The End is Nigh

You don't mention the Southern Poverty Law Center down here in the South and you certainly don't want just anyone to know you're a supporter.  You'll be ostracized at best because they are on the shit list of every right wing group from top to bottom, all with their own pet hate, usually centering around that bogeyman : the United States Government.

SPLC's Hate Watch Blog had been tracking the pair of raving lunatics who murdered

two policemen, declared a revolution and killed themselves in a Las Vegas Wal-Mart.  They were part of the idiotic standoff between the Bureau of Land Management and Cliven Bundy this Spring and are fond of spewing the apocalyptic, revolutionary idiocies typical of a huge number of armed, hostile and bellicose Americans identifying themselves as "patriots."   SPLC is right to do so and too bad more attention wasn't paid to the warnings.  The as yet unnamed couple is hardly unique either in their armaments or attitudes and if the flood of e-mails I've been getting addressed to "fellow patriots" is an indicator, there are a number of them out there. A week hasn't gone by in years without a prediction of something horrible that Obama and the Liberals were about to do that fellow 'patriots' needed to be aware of.

No need to elaborate -- suffice it to say, none of their predictions have ever come true to the slightest degree, the FEMA concentration camps or the National Guard rounding up guns, although people like that will still still hang on to hope that there will be an excuse to get into the fortified bunkers and the armored vehicles and get out the big guns. I have no idea why these people chose today over yesterday or tomorrow, but perpetual predictions of that financial collapse and that gun grab would only make sense to a psychotic spoon fed hatred and lies by not only the militias and survivalist groups, but Karl Rove and Fox News and the Republican Party.

It's hard to crack down on people who haven't yet done anything and of course the above mentioned groups make it harder, portraying the subhuman hordes as heroes, but it's time we admitted we have a problem more serious than making sure no one ever says anything racist, or misogynistic or insensitive and it's time we pay attention.  History seems to be trying to repeat itself and the cast of characters is already in costume.

God, Guns and Hitler

I have certain misgivings about hate crime laws, but we're reminded this morning -- the eve of Pesach or The Passover, and a week before Hitler's birthday, that people who belong to hate-based organizations and creeds, who post virulent hate messages and calls for extermination on-line, need their constitutional right to keep and bear arms infringed.

I feel quite protective of our guaranteed right to free speech and our right to think what we think, but speech that incites to violence, that creates a mortal danger to the public, is something else and that's been established for a long time. Frazier Glenn Miller is a founding member of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party.  That's not a crime, more's the pity, nor is shouting "Heil Hitler" from the back of a police car, but perhaps we ought to consider making it a felony to belong to groups who advocate murder because as far as I know, it's illegal for felons to own firearms.

I know -- penalties and restrictions don't prevent criminals and especially psychopathic criminals from committing crimes, but there's something wrong with Mr. Miller or Mr. Cross as he often calls himself, to own weapons.  There's something wrong if  the targets of hate groups need to arm themselves or to hire armed guards or to go about in fear because we elevate and protect a right to be armed above the right to remain alive.  We shouldn't have to wait for people like that to run amok before we do anything. Threatening violence against groups or individuals should be sufficient to disarm someone. 

Lest one think that being a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant is protection and a reason not to worry, Methodists were shot in this tragedy as well.

Audacity

We're all aware that one of the rhetorical games people use to portray political opponents negatively is to call them name callers. A skillful user can frame any kind of protest as a hatefest and in our time, when the most vociferous denunciation of the sin of homosexuality seems to come from people who hire male prostitutes, it's not surprising that the angriest political protesters spend more time accusing others of the sin of anger. So the people out in the streets flaunting weapons and sometimes vicious signs make it a point to take offense at those "hate-filled" liberals who like to point out not only the misspellings, the sometimes amusing disparity between facts and their beliefs and often vicious rhetoric. "Look at the way they call us 'Teabaggers'" say the offended parties, foam on their lips still fresh from calling the President a Communist, Kenyan, Maoist disciple of Adolph Hitler. "Liberals are having a field day of hate."

What will they call me for pointing out that they were the first to use that silly term themselves? Jay Nordinger writing for the National Review Online has to admit it, but can't do it without repeating the calumny -- those liberal extremists like Rachel Maddow are nasty, childish name callers -- never mind that we "patriots" started calling them Nazis and Communists years ago for valid criticism of the Republican Administration: baby killers! Grandmother killers! America haters! Terrorist supporters! They should be more respectful or at least neutral.

Sure, there's name calling and there's name calling. Massive tax cuts intended to boost the economy were just that a few years ago, but now they're irresponsible and massive debt increases according to "Tea party patriots" ( to use the term that Nordinger insists we should use if we really were fair minded) and aren't I just a nasty name caller for pointing out the stunning hypocrisy? Isn't this just a hate site for publishing that? No, the Liberal Media like the National Review, controls the discourse and that is why it's become so nasty. By Liberal Media of course, I mean those terrorist sympathizers and Trotzkyites who want to grab your guns and turn your children Gay.

