From the Guardian, a London paper, commentary on our 'redneck nation'.
The August madness into which America has descended is about several things. It's about the still-sputtering economy, of course, and the fear it engenders. It's about xenophobia, never far below the surface. And it's about a rightwing media-political complex that plays on the public's ignorance.
But there's a unifying theme that few wish to acknowledge. What we are witnessing at the moment is the full, ugly furore of white backlash, aimed directly and indirectly at our first black president.
The case was made, inadvertently, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece last week by Republican congressman-turned-lobbyist Dick Armey, the godfather of what might be called the Tea Party movement's corporate wing. Armey and his co-author, Matt Kibbe, proudly dated the birth of the Tea Party to 9 February 2009.
Barack Obama's $800m stimulus bill was not approved until three days later. Which is my point. The most notorious political movement of the Obama era, grounded in racial fears if not flat-out racism, sprung into being within weeks of Obama's inauguration, before he'd had a chance to do anything, really. If Obama was for it, they were against it.
The Tea Party winter and spring of 2009 led to the "death panels" of summer, and to rightwing hero Glenn Beck's declaration that the president harboured "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture". Minor issues involving Acorn, a heretofore obscure agency that helped register urban, mostly minority voters, became a cause célèbre. A little-known African American bureaucrat, Van Jones, was hounded out of office for having allegedly expressed offensive views about the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 – views he later said he had never voiced and did not hold. Protesters spat upon and directed racial epithets at African American congressmen as the healthcare debate reached its climax.
And now we come to the full fruition of all this race-baiting. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 18% of Americans – and 34% of conservative Republicans – believe Obama is a Muslim, proportions that have actually risen since the 2008 campaign. Another poll, by CNN/Opinion Research, finds that 41% of Republicans believe Obama was definitely or probably not born in the United States.
Far worse is the racial, ethnic and religious hatred that has been unleashed, starting with the proposed Islamic centre to be built in New York several blocks from the devastated World Trade Centre site, which Obama endorsed and then (to his discredit) unendorsed, sort of, the next day.
Yes, we've all heard Newt Gingrich draw an analogy between Muslims and Nazis, and we all know that more than 60% of the public has expressed its opposition to what is inevitably, and inaccurately, referred to as the "Ground Zero mosque".
But to experience the pure fury, you have to watch the video of a black man who had the temerity to walk through a group of people protesting the centre. It is a terrifying moment.
There is more – so much more. The anti-immigration law approved in Arizona, which made a star of Republican governor Jan Brewer, notwithstanding the inconvenient truth that illegal immigration across the Mexico-Arizona border is at its lowest level in years. The political crucifixion of Shirley Sherrod. The continuing phenomenon of Sarah Palin, who, at long last, feels empowered enough to reach inside the deepest, darkest recesses of her tiny little heart and embrace a fellow rightwinger's repeated use of the N-word.
It's a frightening time to be an American and to watch this insanity unfolding all around us. There's a sense that anything could happen, none of it good.
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