August 3, 2009

I wrote a post on election day which talked about the politics of personal destruction that Lee Atwater created and used in the most vile way imaginable. It was so successful that it spawned his heir apparent, Karl Rove who has carried the mantle proudly. They play on the prejudices of Americans in such a way as to bring out the dark underbelly of society. I said that if Obama had won the election then not only did America rise up to vote for the better man, it also repudiated the Lee Atwater school of campaigning, at least for now.

Has a real crisis beaten the Lee Atwater school of smear politics?

So today is the day we all get to find out if the Lee Atwater school of politics has been defeated by the reality of our economic situation.

It has taken a real crisis to combat the very successful campaign strategy that Atwater championed to win George H.W. Bush the White House in '88. The same techniques that Karl Rove mastered and implemented in beating McCain and then Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. Will truth and reality finally win out?

I wish I could tell you that Americans henceforth will never be influenced by scurrilous personal attack ads and campaign smears in the future, but my hope today is that finally this great nation has been shocked into actually using their brains to decide who should lead us out of the wilderness that came upon due to the negligence of Conservatism. I think Americans unfortunately have a short memory span and these dirty tactics will always be with us. If Obama wins, then I do think that America have no excuses any more if they do get taken in by these cowardly tricks. So I say to you now:

Yes, We Can.

I believed that it wouldn't end with Obama's election and those who thought so were a bit naive. Well, now it's come back with a vengeance and it's sick and it's ugly, but it's real. Everything that has come out of the mouths of the conservative movement and transmitted by their conduits to the public has been targeted at racial elements in our society.

Sonia Sotomayor? Oh, she's an affirmative action choice. Doesn't that make you white people so mad? President Obama? Oh, he's a racist who hates white people. He's uppity and wasn't born here anyway and isn't he really a terrorist planning to bomb American cities?

Fear and racism is being used to rip this country apart and President Obama has only been in charge for six months. Hold on to your seats because this is the tip of the iceberg. Remember the nut in Pittsburgh named Puplowski, who shot three cops in the head because he was afraid that Obama was going to take his guns? That was a prelude of things to come. And the old white supremacist who shot up the Holocaust museum was part of the warm up act.

Bush and Cheney left this country shattered both financially and in the workforce and we would have hoped that the country would try to heal itself with the help of republicans and conservatives. Instead they only care to operate in chaos and degradation in an attempt to rip the country apart. The show has just started and "you ain't seen nothing yet."

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