Vindicate My Faith

John McCain doesn't like the expression Obama used regarding Iowa in the Primaries and used on several occassions, since. He stated that he's never needed that. Never. That's a rather large chunk to take in on one statement. This is a nation that counted slaves as 3/5ths a person in its Constitution, this is a nation that practiced Jim Crow, this is a nation that abrogated one treaty after another with American Indians and practiced not only physical but sprititual genocide on them, this nation imprisoned most of the Japanese American population on the West Coast, this nation fought a Civil War essentially over the issue of Slavery, this nation allowed blacks to go untreated for syphillis as an experiment, subjected US soldiers to radiation from atomic bombs as an experiment, this nation had states with the Confederate flag as a State flag, which J McM approved of when politically expedient, this nation treats gays as second class citizens, the federal government has tortured people in out custody, John McCain bombed on behalf of one of the most despicable despots in our association, under his watch the POW/MIA issue was never resolved, under his watch a very nearly historical redistribution of wealth up resulting in nearly historical disparity of wealth occured.

I can think of a few times, evidently, that this nation has not lived up to its ideals nor its promise. Under the McCain model demonstrated here you are either for the government or a traitor. Whateve John might get up to, if you oppose him as President you are questionable, he's not. I'll be damned if I want to live in his version of the USA, and I won't goddam move to avoid it. You have absolutely got to understand the jingoistic nature of this rhetoric. It plays to the uninformed in McCain/Palin rallies and plays on Faux News and the right wing blogosphere. It is corrosive in the extreme, it actually means the death of liberty. The liberty the Republicans so fondly reference is one of the first casualties of their jingoism.

This is not some slip of the tongue, accidental tie in made by a lefty blogger - it is endemic to that Party. GWB and Cheney used it. Sarah Palin is so completely into that bag that despite having some kind of journalism degree (majoring in teleprompter?) she had this to say about the media and the 1st Amendment:

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

If I call her a mean mouthed ignorant hick as I advocate her poltical extinction I am not being particularly responsible, but I am indulging in my First Amendment rights. Now I am completely unclear how it is that she mentally redefines her statements about Obama as something other than negatice or how the media is supposed to call it something else. Obama has certainly run attacks on McCain, linking him to Pres GWB in this climate isn't a compliment.

The media is traitor for not redefining Palin's campaign, the Obamas are traitors for not thinking everything has always been just ducky in the US. I take the Bill of Rights pretty seriously, evidently more so than these Faux patriots. These are the people who reinforce my belief in the importance of the Second Amendment. This is where tyrrany comes from my lefty friends.