Sticks and Stones Can Break My Bones....

....but words will never hurt me.

Or can they?

"Terrorist!"

"Kill Him!"

"Treason!"

A racial epithet yelled at an African American sound guy followed by "Sit down, boy!" amid slurs hurled at members of the media after Palin riles the crowd up with how unjustly she was treated by Couric in her interview.

That old childhood rhyme was off a bit. Certain words used carefully can incite people to react with violence, which DOES hurt us!

Now I'm not accusing McCain and Palin of openly encouraging the members in attendance at their rallies to scream the things above. If this was only one isolated incident I probably wouldn't be writing this. But it seems to me a pattern is starting to emerge as the McCain/Palin campaign "takes the gloves off" for the final days of this election.

One of the most concerning things to me is both McCain AND Palin have not addressed these incidents. Not once. Of the 4 comments listed above, at least two have been caught on video. How many others at events within the last week have not? These are people we are supposed to be voting for to lead our country and they can't pause their speech for a minute to say, "Now there's no cause to be yelling things like that. We may not agree with our opponent's stance on things, but calling them a terrorist or suggesting we kill them or that they are guilty of treason is rather over the top. We're all Americans and love our country. We can disagree with people and still show respect for them."

But no, of course we wouldn't hear that. Why, during tonight's debate when commenting on something Obama voted for instead of saying "Senator Obama" or "Barack", McCain instead pointed in the direction of Obama and said "...THAT ONE!"

Referring to a person you are running against as "THAT ONE" has some dangerous connotations. When we cannot look someone in the eye, refer to them by name, or acknowledge they are a human being that deserves to be treated with respect and decency no matter how much we disagree with them, we have begun to dehumanize them. Dehumanizing our rivals makes it that much easier to excuse hate crimes, names, slurs, and acts of violence against them. Think about how that tactic is used now and how it was used in places like Nazi Germany to transform the "enemy" from humans to "vermin".

Is this the kind of change the McCain campaign seeks to bring us? Violence, aggression, hate, fear of those different from us, lies? How sick has our country become that this is acceptable behaviour?

Perhaps this is the new McCain/Palin tactic? If they can't take the White House they'll make sure as many people as possible are so fearful of Obama that his days in office won't last very long?

Unfortunately in the US we have a tendency to kill the visionaries that seek to transform our nation. And to be perfectly honest that is a deep, legitimate fear that sits in the heart of this supporter of CHANGE.