This is what we're up against, folks.

I don't think Americans were this scared even after the 9/11 attacks. Yes, people were frightened, but the fear was based on something tangible, something they could put their fingers on. Today, the fear is deeper. It's at the very core of our being. We may not all understand the arcana of derivatives and the way Wall Street finance works, but most of us have at some point in our lives accumulated more debt than was good for us, and we have at least a dim understanding of what a bailout of up to a trillion dollars means.

And even if we don't, we understand that our 401(k) balances are dwindling. We understand that the value of our homes has dropped by twenty percent. We know how much more difficult it is to find a job -- and to keep one. We know how much more we're paying at the pump and at the grocery store. We know the sticker shock when the fuel oil company comes to fill the tank. We know how the electric bill was forty dollars higher in August than it was the same month last year, even though we used the air conditioning less.

If you have children, you're wondering how you're going to feed your fifteen-year-old who can seemingly inhale a refrigerator full of food and calls it an after-school snack. You're wondering how you're going to send your kids to college -- and what on earth they're going to do for a living when they get out. If you're like me, and you're on the north end of fifty, you're realizing that you're going to have to work until they put you in a box -- provided you can even hold onto a job. You're going to have to do this because even if you've done everything right and saved as much as you can towards retirement, a good chunk of that money is gone -- gone into the pockets of the people Henry Paulson is trying to use YOUR tax dollars to protect and prop up in his effort to become Economic King of America.

In a normal world, this would mean that someone who offered a change of direction would be embraced to the point of a ten to fifteen point lead. But this election year is different. Because this year the candidate who isn't an entrenched Washington hack with a history of taking bribes from lobbyists happens to be dark of skin. And in bad times, Americans get scared. And when they get scared, they tend to look for scapegoats, and those who are dark of skin are first in line.

Here's what's happening in the Morris County, NJ hamburg of Roxbury:

Some neighborhoods in Roxbury were blanketed over the weekend with campaign literature from a white supremacist, anti-immigration group that bluntly raised the issue of race regarding presidential candidate Barack Obama, offending some recipients and angering Democratic leaders.

A flier left on driveways in a neatly packaged plastic envelope and distributed by a group named the League of American Patriots, with a Butler mailing address, questioned, "Do You Want A Black President?" and stated "Black Ruled Nations most unstable and violent in the world."

Roxbury resident Elizabeth Corsetto said she and her husband came home from doing errands Saturday and found the flier at the end of their driveway. She picked it up, expecting a mailer from a retailer but instead found a one-page, black and white sheet featuring unflattering photos of Obama, including a doctored one portraying him with a long beard and turban.

"Why should we seal our fate by allowing a black ruler to destroy us?" asked the flier, which also detailed what it contended to be a series of facts on black unemployment, poverty, HIV and crime rates, while pointing out the woes of a couple of predominantly black-populated countries.

Attempts to reach the League of American Patriots, by telephone and e-mail, were unsuccessful yesterday. There were no names of group leaders or organizers on the flier or the group's website.

Corsetto, a former school board president in Dover, said she was shocked to get the flier.

"I'm not against free speech, but I was shocked to find stuff like this in my neighborhood," Corsetto said. "I know racism is out there in this world, but I'm particularly disturbed to believe this is happening in Morris County."

The League of American Patriots was formed March 29 at a meeting attended by more than 20 people at an undisclosed site in northern New Jersey, followed by a July meeting at an undisclosed Morris County park, according to the organization's website.

The group is "committed to restoring America to the principles upon which it was founded. First and foremost is halting the rapid demographic decline of the European peoples in our homeland," according to the website. League members attended an immigration reform rally in Lakewood in May and what was billed as an anti-Mexican rally in Shenandoah, Pa., in August, according to the site.

In short, white supremacy.

This group is perhaps a more extreme version of the kind of racism that has permeated this campaign. Whether it's the McCain campaign running ads linking Barack Obama to Franklin Raines (another black man), or ads chiding him for being "disrespectful" towards "Governor Palin", as if he were Emmett Till and they're just telling that black boy to watch his back, it's clear that "Can't you see that man is a ni-?" is the undercurrent of this, well, race. And that is bringing all the lunatics out of the woodwork.

Today a Washington Post/ABC News poll has Obama up 52%-43% over John McCain, which is getting close to the double-digit lead I believe Obama will need to prevail against a 5-7% racism factor and Republican vote suppression. If Obama continues to surge, watch for more groups like this to form.