On the Contrary

I know what you are thinking, and no, this is not about the guys they recently rounded up in New York and Colorado.  It is about the Republican rhetoric that is bordering on inciting terrorism.  Ah, you think I hyperbolize.  Well stay tuned.  Now one definition of terrorism is “the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve political ends.”  Death panels anyone?  But let’s get more specific.  U.S. law defines terrorism as: “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;” therefore one can surmise that a terrorist is one who carries out this premeditated politically motivated violence. Now consider what the radical right has been saying about our government:

“Thomas Jefferson told us having a revolution every now and then is a good thing and we the people are going to have to fight back if we aren’t going to lose our country.” Michelle Bachmann

“If the government takes too much money and nationalizes everything, I’m telling you, there are gonna be dire consequences, because we’re gonna — just like if it was a terror attack against America, Americans will get hurt.” Sean Hannity

“I read an article on Bloomberg last night that said the Manchurian Candidate couldn’t destroy us faster than Barack Obama. If you were planning a sleeper to come in and become the president of the United States and dismantle us and take us down, this is how he would do it.” Glen Beck

“Those crazies in Montana who say, ‘We’re going to kill ATF agents because the U.N.’s going to take over’ — well, they’re beginning to have a case.” Dick Morris

Finally, Newsmax columnist John Perry wrote that President Obama “is inviting” a military coup and detailed the reasons he said officers might support such a “military intervention” with the end result being one in which “skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars.” On the same day, radio host Jim Quinn told armed service members to “run for your life, get out,” because Obama “is gonna get you killed.”

And these are just a small minority of the rhetoric out there.  So when you get to the bottom line, if they are not terrorists supporting violence against our government, they are at least seditionists.  They are setting the table for armed violence against the government.  Now they justify this by saying that President Obama is subverting our government and turning it into a socialist state.  Therefore they are justified in armed rebellion.  Oh really?

Our own Founder’s had this to say about that: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”  But just how have these citizens been usurped of their rights?  Did they not get to vote?  Did their votes not count?  Do they not have their own representatives?  Are their representatives somehow silenced?  No, what happen was they lost the last election and they don’t want to honor their commitment under a Constitutional Democracy to relinquish power to the winners and work within the political system.

What is even more astounding is that they don’t believe in or honor our Constitution.  Nothing has been done that is illegal and all branches of the government are functioning as they were designed to.  But these folks are no longer in the majority and that is not acceptable.  What you are seeing is the most un-American of Americans.  They are the truly intolerant who have no room for democracy and majority rule.  For many years most of us Americans lived under their rule as the majority party, but we never imagined some violent overthrow because we didn’t like Republican policies.  We respected our government and our political processes which preserve that government.  We worked the system to get back in power.  Now that we are in power, they want revolution.

So back to my original premise, they are inciting violence against the government and the people (remember the killing of the abortion doctor in Kansas?) who do not believe as they do.  Is this not, “the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve political ends”? Are they not the real terrorists we should be wary of?  I think so.  What you have heard lately from these folks is the intolerant trying to implement tyranny in this country.  These are the real threats to our Constitution and our way of life and we must watch them very carefully.  To them, democracy is only freedom if the freedom it allows is what they dictate it is.

Since I am an old fat white person I feel I have some insight into this topic.  But to tell you the truth, I can’t claim any allegiance to these wingnuts that apparently now make up the majority of the Republican Party.  And what I find even more befuddling is that their leaders, those giants of pandering for power, have taken up their cause with rudeness and abandon fitting a drunken sailor.  It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.  Let’s just consider their latest frolics:

• The President wants to speak to school children on the first day of school about hard work, getting ahead, and staying in school, and the faithful think this is a plot to instill socialism in our school kids.  When the President can’t speak to children we have reached a new low in paranoia.  What is next, political credential checking of Principals? This speaks volumes for the problem with local control of our schools.  (NBC)
• Glenn Beck, on his FOX Noise show, claimed to see socialist and communist symbols in the buildings in Rockefeller Plaza.  According to him it is everywhere and is creeping into our psyche.  I wonder what he sees in his cereal bowl every morning.  Note this is the guy who called President Obama a black racist and Sarah Palin recommends her followers watch.
• In a Town Hall Meeting in New Jersey, these are really lynch mobs, a woman in a wheelchair is heckled by, you guessed it, fat white people, when she tried to speak regarding how her debilitating disease was bankrupting her.  Oh, how debate and civil discourse has sunk to a new anti-rational low with these morons. Long live the Republican base.  They have established the baseline for crazy in this country.
• A young woman in a Iowa Town Hall lynching, tried to ask Representative Lynne Jenkins what she would do about someone like her, working full time as a waitress with a small child, to allow her to afford health care.  Representative Jenkins laughed at her and told her to go be a grown up.  This is a real demonstration of how un-in-touch these people are with the real America that is suffering.  In the true Republican ideology, their plight is because they are lazy. Having been protected and removed from suffering themselves, they have no empathy for it.  Their whole psyche is about judgment and blame.
• Worse, leadership in the Republican Party has begun putting out falsehoods and working to incite violence.  We all know the death panel statements from Newt Gingrich, Senator Grassley, and Sarah Palin (and others).  But most egregious are these quotes from the nut who is a senator from Oklahoma (Senator Inhofe):  “I never dreamed I would see an administration try to disavow all the things that made this country different from all others…  Every Institution that has made this country the greatest nation in the world in under attack.” Is this not a call to arms and I mean real arms especially when he said, “President Obama is obsessed with turning terrorists loose in America”?  In the meantime as the evidence for global warming becomes overwhelming, he tells his constituents, “More and more, with each month that goes by, more scientists agree with me (that global warming is a hoax)”.  This is the state of leadership in the present Republican Party which is inciting violence against a duly elected President and denying reality.  Let’s hope they never get in power again. (The Ed Show)
• Meanwhile in la-la land in the House, Eric Cantor wants to give back the rest of stimulus money to pay off our debt because it is failing to help the economy, while the conservative Wall Street Journal indicated that it was in fact helping to restore the economy.  If they could just get their facts straight instead of letting their ideology define reality, we might be able to have a real two party system.
• Most of the more strident opposition to government involvement in health care are Republican Senators who have had their health care, and serious operations provided for by the real single payer system, Bethesda Naval Hospital.  That would include John McCain and others.  I wonder why it is okay for them, but not for the rest of us. (The Ed Show).

My son thinks this just shows how out of touch the Republican Party has become as the party of crazies and bodes well for the 2010 election.  I am a little older and it scares me to see supposedly respected elected officials (shall I remind you of Michelle Bachmann’s  comments about becoming blood brothers to “do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass (health care)” ?) are fomenting violence much as the pro-life group did in the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.  They have no agenda but the status quo which is rapidly degenerating and they are stifling rational debate about the issues.

Probably the best way to understand all this is a quote from Dwight Eisenhower about irrational debate (Ike’s Other Warning).  In a letter to a constituent he  “points out that dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems — freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.” In other words we are seeing this kind of craziness and irrational approach to debate and our problems because it is too hard for fat white people to wrap their minds around them.  I think Ike hit a philosophical truth here that we should all think about.  Remember the Jim Jones suicides?  Group think.

Related blogs:  The End of Rational Debate, Democracy means Never Have to be In the Minority, The Republican Party is in Real Trouble or we all Are