in yesterday's diary...I was trying to suggest that the RW rhetoric of late was designed to single out the libruls as deserving of whatever comes next, and in the hysteria of what was (is) about to unfold, to hope that one unhinged nut or two did something stupid....therefore, the police would be called, and then they would have plausible claim (in their mind) to say there was a fascist police state and their claims that Obama is Hitler are justified.
It's a subtle nuance that I was consistently unable to get people to ponder when we're all just scanning headlines. One commenter even told me as such that there's no time to get the full meaning when skimming diaries is neccessary to keep up.
Ugh. quantity over quality. yeah, that'll work.
A "no-photo", "no-media" update from the Teabagging madness in Hazleton with Alan Keyes tonight below the fold...
My favorite sign tonight was
"Bind them with the chains of the Constitution"
...and I thought,
"Where was this noble patriot with all her chains and bondage fantasies during the last eight years????"
____________________________________
Keyes was late in getting here, spoke for about 25 minutes of the 90 minutes the rally took place, and ended his tyrade with this:
"How many of you have ever realized that the last line of the Star Spangled Banner is a question?
'Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave'"
?
Somehow I've never heard it SUNG like a question -
Nevertheless, he then started a chant
" WE ARE THE FREE
WE ARE THE BRAVE
NEVER LET THEM TEAR THAT FLAG DOWN
NEVER LET THEM TEAR IT DOWN
NEVER LET THEM TEAR IT DOWN"
But if you allow yourself to get inside the headspace of these lunatics, Keyes implied words were as close as one could be to a call to arms -
"...before the answer to the answer to the question 'does that banner yet wave' turns out to be "no", we'd better start a revolution, attack this usurper un-american president and defeat these communist socialist tyrants..."
(my words, not his, but based on the cheering crowd, I'd have been hoisted upon their shoulders had I said them out loud)
keyes managed to bring up the birth certificate, the ACORN conspiracy, and the "undeserved" mortgage loans that were started under Clinton which we all know are the reasons the economy tanked.
I mean, after all - don't you all remember during the economic boom of the last few year that was fueled by all those new houses and real estate and banking - don't you remember the Republcans saying "we must stop all this unwarranted lending to unworthy people! Stop the lending because it's paying for all these houses and jobs and profits!"
You all heard that from Republicans, right?
One more thing:
It was funny how the health department reminded us that only 1 in 5 Americans smoke cigarettes; it was at least 3 out of 5 in this crowd, and they started the rally with a bitch-and-moan about how cigarette taxes are the fault of those nanny-state libruls.
Imagine an armed uprising against the President of the United States and history would recount that freedom to smoke cheaply was one of the patriotic causes that were openly declared...
I felt sick, I felt cold, and I felt like I really don't belong in this town. I managed to find one other guy in the crowd who was a Democrat (you could tell by our lack of cheering at the right/wrong moments) and he agreed that if I had walked over to the center of the crowd and announced that I was an atheist that I might not make it back home.
Tongue-in-cheek - but it felt different being the atheist, let me tell you, standing in a crowd of 100 or maybe 200 and listening to the rhetoric.
What the fuck is happening to this country?
I'll say it one more time: Bin Laden must be so pleased with himself; he hasn't done a thing in almost eight years and here we are doing all the work tearing the country apart from the inside so he doesn't have to.