Political Anger, a note

[womzilla]

I haven't watched, read, or listened to Giuiliani's speech from last night (Sept. 3), but I hear that it was a non-stop angerfest. (Josh Marshall called it "Rancid. Curdled.") I wish I were surprised.

Back in 2004, I did watch Zell Miller's convention speech, which was one of the most over-the-top political speeches I've ever witnessed, comparable to Strom Thurmond's famous States Right Party Convention speech in 1948 ("I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."). I watched Zell, and at the end I thought, "That's it for them."

Needless to say, I was wrong. I hadn't realized--or, more correctly, hoped I was wrong in thinking--that the Bush party runs completely on a platform of anger. Anger and fear, using fear to fuel the anger. One of the things the Bush party has done poorly over the last year has been to stoke the furnace of pure, unreasoning rage. I think that's going to change.

A couple of months back, when the New York Times Magazine ran the cover headline "Rush Limbaugh Is Just Getting Warmed Up", I thought, "He means, 'I'm going to niggerbait like no one has ever niggerbaited before.'" The rhetoric has been stepping up steadily, and I think that over the next two months we're going to see Bush-party anger, contempt, lies, explicit appeals to xenophobia, racism, gaybashing, Dolchstoßlegende, and general fury as a substitute for thought to a degree that will make any sane person despair over the quality of her nation. They will call "leftists" cockroaches; eventually, they will recommend the machetes.

Just, you know, be prepared.

Updated, 10 Sept 2008: When I said "niggerbaiting" above, I evidently meant "black cannibal filth want to rape our babies"-bating. This is breathtaking. It would almost be amusing if, you know, trillions of dollars, the lives of hundreds of millions of people, the survival of 90% of Earth's species, and the future of democracy and the rule of law weren't at stake.

Also, whatever you do, don't mention the war.

Comments

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

The worst speech I ever saw in this regard is the Pat Buchanan speech at the 1992 RNC, about which Molly Ivins famously said that she thought it must have sounded better in the original German. When he started talking about a religious war for the soul of America and calling the Democrats amoral, I really did have a chill run up my spine.

As for the RNC this year, it's clear that the Republicans have given up on trying to appeal to the middle-of-the-road independent voters and are going back to their tried-and-true method of casting the choice as between elitist liberals and staunch conservative patriots. So much for trying to unite America. *sigh*

[supergee.livejournal.com]

The Buchanan speech even disgusted William Safire.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

The Buchanan speech disgusted Safire because Buchanan came out and said in plain speech what the Reagan-Bush wing prefer to say in code.