In the period following 9/11, the Bush Administration did its best to impose a police state mentality on the country, with any and all dissent immediately branded as “unpatriotic.” Remember? If you questioned the war, or criticized the administration, or suggested that perhaps it wasn’t a great idea to invade a country that hadn’t done anything at all to provoke us, you were branded anti-American. A “blame-America-firster.” Why do you hate America? the wingnuts would bleat.
Ultimately this plan foundered on George W. Bush’s massive incompetence and the total trainwreck of his administration’s policies. Even the wingnuts got disgusted with the BushCo clowns, and with that the game was lost. You can’t keep up that whole police state-squelch dissent thing unless there are people willing to enforce the rules.
But despite Bush’s failure, the police state approach can be a very effective strategy. Certainly Barack Obama is going for it in a big way. It started during the primaries, when his campaign established the working rule that any criticism of Obama, no matter what, was to be construed as evidence of racism. Actually you didn’t even have to criticize the guy; just voting for somebody else was enough. You liked Hillary better? Congratulations; you’re a racist.
Over and over again I saw the scenario play out on blogs:
Democrat: I really like Hillary. She’s brilliant and capable.
Obamabot: Sounds like somebody’s not ready for a black man to be president.
Democrat: Obama’s caving on FISA is a huge betrayal.
Obamabot: Why don’t you just admit you’re a racist?
Democrat: Obama says he wants to expand funding for faith-based programs, which is the opposite of what we need to be doing.
Obamabot: Ooh, god forbid we should have a scary black man in the White House, right?
Democrat: The cult-like adoration around Obama is really disturbing.
Obamabot: So you’re saying he’s “uppity”?
Democrat: The evidence for Obama’s cheating in the caucus states is massive, with 2000 incident reports in Texas alone. Voter suppression, busing people across state lines, tampering –
Obamabot: Fine, you don’t want a black man to be president. Just admit it.
Democrat: The sexism from him and his supporters is deeply offensive.
Obamabot: Racist!
If Obama were truly as compelling a candidate as we’re always being told he is, he wouldn’t need this kind of tactic. But he’s not, and he does. He needs all the help he can get to head off inquiries into his lies, his sleaze, his corruption, his fraud, his vacuity.
And so we have Sarah Palin being accused of racism because she mentioned Barack Obama’s pivotal relationship with the very white William Ayers. But hey — if Bob Herbert can hallucinate the Siegessäule as a giant black phallus, obviously it’s no problem at all for the media to see racism now.
Can you imagine what it will be like if Obama is elected? We’ve already seen his “Truth Squads” and we know where he stands on FISA, so clearly the guy has no problem with using the state to crack down on dissent. As I’ve been telling my friends for months now, Obama is the heir to Bush in everything but name.
Posted by Violet in Barack Obama, Election 2008
