Footnote to the preceding

A reminder, via The Guardian (UK) of what can happen when eliminationist rhetoric, particularly when coupled with economic stresses, reaches a critical mass.

Israeli journalist Yaron Svoray was researching a story on a hunting lodge of Hermann Göring when the local forester pointed something out to him.

It proved to be

a huge dumping ground for the destroyed remains of Jewish property plundered during Kristallnacht....

The site, which is the size of four football pitches, in Brandenburg, [Germany,] contains an extensive array of personal and ceremonial items looted during orchestrated nationwide riots against Jewish property and places of worship on the night of November 9 1938. It is believed the goods were brought by rail to the outskirts of the village and dumped on designated land. ...

Among the items [Svoray] found were glass bottles engraved with the Star of David, Mezuzahs, painted window sills, and the armrests of chairs found in synagogues. He also found an ornamental swastika. His search continues, under the protection of bodyguards after threats to his life.

According to British historian Martin Gilbert, Kristallnacht

paved the way for the Holocaust, marking the moment when race hate became sanctioned by the German state.

We haven't gotten to that point, obviously, but while such hate (which here would be a mixture of racial and cultural) isn't technically "sanctioned" by the fanatics, the wingnuts, the reactionaries, it is clearly tolerated by them - and by the McCain campaign.

It's not that they want things to turn violent, it's more that they regard the people they're stirring up as useful idiots, to be manipulated to get their wingnut selves power and then to be kept on simmer until they're needed again. But there is a danger, always a danger, one that I think McCain momentarily realized before he thought "hey, I need these people," always a danger that when you generate a tide it can carry you to places you didn't want to go.