“Threats spur increased security for lawmakers : At least 10 House Democrats are offered stepped-up attention in the wake of last weekend's health-care vote, after death threats and vandalism.” Washington Post, 3/24/2010.
That’s the sort of headline we are seeing this week. These are the times that try a dino’s soul, times in which overly temperate utterance seems downright inappropriate and nothing short of a full-on, predatory battle-roar would be appropriate. So let me say the following in response:
To those (and only those) who are responsible for this sort of thing and who agree with what they’re doing – you are thugs. Note that I’m not saying you are “like” thugs or “acting like” thugs. The time is past for weak similes. I’m saying that you ARE thugs – criminal thugs, in the case of the malefactors referenced above.
It has become obvious that your goal is simply to make rational, respectable people give up on America’s civic culture. And you know what? That was exactly the aim of the organized Brownshirts and semi-organized rabble Hitler used back in the 1920s during his rise to power – to frighten and dispirit the populace by throwing bricks through windows, tossing ethnic and other slurs, making death threats, etc. I suppose next you’ll move on to administering beatings in alleys and burning books that you can’t read anyway. You are the very stuff, the raw material, of the American Nazism that could come to pass if we should fail to sustain the republic. Proud of yourselves, trash? You went around painting little Charlie Chaplin mustaches on Barack Obama’s portrait last summer, labeling the reforms “fascism,” and so forth. That’s the most manifest case of projection one can imagine – you’re the fascists here in the States, not President Obama, and the fact that you don’t understand it only proves that you are either bottomlessly stupid or outright insane.
Perhaps like many others in the liberal, centrist, and thoughtful-conservative blogging community, I used to give you the benefit of the doubt, and supposed that you were just confused and perhaps a bit dull-witted, but in my view there is no further room for doubt: you are violent, irrational flotsam and your sole objective is not to protect your own liberties but instead to destroy the republic any way you can. Why? Because you can’t stand freedom – you don’t have the courage; you can’t stand debate – you don’t have the brains; you can’t stand living in a country where the majority of people think it’s wise to help others in a time of need – you don’t have the heart. Again I say, ye are vile thugs. Set it down for a certainty that you are the nation’s disgrace and that I (and, I can hope, all decent people here in America and elsewhere in the world) hold you in unmitigated contempt.
Oh, and no matter what you do, the health-care bill is going into effect within the next few days. Choke on that fact. At least now you’ll be able to get some health care without “choking” being labeled a pre-existing condition, you dumb, illiterate, violent, childish, knuckle-dragging anti-American degenerate mother*uckers. I know you for what you are, and I don’t believe you will get your authoritarian dystopia in which conditions are so vile, so abject, that the low likes of you can become the norm. America isn’t perfect, but it’s better than that – better, that is, than YOU. I believe that the normal, the caring, the civic-spirited, and the patriotic (I don’t mean only “liberal” by any of those terms) will prevail, and that they won’t do it with your weapons of choice, either – bricks, guns, bombs, filthy-threat-laden calls in the dead of night, or physical intimidation. No, the most powerful things good people have on their side are justice and right, along with a firm desire to see them done in the proper ways. Decency and humaneness are IDEALS, and we all know that you can’t kill an ideal, however hard you may try. You’re wasting your time with those bricks and phone calls, morons. First learn how to spell: it’s “extremism,” not “exremism,” you stupid *UCK!
Finally, if you look in the mirror and don’t like that little Charlie Chaplin mustache you see materializing there (is that a mustache which you see before you, or a mustache of the mind?) , I would gladly welcome you into the sphere of normality and civilization – better late than never. I’m sure it will be so new for you there, you’ll feel just like a kid in a candy store.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I like it when dinos get angry and don't hold back. Especially when I agree with them so thoroughly.
ReplyDeleteYou've said it, Dino.
Dino, I am sympatico with you in your disgust and frustration at these Nazi-esque pinheads that have no idea what Kristallnacht is so they can't see themselves for who they truly are.
ReplyDeleteI watched McCain smirk about it and Palin incite it. They are ugly, ugly people.
What is missing from our family life, our society, our religions that allows for this kind of horrible being to develop?
I just finished reading a book about American GIs who became POWs of Hitler. The Jews among them were sent to separate POW camps where they were used as slave labor and starved.
Many died before they could be liberated and for what? What we are seeing today is nothing like what my country used to stand for, what my countrymen fought to protect.
This is a slap in the face to all patriotic, freedom loving Americans.
I wish I'd said that. I think most of us saw this coming a long time ago.
ReplyDeleteThe fault not only lies with 6-scotches Boehner (that's for breakfast at the golf club) and McConnellism and Cantor the Dull Ranter, but to the so-called more sensible moderate Republicans. None of them have had the spine to publicly denounce these goons.
The MSM has aided and abetted these yahoos by giving them too much coverage and by never denying the lies spouted by the GOP leadership. Bias by ommission.
I'm not ready to despair yet because I want to think that in the end decent Americans, regardless of political affiliation, will reject this travesty. But, I don't remember seeing anything like it - a movement based on hate and race.
Excellent post, Dino.
The radical freedomistas....
ReplyDeleteWith the passage of the healthcare reform bill and with the fact that the Republicans are not going to 'cooperate' with the democrats for the rest of the year...
Well, lets just say that whomever is running the Republican Party strategy department is really one demonized human being in need of therapy.
Yes, folks are angry...but they are angry at Bush, at Wall Street, and at special interests...
I personally think the goal is to destroy the Republican Party FIRST and then take on the democrats in 2012....it sure looks like self destruction....
Nothing like a good rant, bloggingdino, and a hell of a rant it is to purge the soul.
