Too little, too goddamned late

by: General Content

Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 19:25:44 PM CDT

| More

Here in Lakeville, the traveling press was pretty sure we'd see more of the kind of vicious anti-Obama attitude that's becoming a hallmark of McCain rallies of late.

As the town hall started, McCain was off with more pep than usual. Making the same old jokes, but with energy that reminded us of "the old McCain." But would he use his power for good or evil? An audience member teed up a great big softball that could totally hit a dark side home run, asking, "We want you to fight at your next debate... we want to see s REAL fight at the debate, we want a STRONG leader for the next four years." That is Minnesota nice for "RevWrightACORNAyers," etc.

But then something weird happens: He acknowledges the "energy" people have been showing at rallies, and how glad he is that people are excited. But, he says, "I respect Sen. Obama and his accomplishments." People booed at the mention of his name. McCain, visibly angry, stopped them: "I want EVERYONE to be respectful, and lets make sure we are."

The very next questioner tried to push back on this request, noting that he needed to "tell the American the TRUTH about Barack Obama" -- a not very subtle way, I think, to ask John McCain to NOT tell the truth about Barack Obama. McCain told her there's a "difference between record and rhetoric, and I plan to talk about his record, respectfully... I don't mean that has to reduce your ferocity, I just mean it has to be respectful."

And then later, again, someone dangled a great big piece of low-hanging fruit in front of McCain: "I'm scared to bring up my child in a world where Barack Obama is president."

McCain replies, "Well, I don't want him to be president, either. I wouldn't be running if I did. But," and he pauses for emphasis, "you don't have to be scared to have him be President of the United States." A round of boos.

And he snaps back: "Well, obviously I think I'd be better. "

Of course, this is kind of the best of both world: Crazy base-world gets to bring up Ayers and whatever else, really, and he gets to say, "Be respectful." But I think he means it.

UPDATE: Indeed, he just snatched the microphone out the hands of a woman who began her question with, "I'm scared of Barack Obama... he's an Arab terrorist..."

"No, no ma'am," he interrupted. "He's a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements."

Now, these are MY people in Lakeville. This is the southern-most part of the Twin Cities metropolitan area--an area that I lived in and traveled through and have known most of my life. Every first trip to the big city began and ended with a car ride on two lane concrete freeway through Lakeville to places like Burnsville, Bloomington, Minneapolis, St. Paul and beyond. This was the ideal I had--to be able to leave a small town of a few hundred and live where people actually had a life.

This is where the farmland gives way to the big city. I have been on I-35 through there, and I have gotten off the damned freeway and I know the county roads. I know that area and I know those people because that's essentially where I'm from--the bottom quarter of the state of Minnesota is my fucking origin on this planet and it's everything I knew for as long as I care to remember.

Good people, bad people, indifferent people, my people. And I don't know if these were transplants, people who came down from Minneapolis or what. But none of those people McCain had to slap down sound like Americans to me. They sound like terrified animals, snarling and biting and whipped up and stoked into a frenzy by irresponsible and reckless politicians who think the middle of the country is theirs to fuck with and manipulate for votes, money and attention. And I include Democrats in that equation--I've lived long enough to see those days as well. We are talking about Walter Mondale's only "state" in 1984, after all. What the hell happened? Used to be full of smart, educated and enlightened people who valued education, hard work, and being civilized. Guess that's on the decline.

Through the genius of fear mongering, through the poor choices of Senator John McCain to find people who could articulate why he should be President, through the many years of George W Bush thinking he could use patriotism and the military and small town values to drive wedges between us all, I come to sit down this evening and read about Lakeville, Minnesota as being a place where a man has to tell people not to hurl invective against his opponent.

Last time I checked, we were all Americans. I don't plan to go back to Lakeville. Fuck this noise, if that's how it shall be in America, that is how it shall be. The hate won't start here, it will be answered here with what it deserves. Mockery and denigration. If you choose the hate, you won't get my respect. This was the Republic we were given, as it says at the top of the fucking page, and if you won't have it, keep it, honor it and live in it like a halfways decent fucking person, that's fine--I will. I'll keep it and keep it going. Y'all can shut the fuck up while I help take care of it the right way.

Without hate. Because I don't hate you, you folks who believe the crap that gets spewed above by otherwise decent people.

I shake my head and wonder what the hell went wrong.

[Apologies to Ana Marie Cox for taking her whole post, but it was damned good and hard for me to read and I couldn't snip out anything.]