Xeni Jardin over at Boing Boing has an important post analyzing the dragging death murder of Brandon McClelland, 24, last month in Paris, Texas, an area of our country haunted by a legacy of lynchings going back over a hundred years. Please read it.

In light of the McCain campaign’s stinking “idiot wind” gusting over America’s racist dead enders, I also thought that a boing boing commenter’s insight was spot on:

This [murder of McClelland] must be viewed in light of the Ashley Todd incident this week. Todd made up a false story that a black man attacked her and carved a “B” in her face, ostensibly because she supports John McCain. In Paris, Texas, a hundred years ago, a charge like that would get a black man burned alive. Today it doesn’t go quite that far but you could see the shadow of the lynch mob forming in the darker corners of the right-wing blogosphere when the Todd story first circulated. — JWB

Nowadays I’m less concerned with these clowns than with last minute dirty tricks to scare Philadelphia seniors that a vote for Obama is a vote for a second Holocaust. Good grief. Their strategies are just so disgusting.

I’ve been in email conversation with a friend from Louisiana, a philosemite and born again Catholic who believes Obama is a “Muslem” [sic]. He’s a former Huckabee supporter, and I’m concerned for him and all of his like minded fellows who are so overwhelmed with rumours to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt, that they’ve abandoned all trust in the media. Here’s the summary in his own words, after several lengthy exchanges of commentary and links sent in refutation of slander he’s heard:

That is the main problem: lies.  You don’t know who to believe.  Both parties have a degree in spreading them and there is not enough penality for telling them.  The media can be bought to spread their lie of choice, or conceal thereof.  That is the whole reason we had this banking/wall street debockle. Politics breeds them like flies.

For him it’s as if the long feared gnostic world of darkness has finally eclipsed the world of light. Obama may preach the need for change but oh my god, these folk are deathly afraid and distrutsful, and then also, dangerously manipulatable. It is so essential to reach out to them with love rather than with hate or condescension. I am confident we will win today, but if in my exuberance I am blinded to the enduring need to engage with these folks with respect, then it will all have been for nought. The seething domestic insurgents vying for their hate might eventually win it.

Tags: Election 2008,fear
Categories: Prolitics
No Comments »

So far there is no indication that the recent near fatal beating of KATV anchorwoman Anne Pressly in Little Rock, Arkansas, might be politically motivated other than the fact that Pressly is a member of the media and appeared briefly in Oliver Stone’s just opened critical biopic ‘W.’ But given that the daily vitriol heaped upon liberals by McCain surrogates, advertisements, and right wing radio blowhards has already unhinged some to feel they have license for violence against the “enemy among us,” I wouldn’t be surprised if her attack was related somehow.

It was only three months ago, July 27th, that Jim Adkisson barged into a Knoxville, Tennessee Unitarian-Universalist Church with the intent to kill some liberals (and tragically killed two churchgoers). With the election only two weeks away, and supporters of McCain/Palin already beginning to wear the veil of victimhood and martyrdom, I will admit to some fear that the more militant among them will be inspired towards insurgency. It’s not as if the south doesn’t have a long history of fighting insurgent warfare. Normally, I’d consider this sort of associative thinking paranoid… but I guess that recent nearby expressions of hate, like Mike Lunsford’s antisemitic Halloween effigy of Obama, have me concerned.

I pray that Pressly recovers fully I pray for Pressly’s grieving family and that her attacker is caught and that our country soon turns a page for the better. Courage.

(In 1986, a deranged man attacked Dan Rather demanding of the CBS anchorman, “What’s the frequency!? Kenneth, what’s the frequency??!”)

Tags: Election 2008,fear
Categories: Prolitics
No Comments »