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Ooh, That Smell: McCain and His Mob Waltz with Death
Shortly before death, bodies engage in a riot of convulsions and hemorrhages, some disturbingly visible, some internal and unseen. There is a dance of extreme violence that occurs in a living organism as it "rages against the dying of the light," to paraphrase Dylan Thomas. And then, there is often a moment of calm as death sets in, and the organism relaxes its fierce grip on life. Endorphins flood the body and the grimacing mask of struggle, many times, goes slack. And then you die.
If you've ever been at someone's dying bedside, you know what I mean.
It's worth holding this imagery in mind when looking at the videos coming back from the campaign trail of recent McCain-Palin rallies. Of course the candidates have gone negative -- that's what candidates do when they have nothing worth saying. It's not the negative paragraphs larded into the stump speeches that are so disconcerting about the footage we're seeing. It's the mob. And the tacit approval of the mob emanating from McCain himself.
Some lowlights: Several McCain supporters on their way into a rally in Pennsylvania actually call Obama a "terrorist," and one answers the question "Why do you think he's a terrorist?" with the retort "Look at the bloodlines. Look at his name."
A voice clearly screams "Off with his head!" in reference to Obama when Sarah Palin hammers away at the Bill Ayers connection. Palin does nothing to discourage the call.
A questioner at one of McCain's "Town Hall" rallies refers to Obama and Nancy Pelosi as the "socialists" who are "taking over our country."
A line of McCain supporters on their way in to a rally in Ohio heckle the Obama supporters and journalists across the street with cries of "You need to go die" and "Commie faggots," and several call Obama a terrorist, a socialist, a traitor, and more.
It's easy to view this footage and feel panic welling up inside. Easy to feel that a tide is rising in the heartland of fear and anger, ignorance and violence, that is on the verge of flooding the ballot boxes and carrying John McCain and Sarah Palin to the White House.
What's important to bear in mind is that these are hardly "swing voters." These are the 19 percent of the country who might yet call themselves "Bush Republicans," even after the verdict of history. Bush Republicans are not the concern, in the end. Reagan Democrats are. As McCain's own former top strategist John Weaver was quoted as saying: "Please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive."
What's happening at these rallies is a series of convulsions and spasms no less primordial than those we make at the end of life -- a kind of death dance. The death of John McCain, American Hero -- who may be hearing plaudits from the pitchfork-wielding mob, but who is hearing nothing but disappointment and disapproval from those Republicans and Independents who once held him in such esteem. And in the throes of that death, McCain is waltzing with a dying breed of sad old white Americans, whose tragedy continues to be their belief that those who have fleeced them were their greatest friends, and those who might plausibly have their interests at heart politically are a bunch of commie faggots. These rallies smell of rot, the stench rising from these hollow crowds carries the odor of lynch mobs and blacklisters, Father Coughlin and the Silent Majority.
But no more are these folks a Silent Majority. They are a loud, vocal, ugly minority. They are literally a dying breed. And when we write their obituary in the next few years, there really won't be a wet eye in the house.
Cue the Skynyrd: Ooh, that smell, can't you smell that smell? The smell of death surrounds you.
What is terrifying about these images, these sounds, these ugly days, is not what might befall Barack Obama at the ballot box. It is that unthinkable thing that we all think about, that Palin and McCain are conjuring like a dark specter. The game McCain is playing is as real as Russian Roulette and might have the same outcome. David Gergen has warned on CNN that "real violence" could be the bitter fruit of these dark electoral arts. "There is a free-floating sort of whipping-around anger that could really lead to some violence. And I think we're not far from that," Gergen said. "I really worry when we get people -- when you get the kind of rhetoric that you're getting at these rallies now. I think it's really imperative the candidates try to calm people down."
The dire question that seems to be rising is this one: How many more crowds can McCain whip up this way and not expect to stumble on the loaded chamber?
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If the McCain/Palin campaign keeps fueling this fire the next "shot heard 'round the world" will destroy this country or at least ruin it for decades to come.
