Friday, April 2, 2010

Republican's Unleash Their Base. Run For Your Lives.

Republican's have turned health care reform into the most divisive issue in recent memory. Though more than half of the electorate favors the health care bill or believe it doesn't go far enough, Republicans have argued falsely that the American public is against it. Forget the idea of joining in by helping craft the legislation, in this new era, rhetoric itself and obstructionism have taken over as the Republican party's platform. It's a most stunning turn. A party that a year and a half ago, in the waning days of one of the worst presidencies ever, still held to the view, publicly, that to question the President's decisions was "Un-American", has tacitly supported threatening speech and hate speech made by members of the tea parties, and media puppets of the conservative wing of the Republican party like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. And Republican's have contributed to this themselves. The Michelle Bachman's of the world have turned the discussion of legislation designed to help the U.S. join the rest of the civilized world into a three ring circus.

You could hear strains of it in the air, wild and vicious accusations flung helplessly and without mercy or thought; September and October 2008 at any McCain/Palin rally. Accusations so baseless that that at one point the candidate himself pulled a microphone out of an insane old woman's hands to correct her, that Obama was, "...a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with." Yet this continued. Sarah Palin's empty headed parroting of phrases like "Obama pals around with terrorists," struck fear in to many; many at her rallies who believed her insidious lies and to this day feel he is a terrorist and many living in the real world, who have memories of violence, racism, and the measure of response when the right wing of the Republican party is impassioned, mobilized, and afraid.

Since passing the healthcare bill Sunday March 21, several disturbing incidents have happened, single isolated acts (isn't a chain of single isolated acts really a pattern?), Republicans and tea party members alike insist, that have illuminated the true colors of the base of the new conservative movement in America.

Bo Perriello, brother of Rep. Tom Perriello, a Democrat who voted for the healthcare reform bill, had his propane line cut at his home days after members of a conservative tea party group posted his address on a website. The website mistook his address for his brother's and urged people to drop by. A brick with the words "No to Obama, No to Obomycare" (You have to love the far right's grasp of the English language) was thrown through the window at a Country Democratic headquarters in Wichita Kansas. Another brick was thrown through the window of the Monroe County Democratic Committee in Rochester, N.Y.. An attached note read, "Extremism in defense of liberty is not a vice." Bricks were also thrown through district offices of Rep. Louise Slaughter, and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Mike Vanderboegh, an Alabama blogger, railed against Congress working on the healthcare bill and urged his readers to "break their windows." Democratic members of Congress have received death threats. Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak received several voicemails including one in which a woman said, "There are millions of people across the country who wish you ill and all of those thoughts that are projected on you will materialize into something that's not very good for you." "Congressman Stupak, you baby-killing mother fucker... I hope you bleed out your ass, get cancer and die, you mother fucker," a man says in another voicemail. Stupak also received faxes (wow, Faxes? Really?) which include racial epithets used in reference to President Obama and show pictures of nooses with Stupak's name.

On the Day the bill was passed, protesters nearly blockaded the entrance into the House chambers. As the representatives were escorted in, tea-partiers and other conservative protesters screamed threats and profanities. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a leader of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, was called a nigger, as was Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Another Protester Spat on Rep. Cleaver. As always Rep. Barney Frank was called a faggot. This is not new. A Republican congressmen once called him Barney Fag. Point is, these words, these tactics are not unexpected from the Right in this country. Bigotry, small-mindedness, inconsistent hypocritical thought are all par for the course. What else can or would you expect from people who fear healthcare reform as a take over of personal freedom and at the same time that they believe that allowing the government to read their emails and listen in to their phone conversations is perfectly alright. These people have no problem having inconsistent ideas coexist in their minds. Many of them are simply following what republican and right wing media leadership tell them to do and feel and think.

This is why the language and rhetoric of the healthcare debate, and the general tone of the right-wing conservative movement (including the tea-partiers) is so dangerous. You cannot tell the republican base, that they are losing their country. Not after 9-11. Not after the election of Obama. You cannot be a Glenn Beck, creating imaginary links among Obama and the Progressive movements in this country and Soviet Communism and Nazism. You cannot tell a dim, frightened group like the base of the Republican party to take revolutionary action against those who support the policies of the DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED MAJORITY!!! Republicans have steadily used the term "Totalitarian Tactics" in their talking points to describe how Healthcare passed. What were these "Totalitarian Tactics?" Voting? I sincerely cannot grasp what they are talking about. They are using frightening buzzwords like "Socialism", "Nazism" and "Totalitarianism" to rile up and frighten their base into voting for them in 2010. What they fail to realize, (I hope. If they do realize what they are doing and have done, then this is all far more sinister than self preservation and political positioning,) is that the Republican base can no longer distinguish showmanship from actual danger.

