{"id":3873,"date":"2008-10-20T13:57:23","date_gmt":"2008-10-20T18:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=3873"},"modified":"2008-10-21T13:28:27","modified_gmt":"2008-10-21T18:28:27","slug":"mercury-unbottled-part-2-the-scapegoats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/campaign-08\/mercury-unbottled-part-2-the-scapegoats\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercury Unbottled – Part 2: The Scapegoats"},"content":{"rendered":"

“…concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
\n(<\/em>Excerpted quote from Eric Francis’ article in the series on Auschwitz called “The Big Lie<\/a>.”)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt, 1854.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.<\/strong>“<\/em><\/p>\n

(<\/em>Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain at the third and final Presidential debate, October 15, 2008)<\/p>\n

“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights,” … “Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”
\n(Georgia Congressman John Lewis, civil rights veteran, on the hate-speech\u0412\u00a0at the McCain campaign rallies.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Friend and Reader:<\/p>\n

WE BEGIN THIS EXORCISM with a prayer for four little girls in Alabama, for Matthew Shepard, for James Byrd, for the\u0412\u00a016 children killed in the daycare center\u0412\u00a0of the\u0412\u00a0Alfred P. Murrah\u0412\u00a0Federal Building blown up by domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City in 1995\u0412\u00a0and for everyone who has ever\u0412\u00a0directly confronted\u0412\u00a0a torch, a gun, a bomb or an epithet\u0412\u00a0in the name of unthinking hatred and fear.<\/p>\n

In Wikipedia, a scapegoat is defined as someone “who is blamed for misfortunes, generally as a way of distracting attention from the real causes”. For some, those real causes can range from isolation and loneliness to outright terror of the natural and inevitable changes that life brings — in one’s personal life,\u0412\u00a0in your community, culture, religion or\u0412\u00a0world.<\/p>\n

Real causes can also include one’s own guilt and remorse projected onto someone else, making them, not you, everyone’s focus. In some cases the distraction deals with the ineptitude and rootlessness of one’s campaign. In all cases, it seems all too easy to project fear onto “the Other.”<\/p>\n

At the end of Mercury Unbottled – Part 1<\/a>, I wrote: “He (McCain) is now like liquid mercury unbottled. Once spilled, hard to contain, even harder to keep a finger on and lethal to swallow. But at that point, when cornered as he is, a political animal becomes all the more dangerous.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Since the debate, the campaign of Senator John McCain the political animal has become dangerous. Scapegoating\u0412\u00a0is occuring at a rhythmic pace. Remember Casey’s words from “A Coup on the Mind<\/a>“? They lie. Rinse.\u0412\u00a0Repeat. <\/p>\n

Given the media (primarily Fox News) and Republican party onslaught, the rhythm has become a symphony of distrust, accusation, guilt by association and plain old lying and exaggeration about ACORN, Obama’s distant association with former domestic terrorist William Ayers’, and claims that Obama is an Arab. He’s a Muslim. He’s a terrorist. And then of course there are those vote-stealing satanic Democrats.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Politics of Fear: The now infamous New Yorker cover, meant to be satirical, from July 21, 2008.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It would be comical if we weren’t living in a country already obsessed with fear of “the Other.” Being an “other,” I am alarmed by the tone of McCain’s campaign\u0412\u00a0and the entire Republican party’s effort to discredit what some of the founding fathers — at least the non-slave holding ones — would have rejoiced in.\u0412\u00a0A fully participatory democracy with the gates open for all to participate.<\/p>\n

Pointing fingers at voting “irregularities,” one is reminded of the long lines that happened in 2004 in Ohio where black precincts had two working voting machines while white precincts had dozens. Bush won Ohio by a margin that I believe still raises doubt as to its validity, though Kerry did not contest it. In 2008, pointing fingers at “irregularities” leads to violence, as ACORN workers are getting death threats while doing their job, which is registering minorities and low-income residents to vote.<\/p>\n

In the last two weeks of an election, the campaign focus is on: 1) rallying the base; 2) picking up undecideds; 3) making sure your base gets to the polls. If the message is an indicator, then the Republicans are counting on Joe the Racist and Jane the Frightened to get up and out to the polls.<\/p>\n

By using dog-whistling – signals<\/a> to\u0412\u00a0only those who can hear it, they’re triggering\u0412\u00a0use of the race card for those who use race as a deciding factor. By the way, racism occurs on all sides of the color spectrum, so people of color and even some blacks are going to tow that line. Please ask me later about some African-Americans I’ve met\u0412\u00a0who think “McCain LOOKS like a President”.\u0412\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As we watch Mercury unfurl itself back to its original degree before going retrograde last month, we’re witnessing the sound and the fury of the stuff deep inside that scares us. The stuff that all the political correctness of the last two decades\u0412\u00a0could not teach out of us.\u0412\u00a0These are\u0412\u00a0deep and painful,\u0412\u00a0hurtful things that we don’t want to face in ourselves, let alone say their name.<\/p>\n

But as I\u0412\u00a0was reminded in Al Giordano’s gorgeous post Monday in\u0412\u00a0“The Field”<\/a>, he quoted Lenny Bruce’s line: “it is the suppression of the word that gives it its power.”\u0412\u00a0Ironically, this\u0412\u00a0release of poison\u0412\u00a0is\u0412\u00a0occuring\u0412\u00a0near the season of Scorpio, the sign of death and regeneration,\u0412\u00a0and with a hat tip to Paul Simon: its\u0412\u00a0“hello darkness, [our] old friend.”<\/p>\n

Making peace with our demons of racism, our xenophobia and distrust of others outside our “normal” sphere was never going to be easy. Even if Obama is elected, we will still be contending with it. But when you expose the full extent of the wound that’s deep to the bone in this country, you have a chance, I repeat: chance<\/em>, to heal it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\n
\"Planet<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n
Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Watching Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama<\/a> yesterday on “Meet the Press,” I was moved to tears. For all that’s been said about Powell — and yes, I’m still furious that he sold the Iraq war to the UN — yesterday I saw a black man, a Republican, a conservative with a tremendous amount of credibility amongst American Republicans raise the level of campaign discourse and bring home a point about the cost of fear, and those who sacrifice everything to fight it.<\/p>\n

“I’m also troubled by – not what Senator McCain says – but what members of the Party say, and it is permitted to be said: such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian; has always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, ‘What if he is?\u0412\u00a0 Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?’ The answer’s “No, that’s not America…”<\/p>\n

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery. And she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave.\u0412\u00a0 And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards – Purple Heart, Bronze Star; showed that he died in Iraq; gave his date of birth, date of death. He was twenty years old.<\/p>\n

And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross. It didn’t have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Kahn. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey, he was fourteen-years-old at the time of 9\/11 and he waited until he could go serve his country and he gave his life.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I end this exorcism with a prayer for all of us still unwilling to be moved. Let the poison out. Release it. Let it spill and free yourself of it, and while doing so, do no harm. Let this be our season to free ourselves.<\/p>\n

Yours & truly,<\/p>\n

Fe Bongolan in San Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“…concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it. (Excerpted quote from Eric Francis’ article in the series on Auschwitz called “The Big Lie.”) … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[36,297,431,52,144,432,117],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}