http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-End-is-at-Hand-to-Lef-by-Dave-Lindorff-081030-729.htmlWith the polls continuing to show Barack Obama holding a steady or even growing lead heading into Election Day, especially in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia, and with Democratic challengers looking strong in at least 10 Senate races and dozens of open-seat or Republican-held House races, it’s looking like this will be a big win for Democrats, both in the presidential and the Congressional races.
Hopefully one thing such an across-the-boards win will lead to would be a withering away of the self-destructive conspiracy-theory paranoia that has gripped much of the Left over the last eight years.
Once largely emblematic of the far Right, which saw black helicopters of the dreaded United Nations behind every mountain, Jews running everything, Communists working nefariously under every bed, fluoridation plots, an immigrant assault on the Anglo-Saxon gene pool, and a liberal cabal out to steal their assault hunting rifles, now the Left is awash in the same kind of fevered thinking.
Chief among the leftist conspiracy theories are that the Bush/Cheney administration was behind the 9-11 attacks, that the current administration has plans to cancel or annul the November 4 election and institute martial law, that there are plans for a “false flag” attack on American forces which will be used to justify an all-out war against Iran, that there is a false-flag terror attack planned inside the US set for before the election, designed to throw the vote towards John McCain, that the Wall Street meltdown and subsequent bail-out are a deliberate scheme to steal the nation’s assets and funnel them into Republican pockets, and that Republican operatives have the technological capability, and plan to steal the current election by manipulating the results on the electronic voting machines used by many election districts. In a variant of the Right’s anti-Semitic ravings, the Left attributes god-like powers to the Israel lobby and its formal lobbying organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
Never mind that some of these conspiracies are mutually exclusive (if Bush and Cheney are going to declare martial law, they should have no need to steal the election), or that it’s getting pretty late in the game for others to actually happen. The common thread running through these conspiracies is that “they” (the Republicans, AIPAC or the ruling corporate elite, as the case may be), have superhuman powers beyond our wildest imaginations, as well as flawless execution, and are going to achieve their evil ends no matter what we do.
....
Maybe when this election goes right and isn’t stolen, making Obama the president, and debunking the vote-theft fear-mongers, and when Obama goes on to be inaugurated in January, without being blocked by a military coup, these paranoid conspiracy theories will fade away and people on the Left will start working to make change happen instead of imagining reasons why it can’t or just moaning that “they” are going to destroy us all.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
Authors Website:
http://www.thiscantbehappening.netAuthors Bio: Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006). His writing is available at
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
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