This is not about the campaign

Updated Several pieces in various places lately have made note of what Tommy Christopher, a columnist at Political Machine, described as "crowds turning ugly at [McCain] campaign events." Incidents have included someone shouting "terrorist" in response to Barack Obama's name, someone calling him a "traitor," and in at least two cases, people urging he be killed.

Then there were the examples of Lehigh County (PA) GOP chairman Bill Platt and Lee County (FL) Sheriff Michael Scott going out of their way in rally warm-up speeches to refer to him as "Barack Hussein Obama," the latter of who did it while on duty and in uniform. (Both, of course, profess their purity of spirit, insisting there was no malice intended because after all, that is his name, isn't it? I'll buy that argument when they can convince me they routinely refer to their preferred candidate as "John Sidney McCain III." And not before.)

Obama is not the only target: The boogeyman "media" is another, with the New York Times for some bizarre reason a particular target of boos. (The NYT is lefty? When did that happen? Okay, kinda sorta liberal, but come on.) In one case,

[o]ne Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him to "Sit down, boy."

My intent here is neither to support the Obama campaign nor even, in a way, to attack the McCain campaign: Although the latter deserves fierce condemnation for exploiting these irrational fears, these hatreds and bigotries, what I more want to point to here is their existence.

No, not that I think their existence comes as any surprise to you, but rather that we often forget or ignore or overlook how pervasive they are and, more importantly here, the kind of thinking that drives them and the ends they can come to seek. The kind of screeching we now hear at McCain/Palin events, the very kind that they tactitly encourage to "fire up the base," are clear examples of what David Neiwert at Orcinus calls "eliminationist rhetoric," the desire - sometimes implicit but somethimes express - not simply for victory over progressive or merely liberal forces, but for their utter destruction.

(The first part of David's important 10-part series on "Eliminationism in America" can be found at this link.)

Here, it's not enough for them for McCain to win, Obama must be destroyed. Even killed - and not necessarily metaphorically. Everything he represents to these acolytes of atrocity, all of his support and supporters, must be brought to ruin. Why? Because he's a threat! He's a socialist (Would that was true!). He's a terrorist. He's a "secret Muslim" (Oh, the horror!) out to destroy American and freedom. He's, he's, (and this is the important point) not like us!

(Including, of course, in one very overt way which even these folks know better than to admit aloud.)

No, he's not like us, they say - and that fact alone, that single fact of that conviction, is at the heart of more of the bellowing and bombast, the driving force behind more of the viral e-mails and the incendiary posts and comments, than any other factor. He's different, alien, foreign - or, rather, he seems so to them.

These are frightened, frightened people who see dark forces all around them; dark, even demonic forces beyond their understanding, forces affecting their lives in ways beyond their control. When the present looks dark and the future can't be faced with confidence, only the past looks secure (even if it wasn't - but at least you know you survived it and that makes it seem safer than what looms before you). For anyone living like that, feeling like that, change, the very concept of change, becomes threatening.

And frightened, threated people can get angry - and then "ugly" - and then violent.

One recent example of that is what got me thinking about this again. The example is perhaps more telling because it didn't even happen in the US but in "laid back" Canada, illustrating it as a type of response rather than as a product of the US right wing or (false comfort) a product of the McCain campaign:

In Toronto last week, vandals cut the brake lines on at least 10 cars and maybe as many as 14. At least one car owner found out when they nearly collided with a bus.

The cars were also damaged in other ways [the Toronto Star (Canada) reports]; some were scratched and keyed with L signs. Phone and cable lines of some homes were cut.

The "L" has extra significance when you realize that the incidents had one thing in common: All the homes displayed lawn signs for a candidate of the Liberal Party. Toronto police acknowledged there appeared to be "a connection (to the lawn signs)."

The Liberals aren't even the more left party in Canada; they're centrist. The New Democratic Party is the actually liberal party. Yet even that centrist attitude could provoke potentially murderous behavior on the part of someone or someones.

The truth is, and here is my fear, there are still dark times to be survived. Even, maybe especially, an Obama victory in November will not put an end to the eliminationist expressions or the fears that drive them; more likely, it will intensify them. The one thing that unites conservatives of all stripes, cutting across difference in age, sex, class, race, and culture, is fear - fear of change. The greater the fear, the further to the right. Barack Obama is a centrist, a moderately liberal but still a corporatist Democrat who more than once has shown his willingness to burn principle at the altar of political expediency and whose biggest potential lies not in making things better but in merely making them no worse. (Which, I'm forced to admit, would be an improvement over the past couple of decades.) But to the fanatics and to those being drawn to fanatacism by the legitimization of their terror, he's not us - and being in the grip, under the sway, under a government, of the not us is the ultimate threat.

There is no escape from this in a McCain victory, which could easily give rise to the sense of an "opportunity" to put an end to the "threat" once and for all, just as the rhetoric escalated in the wake of Shrub's wins. So I truly believe that no matter the outcome in November, the threat of physical violence against those on the left half of the American political spectrum is increasing and will continue to increase. The only question is how much of it will be driven by those inside the government and how much by those outside.

That does not mean you give up or even retreat; we may indeed come "down to the ethic of total opposition" but that does not reduce our duty of defiance. The future isn't dark so much as it is unformed; it's for us to shape and to light as we can. But right now, today, I have to admit that for me it's looking a bit darker and a bit more unformed than usual. To work for real change will require, I think, more courage - physical as well as political - in the coming years than it has for some time. We have to be ready for that. Then again, as I've mentioned before, we have been in this position in the past only to emerge - "eventually," yes, but still to emerge - with gains in justice.

Now, if you're another centrist corporatist Democrat who can be satisfied with a touch of tinkering and who thinks that drawing down in Iraq ("responsibly," mind you) only to build up in Afghanistan is a great idea - and a hell of a lot of the so-called "progessive" blogosphere fits that description - then you may not need any particular political courage, as you will be in the ascendency in the event of a (very likely) Obama win. But that doesn't mean you're safe - just ask some folks in Toronto.

Updated with a Footnote: Mikey at The Core 4 brings news of another, related incident, this one in the southern parts of greater London. The source is the London Daily News (UK).

A black council worker was shot in the face for wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt after a racist gun man open fire in South Norwood[, a town in the London Borough of Croydon].

Dube Egwuatu, 36, was also blasted in the hand and shoulder with a gas powered ball bearing weapon by a white skinhead in a broad daylight attack.

The black t-shirt bore the US Presidential candidates face with the word 'Believe.' Egwuatu, a systems analyst for Croydon Council, told the Daily Mail how when shopping at an off licence near his home, a man saw his top and started shouting racist abuse at him saying he “fucking hated niggers." [emphasis in original]

There is no question that Barack Obama is threatening to many and his prominence brings a real focus to the fears, phobias, and the associated hatreds. My point, still, is that he is not the cause, the cause precedes him and exists entirely apart from him. And that cause - the terror of a changing world - generates a threat of physical violence that is increasing. Obama may right now be the most obvious, most threatened, target of that violence - but he is by no means alone.