Shakespeare Understood--the Dogs of War are a Bad Thing

I was winding up this week’s offering—a musing about what it means to be liberal [look for it in the future]—when I was diverted by what seems to me to be a more urgent, in the sense that it is more immediately relevant, issue, and so I take up my computer keyboard to start over and to expound, instead, upon the repugnant language being lately employed by the McCain campaign—particularly by Sarah Palin—and by the response of the attending Palin faithful who, far from finding it repugnant themselves, appear to have embraced it as permission to respond with even more heinous offerings of their own. It is by now a well-chewed over fact that the McCain campaign has opted for mudslinging and attempted character assassination over examination of political issues as the tactic for trying to close the ever-widening gap in poll numbers between John McCain and Barack Obama. Astonishingly, the campaign overtly acknowledged the decision, saying that they knew that they had to “turn the page” on discussion about the economy as if they didn’t, McCain could not win:

"’We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days,’" said Greg Strimple, one
of McCain's top advisers. ‘We are looking forward to turning a page on this
financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal
record and how he will be too risky for Americans...’" from the Washington
Post.

While the idea that a political candidate can simply choose to turn the politics of a campaign away from the most burning political issue of the day strikes me as being peculiarly naïve—or perhaps just willfully, if foolishly, wishful—the blatant proclamation of the intention to ignore the economy was not, as it turned out, the most bizarre aspect of the McCain plan. The most bizarre part was that “turning the page” manifested in Sarah Palin, “heels on; gloves off,” addressing the crowds at McCain rallies with repeated comments about Obama that, skirting overt slander, intimate strongly that Obama is not American, is or has been a terrorist, and is hiding behind a nefarious metaphorical mask which obscures his true self. Palin’s by-now-infamous remarks include the claim that Obama has been “…pallin’ around with terrorists,” that he does not “love America the way you and I do,” and that “he is not like us.” She has also repeatedly asked the question: “Who is Barack Obama really?”—as has McCain. (See for instance some of the McCain ads from the last two weeks here, here, and here.) None of these remarks is honest. All of them have tenuous ties to some actual fact, but the tactic relies on a deliberate and extensive distortion of the truth by failing to supply any sources or facts, by wildly exaggerating the significance of a particular true, but largely insignificant, fact, and by relying on language involving constructions that suggest some ominous hidden truth that we don’t know and should definitely fear.

For example:

The claim that Obama is “pallin’ around with terrorists” is a gross distortion of the facts of Obama’s association with William Ayers. The truth of that association is well-documented by independent fact-checking agencies such as FactCheck.com; the facts demonstrate that Obama’s association with Ayers is no more nefarious than is McCain’s own association with Ayers. In McCain’s case, one of his major supporters, the Annenberg family, long time Republican associates of Ronald Reagan, funded the educational reform committee on which Obama served with Ayers. As Andrew Sullivan put it: “If Obama is "palling around with terrorists," the Republican Annenbergs are funding them.”

The claim that Obama “does not love America the way you and I do” is, apparently, a false conclusion drawn from the fact that Obama supports ending the war in Iraq, while Palin and McCain are fanatically devoted to the idea of winning the war in Iraq. Palin said, at an event in my part of the world last week: “Just once I would like to hear Barack Obama say he'd like America to win.” The unacknowledged premises of this conclusion are that the war in Iraq, like an over-sized hockey game, is winnable, that winning the war in Iraq is more important than any cost we might incur in trying to win it—either in monetary terms or in terms of the number of dead—and that “you and I” agree on all of these premises, as well as agreeing that holding out for victory at all costs is the only appropriate way to show love for America.

The claim that “he is not like us” is, presumably, a one-step uglier permutation of the “he doesn’t love America like we do” claim. It ups the ante on hate speech, though, as there is a clear implication of racism inherent in the claim. An obvious read of “he is not like us” is that “he is not white.”