What infuriates me (not in the homicidal manner, however) is the stinking "balance" applied again in the journos' pronouncements on the subject of stoking hatred and violence in the election battle. Gergen (and others) urge the "candidates" to pipe down and disavow the hateful rhetoric, as if both McCain and Obama were guilty of this reprehensible behavior. First, it shows how cowardly they are themselves, afraid to direct their calls to McCain, and second, they obviously insult our intelligence. Well, this one reader and voter is paying attention -- I will not watch, read, and/or buy publications where those cowardly journalists publish their fare.
Having grown up in a small Wisconsin town, I have some sense of the psychological state of a small, local population. The Republicans have successfully tapped into the better aspects of small town values for years, manipulating rural voters across America into voting against their interests. It seems only fair, that as the economy crumbles, the McCain campaign now has to live with the dark underbelly of small town life. The closed-mindedness, ignorance, and xenophobia that existed in my little town occasionally exploded in violence and hate fueled beatings.
Mr. Cenedella, an excellent post! The metaphor of the death dance is superb. I hope we don't have to deal with Bush/McCain zombies for years to come. Well, maybe we already are.
Which small Wisconsin town did you grow up in where there was violence and beatings? Which small or large town for that matter is immune to hate?
When have you last returned to small town Wisconsin? You can take hope from the fact that in my small town Wisconsin, the yard signs are split about 50/50! There is hope.
Just remember, when we force the haters into the harsh light of day, WE win!
Stoughton, has changed since 73 when I graduated from High School, and is now more of a bedroom community of Madison. I moved away in the late 70's, but I do return sometimes, as my parents still live there.
A number of friends were beaten up over the years by some of the more moronic members of the community. They were attacked for being different, liberal, artsy, or gay (race was not an issue then because the town lacked any real diversity). Of course this happens in cities, too, though I don't know anybody in my circle of friends in Los Angeles that has been accosted for those reasons.
I generally associated the behavior of these thugs as an end result of narrow-mindedness that went essentially unchallenged by a substantial minority in the town. Their small thinking had support, even if their violent acts did not. Unable to persuade people who were different from them to change their ways (because they lacked the intellectual where-with-all), they attempted to intimidate or obliterate them. It seems to me a similar thing is going on with the McCain supporters who lash out with racism and hate. Their impotence in the face of Obama's Wave of Change makes them desperate and angry.
I didn't mean to smear Wisconsin towns with my comments. These days Stoughton seems quite idyllic to my big city eyes. The state will go to Obama, and that fills one with hope.
There are times in history when terrible events do yield some good.
The lynchings, bombings and murders of the 1960s were such a time. Heinous crimes were like a mirror held up in which white society got a look at the evil that existed just the below the surface of our society.
I saw my own parents' evolution from silent majority Republicans to marching in the streets to protest segregation, violence and the assassination of MLK, all in the span of 4 short years.
These time will open the eyes of many good people in our society. Hopefully it will not also drive the haters to even more extreme acts.
It's scary, but weird, too. Trying to pin the label "terrorist" on Obama (the cool-tempered law professor) is transparently desperate or a paranoid delusion. It's so obviously just a transfer of hysterical fear that people are somehow enjoying--they seem to feel more alive or more important when they can attack someone concrete.
What's even weirder is the new blather about "socialism." Who started this label? When a Republican president has expanded Medicare (with the drug benefit) and run up an enormous, record-setting deficit, the term "socialism" means next to nothing. I don't get it.
Desperation will make you do crazy things. The violent undertones (and in some cases overtones) in these crowds shouldn't be ignored. It scares me that people are thinking and saying things like, "kill him." I think there s no question violence is being incited at some of the rallies.
I am more concerned about ths nineteen percent than I am about our overseas advesaries. These people are those who perpetrated/supported the inside job that has brought our country to it's knees in the last 8 years.
Remember folks it's not over till it's over - get out there and vote so big that they can't cheat thier way out of it.
Even then we have always got to be on our toes. These people are not going to just walk away.
How can something so horrorific still be so damned sad?
I really did admire this man. No longer.
I am a Democrat and always have been but I did admire him.
