One of Sully’s readers explains the American right to him, does a very good job of it:
For most of your time in America, this insanity has been muted by the success of conservative politics. Since you live in Washington, you probably saw daily the face of the successful conservative political establishment that milked the populist right, and by milking them kept their bitterness at a manageable level. That safety valve was stuffed up by George Bush’s failed presidency.
[….]These are the folks who drove Teddy Roosevelt out of the Republican Party and called his cousin Franklin a communist, shut their town’s borders to the Okies and played the protectionist card right up til Pearl Harbor, when they suddenly had a new foreign enemy to hate. They are with us, the John Birchers, the anti-flouride and black helicopter nuts, the squirrly commie-hating hysterics who always loved the loyalty oath, the forced confession, the auto-de-fe. Those who await with baited breath the race war, the nuclear holocaust, the cultural jihad, the second coming, they make up much more of America then you would care to think.
[….]I voted for Obama with my fingers crossed, because I knew that as the populist right lost power, they would become more extreme, more concentrated, and more violent. As to dismissing them as only a quarter or so of America, please remember that it only took a quarter or so of Americans to actively support the Confederacy.
I don’t think we’re probably headed for mass secessions or Civil War or anything quite that extreme. But I do think a lot of the teabaggers, birthers, and sovereign citizens do genuinely wish that we were.
JK
Obama Derangement Syndrome Update
Alex Jones one-ups Glenn Beck on Crazy
Alex Jones discussing why Obama is the Joker while he’s made up as Heath Ledger’s Joker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGFw3hY20lM&feature=popular
Alex Jones’ Obama Joker $1000 Video Contest
http://www.infowars.com/the-obama-joker-1000-video-contest/
Philly Police Officer Behaving Badly
Philadelphia Police Officer Accused Of Running Unauthorized Criminal Background Check On Obama
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/07/philadelphia-police-offic_0_n_254456.html
Comrade Baron Elmo
Goddamn… that felt good.
JenJen
That was a brilliant letter, and I applaud Sully for having the guts to post it. The writer is correct; it is very difficult for people outside of our country to understand exactly how dangerous the wingnut-right can be, and that they were placated by years of GOP rule.
I can’t even click on The Atlantic anymore, moreso because of McArdle and Ambinder of late. Thanks very much for posting this.
freelancer
I read this and reposted it in full on my site too, bookending it with last night’s New Rules:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/real-time-new-rules-aug-7-2009
Pretty much nails my attitude over the last month. And to think, August used to be my favorite month.
DeadlyShoe
Ayep…
I think these people have limited energy though. They can’t remain so hysterical for the entire Obama Presidency. Maybe for another 6 months but they’ll have to tone it down after that.
Even the Clinton hysteria fell off for a couple years after the effort and exaustion of the impeachment.
But they’ll kick it up again for the next election cycle. They always do.
JK
Latest Stupidity from Glenn InstaClueless Reynolds
“For Barack Obama, democracy appears to be a distraction. He really does seem to view himself as a Caesar.” – Glenn Reynolds
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/83111/
cleek
I don’t think we’re probably headed for mass secessions or Civil War or anything quite that extreme.
we really aren’t. and it’d be nice if the left would agree to not get all apocalyptical in its evaluations of the right’s re-found assertiveness. this isn’t civil war, it’s highly-emotional people confronting their political opponents – and in those situations, sometimes people will say things they probably shouldn’t say. we’re a long ways from a civil war, and we’re even farther from fascism.
take a deep breath, everyone.
Apsaras
Entitlement, pure and simple.
It has long been an article of faith among these people that they are Real Americans, while liberals, minorities, and women who don’t know their place just happen to live here. They believe it because the Republican party saw this entire strategy as the key to their electoral success. And it worked for years. Get Ralph Kramden pissed off enough every four years at the liberals, the queers, and the blacks and people who don’t think Columbus discovered America that he’d heave himself out of his chair and go vote. His candidate would win, and he could return to his recliner convinced that he was part of the great plurality of True Americans and that they had things under control.
Then, last year, the unthinkable happened. Meathead voted.
Now, they can’t handle honest, electoral defeat, and that sentiment is what’s fueling a lot of this talk about how they need to “take their country back.” It’s not just the whole Kenyan Birth Certificate thing, it’s the whole idea that Liberty itself is under attack by a centrist democrat that couldn’t possibly have won honestly.
Mark S.
I’m predicting a blowback against the teabaggers. I’m just afraid it’s going to take someone getting killed at one of these townhalls.
freelancer
“For Barack Obama, democracy appears to be a distraction.”
Yeah, getting elected President with more votes than any candidate in the country’s history can be distracting. No wonder he’s always looking for a good, Dijon-smeared cheeseburger.
Robin G.
I don’t think we’re headed for Civil War, no… but I do think someone’s going to get wounded or killed before this is all over. Sooner or later someone’s going to bring a gun to one of these townhall meetings and things are going to get really bad.
To be honest, I’d say the more likely historical reference isn’t a large group of secessionists, but a few nuts assassinating the Archduke Ferdinand…
JGabriel
@JenJen:
I’m surprised. You’d think Europeans, at least, would have some experience with how dangerous the right wing can be.
.
KCinDC
Cleek, I agree we’re far from a civil war, but I think it’s more likely than not that this idiocy and rage the Republicans are feeding will lead to some deaths before it’s over. Let’s hope it falls short of Timothy McVeigh numbers.
Pug
I agree there will be a backlash. I also agree it will probably come after something tragic happens. This is building toward a right-wing act of violence.
Comrade Jake
I’m not sure we have more than our fair share of stupid people compared to other countries. Our problem is that these people tend to buy guns, and we have a political/media establishment that plays down to their level.
jwb
I’ve been trying to figure out why there are so many old people involved in the teabagging, and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that they are fighting 1968 all over again—it’s the same generation, except the other side is taking to the streets, so to speak. If so, then the optimistic read is that they are old, history is rerunning itself and we get to witness the farce. Lucky us.
BombIranForChrist
I still think the greatest punishment we could ever visit on the Right is to force them to live according to their own principles. Cut the South out of the federal budget completely. Then let’s see how anti-tax they are. Refuse to let them use any technology based on science. Then let’s see how anti-science they are. Let the southeastern farmlands dry up into dustbowls, then let’s see how anti-climate change they are.
The Right’s biggest hypocrisy is that they use the prosperity and comforts that the left and centrists has brought to our country and use it to comfortably rail against the system that brought them the prosperity and comfort. I say take those things away and then see how principled they really are. My prediction is that they will run squealing back to the tit before the sun hits the hills. Who cares what they think.
Stooleo
“I’m just afraid it’s going to take someone getting killed at one of these townhalls.”
Same thing crossed my mind. On the brighter side, I did read that the secret service is going to look into a death threat received by Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash). I’d love to see a few of these wack jobs get prosecuted.
linky
http://tinyurl.com/n74avz
Uloborus
These people HAVE always been around. They’ve just been split between a dozen pet issues and marginalized by the mainstream.
What I think has changed is that Bush caused such a surge of tribalist thinking in the GOP that the people who aren’t really THAT crazy are cheering on the nutsos and seriously considering their cockamamie positions. Basically, the teabaggers are on ‘our’ side and fighting the Dems, so they MUST be right, right?
Oh, and throw in a lot of seething emotion ’cause of the economy and they just hate losing an election.
KCinDC
Meanwhile, the Corner worries about those hapless babes in the woods the pharmaceutical lobbyists being hoodwinked by the wily congressional Democrats.
InflatableCommenter
Me too. Maybe some “Honk if you want to assassinate Obama” stickers on a few cars. Just in good fun. Or dragging him in effigy behind a 1972 Chevy pickup truck. That kind of thing, just good old American free speech.
But all seriousness aside, your comment is thought provoking.
What I am thinking right now is that we have a system that is obviously tilted awat from tyrrany of the majority, giving rise to a congress that reacts like scared rabbits whenever the 25 percenters wave their arms and stamp their feet.
What I think next is that we are in danger of tilting over to tyrrany of the minority. And the reason is, that minority is the group, right now, that is making all the noise. Forget how stupid or inane their ideas and policies are, look at the way they are seizing the opportunity for activism and participation …. ugly and disgusting as it may be, it is activism.
Meanwhile we, the smart and informed left, sit by and passively watch it happen. This is what is meant by saying that for evil to triumph it is only necessary for good people to do nothing. This is when WE should be the ones being activists, packing the town hall meetings, assembling and cheering for what we want, shouting down the morons, knocking on doors, making phone calls, donating money … all the things we did last year to help provide an electora victory.
What happens next depends on what we do at this point. Not what the morons do.
freelancer
Two gut laughs, and then I’m off to enjoy this 100 degree heat.
1)Commenter Lesley, two threads ago, linked to the site http://www.stopmedicare.org
2) Benen just posted the greatest description of the right winger’s contribution to the democratic process:
JenJen
@JGabriel:
Yes, you’d think that.
But America really is a different animal from Europe; it’s pretty much why I love being an American, and I’ve even lived in Europe and would only trade their health care and paid time off for my American-ness. One thing about this nation still rings true: we are not a caste system, and you truly can rise above the social station you were born unto. The current President is a delightful example of all that one principle which makes America wonderful, as were other Presidents that preceded him (Nixon and Reagan come immediately to mind).
However, I truly am shocked today, just as I was when he first proclaimed it to be true, that Sully may still believe the election of Barack Hussein Obama meant “Goodbye To All That.”
InflatableCommenter
@InflatableCommenter:
Just to add, since I can’t edit the post, this is a time for us to be proactive. Instead we are sitting around being reactive. The actual wording of that assertion is Little Dreamer’s, I just stole it.
R-Jud
@Pug:
Which, after it occurs, “no one could have predicted”.
I am so tired of all the histrionics in both of the countries I pay taxes to that I spent the day reading stupid fashion magazines in the backyard. I started out gardening, but I found that I was only writing angry essays in my head, so I just shut the brain down with some glossy paper and perfume samples.
