All credible college-level American history books go into some detail about McCarthyism and Joe McCarthy, a man who was an infamous ideologue of the first order.� I think the McCain/Palin ticket is dangerously close to imitating McCarthy's antics -- actually, I think Palin has already crossed the line... And put herself into the swamplands of Jim Crow and George Wallace politics as well.
I heard the words that Palin allowed to be shouted at her rally in Florida and it chilled me to the bone. Congressman Lewis roundly denounced this language for what it is and he was correct to lay the blame for it's use at McCain and Palin's door.
Palin clearly enjoys inciting her crowds with the most outlandish lies; to say that she has no responsibility for the consequences of her speeches is absurd.� Words have consequences.� Words set the tone.� Words establish the boundaries.� It's a fine point that would argue that Palin has no control over the reactions of her supporters.� Such an argument would have some merit were it not for the fact that her words are carefully chosen to be incendiary. They are false and they are inflammatory and she throws them around with impunity.
Both McCain and Palin have played to the basest instincts of the American radical right-wing fringe.� They love to whip up their crowds with references to 60's radicals (who are now aging senior citizens living quiet lives) and fears that Obama will open the door to socialism and/or Al-Queda (I don't understand this because one cancels out the other; Al-Queda is not a socialist group, so which is it? But such clarity is forever lost in the "fog of rhetorical war").
However, they completely dismiss the very real threat of the Right Here and Now: that America has always had an underbelly of racism and lunatics willing to change the course of history.
I don't expect Palin to know this because it's clear to me that she doesn't read books, has no sense of history, and isn't even old enough to have lived through some of the worst of this history.�
But McCain has no excuse.� When Obama called him out on it last night, McCain typically resorted to making the victim the actual villain, and he railed about how he would not tolerate having all of his wonderful supporters (the Wives of Military Men and something weird about "men with hats") who were at those rallies besmirched and sullied and yada, yada, yada.
McCain had a golden opportunity to tell America, then and there on national TV, what he condemns racism in all of its manifestations.� That he condemns lies and innuendos and half-truths.� That he knows that the United States Senator from Illinois is a good man, a patriot, and neither an Arab nor a terrorist.�
Instead, he sputtered about the honor of the crowd who refused to silence the lunatics in their midst and he did not roundly condemn Sarah Palin as he should have done.�
I think when future history textbooks are written there will be a sidebar that reads:
*NOTE: Although Joseph McCarthy, US Senator from Wisconsin, was eventually exposed during the Army-McCarthy Hearings, his legacy has endured in American politics. McCarthy is best known for bullying people, spewing groundless and often cruel accusations, evading issues, and offering churlish responses to his critics at every turn. McCarthy was one of America's great fear mongers and played to every base instinct and fear in the American psyche. In December 1954, the US Senate voted 67 to 22 to condemn him for "conduct unbecoming a senator." Nonetheless, such tactics have become a staple of the electoral process, although they eventually became subtly hidden within subliminal messages and well understood right-wing rhetorical code, as most notably demonstrated in the 2008 presidential election where John McCain, US Senator from Arizona, and his running mate, the far lesser known and far lesser qualified, Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, resorted to the use of extreme scare tactics and hysterical hyperbole. The more ridiculous of these examples may have been McCain's claim that a voter registration group (ACORN) was on the verge of ruining the entire "fabric of democracy."� However, it was Palin's more sinister (and baseless) claims about their opponent's associations with "domestic terrorists" that established a new (and dangerous) low in American politics. Both McCain and Palin knew full well that McCain's opponent, Barack Obama, was an African-American (not Arab), as well as a Christian (not Muslim), and a very law abiding and respected lawyer, but they willingly encouraged a persistent belief in some circles, particularly in the Southern states, that Obama, a US Senator from Illinois, was an Arab, a Muslim, and even a terrorist. When Palin's rallies became more ominous and some obviously unhinged people were heard to cry "Kill him" (in reference to Obama), Palin continued the rally, to the eventual disdain and consternation of many decent people. Although it has been generally agreed that McCain was a man of integrity, historians remain bemused at either his inability or unwillingness to curb Palin's irresponsible rhetoric which seriously tarnished the Republican party for many years. Historians have argued about how this merger of McCarthyism, which was a paranoic response to the Cold War and driven by McCarthy's character flaws, opportunism, and alcholism, eventually married with America's endemic racism, to form what has become known as Palinism.� However, what can be discerned at the time of this writing is that Palinism became a nationally debilitating trait adversely shaping political discourse for many years.� Historians have long debated who was most to blame for the rise of Palinism, many citing that Palin herself was clueless about the consequences of words and lacked any sophisticated understanding of American history.� The fact that she was a communication major in college suggests she certainly knew the meaning and consequences of her words. McCain, however, has been regarded by most American historians as a more thoughtful and well-rounded personality, one capable of deeper thought, which suggests McCain, who was also the elder stateman and at the head of the ticket, is more to blame for the rise of Palinism. At a minimum, it cannot be forgotten that it was McCain who plucked Palin from obscurity and put her into a position that she was clearly not prepared to master.� Other historians reject this completely and, rejecting even McCarthyism or racism as the genesis of Palinism, locate the perfection of character-assassination, fear mongering, and paranoia with the politics of Richard Nixon, beginning with his smear campaign against Helen Gahagen Douglas and culminating in his term in the White House.� "Tricky Dick" notwithstanding, most historians firmly root Palinism in the marriage of Post WWII McCarthyism and the obdurate persistence of American racism.
bent over dumbell row, bent over dumbell rowing, bent over dumbell rows, bent over entry.
