I think we all go between laughing at the lunatic right and being appalled by them. Then every once in a while they go and shoot a doctor or carry concealed weapons within a few yards of the President, and I realize that some of these crazy wingnuts are capable of real violence.
So when I read something like this in the anonymous comments of my local newspaper --
I'm right there with you. I agree 100 percent. Also our second amendment rights are under severe attack by this administration. I fear an armed revolution may be this country's only way out of this predicament.
-- it worries me. Worries me a lot, actually.
There's more...
So far, we've only seen isolated instances of wingnut violence.
A Unitarian church shooting here, a Holocaust Museum killing there, an abortion doctor blown away (again). All by solitary loons who added the drumbeats from right-wing radio to the voices already loud in their heads and came up with a violent action that seemed to them like the right thing to do at the time. Violent, political insanity.
But this sounds different to my ear and feels different in the gut. Like the fringe gun nuts and assorted true-believers have finally been pushed over the edge, whether by subconcious racism or by last November's defeat or by their endless diet of online and over-the-air propaganda.
And I live in a Blue state. I wonder what it sounds like out in fly-over country. Out in the Redlands. If my neighbors are talking this way, what are your neighbors saying in the South, in the Midwest, in all the concealed-carry states?
If they're talking this way in the public comments of online newspapers, what are they saying to each other in bars, in living rooms, on the street?
Where is this leading and what the hell is it going to take to stop it?
Just some questions without answers for now, but I can't stop thinking about it.