Difficult times

It is hard to watch the soulless hordes of talking heads with one side getting to tell the truth and the other to echo the lies. They are lies. Alan Combs is actually angry; the idea that "Obama . . . Sex . . . Kindergarteners" is anything more than, well, what it is . . . Think about it, for a moment. The first thrust is: "Look, folks, he's insulting the white not-so-bad-looking white lady!" Then, this. The black man, the father, is the "uppity" black, and his sin is leering at your wife and kids. String him up.

That's what is going on here. That's what the GOP is doing. Talk about Nixonian politics.

I mean this literally, really I do. Take a look at the way lynchings unfolded in the South. The accusations that were made, the reaction of the crowd, the focus on violated motherhood and purity. Palin, pure as the Alaskan snows! The disembowelling of the corpse! "Lipstick on a pig, he said! It meant something different when The Senator said it, about Hillary, than when you said it, Obama!"

It is a shadow play, and we are being asked to get in touch with those parts of our psyche that we rightly most despise, and project them forward . . . parts that we might ordinarily wish we could leave behind. Don't trust the black man, get that guy, THERE! part of white America's mentality. That's the meaning of the Palin candidacy. That's the thread they want to pull, the feeling they want to legitimize and channel in the voting booth . . .

Please, please God, please let enough of my countrymen wake up by election day and vote for Obama