ReplyDeleteEarlier today, Paul Krugman commented on the firing of David Frum from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for his notorious Waterloo remark that condemned Republicans for failing to work with Democrats on healthcare reform. Krugman’s source turned out to be Bruce Bartlett’s weblog, Capital Gains and Games, a revealing read:
“Since, he [David Frum] is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI "scholars" on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do [my bold] (…) Sadly, there is no place for David and me to go.”
The comments under Bartlett’s post are equally revealing:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Anon - Conservatives that get kicked to the curb: This movement is devouring its own children.
Ben Vos - The anti-intellectualism and "check your brain at the door" kneejerk policy positions of the GOP seem much more interested in preserving and maximizing profits for the wealthy donors to their orgs than in promoting American economic excellence.
mlloyd - There are no ideas, no policies left; just partisanship and cultural resentment. The policy arguments that you made, and the political arguments that Frum has been making, are unanswerable. So you must be rendered into nonpeople. What a sad, bitter implosion for a once-vigorous movement.
Al Swearengen - I think the HCR debate and the ugly aftermath will have a lot of thinking conservatives pondering exactly how we've reached this vile, debased point.
Denver - When politicians egg on the crowd with apocalyptic language and then shrug innocently when violence is threatened we are in trouble. Conservatives are supposed to respect the essential elements of government and rule of law. When they don't they cease to become conservatives and edge toward outright totalitarianism.
Remainder - I didn't leave the conservative movement; the conservative movement left me.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A sad commentary on the conservative movement by disenfranchised conservatives. Most sad of all is Bartlett’s comment, “there is no place for David and me to go.” That is why I have a soft touch for sincere conservatives who visit our beach in search of friendly conversation.
Republican opposition to HCR has nothing to do with the federal deficit, principles, death panels, or socialism. These comments from conservatives confirm my worst suspicions: A naked attempt by the GOP to hijack an election and sabotage democracy.
One question: Do you think this long-winded comment is worthy of being a stand-alone post sometime next week?
Thanks for your comments, all.
ReplyDeleteTAO, yes, I think what they're doing is wretched for the Republican Party, too -- I've noticed that a few in that party today are sort of distancing themselves from the "No" strategy.
Octo, sure, I think the subject of your post would make a good standalone entry. I would note just how silly the coverage of the parties has been -- the press is either all one way or all the other: we were told that the Demos were doomed, DOOMED! until very recently (some of 'em seemed to think that about themselves, too, to be fair), and now they're basking in a victory. Nothing lasts forever, of course, but we know the old Mark Twain saying about premature rumors of demise.
Unless the economy takes a tremendous nosedive again, I don't believe this year's elections will be a disaster for the Dems -- maybe not great news, but not a disaster. People vote their wallets most of the time.
By the way, those politicians on the right who have accused the Democrats of "politicizing" the thuggery aimed at them are following an old and sordid playbook -- they used it, for example, after the Oklahoma City bombing -- how DARE those lefties suggest that conservative officeholders' mean-spirited, hypocritical anti-government rhetoric might have indirectly emboldened some nut to do something vicious? Etc. They're not, of course, culpable for the acts of depraved individuals. But in no way do I suppose they will ever take responsibility for having set such an uncivil example for the past year now: shouting at the president, spreading lies and alarm, and stirring up the ignorant to serve their own nihilistic ends.
tnlib -- yes, I think it's true that "sham objectivity" has at times kept journalists from showing proper contempt for irrational groups and individuals. Birthers, deathers, and garbage-spouting teabaggers don't deserve to be treated like responsible people.
"The MSM has aided and abetted these yahoos by giving them too much coverage and by never denying the lies spouted by the GOP leadership. Bias by ommission."
ReplyDeleteYou're so right - balancing every truth with a lie is their idea of fairness, or providing something for everyone.
"But, I don't remember seeing anything like it - a movement based on hate and race."
That's because you're not old enough to remember the civil war. The first Civil War, that is. It ended in the cold Civil War and now we're about to see CW II. This time the rebels rogues and mavericks won't be fighting for an oligarchy of feudal land owners but for Corporations, religious and private.
"The Jews among them were sent to separate POW camps where they were used as slave labor and starved.
ReplyDeleteMany died before they could be liberated and for what? What we are seeing today is nothing like what my country used to stand for, what my countrymen fought to protect.
I'm reading the diary of a Union private who was captured and imprisoned in Richmond. They were starved out of sheer malice, the packages sent from home and from the government stolen while the Richmond Enquirer printed their opinion that they should be starved to death - the damned Liberals trying to take away their slaves.
There is no invisible hand making people tend toward the good and there are enough uncouth monsters everywhere to back any Hitler who may rise to power.
"Ladies and Gentlemen — I fear that what I am going to say will spoil your appetites; but the truth is beautiful at all times, and I have to state that Mrs Lovett's pies are made of human flesh!"
ReplyDeleteI was about half asleep when I read and commented on this the first time but I keep returning looking for jewels I missed the other times.
ReplyDeleteRanting is healthy and you did such a stupendous job of calling these ignorant a..holes "ignorant a...holes" without actually calling them that. I commend your restraint.
I keep telling myself not to stoop to their level but I confess that of late my button has been pushed beyond repair on at least one blog. This little ole southern belle has lost her bell more than once. They are as tenacious as Pit Bulls.
I think Andersonville, GA was absolutely the worst of the CW prisons but I could be wrong. I agree with you Capt. about all the different CWs. These folks down here haven't stopped fighting the great war between the states since it ended.
Octo, Octo, Octo.
All of the CW prisons were nightmarish, but Andersonville was built late in the war when the South was running out of everything.
ReplyDeleteI'm just now reading a book by a Union Private who lived through it and sketched it and I've been there too. They didn't have gas chambers, but otherwise they weren't much better than Dachau and far less sanitary.