Clear and present danger

I didn’t take that comment seriously until….

Then, as I have written before, in the early days of the presidential campaign, an elderly Texas couple sitting next to me in a theater in Houston, made the flat statement: "If Obama is elected, he won’t live out a year.” That time, I took that remark seriously, because I know this country well and there are 300 million guns out there. It only takes one pathetic failure like Lee Harvey Oswald to alter the course of American history.

I have yet to speak with any rational observer of the political climate in this country who, in light of the reckless rhetoric of the "disappointed,” does not believe that President Obama is in "clear and present danger.” We need to recall that the Secret Service needed to warn the Republican campaign people that Sarah Palin’s campaign screeds about Obama were bringing out "death” shouts from the audience and increasing the number of threats against him they were recording.

What is the nature of this "clear and present danger?” It can best be illustrated by the play "Murder in the Cathedral.” English King Henry II, exclaims about the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas a Becket: "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” And, some knights, believing they were doing this for the king and country, did exactly that.

That is highly likely the same plot, the same scenario of the "Murder in the Church” of Doctor Tiller, where the guy who "offed” the doctor wonders to the media why he is being held in jail "like a common criminal.” After all, he did it for God and country (and maybe O’Reilly, too) didn’t he?

We need to pay heed to these concerns or we may become a "government by assassination,” like India with all of its consequent civic rioting.

After any election, there is always some bitterness by the losers and speculation about "what went wrong?” But, when the losing margins are wide, usually, this fades away in short time.

However, when an election is very close, especially as in the Florida vote imbroglio in the 2000 presidential "election by the Supreme Court,” the bitterness is intense and endures much longer.

After the Obama victory in 2008, however, which was, after all, by a wide popular and Electoral College margin, it is disturbing how the anger and viciousness of the losers has not diminished one whit. Their motto when the Democrats lost in 2000 was "Get over it.” Why can’t they heed their own advice?

In fact, it has grown more intense in the seven months since, especially stoked by the conservative cable commentators. Scorn was even heaped upon Obama for the mustard he selected for his hamburger because it was a French brand not of the All-American, ballpark, hot dog variety. How much more petty is it possible to get?

Hitler and Goebbels knew the best way to destroy was to dehumanize. That’s what they did that helped Germans to reject Jewish neighbors with whom they had been close for generations. They were also successful in converting Poles and Slavs into second-class human beings that made it easier to invade and kill them.

Some, by trying to prove that Obama was not born on U.S. soil and that he is really a covert Muslim, are trying to "de-Americanize” him, further fueling resentment that would be extreme enough just on racial grounds.

Part of their modus operandi is to posit white society as, now, under siege, and on the defensive. So, if an ethnic Supreme Court nominee makes a few comments that she can understand and empathize more with the plight of a member of her ethnic group in a judicial proceeding than her colleagues, that is blown up to tower over all of her extraordinary accomplishments in life. Of course, in the Senate hearings on her confirmation, the Democrats will, certainly, pull out the well-known facts that justices Thomas and Alioto made identical comments related to their own ethnicities in their confirmation hearings. It’s all in the records.

So there is a "clear and present danger” in the United States these days and it grows daily as the rage of some of the frustrated conservative media grows in direct proportion to President Obama’s becoming more and more popular internationally, as well as, domestically. They are calling into the fray every pejorative they are able to mine from the English language, and then some. And they are succeeding to an extent. As I learned in my year in the occupation army in Germany, the ranting of the leaders becomes the common language of the people.

When the people react with terrible and mindless violence, as was the case during the civil rights movement in the South, these wounded "misunderstoods” will plead, "Why are you picking on us? We ain’t dun nuttin’! We didn’t tell them to beat up and kill people.” That’ll be the epitaph on Bill O’Reilly and Limbaugh, and the like, career tombstones when their reckless excesses catch up with them: "We ain’t dun nuttin’!”

They will bring themselves down. You may be certain of that. The textbook case is Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who became so powerful with his rhetoric of fear that he was getting away with attacking anybody, even the great World War II general and secretary of state, George C. Marshall, whom he accused of caving in to communism.

But like criminals and gamblers, McCarthy went too far. He rolled the dice just once too often. All of his kind get away with little resistance for so long, they feel the can attack anyone. Then they get careless and blunder. With McCarthy, he attacked the U.S. Army. That was the one step too far and he was spun out of power by a simple country lawyer, speaking for the "common folks,” who gutted his arrogance.

O’Reilly is beginning to blunder now, too. Just last week he was brought to the mat and needed to apologize to CNN for expressing repeatedly this "so-called” liberal media "enemy of the people” had given minimal coverage to the murder of two soldiers by an American Muslim convert in comparison the wailing over the murder of Dr. Tiller. Had he used his well-honed investigative brain instead of only his trigger mouth, he would have found CNN had committed more time, more personnel and more detailed coverage than any other news show on TV. So now, O’Reilly has become so suspect, there is at least one Web site dedicated to daily cataloging his excesses, exaggerations and lies.

It won’t be very long for Limbaugh, Michael Savage and the like to get the "truth” treatment also.

The only ones who can curb these loose-lipped "dangers” are conservatives themselves just as Muslims of good will should also muzzle their religious terrorist extremists.

If conservatives or others take umbrage and would like to pound on me for this warning, pound away! I don’t give a damn! I didn’t take Vice President Lyndon Johnson very seriously, either.

I just don’t want to need to say, later: "I told you so!”

Keith Kreitman has been a Foster City resident for 22 years. He is retired with degrees in political

science and journalism and advanced studies in law. He is the host of "Focus on the Arts” on Peninsula TV, Channel 26. His

column appears in the weekend

edition.