I thought the stoopid was deep before the election.
I thought the lunacy was a political stunt.
But it's clear to me now that people in my country are so imbued with fear and lust for vengeance that the surreal madness we've seen in recent days is not ending any time soon; it's accelerating.
We're losing what this country has stood for 233 years:
not freedom;
not liberty,
not justice,
but unity.
I lament further below the fold.
Updated at 9:00 AM Sunday I forgot a major link about "Oath Keepers" in the body. Please watch the video below to see what I mean.
The word is right there in our title, and we brag about it every time we speak the name of this country we think we're all so proud of - the United States of America.
But the only unity in this country now is that some parts of this country are acting as if the real enemy is within this country, not foreign to it.
What has Al Queda done in the last seven and a half years?
What have we done to each other in that time?
We're doing all the work for Bin Laden ourselves, and we're getting more effective, more senseless, more blind - more habituated to it each day.
After my last two diaries, Tuesday and Wednesday, what disappointed most was how many of you who share the stage at Kos (where we are labeled by the RW as a homogeneous blind mob bound by groupthink and on a liquid-only diet of Kos’s own personal Koolaid) most felt I was over-reacting. There seems to be a body of thought that unless the militia movement can outgun the Pentagon and get tens of millions amassed in the streets, that there’s nothing to worry about.
My fear is not that there will be ten million armed Republicans in the streets by sundown on July 4. My fear is that when tinder is plentiful and conditions are dry and windy, the smallest spark can start a wildfire that is impossible to arrest before it becomes a self-sustaining, wicked conflagration that will consume everything.
Because there were many opinions in the comments of my Tuesday and Wednesday diaries that suggest April 15 was a * yawn * busted joke.
And my point in both those diaries was that precisely because they really were lame jokes, the fun (sickness) is just getting started. Tragic people do not enjoy being the brunt of a joke. Hypersensative and troubled people can become self-feeding monster of delusion and persecution and patriotism.
My central premise of the Tuesday and Wednesday diaries, although it seems I didn't make it as clear as I had had hoped, was those on the Right will either feel:
a.) like they went bust, which will eat at their self-esteem and gnaw away as days go by -
- or -
b.) they will find rationalization and excuse that the tea-parties really were not a bust, but (as you will see if you dare to visit their sources today) that the tea parties were a success and therefore the appearance they were a bust is evidence that the media is run by Obama and they live in an oppressive, state-run, socialist (but fascist) dictatorship -
- and -
c.) therefore two groups will be created: Those who feel inadequate and be pissed off and work harder; and those who are inspired and feel accomplished and work harder.
Either way, the demon seed was planted. And we will not be able to detect what has sprouted until we see another sick and tragic headline of some lone wolf who's committed some unconscionable act.
...and then there's another
...and then there's another.
Think about it this way: The shooter in Binghamton was said to have been furious that people made fun of his poor English. What do you think is going through the minds of those who showed up at teabag rallies that were less than spectacular - "oh, well, we tried..." or "We'll fucking show those commie bastards next time...!!" (I'm not saying the shooter in Binghamton was a Republican on a mission; I'm saying that unhinged and angry people have their own reasons, and for us to simply declare they are wrong after the fact doesn't stop the carnage.)
Many of you who commented said that there is no hope of a mass movement from the "tea parties" - and that means you still missed my point completely: I don't fear a nationwide revolution that will have millions of people; I said that as small violence becomes more frequent, law enforcment will be obligated to take greater measures to stop it, and the increased focus on the violence will make the Right insist that Obama is out to create a police state.
It doesn't have to be true for them to believe it. It won't take much for the hysteria to become a call to arms amongst a few unhinged lunatics. They are a self-sustaining fountain of paranoia and delusion we cannot suppress; any attempt to challenge it only causes those who believe it to convince themselves they are correct and under attack.
Ask yourself if this mindset is not conceivable on the RW edges: (my own concept of their thinking)
"...Anyone like the librul media who says that the tea parties were a bust is only a subject of Obama's state-run MSM, following fascist orders to subjugate and deny Republicans their freedom of speech. Corporate run media get their orders from Obama and blindly follow the usurper to his satanic goal of destroying America, and therefore (the RW false claims) of an impending (or existing) fascist state are already true..."
...and where do you think they will go from there?
I don't think it will be down to the park to play badminton.
On Thursday, I grabbed just a few snippets from the RW blogs and news sites.
FreeRepublic:
"Tea Party" Protests Appear to Draw At Least 250,000 -
Cable Anchors, Guests Use Tea Parties as Platform for Frat House Humor
(remember these guys thought that calling Gitmo and Abu Grhaib "frat house pranks" was just fine, and Rush Limbaugh still makes money from the sale of T-shirts and knicknacks with that theme)
RedState :They think we're trembling in woe:
These things have got the Democrats scared..
WarEagle01 Thursday, April 16th at 12:46PM EDT
sh!#less. Most of you have probably picked up on the latest liberal meme: astroturf. Even ardent abortion supporter and Catholic Nancy Pelosi is getting in on it. I just heard her on the radio lying about how the tea parties were just "astroturfing" organized at the "high end" of the Republican hierarchy by people who want to "continue the failed policies of the Bush administration." That’s right Nancy, whenever things get desperate, at least you have the old standby of insulting the Bush administration and average Americans.
(note again how only Republicans are ‘average’ Americans. That was my point about the Kristallnacht analogy; the Republicans have openly declared that Liberals are as suspect and corrosive to American society as Jews were declared to be in Germany. Many of you pointed out that Kristallnacht was government-sponsored propaganda. I grant that you are correct; but does who pays for and promotes the bad ideas really make them any less bad or any less likey to be followed? It’s not the actions that are the same or even who orchestrated it; the point is that they are declaring outright that “we” are so different from “them” that any action taken to stop us will be not only acceptable, but necessary and inevitable.
HumanEvents
Mob Rule Trumps Free Speech at UNC Tancredo walks out when he gets heckled by students
- so what, now it's the public's fault when they show up to drown out a speaker? Wait...isn't "Mob Rule" just the purest form of "democracy"?
How bizarre is it that they are staging national protests while publically protesting about how our public protest was somehow unfair...
ugh.
UPDATE: I forgot to post this video about something I found over at Human Events - have you heard of "OATH KEEPERS"? There is a movement out there to inspire the military to claim any order from Obama to deal with domestic incident here in the US is an 'unlawful order' - I can't figure out how this video and the whole movement doesn't constitute some kind of 'preemtive insurrection' against the Commander in Chief.
Lastly, I want you to ponder this:
Republicans brag about being the "party of Lincoln".
In Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, he said
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate... we can not consecrate... we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government : of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
...the call was to preserve the union so that the men who died in the battle over that fate did not die in vain.
And now we have Republicans in two states openly suggesting that they may indeed try to fracture the country.
Party of Lincoln?
George Orwell is not the only one rolling over in his grave over the behavior of Republicans these days.
But Bin Laden has to be throwing parties and orgies and consuming opium in great quantities since the Republicans have picked up the slack for him in his goal of destroying America.
Because if three states leave, are we still "United"?
And now you know why I'm pissed off, scared, and depressed.
Bin Laden didn't threaten to split the country last week; one governor, one state legislature, and the silent husband of a vice-presidential candiate with membership in a state independence movement and her speech before their gathering did.
Apparently some Republicans think those brave men did die in vain.
Bin Laden must be so fucking pleased.