Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
-Voltaire, Author and Philosopher 1694-1778
Ever since Barack Obama became the Democratic candidate, John McCain has been desperate. He must have been shaking in his shoes while Obama rocked our political world with his tidal wave of 21st-Century leadership, which was not directed at tearing us down individually and collectively as has been the case in the sad and terrible Bush years. I can see why McCain might be darkly afraid of losing his last chance at the presidency, because Obama's call to leadership truly echoed our deepest fundamental values which had seemed irretrievably lost during McCain's party's governance. John McCain and his fellow Republicans proudly led us to the valley of the shadow of death and told us this is where we now lived so put on your armor, while Obama lifted us up and told us he could see the way back to an America that worked for us, individually and collectively, and that by coming together we could make it there.
McCain's lobbyist advisors, Karl Rove and his ilk of minions, must have known they would have to resort to the most evil things they'd yet done to try and make a majority of American believe the absurdities it would take to give power to a McCain presidency. They knew their old boy was fading fast as Obama headed to Europe and was greeted by the world's leaders as a future American president with whom they'd like to work and in whom they could trust and have some faith. Like us, they could see Obama leading Americans toward a vision of the United States regaining the world's respect by reinstating the values of our democracy instead of annihilating it.
We might question if the Republican leadership, consultants, and analysts now wonder if the beating down of U.S. citizens with fear, and if the manufacturing of terror to whip them into the Neo-Con party line might have been a mistake. We might wonder at their own terror as they could see Obama bringing people together and actually inspiring excitement in the idea that changes could and would be made to our broken society and government and that the killer of an Iraq War could and would be brought to an end since there will never be a clear ring of victory. Certainly not in Senator McCain's lifetime--or yours or mine. McCain keeps saying he knows how to win a war. Oh, yes? Which war exactly has he won? The senator must have been chewing at his fingernails to see Barack Obama motivating a whole new generation of voters, as well as those who had already either given up or had never bothered to get involved in their own country's elections.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, under the direction of Karl Rove, were masters at this game of making the American public believe absurdities in order to get our support to commit atrocities--not just upon the rest of the world but upon their own citizens. The implosion of their self-serving empire has been falling down around all of our heads, most recently with the Wall Street meltdown, which is a starred review of failed Republican economic ideas and policies. Look at the mess we're in now.
But the most cynical and desperate ploy yet, which is shocking in its perversity, was nominating Sarah Palin, whom we all know now as Winky, to be his vice-presidential candidate. As we have gotten to know Mrs. Palin, we have witnessed the lengths McCain would go to get elected. Winky Palin does grab a certain segment of our population--those who don't care if the American president is studied, knowledgeable, and prepared to assume the role of the presidency if need be. Those who vote for her, because she winks at them and says, you betcha. This is the segment of American voters over whose eyes Republicans have pulled the wool to entice them to vote against their own best interests. Mrs. Palin is leading her sheep to slaughter (wink, wink) to do what is worst for their own economic (and in every other way) interests. When will they wake up? This group needs their own grassroots leadership to educate them to how they're hurting themselves.
What we see now is that McCain and his party are still willing--even in this terrible time in our country's economic history, and with the complex international situation, especially in the Middle East--to convince the American people of absurdities in order to commit the atrocity, which would be electing him. And now Cindy McCain, whom we will call, for obvious reasons, Blingy, has also been put on the block to sling the absurd smears to help her desperate husband. Can she taste the closeness to defeat as he can? Is this why she's willing to pony up her self-respect and her millions, or, as I suspect, has their whole marriage been about her ponying up?
Is dragging the United States further down into a hopeless mire the crack design and future vision of a McCain presidency? Is this the best they can do? In the debate the other night, McCain was a cantankerous, bitter, stiff, nodding, old man, to Obama's solid 21st Century engine.
Signs point to Americans finally having the wherewithal to throw off the yoke of those who can make us believe absurdities, so they can make us commit atrocities--despite the best antics of Winky, Blingy, and Nod. Let us sincerely hope so.
Beth Arnold lives and writes in Paris. To see more of her work, go to www.betharnold.com.