Yeah.
If I can put on the half-black person hat for a moment: black people have been talking about this since he became a viable candidate. There are too many painful memories from Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X: every time a black leader really becomes important in the U.S., someone shoots him. (Chris Rock used to have a famous bit about this in his sketch comedy.) I remember talking about this with a (black) former member of my department staff. The conversation went something like this, right toward the beginning of the primaries:
Me: Obama looks like he could do well.
Her: Until they shoot him.
Me: Yeah.
Hopefully it will just be an assassination attempt. After seeing some of the anti-Obama stuff out there, there is little question in my mind there will be an attempt on his life should he win.
Did you see that video circulating in which someone is interviewing people at a McCain rally? They are truly terrified at the idea of Obama as president. That combination of hate and fear is volatile.
Maybe McCain liked the RFK book/miniseries so much he just wants a sequel.
Did you see that video circulating in which someone is interviewing people at a McCain rally? They are truly terrified at the idea of Obama as president. That combination of hate and fear is volatile.
What's really amazing about that video is that they don't seem to know why they are terrified, other than that they believe he's secretly a Muslim. I think my favorite quote was "just look at his name" or something along those lines. And yet, they honestly don't believe they are being racist. It's a remarkable piece of video. Not to mention that they all look really dumb - as in, "you could strangle them with a cordless phone" kind of dumb.
On the other hand, JRO is doing everything she can to convince me NOT to vote for Obama, but for entirely different reasons - and those aren't reasons with which I disagree. Like her, I've really had it with the "lesser of two evils" two-party bullshit, not to mention that Obama's idea of sending more troops into Afghanistan seems like a really, REALLY bad idea.
But Palin scares the shit outta' me, so... there's that.
Fafblog makes me feel a little better about all of this.
Would it be possible now to think that all the mahoosive resources devoted these days to internal surveillance of folks will tend to very substantially reduce the real risk of that very terrible thing happening. Or would such faith in the simple goodness of things be unfounded?
One of the things that embarrassed me about being an American in Europe (I've lived on both continents) was our reputation there for being foaming at the mouth racists who are ironically almost universally multi-ethnic (unless you're a recent immigrant, if you live in the Americas, you are most likely multi-ethnic). Oftentimes, that was my greatest source of embarrassment because they're very aware of these mock-racial tensions that you have here in the US.
I'm disgusted by all of the race-baiting, but I'm not at all surprised. In fact, it's a bit refreshing to see what people really are like here when they're not putting on PC airs.
I'm glad that you mentioned Russia's effect on segregation. Few people seem to know it and many Black people look at me as if I'm crazy when I mention it.
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