See Pete Cenedella's Profile
I hear you. Among other things, we're watching a kind of Shakespearean tragedy with regard to McCain, whose every flaw and weakness has just exploded in the crucible of his ambition. He has wandered into a kind of King Lear wilderness of the mind, where the near-homicidal ravings of the worst America has to offer seems to hold more comfort to him. Lost on the trail: his integrity, his honor, his sense of purpose and direction. Lost.
None of which makes it anything but all the more imperative to soundly trounce him and every last ugly demon he has unearthed in his semi-sentient fall from grace.
Thank you, Thank you. Would you e-mail me every day, Mr. Cenedella, to remind me of what you wrote here today? Your words have comforted me like few others.
I know. While I look forward with cautious optimism to Obama's triumph, the sorrow over what John McCain has allowed himself to become still lingers.
As Mr. Cenedella suggests below, McCain perfectly exemplifies the Aristotelian tragic figure. He is not simply a villain, whose demise would simply be justice. Nor is he simply a good man whose demise would be hateful to our sense of morality. He is a person much like you or me, with character strengths and flaws, thrust into a circumstance where his character disastrously fails him and those around him. Let's just pray to the gods that the final act of his tragedy doesn't unfold with him in the Oval Office.
The problem is that when McCain attempted an about-face, his humanity poking it's head up for a brief moment as he said Obama was a decent man, his snarling crowd turned on him. Letting loose the dogs of hell doesn't have an off button.
See Pete Cenedella's Profile
Well said.
ABSOLUTELY!
Thanks Pete. I find your "commentary" oddly reassuring. Like a calm in a cynically whipped up storm. Even die-hard Republicans are repulsed and dismayed by the McCain/Palin appeal to the basest of the base.
I hope above hope that this is indeed the furious last gasp of a dying breed. The mob mentality is an insult to both evolution and creationism and as you note, it is dangerous. Some of those hollow chambers ARE loaded.
McCain has recklessly (and knowingly) opened Pandora's Box, and he may very well have rewritten his legacy from heroic to heinous "leader."
It was Palin's speech, with its Westbrook Pegler's reference to 'small town values,' that first pricked up my ears, and let me know with no uncertainty of where things were headed -- a Pandora's Box indeed.
Beyond Pegler's infamy as an anti-Semite and racist, he is also remembered for his declared wish that one day some 'white southerner' would spill Bobby Kennedy's brains on the pavement. With that quote -- delivered by a hatchet-mom from Alaska -- the murderous call to arms was sounded.
As author of his own campaign, McCain can now only be seen in the light of history's ghosts -- phantoms of racial violence and assassinations. I stand by that statement as one only need to consider the object of the Republican ticket's strategy: The first African-American presidential candidate, Barack Obama.
And so, I genuinely wonder if McCain has prepared and provided for the ostracism to come. Whether senator or president, he will be shunned -- an aberration of unbridled ambition wedded to the worst of humanity.
What can we expect from the same crowds that clapped and cheered when they talk about exposing a CIA agent for political reasons. These are the same people who support treason as long as it because of GOP revenge. They see Scooter Libby as a Hero for revealing a secret CIA agent on behalf of Cheney and Bush. Soon after the election, Bush will pardon Libby and the GOP will rise up and cheer for the traitor. So what can you expect from these people? You can expect hate-mongering and treason.
Speaking of pardons, I expect W may try to pardon himself, so if anything comes out about his conduct after he leaves office, he would be insulated from prosecution.
I don't believe that it is possible to pro-actively absolve himself from any wrongdoing whatsoever before there is even an indictment.
I appreciate your analogy, Pete, although I disagree with your observations on death and dying. In my experience with thousands at the moment of death, it is not as you describe in almost any instance. What you describe is the terrible incompatibility of life in a diseased organism, ... one that is at odds with its own existence. Cancer, a failing heart, lungs that are not meeting the need for air. Some see that as "dying" when dying is the only resolution to a paradox of life sustained at odds with the body that contains it.
