Pandagon
Racims + projection=really stupid
Roy Edroso mocks the right wingers who are lost in racist fantasies about how the cities are going to go up in flames tonight, win or lose. They seem not to have learned their lesson from the Ashley Todd incident.
Nordlinger doesn't get around very much -- rightbloggers are already on riot patrol. "As I live in the Chicago Area, I'm 'hunkering down' for the riots that are sure to ensure -- whether or not Obama wins or loses," says NoBamaNation. "If Obama Loses the Left Will Riot," says Ray Thomas. "Vote Obama, because if you don't blacks will riot," says Drew D. "I guess I can now be called racist." "I want more than anything to watch them fall in the midst of the Obama Victory Celebration Obama Pity Riot," says Political Republican Opinion. "Obama and his supporters are showing as much political civility as the citizens of Paris prior to the Bastille," says The Council of Conservative Citizens, calling for their readers to "stop our recession into a dark and ugly future," presumably by any means necessary.
The last time there were election-related riots in this country, it was a group of Republican thugs that shut down vote counting in Florida, which helped cinch the election theft of 2000.
McCain/Palin have spent most of the last weeks of the election pumping up their base to think of black people, urban dwellers, and Hispanics as illegitimate voters, both with the "real America" rhetoric and phony stories about voter fraud that are a coded way to imply that legally eligible voters should be intimidated on the base of race, geography, age, and probably gender. (Young white women being viewed as more suspicious than young white men.) Email blasts have been sent out asking for groups of Republicans to challenge voters, especially in swing states. Translation: Lurk around looking dangerous and picking on people who look vulnerable and belong to a "suspicious" group.
So who's using the threat of violence and riots to influence the election again? With that, I'll leave you with an interesting tidbit from Umberto Eco's essay "Eternal Fascism":
Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.
Poll porn's debilitating effects
I'm trying as hard as I can to stay off fivethirtyeight.com, electoral-vote, and especially Yahoo's "create your own scenario" map, which I keep modifying to show how easily we can lose. I acknowledge that poll porn is one of those vile things that gives you a buzz because it gives you an illusion of control, but then it just reminds you that you don't have control and you get a poll porn hangover. Pessimism feels like it protects you, because you feel that you've cushioned the blow if you lose, and you can always win and feel better. But in truth, it tends to breed paranoia, where you constantly look for ways to get more information to prove your pessimism right or wrong. And the ugly truth is that it has no real effect on whether or not you're elated by a win or crushed by a loss.
More on voting lines, specifically who doesn't have them
Ezra has a post up about how other countries miraculously don't have long lines for voting the way Americans do. I'm on board 100% with opposing long lines and thinking something fishy is going on. You know why? Because guess who doesn't have long lines to vote? Texas. (Austin, at least, though none of my relatives or friends who've voted elsewhere say they've waited in line. I just realized I've only ever voted in Austin, having lived here since before I could vote.) The only time I've waited in line to vote was during the Democratic primary this year, and it was the last hour of the last day of early voting. And even then it was 30-45 minutes. And in that case, it was obvious that they just didn't have the time to handle what was something like 10 to 20 times the capacity of voters they usually get during primaries, so it was understandable.
Early Voting Is An Objective Good
The National Review opines today that early voting is bad for democracy, for two key reasons.
"Real" Americans? Really?
The fact that McCain/Palin is actively pursuing the unabashedly fascist tactic of dividing Americans into "real" Americans and the rest of us* has caused me to do some personal accounting. After all, I've been both a "real" American and a "fake" one in my time. ("Real" seems to indicate a white person living in a rural area. Contrary to media stereotypes, "rural" is not synonymous with "white".) And when I lived in "real" America---a small, Republican-dominated town---I can assure you we didn't think of ourselves as living in anywhere "real". If anything, the joke around town was that we were far away from civilization, and that if you didn't get out to visit the real world on occasion, you'd lose your perspective.