I recommend it. Wine helps too.
-RJ + 1 (bottle)
bellatrys
Oh, they’re definitely hoping for it – and always have been, at least since the late-Sixties/early-Seventies. “Apocalypse is a force that gives life meaning,” so to speak.
On a certain level.
On another level, they manage to simultaneously not believe any of the bullshit they shriek. They talk about how everything’s going to go to hell in the “zombie uprising” and it’ll be just like a Cormac McCarthy novel and THEY’LL be okay because they have guns and chainsaws and aren’t afraid to use them and have read lots of historical fiction and have a tomato garden out back…and then they turn on their big-screen TV and pop in a DVD they bought at Barnes & Noble on the way home from buying wine and cheese and diapers at the grocery store, or play the music they downloaded thru iTunes and never stop and think about what their lives will REALLY be like if their fantasies ever come to pass.
(Eventually, if you realize this contradiction, it will break your brain and you will have to change. As will meeting actual liberals, and gay people, and so forth, and finding out that amongst themselves, in private, they do not actually talk about rounding up all the Christians and throwing them in godless-pagan-secularhumanist reeducation camps.)
The term “Cozy Apocalypse” was used by one of my readers long ago, when we were discussing this bizarre mindset as manifested in the Catholic TEOTWAWKI novel “Pierced By A Sword” (self-published and handed out for free by the case, and the author apparently sincerely thinks as he claims that this makes it a top bestseller) and, of course, it’s all over the “Left Behind” ethos.
El Cid
You know, you gotta just imagine Barack talking to Michelle and having to go, “So, honey, get this — now they got Sarah Palin saying I’m gonna kill their ret… I mean, developmentally disabled babies. Really. That’s what they’re saying.”
Deep Brain Diarist
I’m not afraid of Islamofascists. I don’t worry about isolated Muslim terror cells causing acts of terrorism in America. I don’t fear foreigners. I fear Americans who are willing to believe that their president wants to kill their grandmothers and their babies. I fear these so-called “patriots” who believe liars like Sarah Palin, who tells them that Obama wants to kill her Downs Syndrome baby. I fear these intellectually-challenged mouth-breathing shouting idiots, like Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, who believes Obama wants to kill ME because I have Parkinson’s disease.
Noise is noise. Demonstrations are demonstrations. But evil is pervasive and progressive. First, they shout. Then, they hit. Then they damage property. Then… they start killing people.
That is what I fear. Not some nameless, faceless Islamofascist with a dirty bomb. I fear some right-wing lunatic with a high-powered rifle who will try to invalidate a legitimate election with a single bullet because the voices on the radio TOLD him to. I fear a group of self-styled “freedom fighters” who — inspired by Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann — will pack a rental truck with fertilizer and diesel fuel and park it in front of ANOTHER federal building and blow it up in the name of “Liberty.”
When something bad happens and the pushing and shoving at the town halls escaltes into real violence, and the unthinkable happens… you know what I mean by that… these same people who have stoked the violence and fanned it and nurtured the hatred that led to it will scratch their heads in wonder and tell you it wasn’t their fault. They were just “talking.” They were just “expressing an opinion.”
At some point, we have to ask ourselves when this constant fanning of irrational hatred and paranoia and tweaking of the fear and emotions of stupid people who fear the unknown and hate the fact that we have an African American as president equates to “shouting fire in a crowded theater.”
And we’d better do it soon.
Meyer
@KCinDC:
Oh, dear. That’s just so…precious. Someone worried about the innocent Pharam industry. Bless his heart.
wmd
I believe that one on one they can be defused (and diffused). It takes willingness to not call them teabaggers or to use ridicule while engaged as individuals.
listen to their fears. Listen some more. Then use mirroring framing to talk them down. While you mirror them you subtly introduce true information that shifts them slightly away from their nuttiness.
Rinse Lather and Repeat. Over and over again.
Beats the hell out of civil war.
General Winfield Stuck
I basicially agree with this, and the hope of some of these fools that we are headed that way.
That said, the level of unrest that is possible depends largely on the economy. We don’t have an incendiary issue like slavery for people to divide along deep social and political chasms. But if the economy was to have come apart the way some feared, all bets are off, imo.
As it is, we are getting better news on that front and that will serve to tamp down the flaming assholes trying to start something.
ppcli
“Eventually, if you realize this contradiction, it will break your brain and you will have to change.”
Not really – sometimes people change, but more often they just keep believing contradictory things. The identification of “doublethink” as a human activity was one of Orwell’s great insights.
gizmo
It’s no surprise that the country is full of delusional wingnuts. We’ll always have our fair share of those people. But what is truly alarming is the extent to which our corporate media is will to facilitate the agenda of the further Right. If we had honest, competent reportage things would be a lot different.
Cervantes
“Bated breath,” people, not “baited breath.”
(Except perhaps in nightmares.)
jenniebee
@Mark S.:
That’s funny. I think that somebody’s pretty sure to get killed at one of these town halls, but my guess is that when that happens, the country’s going to hear about how this is good news for John McCain.
JK
@cleek:
Cleek: “This isn’t civil war, it’s highly-emotional people confronting their political opponents – and in those situations, sometimes people will say things they probably shouldn’t say.”
How long can Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, et al continue comparing Obama to Hitler, Stalin, or Heath Ledger’s Joker before one of their warped, frustrated followers takes a shot at Obama.
Polish the Guillotines
It’s not so much a matter of Civil War in the “War Between the States” sense. Even if the Republic of Texas, for example, were to marshal its National Guard, State Troopers, and all local law enforcement plus every able-bodied Wolverine in the state, the Fed would just park a carrier task force in the Gulf of Mexico and that’s all she wrote.
The real issue is “death by a thousand idiots.” We got a serious taste of it during Clinton’s administration. The De Lay/Gingrich/Lott Republicans were way more concerned with destroying Clinton rather than Bin Laden and al Queda, as just one example. (Health care is another.)
No matter how important to our security or well-being, if the policy originated with Clinton or Democrats, the GOP did everything it could to thwart its implementation. But that’s stating the obvious.
Thing is, now the GOP has distilled itself down to the highest concentration of crazy we’ve seen in a long time — and at a point in our history where the problems are far too serious for their brand of tribal bullshit. It only takes a small contingent in the right (wrong) places to prevent meaningful change from taking place.
freelancer
@cleek
Obama’s 2nd Inaugural:
“Did I ever tell you how I got these scarrrrrrssss?”
jwb
InflatableCommenter
Well it depends on what you mean by being active. It’s not clear to me that competitive shouting, for instance, would be at all useful, and any kind of violent confrontation would be an absolute disaster. It’s actually what the rightwingers want, because it would suggest a massive breakdown of order, and believe me they would know how to quickly turn that against Obama. Now, the other stuff, better attendance at meetings, volunteering, donating money, etc., I can certainly agree with, but it’s also the case that it’s much easier to motivate people when in opposition.
SF Bay
Mark I agree with you. This is going to backfire in very unpleasant ways for the Republicans.
By Sept. the Dems will have given up on “bitpartisanship” and move forward with real health care reform. The Reps will have pretty much no choice but to vote NO. The bill passes without any Rep support. When it starts working, and it will, early in 2010 – just in time for campaigning for congress again, the Dems will wipe the floor with Reps and pick up more seats.
Michael D.
That was a good post for Andrew to hear. I know that because I need to hear it every now and again.
…even though I have joined you all, like John, on the Dark Syde.
shep
You should (re)read Stanley Milgram’s work and then Bob Altemeyer to get a fuller understanding of who and what we’re dealing with. 25% doesn’t nearly describe the percentage of people in a random sample who are ready to do truly cruel things to others, based on very little prodding by very little authority, given the right circumstances (in fact, that’s a bigger percentage than those of us who would seriously resist inflicting such cruelty if ordered to do so by an authority figure in certain circumstances). Also, you can find about 28-35% of people who at most times, in polling, represent the lunatic right (e.g., the percentage that “thinks the Republican Party gets it right” or approves of the job George W. Bush is doing, or doesn’t know if the president is an American citizen, etc.).
Rey
Wasn’t Obama’s approval rating at like 70% back in Dec, after he named his cabinet (and he really didn’t name Al Sharpton secy of state) and didn’t request that the White House be painted the color Black??? Six months into the man’s term, and all hell has broken loose, over a President that wants to help our country get a workable and national healthcare system. I don’t see a new civil war either but, I pray everyday for Obama’s safety. I bet he is chain smoking and going to the roof of the Whitehouse, after the FLOTUS and kids have gone to bed, and firing up a big fatty….
jwb
On the other hand, it’s amazing how quickly the birther movement has disappeared and been transformed into “Obama is going to kill old people and babies” meme. You’d pay good money to see a pirouette of that quality on stage.
General Winfield Stuck
I have little doubt that some stupid acts of violence from this crowd will occur in the next few years, but would be glad to be proven wrong. Hopefully, not McVeigh level, but……
JGabriel
Not all of the time, anyway.
.
Delia
I’m just afraid it’s going to take someone getting killed at one of these townhalls.
If, God forbid, it comes to that, you can be sure that the legions of talking heads will be jabbering about “how the Dems have brought this on themselves, blah, blah, blah.” All you have to do is read La Noonan’s latest offering to get the general idea.
cleek
comparing your political opponent to Hitler is a favorite of demagogues everywhere. let’s not forget, the “Bush=Hitler” meme stayed very popular on the left for eight solid years. there were ever-growing lists of parallels which conclusively proved that Bush was the second coming of Adolph. it was a bit embarrassing to be a lefty, sometimes, frankly. but nobody took a shot at him.
Kirk Spencer
For those who think they’ll be stopped if we outwait them, I submit a history lesson: Abortion.
If they shout enough and press enough and assault enough and in a few cases kill enough, the other side caves.
That’s the lesson they learned. They’ve not learned from the other battle; the one hey should have learned from the fight about race. That’s because although the other side did NOT cave it took longer and it isn’t over yet.
