Panic in Needle Nation

"OMFG! The nigger's gonna win!"

You can see them shuffling through the streets of the "real" America, incipient panic rounding out their jaundiced, bloodshot eyes. They present their stippled, heavily-tracked forearms, moaning in between withdrawal retches, "We're hurtin' man, we're fuckin' hurtin'! Vote for McCain in November! Ble-e-e-ech!"

And like true heroin junkies who need to beg, borrow or steal $500 for their daily fix, Republican addicts are pulling out all the stops and are resorting to every dirty trick in the book to smear Barack Obama, an army of puling amateur Karl Roves who can't find any selling points for their mummy of a candidate and have to resort to regurgitating bile, eight year-old Koolaid and lies.

It's Panic in Needle Park only on a national scale.

Why, O why didn't the FDA warn them that Koolaid could be so addictive? Isn't there any scientific, peer-reviewed data proving that that zesty, refreshing summer drink with the sloshing manic pitcher mascot shuts down synaptical functions?

It must also cripple medium- and short-term memory. It was only a little over eight years ago that we were offered another boob who couldn't be bothered to choose his own running mate, couldn't get straight the names of certain world leaders, cozied up to corrupt corporate types who haven't the slightest problem with rear-ending the public with the alacrity and industry of that Turkish jailer in Midnight Express and who acted like a petulant, spoiled frat boy who was left frustrated at his date's sorority house door.

How soon they forget in their strung out racism, religious intolerance and random acts of vandalism and violence that voting Republican is exactly, as Alicia Morgan says, like the chickens voting for Col. Sanders.

And even as they squat and shiver buck naked within the foundation walls atop which used to sit their homes, unable to file for bankruptcy, offered only free market health care that's complicated, capricious and over-priced, as their sons and daughters get sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to needlessly meet their early deaths, their dollars more worthless than ever, their fourth amendment rights in tatters, their land, air and water more polluted than ever, their jobs getting shipped overseas by the millions and replaced with antifreeze and lead-contaminated crap from China that kills them, their wages stagnant, their 401(k) plans worthless...

...despite all these sacrifices, privations and hardships and many, many, many more, they still think McCain's the answer to all these problems and more, even to the point of calling for the assassination of a democratically-elected African American senator whom most of the country wants instead of four more years.

This Dictatorship Has Been Brought to You By the Letter "R."

But wait. Is it really that simple? Is it just a matter of loyal Republican voters simply voting for the latest empty vessel with the "R" after his name? The answer may have been already passed in the third to last sentence.

The one time McCain tried to do something decent during his two year-long campaign, in tamping down the racist hatred from his supporters by saying that Sen. Obama was "a decent, family man", McCain was booed as if he ripped off a mask and revealed himself to be Michael Moore.

This is an important clue into the Republican addict's mindset. They will cheer on their man as long as his particular Straight Talk Express promises to take them to the Promised Land of unfettered racism and religious intolerance. This is the Republican party's entire value to these people. It's not to seek fiscally-conservative solutions to our nation's economic ills nor a strong, workable foreign policy and national defense to help restore our safety and standing in the international community.

They're looking for a candidate who will give them some validity, some acceptance for their fringe lunacy. And they will elect and cheer with full-throated praise anyone who promises to crush anyone blacker than them, smarter than them, less Christian than them, less heterosexual than them. And, if they stray from their mantra of screeching intolerance, they will get booed.

The nation's ills be damned. The economy be damned. The Iraq war be damned. The war in Afghanistan be damned. The war on terror be damned.

Call him "Methadone" McCain. He ain't quite horse (or maverick) but he's the next best thing.