VA-SEN: Central Front in the War on Terror

You read that correctly.  Virginia is one of the domestic central fronts in the war on terror.  We're three days from an election that could deliver this state from the terrorists in Washington and diminish their rubber-stamp pass-through of Bush policies that have so weakened our values, principles and tenets.

Make the jump.
I haven't had a lot of blog time lately.  Last Saturday I left for a business conference which took me completely away for four straight 18-hour days.  Returning Tuesday night, Wednesday-Friday was spent catching up with life and work things (gotta pay the bills) and phone banking when possible.  This morning it was off to the Webb headquarters in Arlington, VA to pick up my packet of door hangers and go do a crucial literature drop in an Arlington neighborhood.

Walking around on the literature drops is a solitary thing.  It doesn't take two people, and as I've done it, I've done it alone.  It's given me a great deal of time to just think as I walk up to one door, hang a Webb door hanger on it, and then walk up to the next door.

Today I thought about one of Keith Olbermann's special comments a week or so ago, several days after the scary "these are the stakes" ad run by the shameful and shameLESS RNC.  In part:

The dictionary definition of the word "terrorize" is simple and not open to misinterpretation:

"To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear."

Note please, that the words "violence" and "death" are missing from that definition.

The key to terror, the key to terrorism, is not the act--but the fear of the act.

That is why bin Laden and his deputies and his imitators are forever putting together videotaped statements and releasing virtual infomercials with dire threats and heart-stopping warnings.

But why is the Republican Party imitating them?

Why indeeed?  

I was thinking about Olbermann's comments on "terrorism" as I walked an Arlington street alone.  It's not just actual terrorism of the 9/11 style that they are trying to scare us with.  They are also trying to scare us all into thinking that any Democrat elected to office is going to raise our taxes.  Ooooh.... SCARY TAXES.  If you vote Democrat, you're going to have even less money to pay your bills (if that's possible).

Olbermann continued, later in the comment:

"To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear."

By this definition, the people who put these videos together--first the terrorists and then the administration--whose shared goal is to scare you into panicking instead of thinking--they are the ones terrorizing you.

By this definition, the leading terrorist group in this world right now is al Qaida.

But the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party.

They're trying to scare average people.  While I was at my business conference, a known "friendly" (e.g., engaged Democrat) was bemoaning the lack of interest by the average American of the stakes in this election.

I see it a bit differently.  I'm an optimist by nature, and I prefer to think the best of people rather than the worst.  Generally I prefer to believe that it's not willfull apathy on the part of the average voter - it's simply a lack of time and availability to deeply research and consider the issues when making their choices.  In my area, an area that is economically healthy, hard-working two-income households are normal.  This goes for the well-off down to the bottom half of the working middle class.  They have jobs, and kids, and bills, and errands, and activities, and all the things Americans do in their over-scheduled, over-obligated lives.  I prefer to think that it's not so much a case of "they don't care".  It's a case of having enough time in the day to give the elections proper attention.  Election knowledge is somewhere down the priority list behind the jobs and the kids and the family.  I can understand that, and I don't bear ill will towards those who are tangentially engaged.

There is a committed subset of people, though, who are engaged - thanks to sites like this.  We are activists in the true sense, giving our time and effort and thoughts to this critical midterm election, in full possession of an understanding of what's at risk if we are not successful.

I'm tired of being terrorized by this administration and by my own government.  I'm tired of having fear shoved in my face every time I turn on the TV and hear some talking head from the Republican party discussing everything from scary healthcare to scary taxes to scary islamic extremists.  It occurred to me today, as I was walking in Arlington, that these people have nothing to offer me.  Nothing positive, nothing hopeful.  Just a precipitous descent into fear designed to make me complacent and quiescent.

I REFUSE TO BE INTIMIDATED BY THESE THUGS.

I refuse to let George Allen be my Senator any longer.

Tomorrow I have another business obligation through the day, which happens to be at FedEx Field for the Redskins/Cowboys game.  I got a note from another Virginia Democrat that Allen will be there (in Landover Maryland - go figure) trying to cling to the last of his notoriety through his familial connections to the Redskins.  

So I'm going early.  I'll be wearing my Clinton Portis jersey (RB for the Redskins), but I'll have a Jim Webb bumper sticker on my butt and stickers on my jersey and I'll be holding up a Webb for Senate sign.  I fully intend to get behind Allen with this sign and hold it up while he gives his interview, provided they let me anywhere near.  It's my small way of accomplishing something campaign-related even though I have work obgligations tomorrow.

I have to work Monday, but I've already taken Tuesday off and will be door-knocking on election day in our Northern Virginia micro-targeting effort to squeeze out those last Democratic votes.

I am not fearful.  We are going to win this.  Because we're FED THE FUCK UP and we're willing to sacrifice our money and our time and our effort and our anonymity to pull this one through here in Virginia for Webb.  I know there are MANY like me similarly energized in the closing days of their close races.

We're all working to make this fear a thing of the past and to return our states and our leadership to some semblance of sanity and service.

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