Jack Ross on my view that Colin Powell is deep down inside an Arabist:
Though I haven't checked the Commentary blog yet, I too have been
surprised to see that the Republican attacks on Powell have not been
neocon red meat
attacking his "Arabism", but rather baldly and hysterically accusing
him of supporting Obama just because he's black. At first I thought
this was just the same old desperation, but now I'm scared s–tless
realizing what's really going on. The two charges against Powell are
related – the increasingly racial tone of the McCain/Palin hysteria
reflects the worst fears about what the right has in mind for the long
term. They are trying to lay the groundwork for the myth that we were
stabbed in the back by the disloyal blacks, just as the Germans were by
the disloyal Jews….
And Ross clarifies in response to some comments:
No, I do not believe that this is what the Republicans have in mind in
all its graphic glory. Probably the analogy they're working with in
wanting to throw the election, which I believe most of the Republican
establishment and "conservative movement" has wanted to do all along,
is that Obama will be four years of David Dinkins followed by eight
years of Giuliani. And don't think that Rudy himself isn't delusional
enough to think he can do it all over again.
Much as it goes
against my instincts, I believe Katrina vanden Huevel was right that
what Michelle Bachman represented was a slippery slope to a Sinclair
Lewis dystopia. Having said that, I don't think it's going to get
anywhere, because we've done the stabbed-in-the-back thing once
already, after Vietnam. As the German example made clear, its a
non-starter the second time.
I have the distinct sense that this is a very real fear of
much of the black population. It was clear to me that this was why
Jeremiah Wright's intervention last spring was received positively by
the black community in spite of the obviousness with which he was
trying to sabotage Obama, because he was appealing to those fears.
Black people know this history, because they were very conscious of
what was happening in Europe in the 30s and 40s on account of its
implications for them, and because they themselves suffered through
horrible upheavals at home right after World War I, with a string of
race riots that made April 1968 pale in comparison.
