The Losing Side Didn't Lose Gracefully

Here's a chunk of the HBO documentary film "Right America Feeling Wronged" by filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi. She documented the crowds following McCain/Palin over the end of the campaign, and what she found is pretty disturbing, but shouldn't be surprising to any readers of this blog. The clip here (h/t Pandagon) includes some footage of folks from the part of North Carolina I grew up in and recently still lived in, Concord, NC, the heart of NASCAR country.

Alexandra asks folks at Lowes' Motor Speedway if they're ready for a black President. What do you think they said?



"When did this country get chickenshit?" one guy asks. That's what they see Obama as: the final nail in the coffin for their version of America. They're not too happy about it. They're going to continue to be unhappy about it. They want to be angry about it, as a matter of fact. Believe me when I tell you I can recognize mad-eyed righteous indignation used to justify racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, what have you from a mile off, and these guys are full of that.

They honestly do not believe they are doing anything wrong. They believe they are being honest about how the way the world has worked for decades. They believe that's how the world should continue to work. But Barack Obama scares the ever-loving crap out of them. He represents the end of the world working the way they have been used to seeing. That's a hard, hard thing for any human being to take, and the more narrow your worldview, the harder it is to see it ripped out and replaced by a new era where the President of the United States doesn't look like them.

So yes, they are easy targets for the kind of hatred and paranoia whipped up by El Rushbo, Coultergeist, Malkinvania, Hannity the Manatee and the rest of the hate radio all-stars. There's a reason why El Rushbo is the voice of the GOP in 2009. They've finally become the reactionary racist nationalist party we see in Europe. Obama represents the end of their power. Naturally, they hate him.

So now we're at a crossroads. The GOP doesn't want just Barack Obama to fail. They are driving a fundamental, elemental hatred for everything he represents. They want to destroy this country as a lesson to punish the majority of Americans who voted for him. It's the only way, after all, those deluded folks who voted for Obama will ever see what Pandora's Box they have opened by putting a black man in the White House.

Obama represents the total destruction of their worldview. Now, their worldview has shifted to the destruction of the worldview that Obama represents. It's not their America anymore. They don't care if it burns, in fact they see it as necessary to purge those who brought it about.

So when you ask yourself "Hey Zandar, are you serious about the GOP wanting to destroy the country?" then remember this clip. See the entire documentary (all 5 bits are on YouTube for now). They have decided that the country needs to be destroyed in order to save it. That's the goal driving everything the GOP does. We're all the enemy to them. We betrayed them because we elected Obama. We deserve the economic calamity as the price paid for it.

The war is just beginning.