Ugliness

The ugliness is now on full display at McCain and Palin rallies. Yesterday's actions by some in the crowd were appalling. I was listening to Palin's rally when I heard that fool yell "KILL HIM." I assumed it was in reference to Palin yammering on about Bill Ayers but that's not really the point. The point is someone must be seriously disturbed to yell that kind of ugly garbage at a rally for a VP candidate. And it wasn't nastiness leveled only towards Ayers and Obama. It was also hurled towards the media covering the event. As Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post a sound man was treated to racially tinged remarks:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

It made me ask myself what kind of people are attending the rallies. Is violent rhetoric really what the Republicans want to foment? Unfortunately I now do believe that's exactly the kind of ugly words they want to hear.

Now, McCain's rally wasn't much better. I also listened to him and heard someone yell TERRORIST after McCain questioned who Sen. Obama really is. Some people have said McCain looked surprised at that remark. I didn't see it that way. I thought he looked pleased with himself that he had elicited such a comment. It reminded me of the question asked of McCain during the primaries in reference to Hillary Clinton: How do we beat the bitch?

What I see playing out is the McCain/Palin team attempting to scare Americans by framing Barack Obama as "the other". As some kind of scary black guy with suspicious connections. Frankly, I find it disturbing. Disturbing that the party that behaves as though it owns Christianity can so freely hurl disgusting invectives. It's not a matter of simply disagreeing with political stances between the parties. It's the wholesale hatred that seems to embody a frenzied crowd. It's the hatred on display that some Republican supporters have for fellow Americans.

I've attended Obama rallies and you never hear the kind of garbage that was yelled at the McCain/Palin rallies expressed there. You'll hear boos when differing policies are mentioned but never the violent rhetoric. Obama's rallies are much more positive. And why shouldn't they be? After 8 years of Bush and crew we need to hope for a better future. We need to understand that it's going to take all of us, as Americans, pulling together to straighten out the mess we're in now.

It will not be easy to deal with what we have on our hands...2 wars, a financial nightmare, an outrageous lack of vision for America, no real plan for energy independence and a thousand other things that must be addressed. However, I'm not willing to succumb to the peddling of fear. I believe we can fix our problems and am ready and willing to do my part. I believe that with Obama as President we can all, once again, believe in what we can accomplish.

Ugliness will not help America recover from her ills. It only serves to drive us further apart. If this is all the McCain/Palin ticket has to say then it tells me they know they are losing and have no message to take America forward.