Apoplectic panic ! It is spreading and intensifying throughout the once smug and snarky Republican faithful, and that has provided the most entertaining part of this toolong election season.
It seems like a lifetime, but it was only nine months ago when the Iowa caucuses transformed a long shot into an improbable pipe dream. For months thereafter, the mouthpieces on Sunday-morning political talk shows assured one another there was no way it could ever happen.
Nonetheless, practically everyone with an e-mail address has received at least a couple of those trashy, racist "could we still call it the White House"jokes. They weren't funny, but it is sort of fun to note that none of those good ol'boy yucksters is laughing much today. Some of them are too busy to laugh for trying to trade off the SUV for more affordable transportation. Others are poring over the household budget looking for ways to pay the mortgage, and some are simply too horror stricken by the audacity of a black man presuming he could ever take up residence in the White House.
The great irony is that these visibly unamused Americans are the same vociferous minority who insisted on a second term of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Perhaps the old adage was right after all: "Be careful what you wish for …"
Now the tools and tactics of emotional appeals they so effectively wielded in the 2000 and 2004 elections have been turned back on them. Their avowed outrage over the sexual improprieties of President Clinton combined with the ongoing conflict over legally recognized reproductive rights of women and the dubious "threat"of same-sex marriage has apparently petered out.
Outrage consumes a great deal of energy and requires perpetual stoking, and that kind of energy appears to be of the nonrenewable type. Thousands upon thousands of the folks who once proclaimed that "a vote for a Republican is a vote for God "are finding they literally can't afford to cast their ballot for the GOP.
Some have even give up their whining to take a critical look at the myriad costs of colonial military invasions in the 21 st century and the toll of funding subsequent occupations with Chinese and Saudi loans.
Even the unshakable singleplank voters in the electorate have begun to stray from their sworn allegiance. They continue to discover that the candidates who campaigned on promises of instituting a constitutional amendment banning abortion or same-sex marriage never intended to legislate any sweeping restoration of American morality.
If they had, there would be some available record or shred of evidence that they made some genuine effort toward that goal. Instead, those candidates and their incumbent cheerleaders fell in line with the guy who sent out "tax-relief checks"that first summer before retiring to Crawford, Texas, where he utterly ignored the Aug. 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing bearing the title," Bin Laden determined to strike in U. S. "Yep, the height of their congressional performance of their sworn duties is that they paved the way for that same guy who sat stupefied in Sarasota, Fla., reading "My Pet Goat"with second-graders of Emma E. Booker Elementary School 36 days later.
The amazing sequence of ridiculous mismanagement of the present administration is rivaled only by their lack of reasonable vision and their nonexistent understanding of realities "on the ground. "How anyone could miss the fact that Americans might vote for something or someone who represents, at the very least, some hope of slowing our national and international descent into further chaos and likely destruction defies explanation. The lesson of 2000 and 2004 is that fear works. Fear, like California wildfires, is a destructive force that is difficult to control, and fear of continuing the status quo via another vision-impaired son of privilege has jumped the firebreak.
I watched my copy of "The Birth of a Nation"this week in preparation for the GOP Convention in the Twin Cities next week and the coming ugliness to follow. D. W. Griffith continues to prove that truth has little influence in America when it comes to matters of race. Reason and logic are cast aside, and it comes down to anxieties, emotions and gut reactions when the curtain closes and nobody is watching the men and women left alone staring at the levers and touch screens bearing the names of candidates. The McCain camp knows this, and they have but one way to peddle their rich, old, angry, white guy. The e-mails are going to get uglier and the talk shows more disgusting each day until November because the only thing they have to sell is fear itself.
• • • Scott Sullivan writes a monthly column for The Benton County Daily Record. He may be reached at sksully 7698 @ hotmail. com.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online