I'm feeling jointly optimistic and unhappy this morning, after reading Frank Rich's excellent op-ed column on the Barack Hussein Obama fever currently gripping the Republican party. Rich provides substantive empirical evidence of race baiting and fear mongering by Palin and McCain at campaign rallies; his examples corroborate the terrifying articles and photos I've seen in the local newspaper about campaign attendees shouting things like "Obama is a terrorist" and "socialist pinko" while Palin and McCain look on benignly.
I was pleased to see a widely read and respected media figure writing a comprehensive and damning report of McCain's antics. And many of the NYT's readers agreed--there was a heartening display of disgust from both Republicans and Democrats. But there were enough comments about the absurdity of Rich's claims; enough comments that did not posit evidence to the contrary, but simply repeated the fallacious connections between Obama and radical Islam and Obama and the Weathermen (for god's sake, he was 8) and Obama and socialism, that I worry about America.
To be fair, racism, ignorance, and the mob mentality are old allies of the American people. It is a self-congratulatory and false narrative that America is, always has been, and always will be a place of unfettered freedom. Likewise, a lot of Americans have always been dumb and will continue to wallow, proudly, in their ignorance because, as one of my high school friends admitted to me, "thinking is hard." Palin and McCain are not inventing the wheel by catering to the political, social and cultural ignorance of their supporters. They are simply ensuring that this ignorance will persist.
That is a grave social injustice.
It amazes me--no, stuns me--that in a country that relishes the specter of the Nuremberg Trials as Justice in the works, where political leaders repeatedly hold up the Holocaust as the gold standard of political metaphor, we would see, in 2008, angry mobs repeating lies about a black man. It doesn't surprise me that the mobs don't understand the difference between Maoist communism and socialized health care, or that the name Hussein is identified as Islamic extremist. I'm not surprised that there are a lot of people out there who hate black men. I'm accustomed to American stupidity. This is a mean thing to say, but I have little respect for the cognitive abilities of a lot of my fellow citizens.
But I am surprised (why???) that the two highest profile American republicans are actually inciting discrimination! That they stand there at their rallies and allow people to conflate black with terrorist with educated with communism with cultured with Islam with anti-war. So that to be a well-traveled, educated black man with a Semitic name who protests a failed foreign policy and advocates health care for all Americans is to be a "pinko terrorist." Because, you know, "pinko" and "advocate of totalitarian theocracy" are identical concepts.
Maybe it all comes down to education. I like to bewail my liberal arts degrees because I work in a warehouse to support a fledgling career as a college writing instructor, and I feel like the American dream failed me. But I wouldn't trade my education for the world. I've read Marx and Engels, I've studied communist Russia and the history of Islam, I've discussed Habermas's mourning of the dissolution of the public sphere, and written papers on what a globalized society really means. I'm not a genius or an expert on these issues, but I know that "pinko terrorist" is a logical fallacy, and I know what a logical fallacy is.
I know that if I ever found myself chanting discriminatory rhetoric with a mob (anywhere other than an anti-war rally) I would be abdicating my intellectual independence and claims to any sort of morality.
I know that a name is a name. And that actions speak louder than words.
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