Terrorism is the bastard child of anger and alienation. There is really nothing else to it. Terrorism has no dependency upon gender, ethnicity, religion, geography or era. If the USA can claim unfamiliarity with it, it's only insofar as our society has been open to people of all faiths, opinions and backgrounds.
The Republican party, of course, does not want America to be such an open society. It does not want a government that is responsive - or responsible - to the people, since that allows them to achieve their multifaceted goals of enriching themselves at taxpayer expense while sabotaging Democrats' ability to accomplish good things through public action. The Republican party wishes for America to have the image as a beacon of hope and freedom to the world without actually fulfilling that image.
Since Reagan, at least, the GOP has worked to obscure its fundamental nastiness with flowery, innocuous phrases. The real work of drowning the government in a bathtub while eradicating every empowering aspect of American society was done in the background, hidden by genial, grandfatherly Ronald Reagan as their patron saint and public image. As recently as 2000, George Bush felt the need to pretend that he was a "compassionate conservative,' a moderate who would do nice things for the poor while teaching them the value of honesty and hard work.
He was of course nothing of the sort, but the facade was maintained until September 11, 2001. When Al-Qaeda struck on that day, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and the rest of the GOP leadership saw an opportunity to put the Democrats into permanent minority status. They saw chances for profits like they'd never seen before married to a radical expansion of their own power to reshape the federal government and society itself. The mask was torn away, and the GOP, from President Bush to Tom DeLay, from James Dobson to John Hagee, from the most respectable columnists and radio/TV hosts to bottom feeders like Michael Savage and Michelle Malkin engaged in a coordinated campaign to paint every Democrat in the nation as an America-hating terrorist. A traitor. An elite cabal of foreign billionaires, atheists and homosexuals intent upon destroying the United States from the inside out for no reason other than spite and Bush Derangement Syndrome.
As Republicans were winning elections and rewriting the Constitution, they were telling conservatives how alienated they were from the real ruling class. As Republicans were dismantling every safety and accountability regulation they could, they were telling their followers that the real enemy wasn't Al-Qaeda, but Democrats who were really in charge. And more than anything else, American conservatives were being told to get angry. Bob Dole wondered where the outrage was in 1996; in the 2000s the Republican party decided to manufacture and export it as their sole product.
Which brings us to this election, where a black man is about to become the 44th President of the United States. The Democratic party is going to increase its majority in Congress, perhaps even up to 60 seats in the Senate. Democrats are surging in local and state races around the country, fielding candidates for the first time in some places and actually managing competitive races. Faced with this, John McCain and Sarah Palin have devoted their full efforts to the politics of anger and alienation. They're not even trying to campaign on any issues; it's all about painting Barack Obama as the dangerous Other, "that one" who doesn't belong, doesn't deserve to be President.
They are telling people that a traitor and terrorist is about to become President of the United States, and people who have been fed a diet consisting solely of anger, fear and bigotry are reacting exactly as the McCain campaign knew they would. That's what we need to understand: John McCain and Sarah Palin are not being "irresponsible." They aren't simply being reckless, driven to say things they don't really mean by sinking poll numbers. This is an intentional effort to incite and provoke conservatives into action. Do McCain and Palin actually want reporters to be physically assaulted? Perhaps, and perhaps not. What is clear, though, is that their words are chosen carefully and intentionally. They might not want violence as a response, but they know it will happen.
And as we go forward from this election, right wing violence - domestic terrorism - will only increase. Conservatives will be angry and will feel alienated from any ability to change the direction of their government, and so will resort to violence to achieve their goals. Domestic terrorism is a reality now, of course, despite Americans' unwillingness to admit it. But it will increase, and dramatically, over the next few years. Our job in the blogosphere will be to bring it to light, to force media and politicians to call it by its real name, to make sure that the Republican party owns the terrorism that results from its rhetoric.
And pray for Barack Obama and his family, if you are in the habit of such things. I fear for them.
dday has a disturbingly good post about this here, and Josh Marshall and his excellent team are, as always, on top of things.
I think you're right that "their words are chosen carefully and intentionally," but the import of this choice is all the more chilling if we don't wrongly pretend that "our society has been open to people of all faiths, opinions and backgrounds" and that this is the reason we're "unfamiliar" with terrorism. We claim to be unfamiliar terrorism because we don't like to admit that lynch-law was legitimate for a big part of the country (not just the south) for at least a century, and within living memory; we are, as a nation, very, very familiar with this kind of terrorism. So when they choose this kind of tactic, it isn't out of *ignorance*; it's a conscious effort to make political hay out of the US's historical non-openness to people of color.
Posted by: aaron | October 08, 2008 at 11:18 AM
Unfamiliar with terrorism? In addition to lynching,cited above, what about Oklahoma City? Abortion clinics? The Weathermen were amateurs in comparison.
Posted by: dm | October 08, 2008 at 11:37 AM
Altmeyer (http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/) the scholar on authoritarianism, has said that the conservative movement's resemblance to fascism lacks only one element - the use of political violence. Let's hope that the 2008 election doesn't see that distinction erased.
Posted by: arbitrista | October 08, 2008 at 01:12 PM