A postcard prominently displayed at a recent Tea Party gathering in my former Northern California neighborhood. (link below)
I am already in my car and departing from the local dog run just across the way from a local preschool where I notice a huge blue truck with several decals calling for the impeachment of Reid and Pelosi and a call to Retake America 2010
But that isn't what really chills me. No, what I'm frightened by is the less conspicuous wording affixed to the left bumper: "Euthanize the worthless."
Just one segment of the 'fringees' now awakened, inspired and empowered by the likes of Koch Foundation's second largest beneficiary, Americans for Prosperity.
Afraid yet? Cause I am. Not afraid enough, however, that I don't wait until the truck owner emerges 20 minutes later to ask him where he got the sticker. On the internet he says. You can get anything on the internet.
Euthanize the worthless? Imagine being the person responsible for filling that order.
Need some extra cash? Koch Foundation funded RightOnline is hiring! Free training. Group support. Build a community.
The Wake Up Call issued earlier this month by Greenpeace regarding the Koch Brothers funding of Climate Deniers was just the first shoe to fall. A close look into their #2 beneficiary Americans for Prosperity reveals how the slick billionaires driving the American agenda have usurped the Alinsky tactics of community organizing, churned them up and spit them out, like some faux god spewing venomous filth on a disenfranchized, demoralized partially lobotomized serfdom, whose members are mindlessly searching for anything to give some meaning to their vapid existence.
On Euthanazia
Galton's laboratory at the International Health Exhibition at the South Kensington Museum. The South Kensington Museum opened in 1857, and later became the Science Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum. Anthropometry is the scientific study of the measurements and proportions of the human body.
Galton (1822-1911) was the founder of eugenics, the science of using controlled breeding to increase the occurence of desirable heritable charactersitics. Photographic plate taken from 'The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton' (Volume 2, 1924) by Karl Pearson.
So get this. In a recent post for Stand to Reason, a site to train 'Christian Ambassadors.""Life Unworthy of Life" Gregory Kouky discusses the "death of humanness" in addressing the Nazi program of euthanasia, how it started with sterilization. The term, he explains, is from the Greek: 'eu' meaning good and "thantos" meaning death equaling 'good death."
First all children three years of age and under who were even suspected of idiocy or mongolism or microcephaly or hydrocephaly or malformation of limbs or head or spinal column, paralysis including spastic conditions, all put into a group called "The Children's Specialty Department" and trucked to killing centers and put to death. Sometimes they were put to death by injection, but usually they were killed by starvation and occasionally by carbon monoxide gas.
But you see, it didn't stop with euthanizing defective little children. Pretty soon juvenile delinquents began to be euthanized, and then Jewish-Aryan half-breeds began to be euthanized. At the same time there was another project under a camouflage organization called "The Reich Group of Sanitarium and Nursing Homes" with the goal of euthanizing older people. Before long it was not just the young and the old but people in the middle being killed for political reasons and ethnic reasons. But it started with the young and elderly that were considered a drain on the resources of the state.
(snip)
I think things like great steps of moral depravity are not really taken in great steps; they're taken in little pieces. It's like the guy who was asked if he could eat an elephant. "No, I can't eat an elephant," he said. But the answer to that question is, "Yes you can, if you eat the elephant one bite at a time." And this is what happens in any culture that moves toward this type of a thing, the elephant is eaten one bite at a time.
The first bite is taken when someone decides that there is a life that is unworthy of life. This phrase "life unworthy of life" is a Nazi term, by the way. They coined the phrase. Once someone decides there is a life unworthy of life then the question becomes "Which life is it that is unworthy?" With the Nazis there were two different groups in that category: the most troublesome and also those perceived to be the source of social turmoil. Now the most troublesome at that time were the infirm, the children with congenital defects, and the old people that were a drain on society. Those that were the source of social turmoil were the Jews and Gypsies and the homosexuals and the political dissidents.
... Euthanasia becomes acceptable when we say that there is a life that is unworthy of life. Then groups that are both the most troublesome and those perceived to be the source of social turmoil are systematically eliminated.
Working in tandem with FreedomWorks, the Leadership Institute, and the official Tea Party Patriots, Americans For Prosperity (AFP) continues to sink a sizable portion of its $5,176,500 Koch allocation into what just might be called "re-education camps" throughout the country, training and paying graduates in the miracles of social networking tactics to effectively tweet, blog, ning, network, and chalk up some extra cash in the name of reclaiming America!
These 'retraining camps' are happening in community centers just down the street from where you live.
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Restoration or Revolution
Fellow Patriots, the time is now for us to restore constitutional integrity and re-secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
Thomas Jefferson once declared, "Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them."
Indeed, but too many Americans have become complacent in comfort, unable or unwilling to comprehend that the consequences of foregoing Liberty for refuge are dire.
