Rage in the Machine - the mechanics of angry mobs.

"Will you assure us," one woman asked, "that, as president, you will take immediate action to investigate, prosecute and name the names of the people actually responsible?"

"I will," McCain answered.

"The same people that are now claiming credit for this rescue are the same ones that were willing co-conspirators in causing this problem that it is," he said, raising his voice to be heard over the crowd. "You know their names. You will know more of their names."

The crowds that show up for his rallies these days appear to have little appetite for the talk of bipartisan compromise that had been at the heart of his message around the Republican National Convention. During a rally outside a small airport in Mosinee, Wis., on Thursday, McCain said that "it's time we come together, Democrats and Republicans to work together. That's my record. I'll reach across the aisle."

The crowd stood silent. [WaPo link]

Silent and unimpressed. Unengaged, unstimulated. Unfed.

Uh-ohh.

Where do you begin? "Co-conspirators"? "Name the names." Other rallies offer "Traitor," "Socialist." "Kill him" is my favorite.



"Who is the reeeal Barack Obama?" "Terrorist!" shouts a man in the crowd. At 10 seconds in, where this exchange happens, you can see McCain recoil - he asked a question after inferring the answers, and he's viscerally taken back by the answer he gets. He pauses for a moment.

And then, he moves on.

Is Hussein the African and South Asian equivalent of Smith or Jones, John of Robert? Of course it is. But if you're arguing that point you must not care for the security and wonderfulness of the real Jones, Smith, John or Robert... "Real" Americans™!

The rope that Republicans and their Nominees are pulling on isn't politics, it's a vengeance movement, with teases to treason and challenges to violence. Let me repeat that, treason and violence. As I write this, news is reporting that McCain paused another townhall this afternoon after a supporter called Obama an "Arab." Details to come, but it doesn't change the thing that lay unaddressed by American political and financial leadership. They have ridden the tiger of greed -- greed for money and greed for mattering. But, given their ideology and the DOW's judgment on it, they cannot cash that check.

The finesse is gone--I know many will not like that adjective--the finesse, barely, of a Karl Rove is gone. His protege, Steve Schmidt is a far inferior student of politics and history and pattern language. And it shows in the erratic and Attention-Deficit Disorder ways the campaign has manifested itself and even telegraphed its moves beforehand. I'd even suggest that Schmidt, 38, is a poster child for the times. Shiny things move him and get his attention and he traffics them to his customer-base, to McCain supporters and leaners who eat it up. Yes, he feeds them and their R-complexes.



The chart above shows the mechanics of what I mean. It portrays the dangerous, even sensual nature of what he's playing with. War never dies--conflict maintains it's appeal, especially in times of stress--because it makes us feel engaged and able when we aren't really able to do much at all. At least, it helps the immature feel engaged. And Schmidt is a man-child, a 13-year old boy with a 13-year old boy's impulses and appetites and he's dangerous to John McCain's already tattered legacy and to America itself. Put in grown-up terms, he, and seemingly his boss, are deeply challenged to think in broad-scope ways about the strategic opportunities their tactical choices cut off. Sound familiar?

To me it mirrors the challenge of wrestling strategy in many of the projects I lead and in meetings I attend. The expectations are dreamy and noble, the talk devolves to micromanaging grudge-lists and a rice-cake quality of experience leaving attendees frustrated but hazy as to why. And it sounds like the modus operandi of a financially driven and value-myopic economy we're suffering through now. In the sense that 1s and 0s are ethereal, that money for money's sake lacks sustaining purpose and spiritual guardrails, unreality itself, bumps into our human desire to make and touch things, and to have our efforts be longer term than last month's numbers. There comes a time when so many bullshit Powerpoints have eroded trust, and when shouting no longer persuades or even has traction.

When the last of the steroids lose efficacy (much sooner than I expected - chart), as they have in financial markets--as they are in the political marketplace of ideas--Hyper-reality unavoidably bumps into the real thing. It hurts. It shocks. It disabuses us of our exceptionalist PR story. And when someone steals or wrecks your identity someone must pay, in the worst form of debt collection.




Phew. You're still here? Well, I got that bit off my chest, but some may be interested in what's at work here. I certainly am because it's the only way to plan safely for the organizations who pay us to tell them "why" and "how" so that their operational "what's next" has appeal and buy-in and a reasonable expectation that it won't become an R.O.I/A/E rathole. But I still haven't plumbed the mechanics yet, have I? I was going to but I'm worn out because Hardball is discussing this now.

I'm listening to Pat Buchanan, he of the Southern Strategy, smile at the revival of those tactics and worse, in answer to Chris Matthews question, "What's the point" of this strategy? Pat says, "to show that he's not one of us."

Exactly.

It's useful to remember here that in 2005, Ken Mehlman, the previous RNC Chair, apologized for the party's use of that racially demonizing and dividing Southern Strategy.

Should anyone be surprised? Nah. What seems ages ago, back at the end of March, when he'd cinched the nomination, McCain was already testing narratives as it was becoming clear that the Democratic nominee looked to be Obama. McCain's video response?

"John McCain. The American president Americans have been waiting for."

As I wrote 2 years ago in the days after Katrina, "welcome to the cold civil war." Today, I understand completely why I vote the way I do and can explain it clearly. But I also know why my cerebral ass wants, in the most limbic way possible, to get medieval on somebody right now. For the time being, I understand viscerally the mass exodus of professionals, scientists and artists from the Weimar Republic. Is that a hyperbolic comparison? No, not at all.

Many do not know that the reason that the reason Albert Einstein, Marlene Dietrich and many others became US residents was because they looked and listened, and heard the message implicit within the words flying around in the late 20s, early 30s. They saw what was coming and got the hell out of dodge. What of the folks who called them worrywarts and hyperbolists, the ones who told them to stay? They got very dead for not being "German" enough.

I'll be back later since this needs more on the record thinking and much of this validates the book. I need to cool off and spend some time with my kids, the only age-group whose lives are untainted in the clusterf*ck being handed to them, and whose American identity is really at a crossroads thanks to some American voters whose preferred leaders have a deadly toolkit--one that works abhorrent wonders based on the Rage that our Machine engenders.