Martian Buddy
@ppcli: I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw one of the Freepers say “dissent is patriotic” (in reference to criticizing Obama, naturally) without apparent irony. They really are completely impervious to cognitive dissonance.
JenJen
Well, this will turn out well:
Teabaggers bring guns to Tennessee health care event
http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2009/08/teabaggers-bring-guns-to-tennessee-dems.html
Another thing I’m not sure Sully quite “gets” about American culture yet… man, we sure do love us some weaponry.
John Hamilton Farr
You don’t, eh? Well, *I* wish SOMEONE would secede (Vermont, Pacific Northwest?) so I can f*cking move there. I would move to another country in a heartbeat if a) I had the means, and b) I knew where the hell to go. Relocating to a more sane part of the former United States would be a lot easier, no oceans to cross.
Just, um, roadblocks to run…
JGabriel
@Deep Brain Diarist:
Dude! Think you could rephrase that? We don’t want the righty hordes to out. Yet.
.
JGabriel
Bleh, should be: “We don’t want the righty hordes to find out. Yet.”
Where oh where is our editing function?
.
kay
Democrats are starting to do smarter things.
Like handing out cards when the crowd is outside and asking them to write a health care question, and name and address. People who have just identified themselves are much less likely to act like idiots.
I met my former wingnut House member once and the first thing he asked me is what county I live in. I live in a 60/40 R/D county, so he can completely dismiss my question, and he did. He doesn’t need my vote, at all, nor was he ever going to get it.
They’re asking for a show of hands on who lives in the District. As all of you know, House members don’t do jack on the orders of people bussed in who can’t vote them out. If your hand isn’t up, you’re irrelevant. Go petition your own House member.
It took them 5 days to get it. That’s pretty good, for Congress.
General Winfield Stuck
@JGabriel:
Pun magic.
JGabriel
Deep Brain Diarist:
Yes, well, that would be a good in that it meant they still had some sense of shame.
Instead, I fully expect them to yell that the victims of such violence “deserved it” and to blame it on Obama and the socialist liberals.
.
JK
My sympathy goes out to the sane and ratioanl residents of Oklahoma who have to endure James Inhofe, and
Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.): “I see Barack Obama is creating an enemies list of people who oppose this miserable health care plan. I think that’s frightening. That’s from a guy that can’t even show a long-form birth certificate.”
h/t http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/08/08/house-goper-cites-birther-claims-and-enemies-list-at-town-hall/
jones
heh, yeah, because there was no hysterical, nonsensical, blind hatred of the other side coming from the left.
enjoy your moment in the sun, oh wait, it’s already over. these are heady times for the GOP, because they are on the ascent and Obama is already a lame duck. His only hope is to abandon the leftist agenda and triangulate right, ala Clinton, who did so masterfully and completely fucked the left in the ass.
The leftists who are denying that there is a genuine groundswell of disgust with them in this country are in for a bloodbath in ’10, and it will completely surprise them, just as Bush’s re-election did, because they can’t comprehend that the country does not support their agenda. The MSM engineered election of Jokebama is their last gasp, and the Dems have quickly reminded the public of why they hate the left.
Sept is going to be a wonderful month of complete defeat for Obama- no cap and trade actually enacted, no socialized medicine, the complete repudiation of the porkulus bill. Happy times indeed ;)
weeeeeeeeeeeee!
Indylib
That letter was an excellent summation of how these people have always been among us and how they may have some success in standing athwart American progress, but how short term most of their victories really are. In the long run I don’t think they can succeed in their current athwartness, it’s too late, they just didn’t realize it until Obama got elected.
The use of bigotry against African-Americans (and by extension other groups that aren’t “white”) has been one of their longest sustained successes, it’s been with us since before we were a country and seemed a reliable constant to them until they woke up one day and realized most of America had moved beyond it. They lost the bigotry contest in war and non-violent protest both, but continued to succeed in the arenas of political power and money. They’ve now lost the political battle. A qualified black man was elected President of the United States of America by a clear majority of the people.
These ugly tirades about wanting “their” America back are desperate attempts to regain something that is gone.
So much of this ugliness seems to be an attempt to sway those of us of the white pursuasion who do not feel their fear to think maybe we should feel it. They may succeed in swaying a enough of those that don’t pay attention to the details of things (like what the healthcare reforms bills actually say) to have some short term victories. Ones that make those of us who pay attention to these things all of the time want to bang our heads on our desks, repeatedly. But they’ve lost the demographic war. Just the fact that they have to couch their racist hatred in complaints and made-up bullshit about birth certificates and lies about what healthcare reform is going to accomplish, is telling.
Martian Buddy
@JGabriel: “Just look what you made me do.”
JGabriel
Modereratered: Modereratered, again!
I swear to FSM, I don’t know how you can justify a political blog that censors the word ‘sociaIist’. SO annoying.
.
Chris Johnson
No, you’re mistaken. That’s when those people you mention show up in the Senate with sawed-off shotguns and cry “LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!”.
You’re a bit out of date.
The evolution of what’s happening is not ‘isolated bombs/shootings’ and perplexed innocent rightwing authoritarian leaders.
The evolution of what’s happening is, those rightwingers will stay on message and attempt to seize power via a coup. If they succeed, that’s what fascism is, and the violent wingnuts with guns and bombs won’t be called wingnuts.
They’ll be called patriots, and there will be good government jobs for them, in which they can do what they’re best at.
JGabriel
Oops, clean up already. Thanks.
.
JGabriel
“Cleaned up, already.”
Jeebus, I’m like typo city today. Must need more caffeine or something.
.
Robertdsc-iphone
I’ve read that book & the two that follow it. I grew up Catholic & some of the terminology was familiar to me, but the harrowing circumstances of each novel intersecting with the brand of faith the author is pushing made me very uncomfortable about faith in general.
After reading them, I happened to attend a Mass with my folks & could not bring the faith in those books in line with the much more familiar doctrine espoused by the priests.
Very strange.
Delia
Well, I wish SOMEONE would secede (Vermont, Pacific Northwest?) so I can f*cking move there.
Hah! You don’t think the Pacific Northwest is well-stocked with wingnuts? Even in Eugene the local paper’s letters to the editors page is filled with wingers, many of the ranting about how the evil liberal paper will never publish their letters. This is to say nothing of the well-entrenched timber barons.
Leelee for Obama
@Rey: Now that’s smoking we can believe in!
Honestly, I don’t imagine he is surprised by any of this-after all, he’s been Barack Hussein Obama all of his life, most particularly since 911. The AA community used to distrust him in Chicago cause they thought he was too close to the Jewish Community, and not nearly Black enough. Isn’t that precious? He might find the shitheads saying this kind of crap on the floor of the House kind of odd, but then again, even I was stunned by Virginia Foxx, and I know she’s batshit crazy. I keep good thoughts for safety all around, and Reconciliation for passage of the really important Bills, if necessary. The other kind of reconciliation will come when the tea-baggers learn how well off they’ll be with the new rules. Then, it’ll be 40 years before people forget, and some new crap starts up. Hope I’m dead by then. I should be, actuarially.
Delia
I really miss the edit function on this site.
AkaDad
Thanks for ruining my Saturday night, jerk.
Leelee for Obama
@jwb: It’s ADD, they can’t hold onto themes for long, it hurts their brains.
jwb
@Leelee for Obama
Nice to hear the optimism!
A Whitney Brown
My enjoyment of the letter was slightly diminished by the writer’s use of the term ‘baited breath’. It’s ‘bated breath’, meaning someone is holding his or her breath!
Aside from that, I think he gets a lot of it right. On the specific issue of what is driving the health care rioters, and why so many of them are old, I think it is partly the usual racial resentment, but there is an unacknowledged element of greed and fear here.
These older protestors who have Medicare are simply afraid that everyone gets healthcare, they might have to wait in line a little bit. They have theirs, and if everyone gets it, there might not be enough to go around, is what they are thinking. It’s basic greed.
JGabriel
@jones:
I’m not sure that word means what you think it means. ‘Heady’ from Merriam-Webster:
1) a : willful, rash (heady opinions) b : violent, impetuous
2) a : tending to intoxicate or make giddy or elated (heady wine) (being in such distinguished company was a heady experience)
It’s obviously an accurate description of the GOP these days, particularly in its violent, irrational, and intoxicated connotations.
But given the rest of your post, I don’t think it’s quite the word you were looking for, except maybe in the Freudian sense.
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General Winfield Stuck
I know I shouldn’t be rolling around laughing, but I can’t help meself. This is dark comedy gold and I nominate for the funny contest comp. coming up. Thanks!
Leelee for Obama
@jwb: Yeah, I do try, jwb, I do try. Being Irish, depression is an National assignment, so we learn early to work hard at defeating it wherever possible.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
If any of these eejits do decide to start shooting, I hope they have the common decency not to wear white tuxedos and top hats.
JGabriel
cleek:
I never got that. Bush clearly didn’t possess the kind of murderous, eliminationist, genocidal racism that was characteristic of Hitler; Mussolini was a much closer analogy and would have been a much better fit.
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Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: Thank, Stuck! Glad I caused the LOL. Always thought my dark- side humor would make me famous!
Chris Johnson
This is how it’s done. Claims that ‘the country’ totally supports the authoritarian rightwingers, claims that there will be a bloodbath, and that it will show that REAL americans want to kill all the liberals and their unthinkably criminal leaders.
I’d bet money that this guy isn’t a troll in the sense of someone making up fake outrageous statements to start a fight. This poster is one of the authoritarian followers and burgeoning fascists, ready to go to war against America. They are real, they exist, they’re getting louder, and they want two things:
-a precipitating incident
-their leaders to seize power.
You can block them through either channel. Deny them a precipitating incident, at all costs- we’re better off with innocent blood shed by a rightwinger than if we gave ’em a martyr- and make sure their leaders (and that’s our minority Republicans in Washington) do not feel they can get away with a coup.
