It’s not just that the McCain campaign is using words like “terrorist.”  It’s that they’re encouraging their followers to go even further — hence the upsurge in threats coming from the audience, like the guy in Florida who shouted “kill him” and the guy in New Mexico who shouted “traitor.”

In civil rights terms, this is known as incitement, and it differs little from the tactics of unreconstructed American terrorists racists like George Wallace, Lester Maddox, and Eugene and Herman Talmadge.

At the moment, I’m in the middle of the Library of America’s two-volume collection of reporting on the civil rights movement, and the following passage from 1946 struck me as particularly relevant to the events of the past twenty-four hours:

When. . .[Eugene] Talmadge was delcared the Democratic nominee, the season on “n*****s” was automatically opened and every pinheaded Georgia cracker and bigoted Ku Kluxer figured he had a hunting license.

That’s what John McCain and Sarah Palin are doing right now:  handing out hunting licenses to the most extreme, racist, and loony elements of the right wing.  These aren’t pro-lifers, anti-gay marriage activists, or typical NRA members — no matter what you may think of such folks, they ultimately are merely people who have different political perspectives that, whether we like it or not, are still in the mainstream of American politics.

McCain and Palin aren’t in the mainstream anymore.  Instead, they have started appealing to a much different class of individuals:  full-blown bats**t-crazy, automatic weapon-toting, race-hating survivalists.  These are the men and women who make Ted Nugent look like a moderate.

If an average citizen got up and called George Bush a terrorist and another average American got up and shouted “kill him,” they would have the Secret Service on them so fast they wouldn’t know what hit them.  But when a candidate for Vice President and one of her acolytes do the same thing to the opposition candidate, all that happens is blanket coverage by the mainstream media.

Don’t McCain and Palin realize what’s at stake here?  They’ve crossed the line.  They’ve opened the door to the unthinkable, and even worse, see it as little more than their campaign’s latest tactic.  In the process, they’re empowering the crazies.

This morning, my wife asked me the question that many of us have dreaded the most: what if this leads to an actual attack against Obama?

God help us if it does.

In the meantime, may God find a special place in hell for John McCain and Sarah Palin.

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• White Riot
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• What Joe Biden Has to Do to Win Tonight
• Thought of the Night