We have squabbled over race and gender, over pulling out vs. staying in (a reference to Iraq; nothing sexual here), and religion as a political issue and tool has reached new heights.
If we continue on our current trend of playing musical chairs with the primaries and the outcome being a different winner in each one, reflecting the vastly differing perceptions of what's most important with the electorate in each state, then we are in for one long bumpy ride to November and beyond.
Let's start with Shaker Heights, Ohio and work our way out to the broader picture. Six black teenagers beat a white lawyer to near death and it has rocked this small integrated suburb of Cleveland which has been a relatively peaceful model of integration for decades.
“The concept that something like that could happen here literally never crossed my mind,” said the Rev. Diane Ford Jones, an African-American resident of Ludlow.
Petty thefts are rising near the edges of Shaker Heights, so two years ago the city increased its police budget by $50,000 annually to pay for more patrols along the border, said Mayor Earl M. Leiken. Since the attack, unmarked police cars circle the Shaker Heights streets of Ludlow every five minutes. There is no increased police presence on the Cleveland side, residents say.
[...]
What has surprised Ludlow residents most since the attack is the reaction of people around the region. Cleveland has grown steadily poorer over the last five decades. Many people in the surrounding area believe that Shaker Heights will eventually be overwhelmed by Cleveland residents, many of them African-Americans, trying to escape the city’s high crime rate and struggling schools. They wonder why residents of Shaker Heights have not moved to more distant — and safer — suburbs.
Scenarios such as this are are likely to rise as the gulf between those who have and those who have not continues to widen. It's not so different from what is happening in other parts of the world where the conflicts between races, tribes, religious affiliations and class have people on the move seeking safety and security.
And in Montana, a small town has become divided over the issue of climate change which resulted in the cancellation of a speech at the high school by a Nobel laureate climate researcher. While this did not involve violence, it is no less abhorrent to see divisions erupting where we should be uniting. Unfortunately, the right-wing conservatives who are so hellbent on rejecting the mere discussion of the issue prefer to not only bury their own heads, but also prevent more open-minded folks the benefit of education.
The scholar, Steven W. Running, a professor of ecology at the University of Montana, was scheduled to speak to about 130 students here last Thursday about his career and the global changes occurring because of the earth’s warming.
Dr. Running was a lead author of a global warming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the 400-member United Nations body that shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. But when some residents complained that his presentation here would be one-sided because no opposing view would be offered, the superintendent of Choteau School District No. 1, Kevin St. John, canceled it.
[...]
Those who complained misunderstood the content of the talk, Mr. St. John said, but there was no time to explain to all of them that Dr. Running was a leading scientist rather than an agenda-driven ideologue.
“It was my failure to articulate who he is and what he was here for,” the superintendent said. “He’s a Nobel scientist, highly distinguished, but people thought he was something else. Academic freedom is very important here, and science education is very important here.”
Still, as in much of the West, Choteau is home to a deep-seated mistrust of environmentalism, which many here see as a threat to their agricultural way of life. The town has also been largely on the pro-development side of a long and sometimes bitter battle over whether to exploit oil and gas reserves along the wild Rocky Mountain front or to preserve it primarily for wilderness and wildlife.
Finally, there is the raw politics of the matter. Dr. Running specializes in an issue associated with Mr. Gore, not a popular figure among many in this predominantly Republican town.
One has to wonder about our fate as a nation when adversity to Al Gore is so strong as to disrupt and cancel important dialogue. And one school board member didn't even have the backbone to explain his opposition to the event.
Kirk Moore, the owner of a farm and ranch store, is a school board member who favored canceling the talk. But he declined to say why. “No comment,” Mr. Moore said. “Go talk to the superintendent.”
People of this mindset are spread far and wide in the US and they will stop at nothing to exert influence and control, not only over speeches and the contents of science textbooks, but also over elections. There is widespread evidence of their filthy tactics in South Carolina as they make a brazen attempt to impact the outcome of the all-important presidential primary.
Mudslinging in South Carolina began even before Christmas. Nearly 4,000 South Carolinians received bogus Christmas cards purporting to be from Mitt Romney that endorsed polygamy and talked about the “exceedingly fair and white” Virgin Mary.
[...]
At the moment, e-mail is flooding into South Carolina — after having appeared in Iowa and New Hampshire — alleging that Senator Barack Obama is Muslim, which he is not, and questioning his patriotism, based on a photograph in which he does not have his hand over his heart as the national anthem is being played.
The outrageous ignorance, bigotry and prejudice of the people orchestrating these smear campaigns would be laughable were it not for the fact that there are so many ignorant and prejudiced bigots on the receiving end.
What exactly is the value or the accuracy in calling our process "democratic" when it can be so easily manipulated at the primary level, before we even reach the ever-controversial November general election?
On the Democratic side, the most spirited defensive effort is being waged by the Obama campaign after an increase in e-mail falsely stating that Mr. Obama attended a radical Islamic school as a child in Indonesia, and that his parents raised him as a Muslim so he could run for president and subvert the government.
[...]
B. J. Welborn, a volunteer for Mr. Obama, said that she had recently noticed more comments about Mr. Obama’s supposed Muslim ties when making phone calls on his behalf.
“We don’t know where it is coming from,” Ms. Welborn said. “We have a lot of fact sheets, and we direct people to the Obama Web site. But some people just don’t want to listen.”
I'm noticing a common thread here with the earlier Montana climate change story. One of the biggest threats facing our nation today is not Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, outsourcing of jobs or the economy in general. It really boils down to an unwillingness of so many people to fucking listen. They would rather drape themselves in the flag and drown out any reasonable opportunity to learn and discuss with a loud and proud pledge of allegiance, and a steadfast belief that God is on their side.
This shit is seriously undermining and discrediting our election process and it must be stopped. If such activity isn't a felony, it should be. This is not free speech. If their claims were truthful, then it's a fair part of a political campaign. But outright lies being disseminated in an attempt to influence the outcome of an election should be prosecuted as a felony, and the ringleaders of these smear campaigns are worthy of prison time.
By Tuesday afternoon, a group calling itself Vietnam Veterans Against McCain had sent out a crude flier accusing the candidate of selling out fellow P.O.W.’s to save himself.
By Tuesday evening, a group called Common Sense Issues, which supports Mike Huckabee, had begun making what it said were a million automated calls to households in South Carolina telling voters, according to one of the calls, that Mr. McCain “has voted to use unborn babies in medical research.” (The campaign of Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, said it had no connection to the group and had asked it to stop the calls.)
If we cannot have fair and square debates and untainted primary elections for both parties, and if early leaders in these races are selected based upon false accusations and smear campaigns, then our entire process is marred and essentially meaningless. We become a nation with a political process essentially controlled by thugs, bigots, racists, and religious zealots with suppression as their desired outcome. And that makes us not so much different from other countries in the world whose elections and governments are a laughingstock.
Crossposted at Big Brass Blog
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