It’s like Stalin vs. the Pope. If the Republicans start thinking, ‘not bad, look how many armies we have out there’, I would like them to think ‘how many armies does Obama, and after him Biden, have? Woopsy.’
I can’t say often enough- I’d like to hear more about the current status of the Air Force. From what I have heard, they are by far the most heavily infiltrated with Dominionist/Christianist radicals who could conceivably take sides against the United States. That needs to not happen. The armed forces need to be unequivocally on the side of our system of government (note I didn’t say Obama- I said our system of government. They need to be adamantly opposed to any coup no matter who’s behind it)
Mike Furlan
Sadly, Mr. Sullivan was “one of them”. Maybe he’s been cured?
When the New Republic devoted almost an entire issue (10/31/94) to a debate with the authors of The Bell Curve, editor Andrew Sullivan justified the decision by writing, “The notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is not, we believe, an inherently racist belief.”
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1271
phillygirl
“please remember that it only took a quarter or so of Americans to actively support the Confederacy. …”
Damn, everything would be so much easier if we had let ’em go.
Mike
As a member of the 60’s generation, I totally agree with jwb, who
proposes that this is the 60’s revisited.
It’s a cliche, I know, coming from us oldsters, but you really did have to be there
to appreciate the emotions generated in that period. There was no middle ground,
you made your choice and were scarred for life. We who chose the liberal
path lost three great leaders to shadowy “lone gunmen”. The southerners and
bigots lost control over the despised minorities and saw their way of life changed
forever. Today’s turmoil is mild in comparison.
It’s no accident that the Limbaugh/Fox demographic is people my age (over 65).
I can’t blame jwb for being glad we won’t be around too much longer.
By the way, while it’s conventional wisdom that the financial crisis and
McCain’s reaction turned the election in Obama’s favor, it’s worth noting
that around the same time, America got a good look at the crazy right
via the Palin rallies…
Martian Buddy
@Mike Furlan: His wingnuttery seems to be like a case of malaria; he has periods of lucidity followed by flareups of silliness like asking Obama to pony up his birth certificate (to “put an end to the debate,” of course.)
kay
@jones:
Not true on stimulus, Jones. The problem for Republicans is this: we have numbers, and not just US numbers.
Those countries, like the US, well, the sane half of the US, who spent on stimulus are recovering faster than those that did not.
Republicans were just wrong on stimulus, and we know it ’cause the data’s coming in. Thank god you weren’t in charge. We’d be with the laggards.
Leelee for Obama
@Mike: What Mike said, squared! Just being 58 yo is proof that I don’t have to do Purgatory. BTDT!
Mike G
It is very difficult for people outside of our country to understand exactly how dangerous the wingnut-right can be
Some of my immigrant friends were very aware of the dangers during the Bush years — being that they had lived under authoritarian oppressive systems like communist-era Eastern Europe and junta-ruled South America and recognized the eliminationist mindset.
Michael
Same here. I think the Navy would put up a pretty sweet fight – they’ve got the weaponry to do it, and no love for the useless blue suit assholes who do nothing but suck down money.
JenJen
@jones: Some people over-interpret personal anecdotes and take them as evidence of the existence of a “movement,” in the absence of all actual data to the contrary.
You’ll have that.
General Winfield Stuck
What is happening is not about school yard ad hominem taunts from either side. This is a straw man comparison of irrelevant equivilence imo. I really don’t care how many horns they draw on Obama photos or how dems they burn in effigy for that matter.
The difference is these people have given up on politics in the normal sense. Maybe they see the demographic writing on the wall, but whatever the reason, if you spend any time at all reading what they write, it its becoming more apparent by the day.
JGabriel
jones:
Jones, what color is the sky on your planet?
The Democrats have a majority of the votes in the House, and a supermajority in the Senate. Oh, sure, Blue Dogs and other Conservadem objections may mean we have to compromise on some provisions and water down others, but all three of those bills are passing before the 2010 mid-terms, guaranteed.
With or without GOP support. Winger ranting is just making the center less likely to pay them any attention.
.
KG
I developed this theory a couple years ago, about the GOP, in short, it really is/was four smaller parties in one. At the time, I assigned regional labels to the four sub-parties because, in my estimation, that’s where their strongest support came from.
The Northeast GOP is/was basically the establishment types, the Bushs (not including W), the Rockafellers, etc, who were conservative in the sense that they typically supported the status quo unless/until the status quo became unworkable. They could be progressive, but they were culturally and temperamentally conservative. Being the old money guys, they tended to run the party apparatus.
The Midwestern GOP is/was more of a rural/small town conservativism based on humility and the desire to just get by. I tend to think of Bob Dole and Ford as examples.
The Western GOP is/was much more libertarian in its roots – a byproduct of being so far away from DC, and being descendants 49ers, Okies, and the like. It’s a bit more active than the Midwestern or Northeastern parties, and mainly interested in economic issues.
The Southern GOP is/was social conservative populists. What I would sort of categorize as a form of the European Christian Democrats without the moderation. They tend to be the most active and the most impatient, and the most authoritarian.
The GOP seemed to work best when it could balance the four parties, because they tempered each other. The Northeastern GOP’s tendency toward prudence was useful in reeling in the activist libertarians out west, the humility of the Midwest cooled the authoritarianism of the South. And the conflict between the West and South in priorities, also served to temper passions.
Today, the Southern GOP is running the show. The Northeastern GOP has been run out on a rail, the Midwestern GOP is put off by the lack of humility and the reality of the current economic situation. The Western GOP is disillusioned by the recent economic collapse. That’s my take on it, anyway, having observed from the inside for most all of my life.
I’ll also point out, this is the first time in a very long time that the President either didn’t carry the South or come from the South himself, so they don’t really know how to act from outside a position of power (at least in the old days, pre-1968, when the south’s chosen candidate would lose, they had power at the local level, but they’ve even lost that now, what with not being able to turn fire hoses and police dogs on people).
lamh31
This is sooooooo OT, but I just had to share:
Just got back from seeing Julie & Julia with Meryl Streep.
Seriously, is there nothing that Meryl Streep can’t do? I actually think she may be the ONE white actress to get away with playing in Black face (LOL, not really). Still, I can imagine people saying, “how racist!” but “DAMN…Meryl did that shit yo!!!”
Also, I have a new weird crush now, but ALL the scenes with Meryl and Stanley Tucci were FABULOUS. I am now officially a “Tucci-phile”.
Sorry for the interruption, now back to your regularly scheduled program.
Tyro
The problem is when the wingers actually believe this rhetoric, and when they wake up the next day to discover that the country has rejected it, they freak out. They’ve spent so much of their lives believing that they’re the “real americans” that they can’t handle it when it acts otherwise.
JenJen
Can’t ETA anymore (anyone have a Google Chrome fix similar to the Firefox fix that worked for people), but wanted to add that I shouldn’t be feeding a conserva-meme,
Probably best to just let it all play out, see if the intensity can sustain itself without an ugly explosion, and what-not.
As the town hall hoolies will eventually realize, every single year, August has this frustrating habit of concluding, usually indicated by the commencement of September. The only way past it is through it. I’m patient enough to wait them out. It’s taken 30+ years, after all, and we’ve come a long way already.
Demo Woman
@cleek:
I’m not sure that’s a good comparison because I don’t remember Hitler=Bush being spread on the air waves. Did Air America spend time talking about Hitler? I really don’t know but I do know that except for a few left wing blogs I did not read or hear about that else where. You can turn on Fox TV, Rush or other talk radio types and hear that about President Obama.
KG
@77: problem is, nobody knows who Mussolini was. Everyone knows who Hitler was.
Wile E. Quixote
@JGabriel
I never got it either. Unlike Bush, a coward who wimped out of being a pilot in a plush Air National Guard champagne squadron, Hitler served his country honorably and well, winning an Iron Cross during World War I. Unlike Bush, Hitler took over Germany on his own, he didn’t have a bunch of his daddy’s friends do it for him. Unlike Bush, Hitler wasn’t completely fucking stupid. Insane, yes, Hitler was insane, murderous and genocidal, but he wasn’t a stupid cowardly fuckup like George W. Bush. So the comparison is not only inaccurate but it’s also unfair to Hitler.
CTCB05
I wish everyone would read the history of the American Revolution (or even the French & Russian revolutions). Not one thing created any of these revolutions, but a series of events.
The Tea Party people are not going away and they will become even stronger as the Obama group eventually upsets the liberals on some future legislation. Then, you have the left and right extremes united.
These are the same type of people who demonstrated, petitioned and protested King George III. History does repeat itself.
A Time To Stand is a recent, underground novel written by a former mayor of a small town in America (www.booksbyoliver.com). When I see these type of Americans upset then I have to conclude thost at the Town Hall meetings are getting away from their TV’s and going to the streets as they did prior to the American Revolution.
don’t think we’re probably headed for mass secessions or Civil War or anything quite that extreme.
bellatrys
@JGabriel 46 – LOL!
@Robertdsc – that’s because the priests at the churches you attended weren’t Real True Catholics, they were heterodox “Cafeteria Catholics” ! [/theocon]
…yeah, I used to believe
alla lot of that shit, anyway, especially the Coming Persecution stuff and the Pill Kills Babies! line of BS – although by the time I read the first book (never did get around to the other two) I was finding a lot in it very offputting, and the bit where the smug “hero” goes on about how it’s good for little old ladies to go hungry because they sent their pensions to preachers made me furious, stores them up pennies in Heaven donchaknow, even when I was still calling myself “apolitical/moderate/centrist” – I had bought into the whole “special option for the poor” message and been deaf to the dogwhistles and pro-plutocracy legerdemain going on around it.bellatrys
…okay, how do you make that link back up to previous comments thing work? Obviously just sticking the at-sign in isn’t doing it…
Chris Johnson
I’m also thinking of Blackwater, but I can’t take them as seriously as the Air Force as a possible internal threat, and here’s why-
In my town is a sort of halfway house. It serves two purposes- it houses ex-cons out on parole with nowhere to live, and it houses homeless veterans with nowhere to live. It gets money from various sources including the VA hospital, and it has various administrative stupidities and failures to maintain itself.
