I don't expect this to be a long diary.
this CNN article caught my attention today. I remember pretty clearly when Tim McVeigh blew up the Murrah building in OK. I remember because #1 my wife called me at work that day concerned that I was working near a federal building, and that that act of
terrorism might be just the start of something big, and she wanted me away from where I was at the moment.
And #2, because years later, we found out that the building I was working near was briefly on McVeigh's target list. But for a change of plans, I could have been walking right in front of a truck bomb planted by a born-n-bred Murican Terrist on that day.
I bring this up because I had read not too long ago that most of these groups were dying out, mostly due to the public's association of them with, well, whackos and terrorists. Imagine that! But the CNN article bothered me. A lot.
Because, since this whole rancid herring of immigration reform was tossed into the public square, it appears that once again the KKK, on life support just a year or two ago, is now recruiting briskly with the revolting slop of anti-immigration hate speech as their milk and honey. Of course, what they're really doing is drawing flies to shit . . . and it's because Bush's poll numbers are so poor that we're in this situation. Republicans are panicking because their stewardship of our nation has clearly and unambiguously been a disaster, and they've gone back to the shitpile that passes for their political playbook and whipped out race-baiting. In 2004 it was fag-bashing which was used to blow a fog of obscuring filth in front of the important issues our country faced. This year it's going to be "scrummy wetbacks" who will be enlisted to scare the shit out of dumb ol' Joe Sixpack and get him to the polls to defend his country against them filthy immigrants.
And I guess this is nothing new except that Bush and the Republicans are not only playing both sides of this debate, they're rousing some truly disgusting people out of the woodwork in the process. I didn't grow up during the 1950's and 1960's, but I can now understand how hard it must have been to be a progressive in those eras. Because no matter how hard we try to get people to focus on issues that actually matter to them, we have to shout over the din of a few stumblefuck assholes running around ranting and raving about "fags" and "ni**ers" and "wetbacks." (No, I won't print that word here). And they get out their fucking guns and start acting like they're a bunch of fucking tough guys. And then they start walking around like they're the "defenders" of something (as if anyone fucking asked them!) and puffing out their goddamn chests, and saying utterly STUPID hatefilled and outright wrong things, and interposing their extremely ill-informed opinions into polite public conversations. You get the idea. I have zero respect for the KKK-ers and the Stormfront.org readers and all the other raving lunatics out there, and it's gotten so old . . . but it's very revealing that all this hysterical immigration rhetoric has brought out the true Republican base. It's all about using fear against people who are ignorant and stupid, to get them to vote against their better interests. So we start winning the policy arguments, and suddenly Rethugs try to change the subject and scream about aliens in our midst.
