Oh. Boy.
It started with Mrs kamarvt bringing home the Sunday local paper. The Easter Sunday local paper, smeared with a full page paid screed from a group calling itself "America Forever".
The ad was appalling enough, full of all kinds of hate speech - exactly what the first thing on their website claims they aren't. Loaded with disinformation and the type of fearmongering that hunter (among others) so expertly quantified here yesterday, the ad seeks to alarm Vermonters into irrational actions.
When I started digging through my local paper's website, I uncovered a seething, ignorant hatred that turned my initial assessment of the local Order of the Wingnuts, (namely, funny and harmless) on its head.
There is danger here.
(more below)
First, as to the abhorrent screed that littered my Sunday paper; yes, it's paid advertising, and I don't decry the paper's right to make money off of these out-of-state organizations of hate (AF is based in Utah, of course). But this kind of stuff:
The Human Rights Campaign (is) the largest lobbying firm in the world...The ultimate goal of the HRC is to redefine society by converting the impressionable minds of the children into thinking they can define their gender by what they feel like; if you love your best friend of the same sex, then you can grow up and get married; you shouldn't want to grow up and have a family based on a mother and a father, just sign some papers and form a family. In contrast, 20 years ago they began their campaign to convert people to their cause and once they were able to get the children and adolescents to believe their deceitful claims, then their numbers skyrocketed; the young ones were able to convert their families, parents, and grandparents and create this big political power. This is a fact; you can look it up yourself, this is not hateful hearsay. (bolding mine)
is beyond the pale.
Where do you even begin with this crap?
I first checked out SPECTRE ACORN HRC to see just how nefarious and wide-ranging they are...as expected, they are a GLBT advocacy group who are a long way from all-powerful, but they do have the same initials as a certain former presidential candidate with a proven ability to whip up mindless rage among Right Wingers.
Unfortunate for them.
So I wrote them a letter informing them of this outrageous tripe in my paper, and encouraged them to have a lawyer or two look through the lies carefully. Those intolerant troglodytes at America Forever should not encourage people to look things up; they'll do much better simply spoon-feeding their lies to the droolers in a fact-free bubble.
There's plenty more in the ad, but you'll do better to read the whole thing, which these idiots have proudly dislayed on their home page here.
Some choice paranoid rantings:
SAME SEX MARRIAGE IS IGNORANT!
The HRC is heavily funded, they have the time to go after and lobby each legislator individually. they have strategically placed lawmakers to get them to vote for what they want. (bolding and poor grammar original)
There's the imminent threat hunter evidenced in his FP piece, like how the young body snatchers Gaze got their grandparents into the pods lifestyle.
See? THEY ARE ALREADY AMONG US!!!
My favorite tangle of mangled English, internal contradiction, and preschool tantrum is this one:
If the homosexual activists are so sure the people wanted same sex marriage, then they wouldn't have had a problem in taking it to the people to vote instead of ramming it through the legislature; and having the representatives excuse themselves with claims thay received 10 more phone calls in favor of same sex marriage so that is why they voted - they don't even know who the 10 more people were! It is preposterous!
Yeah, it's pretty funny up to this point.
Now I'll show you some of the dangerous parts:
Your state has been victimized to the full extent. Instead of using the words homosexual and lesbian it(sic) should be replaced with Anti-Species.
Gay activists are not only not human, they're overtly anti-human, like a virus, or a tse-tse fly. They deserve the same treatment. God will still love you if you do what's necessary.
Debbie Evans, Bob South, and Jeff Young voted against the bill before the governor vetoed the bill but were the ones who changed their vote (sic) and supported the veto override. Shame on them for promoting sexual conduct to children. (bolding mine)
So, if any McVeighs out there want a specific target, America Forever has helpfully provided their names. I'm a bit surprised they didn't print home addresses.
(It is important to remind readers at this point that Vermont is still struggling to come to grips with the abduction, rape and murder of twelve year old Brooke Bennett at the hands of her uncle last summer. Telling us that we have legislators 'promoting sexual conduct to children' is not fucking funny, or simply irresponsible. It is a call to DO something about them.)
Lest you still don't get how perverted Teh All-Powerful Gaze are, and just what they have in mind for your toddler, the steaming pile of puke ends with this old chestnut (bordered in red):
What do you know about the homosexual movement?
The Homosexual Declaration of War, read in the US House of Representatives on July 27, 1987, reads "we will sodomize your children. All churches who condemn us will be closed. The family unit eliminated. Any man contaminated with heterosexual lust will be automatically barred from any position of influence." (bolding original)
I looked it up. The original article, written by Michael Swift, was SATIRE. Because of the inability to recognize satire among the subset of Americans who align themselves with groups like America Forever, and because with a little editing the piece can be made to look serious (to Teh Stoopid), it has become a favorite piece of propaganda for Dobsonites and Quiverers ever since. An explanation of how the wingnuts deliberately twisted the whole thing to "prove" the imminent threat of a gay sodomizing army, and how it got into the Congressional Record is here.
Interesting, but the name of the legislator who read this into the CR without the opening line (which clearly states it is satire) does not come up in a number of searches.
Enough with debunking the blatantly ignorant shit spewed on the pages of the Rutland Herald by a group of out-of-state haters. That is but one ingredient in the Molotov Cocktail being concocted by the Right-Wing Eliminationists.
One 'most discussed' article on the paper's website concerned our local Teabagging Party, organized by a guy I used to know. Our last conversation ended with him insisting Pat Leahy had to be impeached for treason (and this was at the dawn of the bush error). He was laughed out of the room.
Now I know that some facts in the article are simply wrong (Wallace is a long-time activist, just really really wrong on everything, including that he's not an activist), but what shows up in the comments is strong support for this guy, shrouded in more internal contradiction and misinformation than I can enumerate in an already long diary. Read the comments to get a sense of the willful stupidity, victim mentality, and dismissal of alternate viewpoints (one guy stands alone on the side of sanity - poor fella). There is a lot of asserting Obama is passing a huge tax hike, massive conflation of anger at Teh Gubmint at the state vs federal level, plenty of resentment for the way the election went in November...all the usual bogeymen are lined up and intermingled in those closed, hateful minds.
In other words, a tinderbox.
The full page screaming ad from America Forever is the spark.
Conflation of all "enemies", deliberately stoked paranoia, and the fertile ground of self-righteous ignorance is the oxygen.
History is replete with examples of mobs victimizing the weak as a sick catharsis for perceived wrongs, and gays have long been a favorite target of this violence. We now have an economic situation evoking stress and fear, a focal point to protest the actions of the government defined as a clear existential threat to our very lives, and a convenient scapegoat for our most violent reactions to all of the above, all on display in our national and now local media and expressed through appropriating the language of the wronged and victimized, and by gun hoarding in an already gun-happy state.
This is not funny anymore.
This is dangerous.
Laughing at the teabaggers is seeming more and more like whistling past a graveyard.