B-IRAQ HUSSEIN OSAMA.

I was originally going to call this post, 'McCAIN: NOT ABLE', which was the most cleverest pun of BIBLICAL proportions I have ever come up with. And I was going to blog about what a terrible president John McCain would be for the United States of America, and how sad that made me - because once upon a time, back before John McCain morphed from a pragmatic and easy-going 'Mr Fix-It' to an angry walking metaphor for the disaster that it is American conservatism, I actually believed in, and supported a President McCain. But while I am happy to defend 'primary-era McCain' in a different post, should the reader of 'a word on failure' demand it, that post would now be sort of redundant. McCain's poll numbers are dismal, and short of Barack Obama tatooing a '666' into the back of his head and urinating over the American flag live on CNN - he will be the next President of the United States.

So this post isn't about what an epic fail a McCain presidency would be. But it is about the epic fail of the McCain campaign - a campaign that when it was out of fresh ideas to help the Republican party ruin America resorted to disgraceful, evil attacks on the character of Barack Obama, and in doing so have created a very,very divided and very very dangerous America.

I'm not the best person to try and explain this, cos its late and I'm tired .So I'll let someone with less foreign policy and economic experience, and only a little bit more executive experience than me give a first hand account of what a McCain campaign rally looks like.



Apart from looking a little bit like a lynch mob, I think this video is even scarier than it looks.
The real issue here isn't Bill Ayers, who is now a relatively respected Chicago community organizer and his education initiatives are supported by Republican and Democrat alike. (btw, the 'weather underground' stuff occured when Obama was 8). There are three far greater, and far scarier things if we scratch the surface of Palin's rhetoric.

1) 'not a man who sees America as you and I see America' - here she is attempting to potray Obama, as different, not just unAmerican, but actively antiAmerican
2) 'palling around with terrorists' - notice the 's' at the end of terrorists. The McCain campaign doesnt want Americans to associate Obama with Ayers, they want to associate Obama with terrorists in general
3) 'terrorists who made plans to attack the pentagon'....hmm, does this conjur up any memories in people? any specific dates?

Why is this a problem? Well, there is still a sizeable chunk of the American electorate that believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim. That Barack Obama, if elected, will be a sleeper for some terrorist master plan that will wreak the final destruction upon the land of the free. There is also a sizeable chunk of the electorate that still harbours deep misgivings about a black president in general, on the despicable grounds that black people are racially inferior to white people.

Don't believe me. Well, ill let the fruits of my late-nite Youtubing do the talking for me.






Pretty sickening stuff, huh - especially the second video. (For the record, the guy is at a Sarah Palin rally, holding up a MONKEY with an Obama sticker on it). I don't for a second want to tar any American with the same brush as this fucktard, but I show it to make the point that there are people out there for who the Obama presidency is a very 'scary' thing indeed. A thing that some crazy racist xenophobe may be willing to prevent.

The McCain campaign has actively promoted the idea, in speeches and in rallies, that Barack Obama is anti-American, is only a couple of steps removed from the monsters who bought down the world trade center, and who is just not a person who we should accept in our society. Should he, and I paused before deciding to continue typing here, be assassinated by some madman who is motivated by these views....then the responsibilty, to an extent, would fall upon John McCain and Sarah Palin. It is not a claim I make lightly, but this is the extent to which they have played upon the irrational fears of the lowest common denominator.

Perhaps realising the irrational and nasty flames he had fuelled among his supporters, McCain to his credit, attempted to pull his campaign out of the depths. Here is the last video I will show you, promise! But its a good one...



In my view, McCain did not go far enough. His response 'I am scared of Obama, because he is an Arab' was 'No m'aam Senator Obama is not an Arab, he is a good man'.
A far, far more effective victory for race relations in America, a response that could have fundamentally changed the discourse on race in America would have been - ' Ma'am, Senator Obama is not an Arab, or a Muslim. And if he was an Arab, or a Muslim - so what?'

The best way to defeat racial predjudice is to challenge the racists assertions, force them to justify their core assumptions, beliefs and predjudices. McCain was faced with a golden opportunity to change the way America thought and talked about race, asking 'what is wrong with being different' rather than ' i know he looks different, but trust me - hes one of the good guys really'

McCain blew it. Happily, McCain is also blowing the election. And while I remain deeply worried for Obama's safety, I am cautiously optimistic that a 'President Obama' could be the catharsis that destroys any lingering legitimacy of the idea of a 'superior white-race' in the eyes of a shrinking minority. The McCain-Palin campaign will be remembered, I hope, as a 'never again' moment in world history.

Now that would be change I could believe in.

Alex.