The political marriage of McCain and Palin isn’t the first time America’s aristocracy courted terrorists as bedfellows; the last time they openly displayed such a pragmatic arrangement was when the Taliban were entertained at the President’s ranch. But before that, we had the war against the greens, as author David Helvarg put it, when the energy industry funded the Wise Use Movement to make use of vigilantes like the Christian Patriots to intimidate pro-democracy activists in the US.

America’s aristocracy isn’t monolithic; some fund religious right terrorists who threaten physicians and bomb abortion clinics, some back racist vigilantes who assault and murder immigrants of color, and some support homophobic brutality. One thing they have in common, though, is a belief in the use of violence or the threat of violence in order to maintain their unearned privileges.

And sometimes, that means getting into bed with terrorists.