When all else fails, go for an ad hominem attack. Cant beat your opponent on issues? On policies? On solutions to America's financial crisis? Well, you can always go after his or her character. And if you cant go after anything he or she specifically has done or said that you disagree with, then its best to play the terrorist card. After all, anyone who gets called a terrorist is ipso facto a very bad man.
The only problem with this is that the word terrorist is now being bandied about with real abandon. It is being used more as a generalized derisive heckle than as an actual description these days.
People can be labled terrorists for having a particular religious practice (Islam), for looking South Asian or Arab (like me or Obama), for having a name that sounds similar to that of a terrorist (like Osama) or for living in the same neighborhood as someone who might once have been a terrorist (like Ayers).
All this terrorist name-calling is the racism of the new world order. Racists cant come right out and say they don't want Obama because he is black or half-black or brown. They can't say they don't want anyone who is not 100% black. They cant say they would rather have a dishonest old guy and incompetent young woman who are both white than anyone not white, no matter how competent.
So they do what they can. They call him by his suspiciously Muslim sounding middle name. They cal him mysterious, sneaky, unknown, dishonest (all racial stereotypes typically attributed to Arabs) and they try to paint him as a foreigner (as if suddenly Hawaii is not a part of the United States).
The McCain/Palin ticket is desperate and they are appealing to the racists among us to join their panic.
Too bad its too late for that tactic to work. Obama has already won the war. Despite the racists. Racism is irrational and it is taking our country a very long time to figure that out..... but by and by I DO think we are learning to be better than that.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
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