Jefferson asserted, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Absent a unified front to restore constitutional Rule of Law, that outcome may be inevitable ...
(snip)
With April 19th marking the aniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord it should be noted that as hard as our founders tried to avoid it, they still found themselves having to take up arms. I cringe every time I hear Glenn Beck invoke the wisdom of the founders and then start quoting Gandhi. Screw Gandhi! The day is coming when we will all be forced to stoop down to either grab our ankles or our guns. But let it also be said that Obama is the provocateur in this. As at Lexington and Concord ours will be a defensive action. Obama will force the issue. Peacefull opposition only works in the face of a tolerant authority. Does anyone really believe the progressives will be tolerant? And when the time comes will we be men or sheep? Restoration or Revolution? (posted April 8
July 23-24: Las Vegas,NV RightOnline Training Conference
The 2010 RightOnline Conference will bring together influential new media activists, representatives of conservative organizations, and hundreds of citizen activists to provide important leadership and grassroots training, offering the tools and inspiration to more effectively impact public policy in favor of limited government and free enterprise. The agenda provides a solid program of workshops and training seminars on new media strategies and tools that can be used to mobilize and advance free-market policies.
RightOnline includes state-based and local grassroots training seminars aimed at promoting and increasing citizen participation in the public policy process through the use of online tools.
(snip)
And for the third straight year the left-wing NetRoots Nation conference will be held at the same time in the same city as ours.
It is important conservatives are organized online and use the Internet effectively to stop our country’s sky rocketing debt and expansion of big government.
RightOnline will bring together the foremost new media experts to train attendees on how to be influential grassroots activists and sway public policy debates through the use of online tools and strategies.
This is a crucial year to get our country back to limited government and free enterprise. That’s why we want to make sure you are equipped with the tools to fight back! Link
This month's AFP California Right Online conference promises to teach participants the tactics necessary to become "effective online activists. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn from some of the best bloggers, social media experts and Internet activists."The list of panelists includes: Fox News Contributor Stephen Kruiser,Erik Telford, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Jon Fleishman FlashReport.org, Matthew Cunningham RedCounty.com, and Chandra Sharma,FoxAndHoundDaily.com
Whistling Vivaldi
Social Psychhologist Claude M. Steele's book Whistling Vivaldi "offers insight into how we form our senses of identity and ultimately lays out a plan for mitigating the negative effects of "stereotype threat" to reshape American identities.
It was there that he learned the power of racial stereotypes. Tall and dark complexioned, Staples noticed he inspired fear in whites when he approached on the sidewalk. At first he sought to reassure them by whistling Vivaldi. Then he found malicious glee in frightening them in a game he called "scatter the pigeons." One night he hid in the shadows, then sprang in front of a white couple: "The two of them stood frozen as I bore down on them. I felt a surge of power: these people were mine . . . If I had been younger, with less to lose, I'd have robbed them." Instead Staples shouted good evening and strolled away with a laugh. There are few better examples in literature of the contained fury toward whites that grips even the most outwardly docile black man.Link
Whistling Vivaldi is kinda like what I did yesterday, when I took numerous cell phone shots of that big blue truck's call to "Euthanize the Useless," sent them to my daughter and girl friend; and then reentered the dog run to inquire if the truck belonged to any hound lovers. Nadda. And so I waited for thirty minutes until that tall gray haired man appeared from somewhere inside the building. I pretended to be inquisitive, interested. I got him talking, catching him off guard because he undoubtedly anticipated some type of verbal altercation.
I was back there a few hours ago. So was the truck. And this time I visited the school, asked if they knew anything about the man whose vehicle is parked right outside where youngsters walk by each morning can read this message and wonder what it means, this call for 'euthanizing the useless."
Who gets to decide who is useless? What difference is there between this message and the eugenics movement in the US, the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Germany, Armenia, Darfur? Who gets to decide?
As I was leaving, a man leaving his artist studio approached the exit. I inquired one last time.
"I'd like to know who he is," he says, lighting up a cigarello. "Someone should slash his tires. That's disgusting."
Yeah, that's disgusting. More disgusting even than the "WE ARE PISSED" postcard with the threatening image of a wolf ready to attack.
So, tell me. Are we pissed? Yeah. Are we ready to attack? No. Are we calling for a revolution? No. Are we suggesting euthanasia as the way to deal with those we don't agree with? No.
Just what are we doing about this anyway?
I suggest perhaps we consider implementing the theory behind Whistling for Vivaldi; maybe do something like this:
A billion times over. Could work. Sure would catch them off guard. Imagine if it rendered them speechless?
Photocredits
Francis Galton's First Athropometric Laboratory, 1884-1885. by Science Museum London
Steven Moore by TaniaGail
Gettysburg Civil War Canon by Gregg Obst
Suit at the Vancouver Bubble Mob by dooq