Despite the clearly provocative and ominous tenor of Palin’s remarks, McCain and Palin seem to wish self-righteously to claim the moral high ground because they are not themselves claiming in so many words that Obama is a terrorist or that white people should not trust black people, but idea that one is responsible only for the literal meaning of words and not for their figurative meaning or for innuendo is a position utterly astonishing in its disingenuousness, and the crowds to whom Palin’s remarks have been addressed have, unsurprisingly, not been fooled by it. They have responded immediately, loudly, and aggressively to the underlying meaning of Palin’s not-so-subtly ugly statements. Various members of the various crowds over the past two weeks have shouted out “terrorist!” and “waterboard Obama” and “kill him.” In at least one case, members of the press have come in for an immediate display of overt bigotry: Dana Milibank reported that: “Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African-American sound man . . . and told him, ‘Sit down, boy.’” Granted that the actual number of individuals shouting out the most hateful comments is small, it is nevertheless alarming that any such response to their speeches would be tolerated by two of the country’s most public of public figures. If they want to have any credibility in asking us to accept that their own denial of culpability in actually eliciting the hate speech from some of their supporters, McCain and Palin absolutely must act swiftly, relentlessly, and unequivocally in denouncing the hate speech at their rallies every time it happens. Failure to do so is tatamount to encouragement. The fact that they have so far failed to do so means that whatever actions arise out of the unleashed bigotry in the future, then, will be—at least in part—the responsibility of McCain and Palin for having fanned the fires.

Over the weekend, Congressman John Lewis issued a statement warning of the potential consequences of public figures choosing to engage actively in stirring up hate. Lewis’ statement is worth reading in its entirety, as it is clear, eloquent, and direct. It does not indulge in hysteria, innuendo, or pettifogging insult. It reminds us, instead, through the example of George Wallace and death of four little girls in the bombing of the church in Birmingham, Alabama, of the potential dangers inherent in allowing hate speech to flourish. This is, furthermore, a warning that carries with it the authority of Lewis’ personal experience with what happens when a culture allows hatred to direct public discourse.

On March 7, 1965, Lewis, then one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement along with Martin Luther King, Jr., took his place at the head of the line for the march to the Montgomery Courthouse. These pictures tell the tale:

http://www.howard.edu/library/Reference/Guides/Lewis/BigSixFiles/0307march.gif (The man on the right is John Lewis, leading the march from Selma to Montgomery.)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/54/189772532_cc8c41165a.jpg?v=0 (This is Lewis later that same day being beaten by cop for nothing more than walking peacefully to Montgomery.)

Lewis, walking out peacefully in support of a cause, carrying no weapon and perpetrating no act of violence toward anyone, was beaten on that day by police, along with many others, in an event that became one of the significant turning points of the Civil Rights movement. Lewis knows, if anyone does, the catastrophic effect of loosed hatred. If anyone has a right to denounce McCain’s tactics, it is Congressman John Lewis.

I have read responses to Lewis and McCain that seek to exonerate McCain and Palin from the potential consequences of their choices. The argument sometimes offers overtly the idea that although McCain and Palin are “to some degree” stirring up hate, they are nowhere near as bad as George Wallace. If it doesn’t matter what one does so long as no actual violence results, then it is true that (so far) McCain is not as bad as George Wallace. The logical conclusion of that line of reasoning, however, is that if the McCain Palin hate-talk express does, one day, lead to violence, then they will, indeed, be as bad as George Wallace. None of the defenders I have read, so far, have been willing to extend their line of reasoning to that logical conclusion, however, and so we have no idea whether, in that event, these defenders would turn to repudiators. If the defense depends on the idea that no actual bad can possibly come of hate speech, then it is no defense at all. Blissful ignorance in the form of pretense that what is today will always be seems to be the basis of the claim. I would suggest, however, that the standard of “no actual violence was done” is too low an ethical standard for any human being, let alone a President. I don’t think that anyone can take the position that it is morally acceptable to engage in dangerous behavior so long as we agree to assume blithely that no actual danger will manifest. I think that we should hold each other to a higher standard, and that we must agree that someone who plays with fire, proclaiming all the while that it could not possibly get out of control, and then is astonished and dismayed when the forest burns down, is not significantly more moral than the person who set about deliberately with flame throwers and gloated over the destruction of every tree.