I’ve known a lot of people in that house because I’m clean and sober and go to places where sometimes you’ll find people from that house going to learn to get clean. IF you know what I mean.
The Air Force is more like the vets. Military.
The Blackwater guys are clearly more like the ex-cons, right down to their leader, apparently. Looking forward to hearing more about these murders he was involved in…
I’m told that in this house, when shit goes down and the situation gets ugly, the ex-cons all turn on each other and it’s every man for himself. But the vets- they’re organized and will stand up for each other.
That’s why I’m not as worried about Blackwater guys operating within the US: I think those guys think like jailbirds, not soldiers.
JGabriel
KG:
Surely, some of them must have seen Crimes and Misdemeanors – which so memorably compared Alan Alda to Il Duce.
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JK
@cleek:
Comparing Bush to Hitler or simply labeling him a fascist was obviously insane and disgusting.
You’re missing an important in your post. No one on the left, has anything approaching the messianic following of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or Sean Hannity.
Demo Woman
@lamh31: I saw it yesterday and every thing that you said is correct. During the movie I had to remind myself that she wasn’t Julia Child.
JGabriel
bellatrys:
Bellatrys, at the top of a post, on the far right, is a little curlicued arrow pointing at the date stamp. Click the arrow.
.
JenJen
@JK: Precisely right. Even if Keith Olbermann called Bush “Hitler,” he doesn’t have Rush’s audience. And of course exactly nobody mainstream was calling Bush “Hitler.” Including Olbermann!
It’s a phony equivalence argument that should elicit an “I Call Bullshit” response. Bill Maher really failed at this last night, but it’s not as if it’s responsibility, so I can’t be angry or disappointed in him.
It’s the kind of thing the media is supposed to do. Not holding my breath, obvs.
JK
@lamh31:
@Demo Woman:
Haven’t seen the film yet, but Meryl Streep is the most amazing actress in God knows how many years. There aren’t enough superlatives in English to describe her acting ability. It’s been great seeing how on the talk show circuit over the last week. She’s one of the sweetest, most pleasant, and most graceful persons in show business.
Joshua Norton
I don’t think we’re probably headed for mass secessions or Civil War or anything quite that extreme.
Maybe not, but this time they can really go if they want to.
JGabriel
JK:
Comparing Bush to Hitler was obviously hyperbole and kind of offensive, but there was nothing insane or disgusting in labelling Bush a fascist. It was bad politics, maybe, in that it offended a number of people and made them less likely to listen with an open mind to more reasonable complaints.
David Niewert made the argument that the GOP wasn’t fascist, but admitted they were meeting some of the criteria that defines fascism. He considered them to be in a “proto-fascist” stage.
At the time, Niewert felt that, in particular, the GOP still lacked the bands of violent thugs to enforce its will and agenda that was typical of fascism. The latest town hall violences suggest that the GOP is finally adding that plank to their edifice.
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Fern
@JK:
The most amazing American actress, a case could be made.
There are a few British actresses who could definitely give her a run for her money.
Corner Stone
@lamh31: Meryl is the El Cid of life outside BJ.
JK
@JenJen:
One of the most distressing developments during this period of Obama Derangement Syndrome is the continuing practice of most of the members of the MSM to engage in he said/she said journalism. The most ridiculous, over the top nonsense is being spewed about Obama and the MSM simply resorts to on the one hand and on the other hand reporting.
JGabriel
Joshua Norton:
Which states? Keep in mind that Obama won both Virginia and North Carolina. Missouri was lost by less a percent. Mississippi has one of the highest, by percentage, black populations in the country – I’d hate to abandon them to the whims of a conservative white majority.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of times I think it would be nice to let the wingers go off and form their own country, but when it comes down to it, Alabama seems to be the only state that we could give them without guilt.
.
Corner Stone
@Polish the Guillotines:
Nuh-uh, we’d just swim out into the Gulf with corkscrews clamped tween our teeth, and drill some mofo’ng holes in them there beeyotchez. Done and done.
jenniebee
@lamh31: If you like Tucci, you must see Big Trouble. As a bonus, it also has Zooey Deschanel.
OT, in New Frontiers in Creepy: why is scientology.org running ads on a showing of The Bourne Supremacy?
Anne Laurie
That’s been tried at least twice in American history, and both times were MASSIVE FAIL for the conservative faction. McKinley’s assassination gave Teddy Roosevelt the opportunity to clean out the worst of Bill Hanna’s kleptocracy and pass a ton of progressive legislation — the FDA, labor safety laws, founding the national parks sytem, etc. Kennedy’s assassination gave Lyndon Johnson the chance to pass his “Great Society” legislation (and, yeah, much as it pains a former Irish Catholic jingoist to admit it, Kennedy would never have spent his political capital on Medicare).
Because of America’s history of attempting to solve political problems through violence, I think the odds are against a successful Obama assassination. What we may get instead (what, I’m afraid, a lot of people like Glenn Beck and Eric Cantor are hoping for) is an assassination attempt that kills, say, a roomful of school kids plus Nancy Pelosi and/or Joe Biden and/or Barney Frank. What the fReichtards are not figuring is that the ensuing backlash, rather than rolling back the social gains of the last 40 years, is historically more likely to ensure passage of a single-payer nationalized health plan by a Senate vote of 93-7… with full abortion option, and assisted suicide rider.
JK
@Fern: Agreed. Certainly Emma Thompson comes to mind.
@JGabriel:
I like to avoid labeling Bush a fascist.
The much more important point is what I and Demo Woman wrote previously. People who called Bush a fascist or another Hitler were far more marginal and insignificant than the people who call Obama a fascist or another Hitler.
I can’t understand why the MSM (ie Marc Ambinder, Mark Halperin, Howard Kurtz) is so fucking stupid and can’t see the difference between an anonymous person calling Bush another Hitler and Rush Limbaugh calling Obama another Hitler.
Martian Buddy
Glenn Greenwald has a Salon opinion piece up concerning the infamous “Bush in 30 seconds” ad that compared him to Hitler and Limbaugh’s comparison of Obama to Hitler. It should be interesting to see the followup.
Joshua Norton
@JGabriel: Any place where the wingnuts and loonytarians have convinced the unwashed masses that the state should dissolve tomorrow, taking its wicked tax regime along with it. Let them believe that somehow their wealth and property be more secure. The state sponsored police, legal apparatus and ultimately the armed forces really provide an invisible barbed wire fence keeping their hard earned wealth out of the grubby hands of the envious masses.
Let them take their chances paying for mercenaries and bodyguards to avoid kidnap or assassination, in a free-for-all where any richer jealous person, drug dealer with better connections, or a mob of homeless are willing to confiscate their “wealth” by force.
The state they hate so much is all that prevents the bottom 80% from killing them.
JK
@lamh31: @jenniebee:
If you like Stanley Tucci or simply like great movies, you have to see The Daytrippers http://philnugentatscreengrab.blogspot.com/2009/07/daytrippers.html, which is easily one of the most criminally underrated and overlooked movies of the past 20 years. The brilliant supporting cast includes Liev Schrieber, Campbell scott, Parker Posey, Hope Davis, and Anne Meara.
JGabriel
@Michael D.:
No, no, no, no. We’re the Light Syde, of goodness and right. Even the Republicans admit that Cheney is a Sith Lord.
.
JK
@Martian Buddy:
Sometimes, it seems as if Glenn Greenwald is the only sane person awake or with a pulse.
KG
@ 117: of course, the assassination of Lincoln also brought an early end to Reconstruction. Given the sample size, I’d say we’ve got a mixed bag on that, and I’d much prefer we don’t experiment further.
Seebach
I heard several times the Bush = Hitler meme, and this was the extent of it. It was not that Bush was going to commit genocide, or start death camps. It was the idea of the “Big Lie” and the idea you could fool enough people to start a war if you really wanted one. At all times, this was the quote used in describing the likeness:
“Naturally the common people don’t want war. But after all, it is the
leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it’s always a
simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every
country.”
The Move On ad so demonized outlined the comparisons in Hitler’s and Bush’s speeches. The fact that both referred to a war necessitated by God and protection of the Homeland.
Hyperbolic? Yes. Crass? Yes. Impolitic? Yes. However, of the two administrations, only one has knowingly and willingly committed war crimes, including starting a war of aggression (as far as we know).
As stupid as the comparison is, the “both sides are equally bad” schtick doesn’t even work with this, either.
Leelee for Obama
(((The state they hate so much is all that prevents the bottom 80% from killing them.)))
This is basically what FDR said about his Duchess County neighbors, who hated him. Something New Deal would keep the rest of the Country from murdering them in their beds, a la the Russian Revolution or Nat Turner.
Napoleon
I actually thing civil war is a real possibility at this point, and I predict more dead from the right then during the Clinton administration, even though I doubt you will not have any thing close to Oklahoma City. You will have an event every couple of weeks that kill 1- 10 people.
freelancer
@jenniebee:
You saw that Scientology ad too? I just sent it to a friend.
“You are a spirit”…made up of a patchwork of ancient massacred alien spirits.
between that and the capes. [wow there’s another one just now] I think they’re getting jealous of the Mormons.
“Wow, the LDS managed to mainstream some manifest bullshit, let’s call a PR firm and give it a shot.”
Mike in NC
It’s possible that at some point Andrew Sullivan will figure out that America’s modern so-called “conservatives” have nothing in common with Churchill and everything in common with George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and the rest of that bunch.
Mike D.
Holy shit, “just” a quarter of America? They don’t need to want to secede to make that (maybe conservative?) number scary. In fact, there are a number of things that I think they are interested in that are a hell of a lot scarier if you ask me.
