No More Mr. Nice Guy!

The Day After

On Tuesday night, I was in Pasadena celebrating Barack Obama's victory with a raucous crowd. The next day, while listening to Thom Hartmann on KTLK, I heard a conservative caller (from Tempe - sigh) gloat at the fact that we still don't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. He promised that rethugs would obstruct and sabotage every step of the way, bring Congress to a total standstill, regain control in 2010, and then implement their agenda - the first step being to "take away gay rights."

Last night in Alhambra, I heard a McCain supporter spew invective against Obama and his voters. He's a Marxist, he stole the election, blah blah blah. And here's a doozie - the Democrats engineered the current economic collapse in order to win the election! I must add that this guy is not trailer trash - he's a real estate professional (specializing in foreclosures, so I bet he lurves Bush's economic policies) and presumably is reasonably smart and educated. I wouldn't have pegged him as a racist, but his hatred of Obama was palpable.

When you spend a lot of time on the blogosphere and online generally, it's easy to make the mistake of thinking that the right-wing extremists are a small fringe, unintelligent and poorly educated, not that big of a threat. In reality they are mainstream, there are tens of millions of them, and today they are seething with rage and hatred. They will never accept Barack Obama as the duly elected president (the 43rd legitimate president, as I view him). Many of them would not hesitate to put a bullet in his brain. And some of them will actively plan to do so.

While I'm overjoyed by Obama's win, I feel that the next few years will be incredibly tough and dangerous. Obama inherits an overwhelming host of crises created by his illegitimate and inept predecessor, such as the Iraquagmire, the recession, the stuffing of all levels of government with extreme-right corporatist and religious-right toadies, not to mention that crises like global warning that have been studiously ignored by the Junior Junta over the last eight years. And he will be fought tooth and nail at every step by hordes of crazed extremists who are in deep denial and oblivion about how incredibly destructive their policies were to the country when they had untrammeled power.

I've said from the very beginning that conservatism in its present form - the mutant bastard of corrupt crony capitalism and religious-right lunacy - is a cancer that is destroying the US. On Tuesday we took a big step towards overcoming that cancer, but our majority is still razor-thin. We cannot afford a single mistake.

Fasten your seat belts, it will be a bumpy four or eight years. The real fight has just begun!