Others who would defend McCain and Palin suggest that the candidates are not responsible for the behavior of those who attend their rallies. Charles Krauthammer reduces the incessant Palin incitement to hatred to “A couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands [who] yell something offensive and incendiary,” for which, he adamantly proclaims, Palin and McCain cannot be held responsible. This argument, however, depends on the assumption that the actual words Palin in particular has been using are lily-white, hate-free, innuendo-free, harmless speech, and as such, could not possibly be perceived by any reasonable person as ugly, hateful, encouragement of anyone’s expression of bigotry. Just the use of the phrase “pallin’ around with terrorists” makes a mockery of that assumption. The use of the phrase “pallin’ around” is a particularly perfidious distortion. “Pallin’ around” has several insidious connotations: it suggests, for one thing, that Obama and some terrorists have no gainful employment and spend their time hangin’ out on street corners doin' nothing of any particular value. The use of the plural multiplies one William Ayers into a pack (or worse), and the present tense suggests that all this worrisome hangin' about is happenin' right now—in the middle of the campaign. The only reason for constructing the accusation in those terms is to frighten people, to make them worry that somehow the Obama campaign for the Presidency is really some sort of cover-up for terrorist activity, and to remind people that Obama’s middle name is Hussein—one of those Muslim names. In short: There is no way to argue that “pallin around” is an accurate description of a business association long past, and so Palin’s use of “pallin’ around with terrorists” as an accusation against Barack Obama can only be interpreted as deliberate incitement of those yahoos Krauthammer wishes to blame; Krauthammer’s claim, therefore, that McCain and Palin are innocent of all wrong-doing is foolish on its face.

McCain’s own response to Lewis took a slightly different tack. He he not only declared himself deeply hurt by Lewis’ comments, but he also demanded that Obama repudiate Lewis and denounce his “…very unfair and totally inappropriate” comments. McCain, furthermore, claimed, during last Wednesday’s debate, that in his turn he [McCain] has denounced all inappropriate remarks that had been made by any Republican anywhere:

“And, Senator Obama, you didn't repudiate those remarks. Every time there's been
an out-of-bounds remark made by a Republican, no matter where they are, I have
repudiated them. I hope that Senator Obama will repudiate those remarks that
were made by Congressman John Lewis, very unfair and totally inappropriate.”

Both the demand and the claim were, frankly, astounding, and, to my mind, deeply and disturbingly revealing of McCain’s mind and character.

There are two flat-out lies in McCain’s remarks: neither the claim that Obama did not denounce Lewis nor the claim that McCain has consistently repudiated all hate speech is true. The morning after Lewis published his statement, Obama did, in fact, release a reaction to Lewis that bluntly repudiates that implied equation of McCain with Wallace, but with a sole exception, that anyone knows about, McCain has emphatically not repudiated any of the hate speech stirred up by the sinister intimations Palin has delivered—nor has he shown any sign of trying—or wanting—to stop her eliciting the reactions she clearly intends to elicit. (Unless, furthermore, he is willing to repudiate his own campaign ads, such as this one, McCain’s claim will not become true in the future, either.)

McCain did, one day last week, take the microphone back from a woman who was proclaiming, during a town-hall format meeting, that she was scared of Obama because she had been reading about him, and he is “an Arab.” McCain did repudiate that, saying, with an irony he did not recognize, “No. He’s a decent family man, citizen….” The repudiation is double-edged, because it implies that had he actually been an Arab, there might have been something wrong, in addition to which, apparently, no Arab is a decent family man, but inadvertent bigotry aside, that is the only incident that has been reported in the press, so far as I have been able to find, to indicate that McCain’s claim that “…I have repudiated every time someone's been out of line, whether they've been part of my campaign or not, and I will continue to do that” is even remotely accurate. I am more astonished by the fact that McCain apparently thinks that even in a culture in which information is immediately and widely available 24 hours a day he can make such a blatantly false statement and have it be believed than I am by the lie itself. I don’t know whether this is sheer chutzpah or sheer ignorance, but neither characteristic seems desirable in a President. The only other possibility I can think of is self-delusion, and that, too—even more than the other possibilities—would disqualify McCain from the role he seeks.