Texas Dem
“I don’t think we’re probably headed for mass secessions or Civil War or anything quite that extreme.”
Probably not. But that doesn’t mean we won’t see political violence. When you have so many people worked into a frenzy, it’s only a matter of time until someone does something stupid, i.e., blows up a building or kills a public official. We’ve seen it before.
Demo Woman
@lamh31: If you are still here you might enjoy reading some of Julie’s last month of cooking. http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2003/08/01.html
I’m not sure how to embed the link without the normal handy little tool, sorry.
Now I’m going to watch “Zelary”
Mike G
Those who await with baited breath the race war, the nuclear holocaust, the cultural jihad, the second coming,
More precisely, the Rapture. Notsomuch because they look forward to ascending to heaven, but so they can gloat down at us inferior jealous sinners Left Behind while their lifetime of smug righteousness is finally confirmed in the ultimate I-told-you-so porn.
I had an acquaintance seriously tell me that airlines schedule Born Again pilots with ‘unbeliever’ co-pilots, or vice versa, so that when the Rapture happens the planes won’t crash for lack of flight crew. These people are severely around the bend.
Obama was right. Many of these losers are clinging to religion and ‘the flag’ because they have no achievements in their bone-stupid pathetic lives in a culture that relentlessly worships ‘success’. Belonging to tribes – white, Xtian, American, gun owner – is all they have to be proud of.
Seebach
Also, we are talking about people who compare the moral evil of mutilating a detainee’s genitals in order to get him to confess to terrorism, and for hiring a militia of thugs (Blackwater) whose CEO wants to murder Iraqis as a replay of the crusades to a milquetoast public option that will allow the poor and unemployed the ability to see a doctor. In such a situation, we don’t get to decide if we have a civil war or not. They are the ones that do. And their judgement has been very poor.
WereBear
That Homeland Security report on the dangers of right wing violence was not prescient; just accurate.
With all the whining from the wingnuts about “The left does it too!” it is starkly obvious that right wing violence is simply more likely, because it has what the left does not; large media outlets openly agitating for such.
debit
Another Tucci rec: The Imposters. Check out the cast: Oliver Platt, Stanley Tucci, Lili Taylor, Tony Shalhoub, Steve Buscemi, Allison Janney and Isabella Rossellini. I love this movie more than words can express.
JGabriel
Mike G:
Unbeliever Pilot: So let me get this straight. While you go flouncing off to heaven, I gotta stick around and save everyone else’s lives?
Believer Pilot: It’s not ‘flouncing’, smart ass, it’s more like a floaty, disappearing thing.
Unbeliever Pilot: Okay, so you float away to heaven while I save everyone?
Believer Pilot: Yep.
Unbeliever Pilot: You sure got a strange definition of Christianity.
.
wilfred
Who knows? It doesn’t matter very much if we get stuck in paralytic factionalism that prevents any exchange between sides.
It’ll be like an internal cold war, a long way from “Unite or Die” or ‘United We Stand”. Well, every nation has its term.
Texas Dem
Jody
My money’s on some more acts of domestic terrorism that the media will not label as such, for after all, only brown folks and hippies can actually do terror.
General Winfield Stuck
@Texas Dem:
We will need some intrepid spies. But if you get yourself caught, we never heard of ya/
lamh31
@Demo Woman
Thanks, I’ll check that out.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Ah drat. It would make me really happy if those fuckers all took their toys and Galted off to Michelle Bachmann’s front lawn.
JGabriel
JGabriel:
What? No one is gonna call me on the gratuitous Alabama slam?
C’mon Alabamians, Alabamites, whatever ya call yerselves! Where’s yer damn pride?
.
Texas Dem
Bootlegger
The Nazi Party and the Blosheviks both started their violence with about 25%. Just sayin’.
Mark S.
All this talk of secession reminds me of the debate when Gov. Dipshit (oops, I mean Perry) told some drooling idiots that Texas might someday secede. This is probably an accurate assessment:
I remember somewhere there was a discussion of whether the new Republic of Texas (or Jesusland, depending on how many other states joined) would join the ranks of nuclear powers. Even if they were allowed to secede peacefully, there is No. Fucking. Way. On. Earth. the United States would tolerate a hostile nuclear power on its southern border.
Texas Dem
jwb
@Bootlegger
But when you are working at 25% you also have to be working against a fractured 75%. A situation where, for instance, the left refuses to work with the center because the center is cowardly, or is owned by the monied interests, or the left believes there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the center and the right wingers themselves. Then you have a a very dangerous situation, where everything depends on which side the center (especially the money and the military) decides to support. That’s one reason to be thankful for Rahm’s tirade, however irritating it might be in other respects.
Alien-radio
@jenniebee:
the church of scientology is throwing money at interrnet advertising like it’s going out of fashion. the ad buy on youtube alone is silly money. they are going for broke bescause
1. they are cash rich and property rich but the property is no where near liquid enough. income is seriously down, membership is limited, pyramid schemes that don’t get new entrants fail. the cash expenditure probably includes cash from a fair amount of leverage as well, they barely pay their staff, taxes etc. and still haven’t finished their superpower building so anything that’s not paying off loans is fighting money,
2. Mike rinder has blown (as of a couple of years ago), and in the last couple of months gone public. he was part of misciavages inner circle. He knows where the bodies (possibly litterally) are buried. if rinder is public that’s it for CO$, he is talking to the feds. indightments within a year.
3. these ad buys are about PR control, and desperately trying to pull in some new members (unlikely to work but god knows get enough impressions on enough people and some suckjer will bite) this is unlikely to work (low level dianetics material doesn’t bring in the cash of the higher ot levels). they are aslo ways of funneling leveraged cash out of the organisation into non RTC companies.
mcd
No one asked, but here’s what I think the “debate” is actually about:
1) Government is bad. I understand the sentiment, but I’m suspect of the timing of this latest outburst. For the past 6-7 years, the government has been spying on us like nobody’s business — where has this outrage been? On the other hand, I like things like roads. And firemen. Beats the alternative. (If you really, really think government is bad, I suggest boycotting ears of corn and fructose-flavored sodas. The subsidies are ridiculous). Here’s the thing: If the initial health insurance reform/health care reform plan doesn’t work … then what exactly? We’re doomed? We can’t change it back/fix it? Does it have to be all or nothing?
2) I work hard; I don’t want “others” getting something for nothing. “Others” can be white, black, poor, rich, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, straight, homosexual, immigrant, male, female, etc. You see it everywhere — on the road, on the job, on the street corner. Someone is getting ahead of us, and, dang it, they don’t deserve it. Says who? You? We tell ourselves we’re having a bad day (or life) due to external factors (I’m sick, I didn’t get enough sleep) while we tell ourselves others are having a bad day due to internal factors (they’re lazy, they’re stupid). Whatever. There’s no law of proportionality when it comes to life rewards. You can A) accept it and move on or work harder, or B) show up at health care meetings in face-contorted, vein-popping, eyes-bulging anger. It’s your choice, of course, though neither is going to change anything.
3) The future of the Republican party. 2008 was not kind to the GOP. The Rove triumvirate — neocons, econicons and socialcons — seems to be splintered and the direction of the party is up for grabs. The fight for Mel Martinez’s Senate seat in Florida is one battleground. Crist (econ) has the edge in money; Rubio (social) has the edge in souls. How it ends nobody knows.
4) Stifle the Democrats. This is sort of the corollary to number 1 (and something the Republicans do very, very well; or maybe the Democrats just stifle themselves). If government only messes things up, this grand experiment of health insurance reform/health care reform should fail, and the voters will remember. But what if it succeeds? If it does, it means a lot more than 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness for the GOP.
Now, seriously, what happened to recipe Thursdays?
Martin
A Republic of Texas would turn into Somalia within 3 years. Instantly the state would need to crank taxation up to 11 just to hold off the incursions from Mexico and loss of federal support, seriously pissing off the population. They think the drug violence along the border is bad now – the drug lords would go all in against this weak state (and no, Chuck Norris would not be able to stop them). All of the retirees there would get kicked off of Medicare and Social Security in favor of what, given that they are making the threat in opposition to state services to begin with? We’d shift all of our shipping east to Louisiana and other port states depriving the new republic of one of their largest industries.
3 years before they decide to either beg to rejoin the U.S. or give in and be overrun by Mexico.
Indylib
I’m now taking beginning to take this personally. This is a copy of an e-mail sent to SEIU, via Huffpo.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/08/unions-receive-increasing_n_254704.html
“An official with the SEIU said she had received 50 such emails, including the following one, which was edited to make suitable for publication.
‘You socialist f—s have the nerve to say stop the violence at the town hall meetings when they weren’t violent until you p—ies showed up because your n—– leader obama said to?????? When we have ours in Racine, Wi, I want you there. I want one of your little b—– to put his hands on this Marine. I want one of you to look or talk to me wrong. I’ll be the last thing your ignorant faux body guards will remember for a very long time. You can f—ing guarantee that.’ ”
If this douchbag is actually from Racine, he’s a near neighbor of mine. Racine is just up the road about 10 miles. Now according to my source of info, my wingnut Congressman’s own e-mail, there is not supposed to be a “listening session” in Racine. Kenosha, yes, but not Racine. That makes me wonder if this idiot is even from this area and/or knows our Congresscritter is a Republican. I thought these groups were supposed to be targeting Dem Senators.
Mike in NC
O/T: Jenny Sanford, estranged spouse of wingnut Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC), has taken their four sons and moved out on her scumbag hubby. Possibly a serious setback for his plans to run for president in 2012. This comes after they all spent two weeks on an excellent European vacation, which Gov. Sanford said with a straight face was partly financed by the kids selling lemonade.
Bootlegger
@jwb: That’s exactly how the Nazis and Bolsheviks pulled it off. In Germany the rest of the electorate was split, the far left and center-left had “issues” and the Nazi’s cut off the head of both then moved into government leadership. Along they way they picked up some popular support with their intense nationalism.