As these angry and uncivilized people walk in line to hear their candidate, McCain, spewing invectives at demonstrators and interviewers, ... Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke are rifling through their life savings, commiting larceny on a scale never before seen. They have every right to be angry, but they are misplacing that anger 180 degrees from its rightful target, ... the man they are standing in line to cheer. He and his kind are the cancer that is eating away at their economic and civil lives, ... but they delude themselves of the opposite.
See Pete Cenedella's Profile
Thanks for your comment, and I appreciate your perspective. Are you a hospice worker by any chance? I based my observations on the deaths of some close to me, and in each case there was either cancer or massive stroke involved.
Thank you for a thoughtful essay. The events of the last two days have been scary indeed, particularly in the tepid attempts of the McCain campaign to denounce the hateful comments by some of their supporters. The perspective offered in the essay does calm my fears and reinforces my view that these angry people are a dying breed--whites who kept waiting for the "trickle-down" and now are realizing it won't happen, and in their bitterness they look for any convenient scapegoat.
Pete, I like to think (wishful AND wistful thinking?) that the majority of Americans still have enough residual common sense to see through the sickening subterfuge also know as the McCain/Palin (aka / "referred to" as the Palin/McCain) ticket.
Of course, I have "fooled" myself before, but after the last 7 1/2+ years I like to think we have actually learned somethings, at least temporarily... I so want to believe that the McCain/Palin inspired Mob Mentality is limited to a noisy few - although there is no denying that at least until yesterday, McCain tried (kind of) to calm the "madding" crowd down a tad by saying that Obama was NOT an ARAB. What a maverickish kind of guy McCain is!
But the damage is done and the deranged (easily manipulated) minority are already incited, which makes me less worry less about the ballot box and more about the bullet loaded gun...
I
See Pete Cenedella's Profile
There is so much promise in this moment -- and therefore so much danger too. I find it hard to actually get a decent night's sleep or focus on anything but the election, and I'm not alone. I share the fear of the bullet and your will to believe that we're past that.
I am relieved to hear that others share this (hopefully temporary) affliction.
Generally very active, I have been glued to the television and huffpost, usually at the same time.
I am afraid if I tune out I will miss something.
Will this end after the election, or will we continue this behavior well into an Obama presidency?
I, too, find it hard to focus on anything except this election. I have become obsessed with every detail because I know that if mccaine/palin win, it will be the death of America as we know it. My earliest political memory is the assassination of JFK; I was entranced by the candidacy of RFK and terrified by his assassination; I was truly ashamed of America when MLK was assassinated; I watched in disbelief as nixon resigned; I struggled with anger and depression as I watched reagan preside over the corruption of the American Dream; I was livid at cllnton for his ridiculous behavior and subsequent lies that set up the election of bush II; and I have been horrified as I have watched bush II destroy the Constitution. And now - I come to the most important vote I have ever cast. I take some comfort knowing that there are others who understand that we stand upon the precipice in a way we never have.
This is the proto-fascist Nordic dance of death we're witnessing in the Rust Belt. George Wallace took his segregationist fascism to Michigan in '68, and won the always bitter white auto workers, and the primary. Since then, the proto-fasicst Republican Party has taken his racist, know-nothing, hyper-nationalist (just substitute America for the Confederacy, or act as if America IS the Confederacy, which working-class, NASCAR, country-music white bread America largely IS; note all those Confederate license tags in Alaska) proto-fascist ball and run with it. Thereby running our country completely into the ground. It's the terminally stupid white American mob, just like the equally stupid and self-destructive German mob which cheered Hitler as he was destroying them, which is the real culprit in the demise of America in the last forty years. Like Hitler, the American conservative proto-fascists won by giving the mob exactly what it stupidly wanted. So how do you like the ruins your choices have left you in now, rednecks? Are you "so lonesome you could die"?
Fabulous response.
See Pete Cenedella's Profile
Fabulous response? For me, not so much. Lots of labels and broad strokes in Jean Renoir's words but not much else. Call people fascist, call them stupid, wash, rinse, repeat.
Also, I happen to be a Hank Williams fan so I don't dig the misuse of ol' Hank's signature line.
Sorry JeanRenoir, we don't agree on the way history unfurls, or on the nature of the white working class. I think it's all a whole lot more complicated than you seem to.
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