A Close Election Could Open the Gates of HELL

Three forces are driving a fast-approaching political fire-storm:

1) a contested election
2) a wide-spread lynch-mob mentality, and
3) economic collapse

If this election is anything less than a landslide for Obama, if it is not decisive – in fact, if the outcome is contestable to any degree – those three forces will become chaos multipliers, each feeding the others in a rapidly escalating fire-storm.

Contested Election
False hysteria over ACORN is part of a broader Republican effort to invalidate, in advance, an election they now realize they are likely to lose. So this election is already being contested. The Republican strategy abruptly shifted the week following the first debate, when polls of the limited number of remaining independents moved sharply towards Obama. Their new goal is to make the upcoming election as contestable as possible, to widen the margin of victory that can be called “a tie”, and to delegitimize Obama.

Lynch-mob Mentality
McCain and Palin stoke the rage - and calls to violence - that we’ve witnessed at Republican rallies, by their relentless focus on the non-issue of Ayers. Let’s be clear: their charge, that Obama “sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who would bomb their own country” flatly insinuates that Obama is an enemy to the United States - not that Obama is a poor choice for President, or wrong for America, or even that he is insufficiently patriotic, but that he is bent on doing grievous harm to our country. For those who accept McCain and Palin’s insinuations, to block Obama’s assumption of power by any means - including violence - is a patriotic duty. “Country First”, remember. McCain puts his personal anger, and his disdain for Obama, on public display. The crowds he gathers follow McCain’s example.

Economic Collapse
But McCain supporters aren’t the only angry Americans right now. Not by a long shot. Anybody who has a house, or a life-savings, has recently been robbed of half their net worth. On top of that, they’ve been bilked for a Wall Street bailout. People everywhere are pissed.

Our economy is on life-support. If we don’t know who’s going to be our President by, say, three days after the election, the patient will go into cardiac arrest. No one can say how much anger would arise at such a catastrophe. But Rightwing pundits like Rush Limbaugh are already telling us who to blame: black people.

Escalating Fire-storm
Blame black people, like those sub-prime mortgage deadbeats whom Democrats supposedly forced Fannie Mae to lend to. Blame black people who vote overwhelmingly for Obama. Blame black people, like Colin Powell, who’s endorsement of Obama was “obviously racist”. Blame black people in those southern swing states where the angry conservative whites have lots of practice at whipping up lynch mobs.

In the days after the hung-2000-election, Republican mobs descended on Florida to stop any re-count. Picture those mobs in the alarming context of 2008. How could anybody re-count the vote in the middle of a race riot?

Palin’s wistful ode to “the pro-America parts of this country” made clear her belief that those who oppose conservative values and conservative power are, by definition, anti-American. Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Savage, and all the other rock-stars of the Right, repeatedly make the same equation: Liberal = Traitor. So it’s not only Obama that’s an enemy. If you’re not a Republican, then YOU are an enemy. So expect the right-wing lynch mobs to treat you, and your vote, accordingly.

And of course, the Left will rise to the bait. As in 2000, and 2004, there will be loads of dirty Republican tricks on Election Day: caging, non-existent voting machines, extremely long lines for Democrats only, and electronic election theft on a massive scale. We won’t sit by while Republican mobs take control of the State Houses and County Seats where our votes are stored and counted. We’ll rise up to defend the integrity of elections, and to defend our President-elect.

In so doing, we will give George Bush the justification he needs to declare Martial Law. He has the sole authority to do so. He has recently stationed battle-hardened troops inside the US for this purpose. And - as a war criminal - he has every incentive. Indeed, if there were mass riots in multiple US cities during a contested election and an economic catastrophe, Bush would be be irresponsible if he did NOT to declare Martial Law. And, given that situation, the military, and law enforcement would back him up.

McCain’s Personal Responsibility
Losing to a handsome rookie is proving hard on the famously ill-tempered and hard-fighting old man McCain. Obama's race seems to make it harder still. So the recent uptick in “enthusiasm” (otherwise known as rage) at McCain rallies must be intoxicating to him. But McCain seems to have no concept of the conflagration that he is courting. He’s playing with fire, in a parched field of tall grass, on a hot day.

A firestorm, once set in motion, feeds itself. It generates its own fanning winds at hurricane force. A firestorm cannot be put out until it has consumed everything burnable within reach.

For the sake of our precious - if never-quite-perfect - freedom, let's make this election a landslide.

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