Some grown-up (if there is such a thing in today's Republican Party) needs to get ahold of McCain and Palin and tell them to stop inciting violence, because that is exactly what they are doing.
Today, campaigning in New Mexico, when McCain asked the rhetorical question "Who is Barack Obama?" an audience member said "A terrorist."
A terrorist is exactly what Sarah Palin wants you to believe Barack Obama is. Today in her speech in Florida, when Palin said "according to the New York Times, he (Bill Ayers) was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'' the audience booed, and then she connected Obama to Ayers. One man in the audience shouted "Kill him!"
What immediately came to mind was the Gospel Passion story when Pontius Pilate asked the crowd what he should do with Jesus and they shouted "Crucify him."
I'm not comparing Obama to Jesus. I'm comparing the angry, racially incited crowd to the crowd demanding the execution of Jesus. And I'm also condemning the supposedly Christian Sarah Palin for doing exactly the opposite of what Jesus commanded her to do "Love your neighbor," and "love your enemy" and "do not bear false witness." But then Sarah Palin is a phony Christian, just like the majority of Republicans I meet.
It hasn't been that long since 9/11, and there are still many paranoid people in this country who are ready to condemn anyone who has the remotest acquaintance with anyone else called a terrorist, even a so-called terrorist from the sixties who never killed anyone and was never convicted of anything. Such radical wing nuts are fully capable of murdering someone, and of assassinating a president or presidential candidate.
We Democrats and Obama supporters have always had the fear of assassination in the backs of our minds, especially those of us old enough to remember three charismatic leaders from the sixties who were gunned down. We know the crazies come out from under their rocks whenever a charismatic figure appears, whether it's Jesus or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Jack or Bobby Kennedy or even Ronald Reagan, who survived an assassination attempt. We don't want to see the same fate for Barack Obama.
But Sarah Palin and John McCain could very well incite these fantasies in the heads of their otherwise empty-headed followers. They are playing with fire and they could end up getting a lot of people burned. But they don't care. They have no consciences - they are psychopaths who are incapable of love and compassion, fairness and kindness, honesty and decency. They are even more despicable than Bush and I never thought I could think that of anyone.
Should any harm come to Obama, it will be their fault and their fault alone and they will deserve their own place in hell. Should they succeed in convincing enough voters of their lies, the damage that will come to the country will also be theirs. And they will damage the country. In fact, they will be the cause of its death.
They will be assassins of a country. And that, my friends, is the definition of a terrorist.
