as well. When you have the likes of the rope-belted perfesser, Glenn “Instahack” Reynolds and Michelle “Diss The Cheerleader And You Save The World” Malkin running scared, and running interference to cover for the nuts they play to, but make believe they don't, you know a line got crossed.
First, Reynolds: (No links. Crawl through the cybersewer “Shawshank Redemption”-style to find their turds.)
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE? So we've had nearly 8 years of lefty assassination fantasies about George W. Bush, and Bill Ayers' bombing campaign is explained away as a consequence of him having just felt so strongly about social justice, but a few people yell things at McCain rallies and suddenly it's a sign that anger is out of control in American politics? It's nice of McCain to try to tamp that down, and James Taranto sounds a proper cautionary note -- but, please, can we also note the staggering level of hypocrisy here? (And that's before we get to the Obama campaign's thuggish tactics aimed at silencing critics.)...
...The double standards involved --particularly on the part of the press -- are what are feeding this anger...
...So while asking for McCain supporters to chill a bit, can we also ask the press to start doing its job rather than openly shilling for a Democratic victory? Self-control is for everybody, if it's for anybody...
And then, our poor, special child Shellykins has the blogospheric equivalent of a two-year old's shit-fit while sprawled on the floor of a Stein-Mart:
The Obamedia is attempting to set yet another false narrative: The narrative of the McCain “mob.” McCain-Palin rallies are out of control, they wheedle. Conservatives are mad! They’re yelling mean things about Obama and calling him names! It’s scaaaaary!...
...Please.
Let’s talk about “insane rage” and “violent escalation.”
This is insane rage — Madonna bashing Sarah Palin and shrieking “I will kick her ass:”...
...This is insane rage — Sandra Bernhard bashing Sarah Palin and cursing her head off with hate warping her crazed face:..
...And speaking of violent escalation, let’s revisit the Unhinged: The Mugshot Collection for the violent escalation last election cycle that the Obamedia ignored:...
The two whine-fests are funny for so many reasons. One, you can tell when something is under Instahack's onion-thin skin because you can feel the abject agony of his having to actually write something beyond “Heh”, “Indeed”, “Ouch!” or somesuch passive-aggressive pablum that ends up agreeing with heinous winger shit. Two, when he's going on about the mean, old press being responsible for these kooks' anger, remember...this is the clown who's been crowing like a rooster with short-term memory disorder about the death of the old media, and their loss of influence. As they are apparently being replaced by such new “Tiffany Network”-grade work as seen at Pajamas Media, of course. Malkin's piggy squeal though, first comes off like some over-the-top ad-lib shit off the “Mean Girls” cutting-room floor—“It's scaaaaaaary!” But that's almost appropriate, considering her emotional maturity level (Hey, she may have actually written this little screed herself, by gum!), and then she lapses into the lamest defense since The Patriots' fourth quarter ass-tumbling last winter against the Giants. “Waaaaaaaaaah! Lookit what they did!”—followed up with mealy-ass filler from her most recent bound failure of a string of consonants and vowels, “Unhinged”. (This will NOT bump up sales Malky, sell 'em outta your trunk like the hoodrat snuff-fiction you know it's equal to)
But notice one key thing about these two leading-low lights and their defenses. There's not a shred of contrition, folks. If anything, there's more of the “Raaaaaaaaargh! I hate, therefore I am victimized!” keening. Why?
Simple. It goes back to something I said two weeks ago about today's wingnuts when I called them “The Lost Generation”.
...And the likes of Palin and her fellow travelers, skipping down the road of stupid like Dorothy, The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow...not in quest of heart, home, courage and yes...brain, but power instead—represent the core of what passes for leadership on the right. There is NO brilliant—but wittily evil mind on their side like Bill Buckley's any more. His generation is dead and gone, and he was at least entertaining in a thought-provokingly maddening sort of way. No. What we have is a cloud of dumb-assery, raining grating “Dontchas”, “Betchas”, “Hear-yas”, and “Back-to-yas!” upon us to where we stand knee-deep in in a sludge of bullshit and stupid.
There remains only a vestigial brain—just sophisticated enough to walk, breathe, chew gum and hate with.
The modern-day republican is hammer-to-the-temple stupid and is reduced to just a hateful “id”. Reynolds and Malkin and those hooligans at the rallies exemplify it. They are never wrong—somehow only provoked and misunderstood. Pushed to their state of crazy by a world gone mad.
Bullshit.
In Robert Louis Stevenson's original “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” the venal Hyde was not something that Jekyll became outside of himself. The brutal “Hyde” was a thing within him that if not acknowledged as a component, would repeatedly subsume him. (Which it does in the novel)
The GOP of today is the ascendant, unfettered Hyde. Jekyll is no more. Lamented in his passing by Andrew Sullivan and others through the reality of classic “conservatism's” having been overwhelmed by the lunatic fundie base. The genie is out of the bottle for good now, and that scares the living hell out of the sane and sober “silent majority” of classic republicans. What we see at these rallies is the inbred children of old-line Birchers, and Wallace-ites, raised on Rush and Coulter on home-school talk ray-diddio, and taught to read by reciting black helicopter-and-illuminati-filled chain letters. They were looked at as the “special” kid the shamed GOP elites kept in an attic closet or in a special hidey box like “The Gimp” in “Pulp Fiction”. Well, a desperate John McCain has set those maladjusted people loose—to spark something...Anything!—to get his campaign turned around and instead, it blew up in his face.
Exposing him as craven and feckless, and them as the damaged loons we always knew they were but were maybe too reticent to group in.
The reason you can't stop these people is because they are “the base”. That core 25-28% who still support Bush in spite of his royal 'King Feces Touch' and will back anything a nut with an “R” in front of his name and a bible under his arm says. They are the concentrated pure essence and cannot be diluted at this point—for they are what remains. You can't ask something that is what it is to be something else. The dangerously flawed John McCain chose to appeal directly to them—and not the independents who've abandoned him in droves, because they are the shock troops, the instant offense you go to when you need a furtive boost. Not what you base a winning team on.
John McCain's sweaty desperation helped him to forget that. And now the big, ugly gear of intolerance in the republican machine has laid itself bare. For the Reynolds' and Malkins of the world on piss-pot damage control duty, there is NO spin away. There is no masking what those crowds are down with.
You can try to stuff that genie back in the bottle, Johnny-Boy. But first, you'll have to glue that fucker back together after you smashed it open in a panic.
And now that the genie's (a pretty powerful one, too) tasted freedom, thanks to you...it's gonna be damn near impossible to get it to “go home”.
'Cause those blinks when it gets angry are no joke.
|