The right wing has done such a stellar job of highjacking the national conversation and demonizing the left. They do this by using inflammatory and divisive language. The right co-opts the terms "patriot" and "real American" for there own uses, which defaults the left to unpartriotic and un-american. Just this week Steve King (R-Iowa) called for an uprising against our legitimately elected government and compared our govenment to that of communist East Europe!
It is shameful that congress members like King and Michelle Bachman and others are given a platform for inciting people with fear. Add to that the crap that comes out of Beck and Limbaugh and the fact that millions of people who listen to this and believe what they hear and we have a very real problem in this country. This type of rhetoric continues to gain traction. Instead it should cause revulsion and it should be held up as an example of complete nuttery at best and treasonous at worst. Its time the left pulled the rug out from the rhetoric. These people are basically calling for the overthrow of a legitimately elected US President. They are inciting violence. And the main stream media give them a platform and a voice. While they are free to say and think as they wish. Its time to treat these people as what they are. Extremists, just like a Nazi Group or Ku Klux Klan. They need to be ignored. They should not be engaged with. True American patriots who believe in equality and justice for all, who believe in the middle class, who believe in bringing out the best in the least of us need to be enraged and stand up and say this is unacceptable in a real American Society. Unfortunately, the real Americans in this country are going to have to use some of the same tactics the right wing fringe did and high jack the conversation back. We need to scare people into seeing what this country would look like as an authoritarian theocratic corporate state. Only, in this case its the truth, not hyperbole and lies to scare people to believe something that is not true. Just as the right wing doesn't really support democracy unless it is their own leaders that have been elected, they will not extend all the freedoms we have today to the left in a theocratic corporate run state.
On a related but side note, President Obama should not have gone on Fox new. It just legitimizes and gives voice to the ilk described above.