Speed the day!

*Anyone to the left of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, that is.

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton: “John McCain failed miserably by erratically lurching from position to position”

Mmmm…fava beans…

Thank you. That’s depressing, but I appreciate the answer.

(SamFromUtah under the new nym.)

Pretty much. It’s older than the U.S. itself. In the 1630s, the big fear was that the Pequots (uncivilized savages who thought they didn’t deserve the atrocious treatment they’d received by assorted pirate traders) were going to murder the colonists in their sleep, so the big issue was when and how to massacre them. It also, just entirely coincidentally of course, resulted in the acquisition of vast new lands for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and was completely unrelated to the formation of a rival colony in Connecticut. Entirely coincidental, really.

Since then, yes, North American politics has been deeply paranoid to the point of violence. Various Indian nations, the hated papist French and their Mohawk allies, for example. When the settlement of that war permitted the French people to stay in newly-English territory, the English Crown itself became the target of accusations that it was secretly Catholic and the True Christians of America had been stabbed in the back. And taxed to pay for their own back-stabbing, to boot.

After that dust-up, the American Revolution, paranoia spread to include any immigrants, especially those of that inferior race, the Irish, and any Catholics. The list of Native American nations out to destroy us grew longer to include the Cherokee and Creek in the south- so naturally they had to go. Entirely coincidental that the prime farmland they left behind became cotton plantations.

Speaking of which, paranoia about the dark folks working for nothing rising up and killing everyone had by this point been around for a century and a half. This fear of slave revolts led to assorted massacres and purges.

That particular fear is, of course, entirely unrelated to our contemporary goobers buying guns in anticipation of an Obama victory or the breathless anticipation of black riots should Obama lose.

Short answer: yes, fearmongering about existential threats have long played a role in U.S. politics.

What a country!

Okay, really? Is he really saying that every other country and political power on earth is going to be too scared to fuck with him?

The fact that a Presidential candidate for one of the two real parties is spouting this kind of nonsense just drives me crazy.

He was trying to walk around the table to shake hands with the moderator after the third debate. He went one way, the moderator went another and he made this “dopey me” face.

If you look at the video it only lasts a second.

Someone said somewhere (maybe here) that candidates like McCain and Hilary who grimace and gesture when they speak run the risk of looking foolish when a camera captures them in mid-grimace. Whereas Obama who always looks cool and un-ruffled doesn’t have that problem.

Well, John Sidney McCain III is sure testing the heck out of ME … because even at this late date, I still can’t tell for the life of me whether he’s blowing it on purpose & systematically trashing the GOP as paybacks for the hit-job it pulled on him back in 2000, or he just honestly IS this ridiculous.

Hints? PROTIPS? Anything?

It’s some kind of release of tension. He wanted to explode the whole time during the debate so it comes out this way as soon as the debate is over.

The world could use more Marxism.

I refuse to belong to any organization that’d have me as a member. Swordfish.

They tried very hard to make China the new boogeyman between 2000 and 9/11/2001. Remember all the hysteria about the Chinese taking over the Panama Canal?

I remember that. They seemed awfully lost without the Russkies to blame for everything, and IIRC some of the fringier ones were claiming that the fall of the Soviet Union was a ruse designed to get us to drop our guard.

…have U.S. politics always revolved around fearmongering an Existential Threat, or is that a relatively recent thing?

I think there’s always been a strong paranoid element in American politics that’s fed on perceived dangers to the nation from foreign immigrants or blacks or labor unions.

You could make a case that the modern version – powerful cabals of evil foreigners bent on global domination – goes back to the World War II fear of Nazi Fifth Columnists. After the war, that morphed pretty easily into anti-communism, and forty years of Cold War hard-wired the theme into US politics. During the 1990s, neo-conservatives were quite openly casting about for a new boogeyman to replace communism, and seemed to be unsure whether they should concentrate on the Muslims or the Chinese. 9/11 settled the issue for them.

11 days to add the sammich. I’ve been waiting for this since day one, since the first time I saw the picture.

Well, where did he buy the clown tongue? All I can find is noses and shoes.

It was deliberate. He was clowning around. Never a good idea when you’re running for an office in which, current occupant notwithstanding, dignity is an important component of power projection.