All week the McCain and Palin campaign have been turning up the hate machine. According to Dana Milbank the hate isn't just directed at Obama, but all all liberals--reporters, intellectuals, and anyone who dares to disagree with McCain, Palin, and Bush (unless of course it's McCain and Palin doing the disagreeing). Instead of debating or discussing the issues, Palin and McCain have taken to demonizing Obama and anyone who supports his candidacy.

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O'Brien's heavy face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out ‘Swine! Swine! Swine!’ and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein's nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. [. . .].

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Oh, wait, sorry that's an excerpt from Orwell's 1984 not news report from a Palin campaign stop. Sorry about that.
posted by Idle Crank at 10/08/2008 06:30:00 PM