These troubling traits were demonstrated in a variety of other ways during the exchange in the debate over Lewis’ remarks. The implication that Obama is the one, of the two of them, who has truly violated decency by refusing to repudiate Lewis demonstrates either ignorance or willful disregard of the fact that Obama had already done what McCain was so petulantly demanding. Indeed, on Monday morning, immediately after the publication of Lewis’ comments, Obama issued a statement in which he did specifically say that Lewis’ comparison went too far. The official statement read, in part: “Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy [of] criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies.” It seems unlikely that McCain truly did not know this, so it seems that this must have been a deliberate lie. If, in fact, McCain did not take the trouble to make himself aware of the Obama campaign response to John Lewis, then he is as ill-informed and as disinterested in informing himself as Bush has proven himself to be, and we have spent eight years learning the hard way what devastation results when we have a President who is either content with his own ignorance or arrogant enough to suppose that if he doesn’t know it, it either wasn’t important or it didn’t happen.

McCain additionally exhibited an apparently willful refusal to recognize any difference between a citizen completely unaffiliated with the Obama ticket expressing his unsolicited personal opinion about what constitutes reprehensible and dangerous human behavior and a member of the McCain ticket repeatedly and overtly eliciting hate speech as a tactic for trying to gain votes. I am no more convinced that willful blindness or stubborn refusal to face reality is a positive quality in a President than I am that brazenness or ignorance is.

The pained and accusatory demand that Obama issue a repudiation of Lewis’ remarks additionally revealed that McCain suffers from an all-too-human proclivity both to see himself as the injured party and to exonerate himself from wrong-doing. His hurt outrage suggested to me that McCain’s sole concern was with the thwarting of his personal desire to be President, and, consequentially, he was oblivious to and uninterested in the idea that there might be actions which are truly not acceptable as a means of pursuing that desire. He proclaimed himself “proud” of everyone who comes to his rallies, and declared that he can’t be responsible for some “fringe peoples” who might be expected to turn up in any large crowd. This, too, is the Krauthammer argument, and it is as willfully blind coming from McCain as it is coming from Krauthammer. At the very least, it is naïve to try to take a position that Palin hasn’t been saying anything the least bit underhanded, untruthful, or dangerous, that she is completely ignorant of the effect of her words, and that neither she nor McCain himself are in any degree responsible for encouraging bigotry. While the desire to be the wounded party rather than the wounding one might be commonly human, it is not what I expect from a President. Reality matters. A commitment to personal responsibility matters.

Finally, McCain’s misrepresentation of Lewis’ remarks demonstrate either a lack of understanding (not likely) or one more deliberate and desperate attempt to find a way to associate Obama with someone undesirable. McCain described Lewis’ remarks this way:

“…a man I admire and respect -- I've written about him -- Congressman John
Lewis, an American hero, made allegations that Sarah Palin and I were somehow
associated with the worst chapter in American history, segregation, deaths of
children in church bombings, George Wallace. That, to me, was so hurtful.”

The suggestion is that Lewis made an untruthful and heinous claim that McCain took active part in Wallace’s depravity, and that Obama, by associating himself with anyone who would make such a patently false claim is further disgraced. Lewis, however, did no such thing. In the first place, the only allegation he made is the undeniable one that McCain and Palin have been indulging in hate speech. The invocation of George Wallace was as an example, and a potential comparison; it was not by any stretch of the imagination an attempt to suggest that McCain and/or Palin was actually present during Wallace’s rallies or party to any of his activities. Sarah Palin, in direct contrast, has specifically implied that Obama himself was part of Ayers’ violent anti-government activities. Mary Mitchell, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, says:

“At another point during her rant, Palin cited a New York Times article that
described Ayers as ‘part of a group that quote “launched a campaign of bombings
that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,”’ she rattled off as if she
was talking about 9/11.”

