I've been thinking lately of the current state of affairs; the sudden rise of Tea Baggers, the vitriolic descriptions of children in Norway as "Hitler youth", and of course - the new and improved Speaker of the House trying to counterpunch the President without using the words "tax" or "revenue", only "spending".
It occurred to me that perhaps I am a left wing radical. I am so left wing that I myself should be as wacky as the clowns that support Florida's law to drug test everyone that wants welfare money. (another diary, another day)
So, let's compare the left wing wackos with the right wingnuts down below the squiggly thing-a-ma-jig:
I want to be thorough, but the list of left wing wackos goes against my normal thought processes, and it is difficult for me to identify them.
Well, there's the left wing wackos at PETA, right? Group them fairly or unfairly with the "eco-terrorists" at Greenpeace. They are like the Navy of PETA. On a smaller less organized scale are those that tie themselves to trees to save Northwest spotted owls. These left wing radicals are not responsible for a single death in the last 60 years that I could verify. In recent history, these are the left wing terrorists.
Going further back, the Weather Underground set off a couple of bombs, the Cuban Socialists hijacked planes, ("Take me to Havana") and The National Party of Puerto Rico tried to assassinate President Truman in 1950. In 1975 the FALN killed 4 people and injured 53 when they bombed Fraunces Tavern on Wall St.
In recent history, we have eco-terrorism on the left, and ummm, how do I say this with typical lefty political correctness?,,,,, it's eco-terrorism vs. murderous-terrorism.
May I say that again? Left wing eco-terrorism vs. right wing MURDEROUS-TERRORISM.
Ideology is how the FBI separates crime from terrorism. They didn't consider the Anthrax Letters to be domestic terrorism because there were no claims of an ideological nature motivating those crimes. (Tell that to the Democrats that received those envelopes)
Timothy McVeigh, angry about gun control and Waco focused his right wing ideological rage on innocent civilians.
Osama Bin Laden, angry about U.S. meddling in Arab countries focused his right wing ideological rage on innocent civilians.
George W. Bush, angry about Saddam Hussein trying to kill his father, focused his neo conservative ideological rage on Iraq.
And now this Norwegian Monster, Anders Behring Breivik, whose manifesto is ideologically conservative, openly encouraging terrorism against the left.
"A prioritised target is the annual party meeting of the socialist/social democrat party in your country. An entry strategy might be to use fireman‘s clothing when entering the building. This allows you to conceal your armour and weapons under the fireman‘s coat ... An alternative approach would be to deploy mobile bombs at strategic places outside the main entrance".
I'm sure somewhere some right wing echo chamber is trying to paint him as a liberal.
Now, if you are willing to pull back from these extreme examples at the very edges of the right wings of the batshit insane conservative ideology, what happened when more "mainstream" conservatives talked of a "second amendment remedy" and put cross hairs on "targeted" congressional districts? That's right, some right wing nut shot up a liberal town hall meeting.
I'm not bashing the right, I'm simply pointing out that right wing nuts are an order of magnitude far more dangerous than left wing nuts. Conservative ideology tends towards violence, rage, murder, war, all in the name of religion.
I know, I'm a left wing nut. I'd much rather hang out with Mohatma Ghandi than Dick Cheney. (A guy so far friggin' right he shoots helpless little birdies and his FRIENDS on the same day. Sure am glad I'm not his dog)
OK, rant over. What do you guys think?