The Man From Hope, Redux

From a letter in yesterday's DH bashing Obama and supporting McCain:

“Hope” and “change” are just stupid slogans that mean nothing!

How dare Barack Obama challenge the narrative of fear. How dare he.

I can't stop laughing at that line. I want to make it a masthead somewhere, though I like my current one better.

It reminds of this post, wherein I noted the following: "Specifically, by attacking Obama's platform in such a way, people are implicitly suggesting that we can't hope for a better future, that we don't have the capacity to work together to solve problems."

You know, Hering was on vacation last week. And come Monday, there were nothing but unhinged letters. Coincidence? I hope so.

Trickle-down

From Democratic Underground via Sadly, No!, a story of what can happen when bad politics and eliminationist rhetoric trickles down.

This is one reason I'm appalled by the existence of the Bush Administration and their tactics. It's not the only one.

What followed was a coordinated effort to block Andy’s medical care or his benefit from the medical care we could secure for him. In specific, the Bush right had its agents make small donations so they could then call Paypal with allegations of fraud that froze Andy’s account. They also called Paypal, misrepresenting themselves as the hospital to “verify” that this effort was a scam.

...

As late as week before Andy died, we couldn’t keep the poisonous campaign from him. He felt well enough to log into to his email and found a multipage denunciation, supposedly being filed with his state’s attorney general. He called me, not so much in a panic. Panic was no longer a speed Andy had. He called me in despair, because he could no longer fight the barrage of hatred being leveled at him. I don’t remember what I said to him but I hope it helped for a moment.