You'll have to pardon me as I'm currently in Japan so I'm not getting all of the news updates, but I am following Kos, HP and a few news sites when I get a couple of spare minutes.
I've read the articles about the tea partiers calling members of Congress "fa**ot," "ni**er," spitting on them and so forth. And I've seen the reports where the Republicans in Congress cheer them on, and I've seen people vent frustrations at why the Republicans are doing this and even encouraging the fringe.
Let's be very clear - the Republicans KNOW what they're doing. They know that encouraging the fringe is dangerous, that right now they're only vandalising offices and sabotaging propane lines at the homes of relatives of representatives. But they're going to keep encouraging the fringe until they start killing.
Why? Because when you're the party of "no," and "no" isn't working, then you need to scare your opponents into breaking down.
I never lived in the 1960s. I missed that turbulent age, but I can see a lot of similarities. Democrats in office and pushing domestic reforms, progressives and liberals are energized and pushing for these reforms, and everybody trying to move the nation in a direction that seems to benefit people.
And that's when the shooting started. See, you couldn't argue against civil rights at the time, because it's a losing debate. But you CAN shoot the people pushing for civil rights and try to end the debate that way.
Martin Luther King Jr, as a civil rights leader, was not shot by a white man who wanted to end the civil rights movement. He was shot by a man who was convinced MLK Jr was a communist (sound familiar?). Gee, I wonder what right-wing radio and politicians were saying about him at the time?
Anyone remember Kent State? Liberals aren't going to be doing a whole lot of good pushing for social change when they're running from bullets.
The right wing then, like it is now, is scared and angry. They don't have a unified message, hell most of them don't even know WHY they oppose this stuff, other than the indoctrination and propaganda they've been given since kids. But they DO know that they're anggry, and they DO blame "liberals" for it.
SarahPAC has put gun sights over the districts of Democratic representatives she wants to "target." That's not a mistake. When Tim Pawlenty, the day after Joseph Stack flew a plane into an IRS building, killing a vietnam vet, said "We need to take a nine-iron and smash the window of big government," that wasn't a mistake. Mistakes like that don't happen.
The Republicans built an entire election campaign out of telling the fringe that Obama was not American, that he was communist, that he was Muslim, all of it laying the groundwork to encourage some fringe element to take a shot at him. And it's only a matter of time until they do.
What they're doing SHOULD be illegal. It is, technically, but there will be no investigations or actions until the fringe starts shooting. But what we SHOULD know is that this IS happening, it happened before (and succeeded at the time).
I've spent most of the last 2 years outside of the US, traveling to different nations and I can tell you one thing - the US is the ONLY country I've ever been in where this is happening. But that doesn't make it okay. But be prepared - the fringe element is out of their mind right now, they're angry, they're even MORE angry than before since HCR passed, and with an election coming up and Republican rhetoric already ramping up, it's going to get worse. I don't know when the first shots will be fired (IMO they already have been), but it's coming soon.