This is a clear attempt to suggest that Obama, in having been in some minor way associated with Ayers, is not only directly linked to the bombings that William Ayers perpetrated when Obama was eight years old, but that, worse, Ayers, and by the false association, Obama, was somehow involved with al-Qaeda.

The absolutely incredible—and I mean that in the sense of not believable—irony inherent in McCain’s accusation is that in accusing Obama of doing what McCain is actually doing, McCain makes clear that to employ such a tactic is absolutely beyond the pale and so should be immediately halted. It would be easy enough to simply ascribe the irony to McCain’s general pattern of falsehood and denial, but I find myself wondering whether it is not, in fact, the result of something even worse: an actual failure to see the parallel. If McCain is truly unsubtle or insensitive enough to recognize irony, if he is incapable of seeing himself doing what he accuses others of doing, then he is incapable of self-reflection, and I can think of nothing more dangerous in a President. I have long thought that George Bush was completely impervious to any criticism—least of all from his own assessment of his own decisions and behavior—and that lack of reflection has been disastrous. If McCain is cut from the same cloth, then he lacks another essential qualification for the Presidency.

I have argued in this space before for the need to use language in a way that promotes truth, rather than trying to fabricate it. McCain’s representation of Lewis’ statement is a further example of fabrication. Had John Lewis made excessive and slanderous remarks to the effect that John McCain has now done as much damage to Civil Rights as George Wallace once did, perhaps we might need to question Lewis’ rationality and write him off as being the one who is out of line. But the fact is that Lewis’ was right. His statement does not, despite Obama’s careful denunciation, draw a direct comparison between John McCain and George Wallace; instead, it offers up Wallace as the extreme example of the possible end result of beginning where Palin and McCain have begun. Outraged McCain supporters may exclaim that drawing such a fine differentiation amounts to mere picking of the nits, but I suggest that it does not: Lewis’ statement is, instead, what I would wish for all literate people to be able to produce: a careful and precise delineation of the relationship between facts and patterns. Lewis does not suggest that McCain is right now a reprehensible George Wallace reincarnate; instead, he does suggest, truthfully, that when public officials are willing to tolerate—and, more directly, engage in—unleashing the dogs of war, they cannot expect to contain the damage within whatever bounds they consider acceptable, that because they cannot control the outcome, and because the potential outcome is catastrophic, they should not provide the cause.

This is a warning that all of us, McCain and Palin most especially, need to hear. McCain, however, seems to have put all his chips on the idea that he can implement the Goldilocks version of hate speech: he seems to think that he can create just enough havoc. McCain, I am sure, would be delighted with just enough hatred of Barack Obama to cause just enough switching of votes to ensure a McCain win. I am sure that he would be horrified to discover one day, in the worst-case scenario, that his effort at character assassination had led to an actual assassination, but this limited-nuclear-war approach to fanning the fires of rage is naïve and dangerous. It’s hard for me to imagine that McCain does not understand the dangers of inciting to riot, so perhaps he simply cannot admit, even to himself, that he has sunk so low as Lewis’ portrait of him so rightfully suggests. John McCain is not George Wallace in the sense that, though the dogs are out, they have not yet run down and devoured the prey. If George Wallace was content—or even thrilled—to have a cataclysm result from his incitement, then I am sure that John McCain is not that George Wallace either. But John McCain is George Wallace to the extent that he is actively engaged in unleashing monsters with apparently willful disregard for the havoc that may ensue.

