Anguished Haters Lash Out

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By Gordon Smith

If you read the comments at the Asheville Citizen-Times, you’re already aware that Barack Obama is an Islamic apostate who may be a mooslim, that he’s BFF with terrorists from Hamas to Weather Underground, and that he Hates white people. As a regular participant in the lowly AC-T forums, I’ve come to expect the worst sorts of smear tactics from zealous, frothy-mouthed shut-ins.

This sort of poison is rippling across the internet and talk radio, lapping at the harried shores of truck stops, diners, and dive bars. It’s infecting the subtext of this Presidential contest with racism, xenophobia, and Christian Nationalism.

The people responsible for propagating lies and smears like these aren’t big John McCain supporters either - they’re Republicans staggering about, eyes-wide, incredulous and angry that their movement conservatism failed so mightily under the hand of Bush and Cheney. They liked the “with us or against us” rhetoric. They applauded when Freedom Fries went onto the menu on Capitol Hill. Saddam’s spider hole was a visceral thrill, and hating the Dixie Chicks was an exercise in loyalty and conviction. After years of being at the bottom of the political heap, it was their time to shine.

Now only 20-odd percent of Americans believe George W. is a good President. Over half of those who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 are now faced with a terrible reality - They were wrong. Now they’re going to lash out at the presumed Democratic nominee with a cynical, nihilistic fervor. It’s not as though they admire or even like John McCain. He’s the mockery of their last hope that a ‘real’ conservative would step up and prove that they hadn’t married their identities to a failed set of ideas. They are distraught, even grossly impaired. In their anguish they build a mythology steeped in the sense that the world is so out of control that even their most hyperbolic exhortations might just be true.

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Yeah, what he said!

The troubling thing is it is not a small isolated cluster of troglodytes regurgitating bile in the local newspaper but the similar small clusters of low-brows regurgitating bile in dark corners across the nation. But the good thing about it now is as Red Rider put it:

Lunatic Fringe, we know your out there ... and we're not going to let you steal the laughter this time.