The Politics of Fear, Loathing and Division
Written by John Erianne on October 21, 2008 – 4:54 pm -One of the more absurd moments of this campaign season, for me, was during the second Presidential debate, when John McCain attempted to recast himself as a modern-day Teddy Roosevelt. What made it so absurd is that the Republican Party has, over the last 40 years, gradually lost its mind, its heart and its soul. I’m sure if T.R. were alive today to see what has become of his Grand Old Party, he’d be furious and sick at the sight of it. Ever since Nixon gave voice to the “Silent Majority” and lobbed the first bombs in what has come to be known as the “Culture Wars,” we’ve seen this country divided more dangerously and saliently than at any time since the Civil War. Even during the Reagan Era, the country wasn’t as divided as it is today.
Then along comes a smart, relatively young, capable, multi-racial candidate in the guise of Barack Obama who has made a career out of the idea of political and cultural reconciliation and has, in fact, staked his whole candidacy on the notion that the American people are ready for that to happen.
And he was doing swimmingly until John McCain decided to whip out the old Republican book of down and dirty campaign strategy when it became clear he couldn’t win this election on the merits of his own policy positions and ideas. Over the past several weeks, John McCain, his VP selection Sarah Palin, his surrogates and an army of ultra-conservative right wing pundits have unleashed an almost unprecedented litany of attacks on Obama characterized by words, images and tactics that seek to demonize and de-Americanize him.
It’s sad, really. Sad for this country and by extention, for the world. Even though the Republican playbook has a track record of winning elections for conservative candidates, it has an abysmal record for accomplishing anything good for the country. The last eight years are the surest proof of this. The politics of fear, loathing and division hasn’t solved one major problem or made a single person’s life better. It has produced a more cynical, apathetic electorate and a generation of politicians who talk to the citizens they serve as if they were a bunch of children instead of speaking to them like adults. This isn’t the democracy we were promised in our youth. This isn’t the democracy true patriots have fought and bled and died for throughout our short, but tortured history. It is, instead, a betrayal of that promise of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” An act of the most scurrilous form of treason.
