Previously posted at slothropia.com.
Anyone who regularly plays with the Google box knows that left blogotopia (and yes skippy coined that phrase) is displaying appropriate concern about the latest fads in right wing rhetoric.
Here is a Media Matters piece about conservative "violent, revolutionary rhetoric." Here's Bob Cesca at Huffpoon "the consequences of crazy talk."
That's just a couple of examples, but there have been dozens of other posts about this topic on blogs large and small. What some call the mainstream or traditional media (my preferred term is "corporate media") has been slow or perhaps unwilling to mention much beyond the alarming increase in gun and ammo sales since November 4 last. A few days ago I saw a chyron on CNN that said (I paraphrase) that the Pittsburgh shooter of three cops "may have been a white supremacist." CNN got this scoop about a week after a number of journalists and bloggers had done some digging in that area.
And the beat goes on. Check out this review (on Daily Kos) of David Neiwert's new book, The Eliminationists. Here's Neiwert himself on the Pittsburgh shooter. Neiwert, of course has done amazing work over the years exploring the vague boundary between appropriate (even if based on intolerance and hate) right wing political action and opinion, and the violence that is the logical end of eliminationist rhetoric. Neiwert is a hero of mine and I can't wait to read his latest book.
So there is something simmering that seems profoundly unhealthy. Forget about the tea baggers qua tea baggers. Their little tea parties are more comical than threatening. Worry instead about those who listen to Beck warn about that commie Obama taking their guns away and jump from their lazy boys and yelling "Yeah! Tell it, Glenn!" Some, like the Pittsburgh shooter, are dry tinder, and Beck may or may not be the lit cigarette that finally starts the fire. They may or may not be organized, but they are ready to do damage to others and then to themselves.
There may be another Oklahoma City in our near future, and I hope someone is looking for a way to inoculate us against that possibility.
Then there are those who may not even have cable and who think zeitgeist is what you say when someone sneezes. But they are armed, and as Michelle Bachman would wish it, they are dangerous.
Here is an anecdote. I heard it secondhand, I cannot verify its veracity, and I am in no position to identify any of the participants. Therefore take it for what you think it is worth.
Someone who works in the public sector delivering services to those with certain needs was driving in rural Central Illinois recently, on his way to meet a client in their home. The public sector person became lost and stopped at an isolated residence to ask directions. A man answered the door with a pistol in his hand and asked, "Are you from the bank?"
The public sector person said no, said he was lost and apologized for the intrusion and left without receiving any directions.
I'm guessing there are more people with side arms waiting for someone from the bank to knock on their door. Or someone from the Census, or the Sheriff's office. I would guess further that it is only a matter of time before someone else gets hurt.