The Gloves are Off

Now it would appear that the very dense John "did I ever tell you that I was in Vietnam" and the even more dense Sarah "legs and breasts and a big cheesy grin" Palin are getting personal in their campaign against Barrack Obama. Apparently Obama has crossed paths sporadically with Bill Ayers, who was one of the founders of the Weathermen, a radical group that launched a bombing campaign against the American establishment; a sort of American equivalent of the German "Rote Armee Faktion" and the Italian "birgada rossa". Now it doesn't appear to matter that Mr Obama has never expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”1 However, Sarah has been advised by aides, "the gloves are off, the heels are on, go get to them."2 It is, of course, extremely doubtful that Sarah had ever heard of the Weathermen prior to her aides telling her and it is, therefore, hardly to be expected that she had ever heard of Bill Ayers. Still the gloves are off and Sarah had her campaign donors cheering in Englewood, Colorado, when she said: "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country... This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."3 Well, she was addressing people who support her campaign but surely, surely the American public won't be listening to drivel like this.
John "did I ever tell you that I was in Vietnam" McCain on the other hand is a contemporary of Bill Ayers and he had heard of him before. In a televised interview last spring, he asked, “How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?”4 John, he was engaged in bombings that "could have or did" kill innocent people. The evidence would appear to suggest that he didn't kill anyone and John even if he did, kill someone, so did you. In fact John, do you remember why you were in the Hanoi Hilton? That's right John, you were flying over Vietnam dropping great big fucking bombs on innocent civilians. The Mayor of Chicago, Richard M Daly said in an interview last week, "“He (Mr Ayers) has done a lot of good in this city and nationally,” and then went on to explain that he has consulted Mr Ayers on school issues; Mr Ayers is now an Education Professor at the University of Illinois. Mr. Daley, whose father was Chicago’s mayor during the street violence accompanying the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the so-called Days of Rage the following year, said he saw the bombings of that time in the context of a polarized and turbulent era.5 Well, I am prepared, to see John as the product of a polarized and turbulent era. However, unlike Mr Ayers, John "did I ever tell you that I was in Vietnam" McCain hasn't moved on or even begun to ask whether he might in fact have been wrong.
What we have, of course, is an infantile effort to discredit Barrack Obama. Nevertheless, it is, of course, true when Palin refers to Obama by saying to her followers, "..... This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America." There are a lot of people who see America just as Palin and, indeed, McCain, see it and that is why Obama could lose. Still, the reality is that Obama does have a brain and that is why he sees America differently from Palin and McCain and their followers and, while he will be constrained and reigned in by the establishment and the requirements of American "Realpolitik", he is capable of ensuring that a less unilateral and more diplomatic foreign policy is pursued. The alternative is too dreadful to consider.
1 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us/politics/04ayers.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
2 http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/10/palin_obamas_terrorist_pallin.html
3 ibid see also http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gi3oP74kMjA
4 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us/politics/04ayers.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
5 ibid