"Paroxysms of Rage"

That’s a phrase NRO’s election guru, Jim Geraghty, uses to describe the reaction he gets from liberal readers every time he mentions a poll that shows McCain gaining ground on Obama.

And yet some liberal readers are driven into a fury each time I point to something that suggests their guy might not win, or might not win by a landslide. And it’s clearly ratcheted up in recent days. . .So what’s going on here? These folks are who they are; I’m not expecting discourse beyond their usual “YOU SUCK” level. But why are they so bothered by one guy saying that a landslide isn’t inevitable? Why does “your guy might not win” send them into paroxysms of rage?

Of course, as reader Ted points out in a comment on a previous post, this is nothing compared to the eruption of molten fury that will take place if McCain is miraculously able to pull this out (and it will definitely have involved divine intervention if it happens.)

We’ve had a couple of months now of the media establishment assuring the nation that Obama is going to win–in part as a psychological effort to discourage and suppress potential McCain voters. We have a huge majority of the African-American population deeply emotionally invested in the Obama candidacy. We have eight years of frustration at two previous super-narrow losses.

All that, coupled with the fact that Obama has energized a segment of the American populous that is semi-deranged (remember the anarchist protesters that were throwing bleach on grandmothers at the Republian convention in St. Paul?) adds up to a swelling caldera that will blow the moment the election is called for McCain (if it goes that way.)

There will almost certainly be riots and looting in many of America’s major cities. (Heck, there’s rioting and looting in Detroit when the Pistons win the NBA championship.) When the national guard is called out to restore order and protect property, it will fulfill all the dark fantasies the left has been entertaining over the last few years about Bush the dictator. “We knew he was just looking for an excuse to declare martial law!” they’ll scream.

The disruptive and scarring claims of election fraud that followed the Bush victories in 2000 and 2004 will seem like a Teletubbies love-fest in compared to the blizzard of litigation that will follow such an outcome.

In other words, it will get very, very ugly.

Of course, if Obama wins as predicted, it will get ugly in a very different way.

Thus, it seems that no matter what happens in two weeks, it will be a good time to know that you are a child of God and that this fact makes you a citizen of another Kingdom–one that knows no boundaries and functions in a different economy.

Nevertheless, wisdom and prudence would suggest that you may not want to be in the middle of a major city on election night. Just in case.