McCANE ENLISTS MACHIAVELLI AS A DEFACTO ADVISOR: COUNTRY ABOVE SELF- NOT!

                   WHEN ON THE ROPES CREATE A LYNCH MOB

The test of character is when a person is in a state of crisis. Crisis brings out the best and the worst in people. The polls clearly show McCane and Palin in deep trouble if not compeltely on the ropes.

By their own remarkable admission they have gone on record that the rest of the campagne is going to be focused on raising doubts about Obama's character not other issues such as the dangerous state of the economy.

To this end both Sarah Palin and John McCane have both unleashed an all out verbal bomb throwing attack on Obama. This is, in and of itself, harldly surprising. Both sides do this routinely. Negative campaigning apparently has worked so why not do it? But all negaitve campaigning is not equally negative. Some negative tactics are more negative than others.

Seque to Machiavelli. In an important book called The Prince, Machiavelli described the tactics a dictator inevitable takes to preserve his power. When a dictator is threatened with a potential loss of power by frustrated supporters, he or she chooses an external enemy that becomes a scapegoat for the resless to project their anger upon. Then the crowd is continually whipped into hysteria. In so doing ordinary God fearing citizens can be turned into an hysterical lynch mob.

I would imagine that many of you reading this might be saying that could never happen in America. Imagininhg a Palinesque response: I betcha you are wrong!

Note the following headline:

OBAMA HATRED AT McCANE - PALIN RALLIES: "TERRORIST" "KILL HIM"

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog writes:

McCain was speaking today in New Mexico, doing his usual personal attack on Barack Obama, as the stock market plummeted (you can see the ticker next to McCain on the screen, an apt reminder of what McCain and his fellow Republicans represent), and McCain asked the crowd "who is Barack Obama?" Immediately you hear someone yell "terrorist." McCain pauses, the audience laughs, and McCain continues on, not acknowledging, not chastising, not correcting. Oh, but McCain does say in the next sentence that he's upset about all the "angry barrage of insults."

"Dana Milbank highlights another incident from Tuesday:

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."

 

Any rational citizen will be alarmed irrespective of who they believe should be the net President and Vice President. The McCane and Palin tactics are virtually the same as those who manipulated lynch mobs into an hysterical frenzy.

This activity must be challenged and called what it is - out of bounds - appealing to the lowest of thge low - un American and wrong as in World War II.