A proclivity for telling falsehoods, blind ignorance, willful ignorance, a lack of sensitivity to the meaning of words, a lack of awareness of the power of modern information systems to deliver actual facts, an inability to self-reflect, a lack of ability to understand that blatant untruths make the speaker of those untruths look petty, arrogant, and stupid, and a complete unwillingness to live by any real standard of honest discourse are the traits that McCain exhibited in his reaction to John Lewis; dishonesty, willingness to trade on bigotry and hatred, and small-minded determination to win at all costs are the traits that he—and his running mate—have exhibited over the past few weeks in their descent into attack campaigning. In both the debate and in the new campaign strategy, McCain and Palin have demonstrated their allegiance to a moral code that exonerates malefactors from the consequences of their choices on the grounds that so long as they do not actively swing the sword, they are not responsible for the head it chops off.

The first amendment does protect McCain and Palin’s right to say what they want about Obama, but they are, as we all are, nevertheless responsible for the consequences of what they say. It is to be hoped that the least of those consequences will be continued public denunciation of their resorting to hate speech. McCain and Palin have certainly earned the just condemnation of their words and actions by John Lewis and all others who believe in the fundamental rightness—and more the necessity—of choosing not to stoke the fires of ignorance, anger, fear, and frustration, all of which lead far too easily to violence against anyone offered up as a target for bile. As I wrote once before, I cannot say that the developments of the past two weeks have made me any less likely to vote for McCain, as I would not under any circumstance have voted for anyone with so similar an outlook to George Bush, but to my mind the decision to wield hate speech as a weapon in his campaign, as with the decision to name Sarah Palin as his running mate at all, disqualifies John McCain for the Presidency. We cannot have as the leader of this nation someone willing to use hatred as a tool for his own ambition. In “unleashing” Sarah Palin, in choosing not to abandon the tactic, despite overwhelming public disapproval, in refusing to accept the picture of himself painted by Edward Lewis as an indicator of how far he [McCain] has strayed from basic human decency, and in choosing, instead, to attempt to cast the denunciators of hate speech as the true villains, McCain has chosen the lowest of the low roads.

I suppose that I ought to be glad to see the McCain campaign implode this way; I ought to be happy to find increased hope for an Obama victory in the fact that the outrageous tactics are seen as outrageous by many thousands—millions, even—of others, and not simply by me. (My husband has just informed me—via text message, as I am on a train out of reach of Internet—that Colin Powell has today endorsed Barack Obama. I wonder—pure speculation on my part—whether this is part of the price McCain is paying for his employment of hate speech.) I should perhaps be gratified that the choice to pursue the hate speech tactic has alienated more voters than it has won over, but in truth I cannot feel happy even if this proves to be the decision that seals McCain’s fate and assures Obama his place in the White House come January. I would rather have had the election fought and won fair and square than have to face the distressing fact that there is still enough fear and hatred in this country to make a hate campaign seem like a viable tactic, I would rather not be living with the terrifying specter of renewed racial violence in this country forty years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, and I would rather not have seen the depth of ugliness of which both McCain and Palin have demonstrated themselves to be capable. I would rather think better of people.


Addendum: Here is video of McCain this morning on Fox news traveling the same ground of Obama’s secret and unrevealed ties to Ayers as well as his purported refusal to repudiate Lewis’ remarks over again. The clip includes the audio of one of the RoboCalls that McCain is using; it is particularly repugnant and embodies all the deception that I have written about here. McCain is adamant that he has done nothing wrong, and he gets agitated trying to convince the interviewer of this fact. Delusion or lies? I’m beginning to think that it’s the former—that McCain has really lost his way so far as to believe his own ugly press. If so, that is a very sad place for someone who has done many great things for his country to end up. Delusion or lies—either way, the continuing insistence on the legitimacy of patently false allegations is deeply unpalatable and disturbing. In a wonderful counter-balance: I have now had the opportunity to watch Colin Powell’s endorsement on Meet the Press this morning, and it is brilliant, balanced, sane. I have embedded it above; I highly recommend you watch it if you haven’t.

UPDATE: Tuesday--I have corrected Congressman Lewis' title and added in a number of hyperlinks to my sources that I neglected to add when I got off the train on Sunday.