Palin:Obama=Netanyahu:Rabin (Sure Hope Not)

David Bromwich has a moving piece on Huffpo about the actual dangerousness of Palin's loose talk about Obama, linking him to terrorists. David Gergen has been saying this too. Bromwich says it's a form of delegitimation which we also saw with Kennedy:

An unmeasurable but well-recorded condition for the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the campaign of delegitimation that preceded that terrible event. Anti-Castro Cubans hated Kennedy because he had disappointed them at the Bay of Pigs, and seemed to be a warm friend cooling. Many Southern white people hated him for his indications of solidarity with the cause of civil rights. There are other actors and reactions that might be added; but all shared the belief that Kennedy was not a legitimate leader, that he didn't deserve to be given the chance to go on governing. The hatred was especially virulent in the South. Death threats were in the air and Kennedy had been warned against taking the trip to Texas...

[W]hen the incantation "He is not one of us" dips so far below sanity that we pretend the rules and decencies aren't in force any more--it is more than one person who is harmed. This loose way of talking and thinking of violence hardens us against real responsibility if the violent thing should happen. We are administering shocks to ourselves in advance so as not to be surprised by the actuality. But such preparations are in their very nature corrupt, and corrupting.

I'd note that the same thing happened with Yitzhak Rabin: the atmosphere of contumely toward him in the months before he was killed. He was compared to a member of the Nazi SS for wanting to give up land. And sure enough, a nut killed him. His widow accused Netanyahu of inciting murderous feeling. Lipstick-on-a-pitbull is giving me the willies.

P.S. Bad link. Here's Bromwich this week, on the New York Times giving attention to the Bill Ayres "Domestic terrorist" canard...

Comments

[Richard Witty]

I'm amazed that McCain is so willing to throw his "honor" away with direct association with such contemptuous comment.

[Richard Witty]

I told my wife that at this point, Obama is a shoe-in, that even with another terrorist event, he would not win.

She said that the only way that McCain would win, would be if Obama were assassinated.

How did we come to this even as a prospect?

Are we that racist a society, that fear-driven?

[anon]

One is known by his or her associates, whether its Lieberman or Obama's.

[LeaNder]

Richard, I am absolutely pleased to hear from your wife. Remember Hilary's faux-pas?

But this puzzles me:
I told my wife that at this point, Obama is a shoe-in, that even with another terrorist event, he would not win.

Meaning?: I told my wife that at this point, Obama is a shoo-in, that even with a another terrorist attack, he would win.

[Jim Haygood]

"Many Southern white people hated [Kennedy] for his indications of solidarity with the cause of civil rights. The hatred was especially virulent in the South."

How does Bromwich know this? Was he there? I was, and this sounds like an entirely fictional load of swill that Bromwich conjured up.

Actually, Kennedy allied himself with the powerful southern Democratic Congressional committee chairmen of the day by talking a good game on civil rights, while doing diddly-squat. Integration of southern schools was at a standstill during Kennedy's term, despite Brown v. Board of Education approaching its tenth anniversary.

Kennedy's assassination may have had something to do with Lyndon Johnson's lust for power (peruse that telling photo of Johnson's knowing wink to a political buddy, in the midst of shell-shocked mourners). Or it may have had something to do with Kennedy's courageous opposition to Israel's nuclear program, which Johnson promptly reversed. But trying to pin Kennedy's death on some fictional "virulent southern hatred of Kennedy" is nuts.

[the Sword of Gideon]

I think it was the Haygoods

[anonymous]

William Kristol chose Palin
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/palins-talent-scout

Without the Neocons, Evangelical Fundamentalists could never have risen to such prominence - but their regard for "the Holy Land" was too useful. After savaging half the planet militarily and economically, the Neocon's lasting legacy may be the elevation of Evangelical Fundamentalism to the abject detriment of American society.

[Anonymous]

"Kennedy's assassination may have had something to do with Lyndon Johnson's lust for power"

"Ding dong the witch is dead; dong ding fairy godmother will head"

[Duscany]

I wish Obama would quit pretending that Ayers was just someone in his neighborhood whom he would see now and then while walking his kids to school. Obama might have only been eight when the Weather Underground was bombing this country but he was 41 when Ayers said his only regret was that he hadn't planted more bombs.

Obama wouldn't serve on a board with a former Nazi. So why does it do it for a former member of the Weather Underground? He can't claim he didn't know about the Weather Underground. Anyone who really never heard of them doesn't know enough American history to be president anyway.

I suspect he knew full well Ayers's history and that of the Weather Underground as well. It just didn't bother him. In his eyes they had the right goals. They just didn't go about them the right way (they should have planted fewer bombs and applied for more community action grants).

[Duscany]

McCain can't win this election. He can't think on his feet. He gives banal answers to every question and then (badly) pivots into stock phrases from his stump speech.

I am not thrilled about Obama but when he doesn't want to answer a question he evades so smoothly that you almost think he answered it. I'm astonished that neither McCain nor Obama think the current economic meltdown will require them to trim any of the new spending they've proposed. What are they going to do? Just print money? Unfortunately, yes.

[anon]

Who is more scary, the war-monger McCain or the community intimidator & vote fraud king, Obama?