Thursday, March 25, 2010

Right-Wing Hate, Threats, Violence On The Rise

In the wake of passage of health-care reform, the loony right is becoming even more dangerous than usual. They are throwing bricks through the windows of Democratic offices; they are praying for the death of the President; they are even threatening to kill children.

No, these are not Minutemen hiding in some survivalist Idaho bunker. These are not Klansmen burning crosses in Mississippi. These are not neo-Nazis marching in Skokie. These are your neighbors, your pastors, your elected representatives.

Bricks have been thrown through the windows of local Democratic headquarters in Ohio and Kansas. Glass has been shattered at the offices of Louis Slaughter (D-NY) in Niagara Falls and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in Tucson. A note was left behind by a vandal at another site. It referenced Barry Goldwater's, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

A fundamentalist California preacher named Wiley Drake urged his flock to pray for the death of all congressmen who voted for the health-care reform bill. (Now that's a Christian attitude!) Racist and homophobic slurs were hurled at prominent Democrats Barney Frank and John Lewis.

Are Republican leaders encouraging cooler heads to prevail? No, they are instigating the hate. Sarah Palin cries, "Don't retreat; reload." Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) shouts "Baby Killer!" at Bart Stupak (D-MI) on the House floor.

And it's going to get worse, if you listen to the extremist rhetoric of the fringe right. Like whiny children who can't accept defeat, Republicans are still trying to derail health care with parliamentary technicalities and whacky amendments. Apparently they believe in democracy only when it works for them.

America is a scary place now, and I worry for the safety of anyone on the left who speaks his or her mind in public. We are like the Jews of Germany in the 1930s, huddled in our homes hoping that fascists don't throw bricks through our windows or haul us off to concentration camps. They are armed, and we are not. And they have Goebbels Limbaugh spewing hate on the radio all day, inciting the worst of the lot to take action.

Unlike the German Jews, however, I won't go quietly. In my little corner of the Midwest, I am still loudly resisting the bastards, and I will not stop. See my previous post, entitled "The GOP (Gathering Of Primitives) At My Door," for tips on how to deal with these mindless fanatics. Remember the words of Huey Long, "Fascism will come to America, but they will call it democracy. But only if we let it happen."

4 comments:

Jack Jodell said...

Far-right "teabagger" extremism is an attack on liberty, and is therefore a very bad vice! The right's new propensity for violence is a form of mob rule, prohibited by law in all civilized countries. This is looking more and more like pre-1934 Nazi Germany. Unlike there, where this insanely authoritarian far-right movement was basically unchallenged, enabling it to grow and engulf Germany, our variety found here today MUST be confronted and challenged at every opportunity! This is a very long, dark, and slippery slope lunatics like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, together with all their hateful and idiotic teabagger friends, are trying to push us down. We must fight and defeat them before it's too late!

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Tim Fleming said...

Jack--

Sociopaths like Bachmann and Palin invoke the name of Jesus and then do the the most un-Christlike things imaginable. The hypocrites don't even have the self-awareness to know that they are conscienceless, evil ministers of chaos, who would destroy democracy and mangle justice if it advanced their own personal status, power and wealth.

Jack Jodell said...

Tim,
I just went to ol' Ralph's website. The photo he has posted there illustrates perfectly the crazed extremism of today's far-right Republicans and teabaggers. It is a disgusting portrayal of "A gun in every hand, and a bullet in every head that doesn't agree with you." These hateful and paranoid people are neither Christian nor sane.