The city has killed one president and if the following is true, Palau is right to worry about Obama’s survival chances:
DALLAS — Security details at Barack Obama’s rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.
The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.
Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department’s homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order — apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service — was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena’s vacant seats before Obama came on.
“Sure,” said Lawrence, when asked if he was concerned by the great number of people who had gotten into the building without being checked. But, he added, the turnout of more than 17,000 people seemed to be a “friendly crowd.”
The era of presidential assassinations might be over in the US, but if there was any candidate that might be targeted, my money would be on Obama. Though Hillary Clinton also provokes enough blind rage amongst wingnut circles of course.
Palau
February 22, 2008 at 6:12 amCan a city actually kill someone? I think there’s a fair few would say the city was just the venue, not the assassin.
Leaving language quibbles aside, whatever I think of Obama’s politics his charisma andl bravery are undeniable; but in expecting Bushite federal and state security to protect him he shows an equally stunning naivete about how US politics works now.
He may have pacified the money guys and won over the vast majority of reasonable people, but there’s a stone racist rump on the right that will never, never accept a black president – especially not a Democrat – and they’ll do anything to stop it. Many of its sympathisers and indeed members are predominant in police, judiciary and Homeland security circles.
What the right has been doing over the past years is thoroughly subverting the institutions of US government, or what remains of them, by installing as many fellow travellers as possible. That many of these rightwing placemen and women were also racist nutjobs appears not to matter a jot: in fact at times to be a wingnut bigot seems a job requirement. (Not saying every single one’s a potential rightwing nutjob assassin but it it only takes one to turn a blind eye at the right time, as your link shows.)
If someone nobbles Obama, or even if someone only tries, I dread to think what’ll happen.
So many Americans seem to have anointed Obama as the Second Coming of JFK and MLK, a Hollywoodl hero riding to the rescue of an innocent and beleagured populace – a hero who’lll put everything right, who’ll sluice out the sewers of Washington, close Gitmo and stop torture and make Americans proud of themselves again.
In fact there’s such a weight of expectation riding on his shoulders – expectations that can never be fulfilled, even by a miracle worker – that the story arc almost cries out for his early demise. No one can handle that much expectation and fail. The country couldn’t bear it. So the narrative would seem to require a tragic early martyrdom and a quick canonisation.
But that would be after the immediate reaction. A violent backlash and an ensuing race war is exactly what any putative asassin would be hoping for – the far right’s whole mythos and reason for being is the precipitation of a race war/End Times scenario, in which they, the God-chosen superior white race, will defeat all, enter into their earthly inheritance and then be Raptured, praise be.
That the precipitation of such a conflict would suit also suit the aims of military/corporate politicals, who already have plans in place to abolish democracy and seize military control should any such engineered shit hits the fan, is nicely coincidental.
I’m not feeling the audacity of hope, I’m feeling the sick dread of apprehension.