The McCain campaign has stirred up some serious muck in order to divert the focus away from McCain’s inability to reassure the American public he can resolve their economic woes. He has polled horribly on the issue of the economy, and rightfully so, as McCain would implement nearly identical economic policies as President Bush that have played their significant part in unhinging the American economy.
McCain’s charzard and pikachu have both fainted in battle leaving him with his last pokemon -- Ayers. This new focal point for M-dawg’s campaign has actually been around for awhile now, but has taken on fuel from the desperation of the McCain campaign. Obama’s associations with Bill Ayers has really gotten the conservative base riled up. How could Obama have a relationship with Ayers, a domestic terrorist that was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical, leftist organization dedicated to violent means to achieve their goals of ending the Vietnam War? WHO IS THE REAL OBAMA!!!?
To fully address McCain’s attack, I’ll divide my points up into sections.
First on Associations:
Turns out Ayers is a free American citizen who is also a highly successful university professor:
http://education.uic.edu/directory/faculty_info.cfm?netid=bayers
If Obama is in cahoots with a terrorist, then we really need to rid ourselves of all the terrorists at the University of Illinois in Chicago where Ayers teaches. Talk about associations! And more schools seem to be harboring this terrorist!
*In Ayers bio in above link*
“HONORS AND AWARDS
2005-6 - Randolph Distinguished Visitng Professor, Vassar College
2005 - Distinguished Scholar, Museum of Education, University of South Carolina
2003 - Visiting Scholar, Lesley University
1996 - Doctor of Humane Letters (Honorary), Nazareth College"
Can you imagine how much closer his ties and connections are to the hundreds of students he has taught, the administrations and faculties of schools he has worked for and the schools who have given him honorable awards! We don't just have terrorist cells here -- we have an entire terrorist organization actively working in the US known as higher education. There are motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!
Obama’s ties to this man are pretty loose. They are both liberal, activists and work in the same part of the country. Well, what do you know, turns out they interacted and served with respectable, mainstream organizations that give out grants, seek to end poverty, etc.. in the early 2000s. Obama must have really searched high and low across this country to find this domestic terrorist, so he could establish a relationship that one might describe as “bff.” Obama’s proclivity to seek out terrorists really speaks of his moral character. Just so you know there is no evidence of further links between Obama and Ayers as of 2002.
On the issue of Time:
I’m not going to break down in uncontrollable sobbing over the atrocities (being in a group that fatally killed one police officer and injured another along with various acts of property damage) this man has committed when he acted as a "domestic terrorist" well over thirty years ago. Sometimes late at night I scream out in rage at John Wilkes Booth "WHY!?" The audience who gets riled up about this is full of it. They’re only interested in pretending to be outraged for political reasons. Nobody I know young or old started screaming out about political events that occured in the 60s and the 70s anytime recently -- the 80s, well, that’s a different story “ DO NOT DISASSEMBLE JOHNNY 5! HE’S ALIVE!!!”
The Weather Underground sucked, but it should be made clear what kind of actions they did commit. I’m convinced the crowds screaming terrorist, and your average conservative idiot, do not know why they're screaming terrorist. They want to pin Obama as the outsider, the other, that needs to be associated with the most vile thing they, the collective group, hates -- it was “commies” but now it’s terrorists.
McCain and Palin make sure not to go beyond their rhetoric in their speeches regarding the issue of Ayers. They know if they begin pressing the facts, they’re left with a label like “associates with terrorists” that won’t stick. McCain and Palin leave their rabid crowds to come to the conclusion from what they leave unsaid; they have definitely sewn the seeds, too. McCain can barely control the xenophobia in his town hall meetings. Screams of “terrorist” come from the crowd with other hateful, violent things shouted. He put an old lady in a full nelson when she started callling Obama an Arab on microphone in front of cameras at his rally. What has been left unsaid in McCain’s rhetoric has been filled with the belief that Obama is lying and is whatever is not American to these people -- terrorist, Muslim, Arab, Satan incarnate.
McCain and Palin are playing with the semantics and pragmatics of language. They are using the literal meaning of the word terrorist, so when they say “Obama associated with a domestic terrorist,” it is literally true. The Weather Underground was a terrorist group, and Ayers was a member; however, the meaning that is latent in the statement is from the pragmatic use of the word. Without explaining or delving into how exactly Ayers is a terrorist, setting up a multitude of contexts, the word is left with the resonance of a post-9/11 society. These "terrorists" of Ayers ilk were some of the most highly educated, young, white, wealthy people in America who joined an extremely radical fringe group in a time where political activity was increasingly more aggressive and more radical in response to the Vietnam War among other issues. They are not various incarnations of Osama bin Laden as the rabid dogs at McCain’s rallies would believe. McCain and Palin have used the word terrorist to convince their less than brilliant base that Obama is actually an Arab, Muslim terrorist. These people are not just screaming these bizarre ideas for no reason, they’ve been tricked into believing it through the tacit messages in McCain’s campaign’s wantonness use of pragmatics and fear-inducing rhetoric.
1 comment:
McCain used Ayers!
...it wasn't very effective.
One thing you don't hear about all that often, mostly because the Obama campaign is better than this, is that Palin is strongly associated with a secession movement in Alaska. These people harbor strong anti-American feelings to this day, and Palin is tied more strongly to them than Obama ever was to Ayers.
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