Volume II. No. 57
 07-11-04
 Fear-Mongering In The 2004
 Presidential Election Campaign
 author: Vance Cureton
 © Copyright 2004
 

 Big John and Little John have hardly had time to dust off their new campaign 
 vehicle. And already republican political operatives are digging in hard. They 
 are determined to use "FEAR-MONGERING" as a tool to distract voters across 
 America from the more salient of campaign issues such as the 1,000 Americans
 dead in Iraq. And the faulty intelligence that led to the war in the first place. 

 Bush and his fellow republican regressives are going to use fear to try and 
 win the election. To be more precise, fear of homosexuals, lesbians, the entire 
 immoral Hollywood crowd, and liberal elitists from the northeast who allegedly
 represent all that is wrong with American society.

 Better get used to it. Because the word "liberal" is going to be plum worn out 
 by the time the actual November election date comes around. 

 This election campaign is already destined to become historically significant. 
 All the signs are there for a descent into the kind of smooth-talking polarizing 
 rhetoric the likes of which this nation hasn't been witness to since the 40's, 50's,
 and 60's, when all those gentlemanly southerners { Strom Thurmond and Jesse 
 Helms please take a bow } were making speeches - sometimes in coded language 
 - as to why it was so important that  "nigras" be made to keep their place. And 
 that the nation would do well to forget about all this integration nonsense.

 This year the code words are again "family values."

 Whenever republicans get scared they are going to lose an election, they 
 start bellowing about "family values." As if the only moral people in America 
 are on the right. The same conservatives, by the way, who were silent when 
 our overly bellicose vice president used the "F" word, are now just besides 
 themselves with glee because John Kerry and John Edwards made an appearance 
 at a New York City fund raiser where the liberals in the crowd - perhaps 
 too exuberantly - gave it to George Bush and his Right Wing jackboots the 
 same way Rush Limbaugh sounds off on liberals every day on his radio talk 
 show.

 Like most bullies the Bush republicans can sure dish it out. But they can't 
 take any. They moan like a bunch of crybabies when their own sour milk gets 
 thrown back into their faces. And the sqwaking is bound to become much 
 louder if Big John Kerry and Little John Edwards continue to show as much 
 spunk as they have so far, at this middle date in the campaign.

 The situation in Iraq is relatively stable for the moment. Oh sure, there are 
 distractions. A car bombing or beheading is nothing to be concerned about
 now that the "omnipotent threat to all human civilization" Saddam Hussein 
 is gone. -- Thus, George Bush is back to his old sing-song about a constitutional 
 admendment to save the institution of marriage. The debate is set to begin 
 this very week on Capitol Hill. Notwithstanding the fact that the the resulting
 bill would have zero chance of passage, republicans will use white-hot senate 
 floor speeches proclaiming the moral chaos that will result if congress doesn't
 rescue the institution of marriage from the hands of activist judges and their 
 equally repugnant liberal elitist collaborators who are all by themselves set 
 to destroy the moral foundations of American society.

 If that can't fire up the republican base nothing will.

 All of this is nothing but a political ploy. Most Americans are outright dismissive 
 of gay marriage. So what else is new. But nowhere - except in the minds of the 
 Far Right fringe - does the current debate about the rights of homosexual couples 
 to experience a kind of social legitimacy that until recently could not have been 
 imagined, does this temporary political uncertainty rise to the level of crisis that 
 a constitutional amendment is called for.

 The Supreme Court decision to interfere in Florida's electoral process in the year
 2000 is now regarded by many legal scholars as one of the worst moments for the 
 court in modern history. The court handed the election to Bush out of a political
 motive. This amendment Bush proposes would be equally disastrous. Now is 
 hardly the moment for radical action on Capitol Hill. -- Let democracy work. Allow 
 state legislatures and state courts plenty of time to wrangle with this complicated 
 social issue. 

 But, George Bush will paint homosexuals living in matrimony as a crisis because 
 he's desperate to reclaim the White House. And everywhere else he is vulnerable. 
 The "values" issue is his best option. And he's ready to speak in code. No he 
 won't use hateful words, but his words nontheless will be full of condescension
 and contempt. He will speak as if all decent Americans share his Christian-flavored 
 morality. No different were the methods of the segregationists of old. Race-mixing. 
 Social-mixing. Miscegnation. It was all the work of the devil -- and Yankees.

 Bush's rhetoric will be carefully tailored to get people scurrying to the polls out 
 of fear that something very bad will happen to their beloved country if they 
 don't vote him back into office. This is the politics of division, exclusion, and 
 fear. And this week on Capitol Hill we are in for quite a show. It should be a 
 moment hard-hearted, intolerant political conservatives can be proud of.

 George Bush is not the statesman America needs today on either the domestic 
 front or the international one. We need a president who can stand tall above the 
 fray, and tell everyone to calm down. While congress is wasting valuable time 
 debating his dead-end marriage amendment American boys are still under fire 
 in Iraq. More lives are destined to be lost in a conflict that still has no end game. 

 Now that is an issue worth debating.

 Bush may be a bad president. But he isn't lacking enough to think Iraq is going 
 to get him back into the White House. So we'll have endless "fear-mongering"
 from now until November.

 "Family Values." How delightful.
 

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