The Bolsheviks were actually the weaker of the two revolutionary groups, but the other leftists were too timid and tried to work through the government and with the Tsar. So when the Bolshies made their move, and it was violent, they isolated the Whites and like the Nazis gained popular support.
I’m not saying this will happen here, just that no one should underestimate the group with 25% support.
Chuck Butcher
Political violence is deliberate and aimed with specific ends in mind. What will probably happen with this fear mongering is that some poor sick SOB will hear his cues and go off. There is a serious difference between the Brownshirts and the angry health care goofs, the Bownshirts may not have been particularly bright but they were directed with specific violent goals in mind to achieve specific political ends.
Some of you mistake angry braggidacio (sp?) for serious intent. Guns and personal disputes do happen with a distressing frequency but guns and violence against unconnected individuals is quite rare. Despite the rhetoric it takes quite a leap to commit a crime of that magnitude, generally that doesn’t happen. I do expect that someone with some very serious issues will go off, but we’re talking about very real psychological problems rather than stupidity. It is stupid to get all wound up about phony political bullshit but it is certifiable to try to kill someone over it. Despite the personalization of this issue, the people on the other side aren’t the cheating wife, lying friend, or other such that drive murderous fury, generally fueled by alcohol or other.
I don’t absolve the political cretins of blame for the acts of those they triggered, they should have known better, but the angry shouting faces aren’t the ones who’ll commit the crime. Look at all the angry shouting faces in anti-abortion functions and yet only a literal handful of actual violent actors emerged, There is quite a bit of pyschological literature covering these people and the reality seems to be that politics/sociology are only a cover for their actual malfunctions that lead to the violence.
I guess what I’m saying is that there really is a hell of a lot of stupidity out there, but political murder is fortunately quite rare and fortunately crazy unassociated murder is also rare.
Bootlegger
@Martin: Hardly. Texas could easily govern itself and they have oil money in addition to the agricultural capacity to feed themselves. They also have one of the largest of all the state national guards, including an air force. Fort Hood, and all of its armor, is also in Texas.
The US could isolate them, but they would be far from helpless and their Texan identity would rally them around a government (ahem, remember the Alamo?).
stinkwrinkle
A couple of thoughts:
1) There’s a reason Godwin’s Law has the force of law (in a facetious sense, of course): once you call someone Hitler, what’s next? Hitler squared? With a pony? Besides, no one is Hitler. Bush may have had concentration camps and torture prisons, but can you imagine him engineering a revolution through the force of his charisma and personality?!? Obama has the personality, but so far he’s using it for buckets of lukewarm centrist crap. You want to call an American president Hitler? Wait for one with the charisma, a nasty agenda, and something like Blackwater/Xe on his side. I’ll help you call this person Hitler.
2) It seems that people like to make flat assertions that there will be no civil war/secession. I have to wonder where the certainty comes from. The trend seems to be toward polarization, not reconciliation. At some point, separate countries seems like a distinct possibility; maybe under the aegis of some European Union-like supranational entity, maybe not. Maybe just a hot, scary border between “Jesusland” and the Former U.S. Come on, Rome had a good run, so did the British Empire, and so did we. Nothing lasts forever. I’d like to think we could avoid the civil war aspect of the breakup, but then I thought we could have avoided the Iraq War, too. I was wrong!
Well, that’s that, then. Thank you.
jcricket
@stinkwrinkle:
Reminds me of the comedy routine: “You know who was Hitler? Hitler was Hitler”. Can’t remember who it was (prolly Denis Leary).
But at any rate, we’re so middle-of-the-road as a country I can hardly imagine a Hitler really rising to power nationally. I can certainly imagine more Eric Rudolph’s with explicit support from the whacko GOP.
Although even in heavily southern/GOP-leaning states there are substantial Democratic minorities (20-40%). That is to say, I can hardly imagine all the blacks in Mississippi and elites in downtown Atlanta standing for secession.
JenJen
@Mike G:
Oh. My. God. Or is that redundant?
“If Martians fell from the sky
What would that do to God?
Would we lay the weapons down
Or aim them up at the sky?
No one would believe it
Except the fucking nutjobs
They’d laugh and cry ‘I told you so.'”
– Dave Matthews Band, “Time Bomb”
JGabriel
Mike in NC:
You don’t understand. The Sanford kids make The World’s Best Lemonade. It goes for $199.99 per glass
to stay under reporting requirementsand all the Sanfordspolitical donorsfriends line up for miles to buy it!.
gnomedad
@Mike G:
Harsh, but I think it explains a lot.
JGabriel
stinkwrinkle:
So if Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin ever get married, we’re doomed?
.
Wile E. Quixote
@Bootlegger
You’re assuming that all of the troops stationed at Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, etc, most of whom aren’t from Texas, suddenly decide to write off their loyalty to the United States and their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and join the secessionist movement. To describe that assumption as being completely fucking stupid is charitable, to say the least.
jwb
Bootlegger
“That’s exactly how the Nazis and Bolsheviks pulled it off.”
Yeah, I know. And I’m just adding that the left’s attack on the Blue Dogs and other centrist Democrats is a good way to help our current crop of wingnuts. Fortunately, at the moment they seem to consist of mostly overweight geezers, and so I actually still find it hard to see them coming together into an army of credible stormtroopers.
jwb
@Wile E. Quixote
Comrade Darkness
@Alien-radio: they are cash rich and property rich but the property is no where near liquid enough.
10% of twilight’s profits would buy a lot banners on the intertubes.
bellatrys
@JGabriel:
Aha! Thanks so much, knowing .5 of the battle, &c &c.
jcricket
Uh, and all the Hispanics would team with the Mexicans and perhaps turn Texas into part of Mexico.
And America would refuse to deal with any state that secedes, plunging that economy into instant darkness.
Ain’t gonna happen.
Michael
Jesus H Christ on a stick, have I clicked into the Free Republic?
Independent Texas and hostile internal borders?
I need another drink.
Martin
Correct. The military would drive its equipment right out of state. I doubt any major corporation with a headquarters in Texas would risk staying there not knowing where the new country was heading. They’d keep doing business (why throw a perfectly good market away) but they wouldn’t keep the center of operations there unless that was their main market. You think the faculty at Texas universities would stay? I mean, most aren’t even from the U.S., let alone Texas, but who would risk staying in a place where the policies are unknown, but are expected to be substantially different from the U.S. That’s a rational expectation since the whole point of secession was to get away from those policies.
On the flip side, Texas would pick up a good bit of influx from other parts of the country, but I’m not sure how beneficial that would be. There’d effectively be NO liberal party there – hardly any would bother staying. It’d be Sarah Palin on the left and John Bolton on the right. The place would have the foreign policy temperature of North Korea.
Wile E. Quixote
So how can we start rat-fucking these bastards? These people are fucking stupid. They are stupid, worthless, bigoted filth who are being cynically manipulated by a small cadre. This sort of system seems ripe for disruption to me.
ninerdave
No, but I do think we’ll see one or more people dead before the end of the August recess.
wasabi gasp
When Texas gets beat and comes crawling back, we get to rename it Misseschusetts.
JGabriel
Martin:
That would be part of the attraction of giving wingers their own country. Since there always must be an internal enemy stabbing your back in winger world, they’d immediately fall into civil war. Probably several.
You’d have Southern Baptists v. Conservative Catholics, West Europeans v. East Europeans, Christianists v. Galtians/Randroids, Isolationists v. Warmongers, and so on.
And no one would take out the garbage because they’re all too good for that shit.
.
JGabriel
Wile E. Quixote:
Right-fucking site Stop Medicare is a start.
Don’t know what the next step is.
.
steve s
As a thought experiment, let me ask you the follewing question. Is the notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in height an inherently racist belief?
steve s
(For the record I don’t believe that racial differences in intelligence, if they exist, are significant enough to justify treating individuals differently at all. Ben Carson is black as they come and I’m so white I can’t even get a tan if I try, and yet if you need brain surgery and pick me over him to do it I would consider you one of the stupidest human beings on Darwin’s green earth. But I see no reason why mean differences in the small range of activities we clumsily label ‘intelligence’ couldn’t exist, in principle. Though I believe racists’ stupid desire to use those (possible) differences has so poisoned the discussion that we basically can’t have such a discussion at the moment.)
jwb
JGabriel
“Right-fucking site Stop Medicare is a start.”
What I’d like to see happen is pushing the Stop Medicare meme so it goes viral and they start pushing that one on the seniors. Hopefully, some of the spoof trolls are putting the practice they have been doing here to good use.
steve s
Thought experiment number two:
When I turn on the World’s Strongest Man competition I expect to see big chubby white guys with names like Thor Rasmussen and Bjorn Mangusson. When I turn on the Olympic sprinting competition I expect to see ripped black guys with names like Tyson Homosexual^. On a racism scale where 0 is a character with an Oliver Sachs type brain disease who is incapable of seeing color, and 10 is Adolph Hitler, how terrible a person does this make me?
^: if you’re such a news junky that you get the joke, you get 10 internet points.
Jonnypencil
One of Sully’s readers explains the American right to him, does a very good job of it:
Not too hard to be to the right of Andrew. He gives Kos a run for his money as far a liberal bloggers.
Delia
@Bootlegger:
As I remember, the Alamo was a frakkin’ disaster in which all the Texans died.
Delia
You know, the sad thing is, before everyone got their knickers in a twist over socialized medicine, all the Villagers were indeed pontificating about the need to cut back on these frivolous entitlements like Medicare.
wasabi gasp
@steve s:
When I turn on black bluesmen, I think of white John Coles.
Alien-radio
@Comrade Darkness:
Co$ income isn’t even remotely in that bracket (twilight budget ~$40 mil intl gross $350-400.
COS was bailed out by yeardly smith to the tune of 10 mil and that was a major case of proping up creaking financials.
The you tube ad campaign alone from what I’ve heard runs into six figures and that’s been running for a year. They’re spunking everything thay have, cos it’s all they’ve got.
