Can You Divide this Country Much More, McCain?

The Republican Party has divisiveness down to a fine art, and that has been particularly evident the past few months. Their basic premise is that, if you keep people distracted by fighting against each other, you can pretty much do as you please. Mention abortion or "gay rights" and you will have people so distracted that they don't notice you've been torturing our enemies and making massive profits on those wars as well.
John McCain may have been alienating folks for a much longer time prior to this summer, but he probably didn't have nearly as large an audience as he did during the Republican National Convention, when he announced he was a maverick. Yup, he basically said he wasn't like all those Washington insiders, who believe in politics as usual. You know, those other senators he's been working with for over 30 years now. I guess to say "working with" is misleading, because he's been the maverick who has been doing all the right stuff while they've been a bunch of screw-ups. Did any of the members of Congress at the Convention that night stop to think, "Hey! He's talking about us!" I've asked it before and I'll ask it again; how does McCain expect to work in any productive way with our legislative branch after spending all this time dissing them? Talk about gridlock!
I've already talked about an early John McCain ad, one that said Obama had been "disrespectful" to Sarah Palin (i.e. that white woman). Oh yeah, starting to stoke the fires of racism, right John? Doesn't take much to get a few folks muttering at your rallies. Then came the financial crisis. McCain's poll numbers started to dip, and were not helped by the presidential debate. He really had nothing to counter Obama's economic plan, and instead of even trying, McCain took the easy way out and got down and dirty. Releasing his lap dog and the shadowy knights of the underParty, the smears began. It wasn't enough just to say, "Those nasty Democrats. They pinch babies and make them cry." Portraying Obama as a terrorist-by-association, they sought to play on the fear that some people have--that Barack Obama has a very weird name; sounds foreign, doesn't it? Just who ARE Obama's friends anyway? Sarah Palin is the goddess of smear; she just never backs down, no matter what. Years of work on race relations go quickly out the window in an effort to land a few more bottom feeders into the McCain vote net. Sarah Palin has yet to take even one person to task at her rallies, even when they are going so far as to yell out that Obama should be killed. This has spilled out into the streets of America; cars parked at Obama rallies in the past few days have had the tires slashed. People going to vote early have been harassed (guess the local Planned Parenthood was closed that day, and those protesters had to find someone else to harangue).
So far, McCain/Palin have divided our country into Democrat/Republican, gay/straight, white/black, terrorist-lover/Republican voter. What's next? Well, according to Rep. Michelle Bachmann, pro-American vs. anti-American. And guess where the Republican thinks Barack Obama is in this latest attempt at division in America? It's a sad day in the US when one major party has to harken back to the dark days of the 1950s in an effort to get a few more votes for their side.
I thought I had heard it all, but no---in the past two days, John McCain senior staffers and some other right wing voices have been squawking about leftwing feminists vs. .... I guess... "real feminists" (like Sarah Palin). Wait!!! I thought "feminist" was the "F" word for the right. I am so confused.
However, I do know three things for certain:
1) This divisiveness will get worse before it gets better. I certainly hope there is no physical violence.
2) The pain caused by the Republican party in the past six weeks will take years to heal.
3) We Americans are so much better than that. Please, get this message out to everyone you know.
And vote.