They are a sad group. The world has passed them by. It has moved on. Impossible things have happened and they are desperate and frightened beyond all rationality. The television beams into their trailers and isolated communities, images of the multicultural melting pot world that exists around them, just beyond them, outside of their grasp to understand. Ideals and visions that only previously existed in their worst nightmares. Homosexuals are treated with the beginnings of what might be called dignity and it is frightening to them. There is a Black president, sitting in the White House, a revolting, impossibility to their systems of thought, to their very existence. These people, whose beliefs were the norm in the 1950's, are now on the fringes of reality overnight. They have woken up in an America they cannot possibly comprehend with their small minds and even smaller hearts. The Christian in name only set. Those who would spit on Jesus and throw bricks at him and worse if they heard him speak because Jesus would sound like a progressive or a socialist to them. Their nation is gone. The impossible has happened and if that can happen then America can become whatever their twisted imaginations can think up. They believe any supposition proposed, no matter how fallacious, unlikely, or ridiculous, that will restore the world to their myopic vision. And they will take seriously, rhetoric, no matter how false, or conjured to procure votes, that tells them they are losing their America and must take revolutionary action.

Rep. Boehner has asked for restraint after riling up the lunatic fringe he relies on for votes. He has finally said that violence is unacceptable, and that these passions (passions he created with invented "facts") should be turned away from violence and threats and toward voter registration. Republicans and conservative talking heads alike blame the passage of the bill, and Democrats themselves for the violent reaction. The fires continue to be stoked. The Glenn Beck's and Michelle Bachman's and Sarah Palin's continue to spew nonsense that frightens the bejesus out of the already frightened and easily misled. Threats are still being made. There are still protests planned. ***(One is scheduled for April 19 by the pro-gun group Second Amendment March (SAM), a rally on the Washington Monument grounds. The rally, whose stated rules according to the organization's website are now; "1. NO UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF FIREARMS. 2. If you do not intend to comply with item #1, do not attend. 3. It is each attendee's own personal responsibility to be familiar with the firearm laws in the areas in which he/she will be traveling," was originally conceived as a march to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC while carrying their guns out in the open. A "let's see how close we can get with our guns" march, frightening in itself until you recognize the date. April 19th is the15th anniversary of the day that well known, homegrown right wing terrorists, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. They were spurred on by radical rhetoric. They too believed they had lost their country. They too were members of a vast lunatic fringe on the right fueled by racism and violent hate. To choose this date for a march on Washington with guns out seems more than overtly deliberate especially with the threatening nature of the Right's reaction to recent events.) *** See Comments for correction

No one knows what will happen. I certainly don't. I am a student of history. We have seen what happens when these people are riled up and let loose. We have sat, and discussed it; Our fears for our nation, for this administration, this President in particular. The second the joy of having elected the first black President of the United States wore off, the fears for his safety crept in. Assassinations are the children, not of policy change, but of climates of violence. They are built upon a foundation of mistrust and fear of the future itself.

And we wait. And we watch. And we hope that history doesn't repeat itself. For when Right wing lunatics fear they are losing their country, when they fear for the safety of their backward ideologies, when they are pushed into action, THEY TAKE LIVES! Abraham Lincoln, Medgar Evers John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and countless others can attest to the violence that can occur when the Right wing in this country is unleashed through irresponsible rhetoric. It has become frightening. The rabble has been roused and has already become unmanageable.



And we wait. And we watch. And we hope that peace and reason take the day and that these things do not come to pass.

2 comments:

  1. Duly noted. But you are mistaken about Second Amendment March. It was NEVER their intent to go ARMED into D.C.-- NEVER. You may be confusing that with another pro-2A rally taking place just across the Potomac, in VA (where open carry is legal). Also, despite what those who like to smear would say, April 19th was NOT chosen because of Timothy McVeigh, Waco, or Oklahoma City. It's the 235th anniversary of Lexington/Concord, when the British came to take away the arms of the colonists. This is quite obvious if you look at the SAM website at the logo with the minuteman. If it's to commemorate a monster such as McVeigh, or the deaths of innocent people, I would think they would use a different logo -- perhaps the symbol for anarchy or something OTHER than a symbol of patriotism.

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  2. Excellent comment, and a bit of poor research on my part. I will edit in a correction. Thanks for the input!

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