A year or two ago, if you’d told me that Democratic Senator Barack Obama would be leading Republican Senator John McCain by a seemingly comfortable margin with two weeks to go and asked me what, in their desperation, the Republicans would be talking about to try and scare my fellow US citizens into voting against him, I’d have said race.
After all, Republicans have race-baited in one form or other in most of our presidential contests since former US president Richard Nixon’s time, so it would have seemed impossible to me that they’d miss the chance to do so at a time when Democrats had actually gone to the trouble of nominating an African-American candidate.
It’s true that we’re hearing racial-code talk here and there. But the main fear tactic being employed now is something else. It’s that Obama and his associates — and for that matter his supporters and even the regions of the country that he’s destined to carry — are anti-American.
On Oct. 17 at a rally in North Carolina, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin told her audience that she was proud to be “with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.” She means here of course that there are anti-American areas of the US, and they are where the liberals live, and the people there are voting for Mr Anti-America.
This was especially interesting coming from a woman whose husband, Todd Palin, was until just six years ago an enrolled member of a rightwing fringe political party that wanted the state of Alaska to secede from the US. But if you understand rightwing logic, then you’d know that Todd had no choice but to join the Alaska Independence party in 1995, because by that time the US he thought he knew and loved had been brought to ruin by the liberals and socialists and America-haters. See?
Likewise, earlier this month, Joe McCain, the brother of John, said that Alexandria and Arlington, the two major cities in the northern Virginia suburbs that lie just across the Potomac River from Washington, were “communist country” as far as he was concerned. His brother lives in Arlington when in the nation’s capital for work, and his brother’s campaign is headquartered there as well, but never mind.
‘THE REAL VIRGINIA’
A McCain spokeswoman offered a wan apology at the time, but lo and behold, just last Saturday a different McCain spokeswoman said on television that while Obama would perform well in northern Virginia, “the rest of the state — real Virginia if you will — I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain’s message.” This did not seem to be a planned one-liner. The spokeswoman made the fatal error of saying what she actually thinks. Republican Virginia equals real Virginia. Democratic Virginia is alien and impure.
This point was proven most dramatically by a woman named Representative Michele Bachmann, a member of Congress from Minnesota. In an interview on Oct. 17 on Hardball, a leading US cable talk show, host Chris Matthews asked Bachmann whether Obama worried her.
“Absolutely. I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views,” she said.
He asked her what she thought distinguished liberal from hard left from anti-American. If she maintains such distinctions in her mind, she refused to acknowledge them. Then, finally, Matthews — who deftly fed her the rope to hang herself — asked her how many members of the US Congress held, in her view, anti-American views.
It’s been almost a two-year campaign. There have been moments we’ve thought of as memorable at the time, only to see the high tide of new events erase their mark from the sand. Bachmann’s answer, however, will live imperishably.
PRO OR ANTI-AMERICAN
“What I would say — what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that,” she said.
Before we go any further — who is this Bachmann? She’s a first-term backbencher from exurban Minneapolis who says the Lord told her to run for Congress. She declared herself “a fool for Christ” in 2006 when she announced her candidacy. By all accounts she’s down with the whole rightwing Christian package: Immigrants bring disease and pestilence, homosexuals want to indoctrinate straight children and so on. Republican leadership undoubtedly pushed her out on to television because she is, as some say, a looker — at least by the standards of Congress.
The call for an investigation into the beliefs of every federal lawmaker and an expose of those found wanting in their patriotism certainly takes us into deeply creepy territory. I would not call Bachmann herself a fascist. Odd as it sounds, to do so would be to grant her far too much credit. For one to embrace an -ism, even a repugnant one, one needs to have read a certain amount of history and political philosophy.
Bachmann is just an idiot. She wouldn’t know Edmund Burke from Billie Burke — she played the good witch in the Wizard of Oz — and she obviously has no idea that, in her rejection of the two bedrock American principles of separation of church and state and freedom of thought, she is the one who is as anti-American as they come.
But friends, all is not darkness. Bachmann’s appearance caused a national uproar. Her Democratic opponent raised nearly US$500,000 from around the country in just 24 hours, and he now has a chance of beating her.
That would be nice. But let’s go back to the big contest. With Bachmann, the lid came off the rightwing id. It will happen many more times over these next week. McCain, who now openly uses the word “socialist” to describe Obama’s proposals — the week after his friend US President George W. Bush took federal control of nine major banks — and especially Palin have shown every sign of encouraging it. Their goal is to scare the US citizens about Obama, but moderate, independent voters might well decide that Obama looks a lot less scary than they do.
Michael Tomasky is editor of Guardian America.
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
On a quiet lane in Taipei’s central Daan District (大安), an otherwise unremarkable high-rise is marked by a police guard and a tawdry A4 printout from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating an “embassy area.” Keen observers would see the emblem of the Holy See, one of Taiwan’s 12 so-called “diplomatic allies.” Unlike Taipei’s other embassies and quasi-consulates, no national flag flies there, nor is there a plaque indicating what country’s embassy this is. Visitors hoping to sign a condolence book for the late Pope Francis would instead have to visit the Italian Trade Office, adjacent to Taipei 101. The death of
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
RSS