You’re ridiculous

If you’re voting for Barack Obama in a couple weeks, you’re ridiculous. 

Don’t you know anything? 

He’s a Muslim. 

And he’s an Arab. 

He has a crazy Christian pastor. 

But remember, he’s a Muslim. 

He’s friends with terrorists. 

And he was a community organizer. 

He wants to kill your unborn baby. 

And he’ll raise your taxes to keep doing it. 

He’s a despot in training. 

And he’s black. Black. BLACK. (Shhhhh.) 

He’s angry. 

So is his wife, who takes no pride in America. 

He’s got no experience. 

And he hates old people. 

He has no respect for POWs. 

And he’ll endanger our soldiers by ending the war. 

He used to hang with ACORN. 

And he caused the subprime mortgage crisis. 

Which caused the impending economic depression. 

Which is helping John McCain lose. 

And, you know, just … Arrrrggggghhhhhhhh! 

Let’s call this line of thinking the terrorism of the idiocracy. It did not start with John McCain or Sarah Palin — although they have found wild profit in it — and it surely will not end there. In actuality, it begins in the vacuum created by a general ignorance of the world around you, the pride you take in that ignorance, and the vulnerability that leaves you with. When some addled shit-peddler like McCain or Palin fills the vacuum with radical lies, these barely literate masses take a crazed posture, and the worst of their own fear and loathing manifests itself in heinous, hilarious ways. 

Like the woman who still insists, despite McCain himself telling her otherwise, that Obama is an “Arab” and, by implication, “Arab” is bad. Naturally, McCain scored media points by calling off that particular dog, but he never said anything like, “Hey nut-job, Arab is not a bad word.” In fact, by avoiding saying that but nonetheless acknowledging she’d erred, he subtly reinforced her “epithet.” 

For the past two weeks I’ve watched videos, read stories and listened to radio reports about the righteous anger the namesakes of McCain-Palin are generating as they strategically tour the country in search of a few more stupid victims. And you know, I can’t blame them. Their only object is to win an election, and here they have the finest bait: The first serious presidential candidate who also is an easily identified ethnic minority, a guy who’s been brazenly honest about his life in two books, who has worked against poverty in a gritty urban environment teeming with unsavory characters, and who is actually trying to discuss pertinent political, philosophical and moral issues on the campaign trail. 

Dude, this is America. Are you high? Hit the motherfucker. 

Thank God somebody is swinging here. This whole campaign deal has gotten to be painfully boring, and frankly, I’m feeling a little alone. Sure, my friends and family usually care to listen to reasoned arguments from the intellectually curious, but I’ve been concerned that my continued pursuit of information of which I am not already aware has left me too far removed from the … uh … wait … $9.99 for a cell phone! Hm. What was I saying? 

Right — I was talking about being bored. And uninformed. 

Speaking of, I heard McCain call Obama a “decent, family man” the other day, after that crazy old white woman called Obama an Arab. It got me thinking: What is decency, John McCain? 

Is it somebody who would rather turn this country into a boiling cauldron of racial and cultural insensitivity than lose the biggest political race of his life? 

Is it someone whose vainglorious quest for office has now stripped him of everything reasoned societies value, especially his credibility? 

What about McCain-Palin’s biggest fans, the ones who can barely spit out a sentence in English to save their egos from frying under the intense heat of a five-word question like, “How is Obama a terrorist?” 

If you believe the polls, McCain-Palin will be humiliated into political obscurity in a couple weeks. There’s a war on terror we might actually win: The terrorism of the idiocracy.

This article appears in October 15, 2008.