It has all happened before, and it shall happen again.
This is a saying that I am, personally, quite fond of. It's found everywhere, from Tibetan Buddhism to Peter Pan. It seems to focus more on religion, with the cycles of life and the wheel of time. But it is applicable in everyday life for even the most mundane of things. The styles of my parents, children of the 60's, are evidently comming back. Whilst I pray that the parachute pants of MC Hammer fame are dead and perminantly buried (preferably under several tons of concrete, lest they rise as Zombie Pants), some things return as reliably as Halley's Comet.
One of these is the cycle of right wing, conservative violence. As clockwork, it rears its ugly head and puts itself in the press once again. It is not the first, and it will not be the last. And it WILL happen here.
Other diaries do an excellent job with the details of the incident, so I shall spare you but a simple recap. Anders Behring Breivik, a Christian Conservative (tm) attempted to assasinate the Prime Minister of Norway via explosive device, and then sailed to an island owned by the Norwegian Labor Party. There, he proceeded to shoot upwards of 80 people before being arrested.
Anders Behring Breivik is a conservative. He sees himself as a nationalist and patriot. He looked upon the degredation of his society and wept. His enemies were progress and multiculturalism. He sees the present, progressive government of Norway as tearing down the country his Nortic ancestors built. He sees the Islam in Norway as an infection to be cured, and Islam's "enablers" as enemies.
Anders Behring Breivik is no loon. He is not crazy, deranged, or insane. He is simply Conservative. A conservative who saw the enemy of his vision for (proper) Norway, and acted to neutralize that enemy. Children on that island, being the next generation of the Enemy, were fair game in his right wing mind. And those people he killed trying to get the Prime Minister, his enemy? Collateral Damage.
There are no excuses for what Mr. Breivik did. But his choices are purely logical for him. He saw the Enemy, and tried to defeat him. He saw the future, and tried to save it. He was coldly calculating in his moves, This is not the work of a crazy person, or a man who suddenly snapped. This was the work of a sane, intellegent man who was planning this for months, if not years. This was Norway's Timothy McVeigh.
Work such as this is not the work of an inherently defective or damaged mind. This is the work of a mind corruped by conservative politics. The cycle of Conservative violence, from Bismark to Hitler to Diệm to Hussein to Bin Laden, never ceases. Violence such as this is the natural end state of conservatism. There is no reason, no remorse, just logic and politics to them. The polluted Conservative mind works differently than ours. What is grossly unacceptible to us is perfectly permissible to them.
This should illustrate to all of us the dangers we face at home from the Republican Party. The Progress Party, the party that Anders Behring Breivik once belonged to the Youth wing of, looks positively liberal compared to "mainstream" Republicans, much less the filth that comes from the Tea Party. It is also worth noting that the Other party, where the next domestic terrorist (yes, it is CONSERVATIVE RIGHT WING TERRORISM, dispite what the mainstream media would have us believe) will undoubtedly come from.
This incident highlights how vigilant we must be. All these threats are not just empty, they are real. This has proven, again, that the Conservative mind is capible of even greater evil then most of us can imagine. Those isolated statements have the capibility to turn into real action. Report EVERYTHING you see. Report to the Police, FBI, Secret Service, everyone. Make sure that right winger making threats is arrested before anyone dies. And remember, it can be anyone.
That neighbor, the one who attended that Tax Day rally? He might be the next Anders Behring Breivik.
That other neighbor that belongs to the NRA? The next Anders Behring Breivik.
The Uncle to complains about the government being too big? Anders Behring Breivik.
Be vigilant, be aware, but most importantly, be safe.