I never, ever in my life thought I would say this, but thank whatever deity you believe in for the California Highway Patrol.
It turns out that the gunman they battled last Sunday on Interstate 580 was headed into San Francisco to hunt him some liberals, especially those who worked at the ACLU and the Tides Foundation.
Let me talk for a moment about Tides. I have several professional contacts through my work with their org, and I know what kind of good people they are. They are a rather low profile organization that helps broadly progressive causes like sustainability and combatting AIDS. They run a fantastic office space in SF called the Thoreau Center, a converted military building on the Presidio where non-profits can rent out a place to work at a low overhead.I have friends who work in this space. The Tides folks are a bunch of sweet-hearted do-gooders. A nicer bunch of hippies there never were.
But to Glenn Beck, they are part of a sinister cabal of socialists plotting to take over America.
When you paint your political opponents as enemies of your very freedom, as threats to the nation you love, as sinister and shadowy conspirators against your way of life, can you really be surprised when your information-starved rage-addicted followers act on that threat? If I actually believed, really believed what the flight attendants of hate preach every day, I'd probably be storing up my guns as well. But luckily for me, the Good Lord saw fit to put a small amount of gray matter between my ears and encouraged me to use it for things that were not evil.
Thank God he also gave the CHP guns. Good job dudes in beige. I'm still not forgiving them you that speeding ticket outside of Taft, though.
I don't really have any solution for the evident pattern of right-wing violence against whomever the latest target of Fox and the other hate pushers might be. Lock your doors. Keep your eyes open. And support good non-profits like the ACLU and Tides. As the old WW2 posters used to say, stay calm and carry on. But be wary, be alert, and be careful out there folks.