Mike Farrell at HuffPo: "Palin Energizes the Pitchfork Mob"

Great piece from HuffPo

The Mysterious Change

"You really do hate America!" This was the parting shot from a man I had just debated on a television show shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Because he's a notorious right-wing blowhard, I laughed it off as the ravings of a crackpot in extremis.

Little did I know...

Soon, those of us who opposed the Iraq war, torture, "extraordinary rendition," Guantanamo, spying on innocent Americans and other illegal tools in the Cheney/Bush black bag began to hear variations on that theme from people one would have expected to know better. And it's gotten worse as they've become more desperate... or do the depths to which we've fallen suggest a fault-line in America's culture?

Only a short time ago we dissenters were called "Saddam-lovers," "America-haters" or, when they really wanted to cut deep, "French!" But that usually came from the relatively unhinged, like my debate-partner. Today, similar imprecations fall readily from the lips of media bloviators while the hoi polloi moves toward lynch-mob tenor with screams of "traitor," "terrorist," "kill him," and "off with his head" -- these not aimed at lowly actors but rather the next President of the United States. Worse, it is winked at and ignored, then defended and embraced by some from whom we expect better. As one in the crucible of this volcanic yet potentially transformative moment, John McCain, who claims to put "Country First," should re-read The Ugly American. Sarah Palin can watch the movie.

<snip>

Yet today, unable to rise to the challenge of hope, would-be president McCain chooses expediency over country, placing the priestess of parochialism, a barb-tongued, inanity-prone neophyte, a heartbeat away from the oval office. Schooled in "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" and "American Idol," she energizes the pitchfork mob, dividing "real America" from the rest of us, reviving faint echoes of white superiority and "manifest destiny" as her sponsor deafens himself to it all.

But there is a remedy for this ugly America; there is reason to believe that the promise can yet survive. There is hope. And there is truth. But we have to demand it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-farrell/the-mysterious-change_b_137789.html

Mike Farrell is truly one of the good guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHrExRHZnm0

Just the mere mention of the words peace or diversity is enough to set them off on a blood lust.

I am glad I live in my America, the smarter, kinder, gentler, more accepting one, with all of you DUers :pals:

K/R