JGabriel
steve s:
He makes you his bitch?
.
JackieBinAZ
I don’t know if this has been brought up yet but can we expect to see that dog with the fork in its head for as long as we saw Pamela Anderson?
Zak44
Even though Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” was written almost half a century ago, it’s still the most perceptive examination of this mindset that I’ve ever read.
I recommend it to anyone trying to understand what’s going on today, even though you may be a little depressed to find out persistent a strain this kind reaction has been throughout our history.
You can find a copy of the essay here:
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html
Zak44
Even though Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” was written almost half a century ago, it’s still the most perceptive examination of this mindset that I’ve ever read.
I recommend it to anyone trying to understand what’s going on today, even though you may be a little depressed to find out persistent a strain this kind of reaction has been throughout our history.
You can find a copy of the essay here:
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html
Martin
Yeah, but if Texas threw enough people at the enemy, eventually the enemy would get tired from all the slaughter, and then Chuck Norris would have them exactly where he wanted them.
Darkrose
@Chuck Butcher:
Yeah, I’m sure Dr. Tiller’s family finds that comforting.
Bootlegger
@Wile E. Quixote: And its similarly fucking stupid to assume that Texans couldn’t seize much of the hardware. Don’t be so so obtuse.
Bootlegger
@Martin: Ok dorks, all I was saying is that Texas could survive as a separate entity. No they wouldn’t invade the US or fight a war with anyone. But if you think Texas is Yugoslavia you all have the sense of an inbred from White Settlement.
Bootlegger
@Delia: And it became a rallying cry for winning the conflict in the end, which was my point. What a bunch of haters.
Chuck Butcher
@Darkrose:
Bender
Seriously? Seriously? Are you guys really comfortable in pretending that the anti-Obamacare attendees are starting all the “violences?” That seems kind of, ohhhhhh, batshit crazy and delusional.
So far, we’ve seen video of one guy getting punched in the face and kicked in the head in St. Louis, and it wasn’t by the anti-Obamacare side. It was by union goons. We’ve seen multiple videos of Kathy Castor’s union goons facing down the anti-Obamacare attendees in Florida, then forcibly wrestling a guy out of the way so they can close the door of the “public” meeting. Transparency!
Obama wants “his people” to “get in their faces” (the first time I can think of in my lifetime where a US government has ordered Americans to physically confront other Americans — niiiiiiice). Apparently some of his thugs got the message.
By the way, such thuggery is doomed to fail in the cellphone/videocam age. Hard to teach a hired goon new tricks, though…
Fencedude
@Bender:
“Obama-care” is as much of a tell as “Democrat Party”.
Please take your talking points and shove them up your ass.
CJ
@Bender: That is distasteful, isn’t it? But unless your friends can learn to stop throwing tantrums when they don’t get their way, I guess we’re going to have to put them in Free Speech Zones. Those are still considered to be a vital part of our democratic process, correct?
CJ
JGabriel
Bender:
Yep. We are.
Nope, it wasn’t. You guys just aren’t used to the left hitting back. Can’t take a punch. Crybaby.
.
JGabriel
Also, Bender, are you calling American workers ‘goons’? Why do you hate American workers?
And if you hate American workers, then I assume you hate America too — you America-hating wingnut.
.
Martian Buddy
@Bender: We can only hope that the brutal ACORN thugs won’t carve a backwards B into anyone else’s face, as is their wont.
Xenos
@Martian Buddy: No, I hear the Acorn thugs go around carving backwards “A”s on real Americans’ faces.
El Cid
We would have shown up and saved the U.S. Constitution from Obama’s euthanizing goons but the ACORN thugs with their clipboards and their intimidating black skin stopped us. UNFAIR !!!
JGabriel
@Xenos:
Really? I mean, I’ve seen it around, but I thought it was just a promo for a movie version of The Scarlet Letter.
.
Martian Buddy
@Xenos: Community organizers and service employee purpleshirts are like the NKVD on crack and steroids–everyone knows that. I fear for the poor, defenseless, pistol-packing teabaggers.
JGabriel
American workers are disagreeing with us! It’s a violation of the First Amendment!
.
JGabriel
Y’all are gonna come up against the Second Amendment! Wahh! Wahh!
.
JGabriel
What a pity Bender isn’t here to join us in our expressions of concern!
.
Martian Buddy
On a semi-serious note, I’m starting to wonder if ACORN or SEIU T-shirts will become popular with antisocial teenagers–they seem to be more effective at intimidating old people than the traditional black concert T.
El Cid
Well, call me old fashioned, but I don’t think ACORN thugs should be roaming the country killing retarded babies for Obama. I just don’t think it’s right.
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: Oh, very nice, El Cid. Tip of the hat to you!
bob h
What do the Teabaggers do after August? My guess is they all go to DC to try to intimidate the Congress in situ. Lou Dobbs and Beck will be egging them on. We will have an attempted coup. If they are successful, you might as well put Dick Armey in the WH.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Focus on self-improvement?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Maybe they can focus on self-improvement?
Mike Furlan
1. First define “black” (or ethnic group) in a scientifically useful way.
2. Then define and carry out a “double blind” experiment testing your theory that “black people are stupid.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_experiment
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN: This was basically just a combination of Sarah Palin’s dire “death panel” for her baby Trig added to the bizarre right wing hobby of converting a group of nerdy housing rights petitioners, ACORN, into one of the most feared paramilitary forces of modern history. It was a logical combination. ACORN is the new SAVAK.
Plantsmantx
“So far, we’ve seen video of one guy getting punched in the face and kicked in the head in St. Louis…”
Really? Which video would that be? In the one I saw, he was neither punched nor kicked.
El Cid
@Plantsmantx: Pretty soon libruls like you will be denying the story I was told by a good friend of mine’s uncle who saw an e-mail forwarded to him by this other guy he met at a store’s cousin, which concerns the 37 elderly people beheaded by ACORN forces on top of a Dallas skyscraper.
Comrade Darkness
@Mike Furlan: For any real sample, defined in any manner, the variance within the group will exceed any between the groups.
Or maybe that was your point.
I try to explain this to my nephews. Sure, you have tribal instincts when you first see someone, be they taller, fatter, darker, lighter, whatever than you “think” is normal. But, that doesn’t mean shit for telling you anything about the strengths and weaknesses of that individual.
ice9
Bated, as in abated, not ‘baited.’ Baited breath, eww. What kind of bait ya usin’?
ice
zoe kentucky
It’s all cognitive dissonance with a strong dose of irrational, blinding xenaphobic hate.
Keep in mind the following:
They’re a small, loud angry group that voted for McCain/Palin. They hate Obama, they hate democrats, they see socialists/commies/nazis everywhere they look. (But they clearly couldn’t define any of those terms if their lives depended on it. Hey, now, that would be an interesting test.)
They hate government health insurance even though many of them are on medicare and like it perfectly well. Those who aren’t on medicare will sign up for it as soon as they are able to.
They hate and distrust government in general UNLESS the GOP is in charge.
The GOP politicians HATE governement health insurance except for the government health insurance policies that they have for themselves and their families.
What, did any of us really think they wouldn’t seize any opportunity to freak out and try to undermine Obama’s presidency? These are the people who gathered in the thousands to worship Sarah Palin, for pete’s sake. Remember those rallies? It’s the same people.
They think they’re humiliating and delegitimatizing the other side, but they’re already teetering on the edge of only delegitimatizing themselves.
Mike Furlan
Yes that is true.
My first point however is even simpler.
If you don’t first define “black” the argument stops there.
Have you ever seen a precise definition of “black?”
Mike Furlan
Yes that is true.
My first point however is even simpler.
If you don’t first define “black” the argument stops there.
Have you ever seen a precise definition of “black?”
Corner Stone
@El Cid:
But if they don’t who will? Think of the children! Fer dog’s sake won’t someone please think of the children!
Corner Stone
@Martin:
Good luck.
Oh wait, you mean swapping the Port of Houston, “The port is ranked first in the United States in foreign waterborne tonnage and second in the U.S. in total tonnage.” to other ports like your momma changes sex partners? Prolly not so much.
You people really don’t get infrastructure do you? This is the same idiotic process others here have said when they speak of oil being a fungible commodity. Sure it is! Now let’s see you refine it.
Corner Stone
@El Cid: What did Mike tell you? Cuz there weren’t any people doing anything or anything to speak of, or anything like that. Nothing. You hear me?
Corner Stone
U.S. Refineries* Operable Capacity
9 out of the top 20 are in TX
Refine me, dine me, 69 me
Bender
Crybaby? This from the whiners who bitch that real (unhired, non-goon) Americans are chanting at their Democrat CongressPussies? Poor widdle lefties getting their widdle feewings hurt by meanie words?
Hitting back? Yeah, that guy in St. Louis shouldn’t have been selling American flags. That’s a form of assault against union thugs! They had to punch and kick him! Self-defense!
The guy in Tampa shouldn’t have been standing where some union goons wanted to stand so they could close the door on the “open” meeting. They had to move him… by his throat. In self-defense, of course.
And the reason it had to be hired union goons? Because everyone knows the rank and file lefty is a noodle-armed pussy who couldn’t knock over a house of cards with a five-step run-up. And he throws like a girl… Face it, the hardest not-for-hire geezers you’ve got are the lesbians.
You can’t beat YouTube with hired thugs, though. Video wins every time with swingable voters. The only people buying your lame “hitting back” fantasy are those of you in the Hivemind already.
Obama is expert at using FSZs, so it wouldn’t be anything new to him, for sure.
If you want to close the “town hall” meetings and have an echo-chamber, just don’t have Your Democrat CongressMasters tell the common lie that they are “there to listen” to their constituents. Just have them tell the truth: They think they are the Masters, and know better than their voters/serfs. To the Dems, dissent is the Most Vile Form Of Treason… at least since January.
Sad_Dem
That ain’t sushi breath–that’s baited breath! har har har
/Dijon
/recycling (unless it’s a joke)