I'd hate to play poker with such people. It's more than just Botox that enables the propagandists and media manipulators and their candidates to say such things with straight faces. So when the Republican candidate for the Governorship of Florida comes on the air last night and with the flippant demeanor of someone explaining to preschoolers that fish swim and birds fly, tells us that "Obama thinks that more government is the solution to all problems."

I have to be in awe of his training, self control -- the sheer dishonesty of his audacity. As he was speaking, of course, one of our time's greatest ecological disasters was and is poisoning vast areas of the Gulf of Mexico and soon to poison a good part of the Atlantic ocean and all the sea life -- and all the result of taking government mandated safeguards out of the equation: the sum total of the Bush energy policy as written by BP and Exxon and Halliburton. When BP drills elsewhere in that oh so socialist world, they have to use a device that would have prevented this spill, but thanks to core Republican policy they got to save $500,000 and cost us untold billions. God only knows what the final cost of this disaster will be or how many decades it will take for the Gulf to begin to recover.

But there you are, I'm indulging in "hate" again when I should listen to Rush and accept that man made disaster is "natural" and after all, oil is part of nature and it's a liquid just like water and nature itself wants the oil cartel to make billions and billions and billions -- far more than it wants us to be healthy and prosper. I do try, but as they tell me I'm a liberalcommiefascist, it can't be easy to rid myself of that ugly old hate and go along with the flow.

Onward Christian Soldiers

Christian hate groups, patriot groups and all kinds of domestic terrorist groups are activating or re-activating in the name of God and country. They are like tiny benign tumors that grow into massive malignant cancers.
Sue just posted a piece about a new group called The Oath Keepers - the militant and armed side of the The Tea Party Movement.

Wing-nuts, in their infinite denial, like to proclaim that these groups do not exist. But they do and they are no better than such gangs as the Bloods and the Crips. In short, they are ignorant thugs who harass, intimidate and threaten their fellow citizens in the name of Christianity and love for our country.

Repent Amarillo is an evangelical hate group which has been "terrorizing the town of Amarillo." Their mission is to "work:"

1. Gay pride events.
2. Earth worship events such as “Earth Day”
3. Pro-abortion events or places such as Planned Parenthood.
4. Breast cancer events such as “Race for the Cure” to illuminate the link between abortion and breast cancer.
5. Opening day of public schools to reach out to students.
6. Spring break events.
7. Demonically based concerts.
8. Halloween events.
9. Other events that may arise that the ministry feels called to confront.

According to The Texas Observer, one of "Repent's" targets has been a swinger's club, Route 66.

Their leader, David Grisham, a security guard at nuclear-bomb facility Pantex who moonlights as a pastor, explained the action. “We’re here to shine the light on this darkness,” Grisham told the Amarillo Globe-News. “I don’t think Amarillo knew about this place. This is adultery. This is wrong. There’s no telling how many venereal diseases get spread, how many abortions.” The goal, Grisham says, was not just to save the swingers’ souls, but to shut the club down.

Because of complaints to the fire marshal and the city's code enforcement division, the club was shut down for five months for minor violations,"like the lack of separate-sex bathrooms." Membership is supposed to be private, but somehow the Repenters obtain the names and addresses and show up at parties at private homes. These good Christians trespass on private property and try to block cars from entering the driveway.
Meanwhile, Repent has put the Meads (the owners) on the brink of bankruptcy.

Since the protests started last year, the Route 66 building has been rented just three times, forcing the couple to put it up for sale. For Repent, God had delivered a victory. The group snatched up a Web site the Meads had let lapse, Route66SwingersClub.com, and turned it into a call for “adulterers” to “Repent or Perish!”

Ironically, but not surprisingly, Grisham was a "sexual sinner" before he got saved.

What’s next for Repent? They’ve posted a “Warfare Map” on the group’s Web site. The map includes establishments like gay bars, strip clubs and porn shops, but also the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. Repent believes the 600-acre prairie park’s Walmart-funded “Earth Circle,” used for lectures, is a Mecca for witches and pagans. Also on the list are The 806 coffeehouse (a hangout for artists and counterculture types), the Islamic Center of Amarillo (“Allah is a false god”), and “compromised churches” like Polk Street Methodist (gay-friendly).

Hateful twits, hateful tweets

". . . and forgetting long passed mischiefs, we mercifully preserve their bones and piss not on their ashes."

-Thomas Browne-

Unless of course the vitriol of human meanness courses through your veins, in which case you don your rabid Pit Bull apparel and gnaw on what bones can be found. I've rarely seen such hate, even at a time like this where hate is the entire foundation of American Conservative politics. As fast as the greasy fingers can type, the Internet begins to fill with accusations of murder, treason and more formless forms of evil known as "liberalism." There is no restraint in Mudville now that Ted Kennedy has struck out.

Too many blogs, too many twits, too many accusations to dignify with a reply, but one thing is held in common: the tribe that represents the worst traits of our remote ancestors feels victimized and therefore free from any obligation to decency. They lost an election, their worship of Feudal Corporatism, equal rights and civic responsibility is being challenged - at last - and their true values finally revealed. It's as ugly as it's ever been.

I recently and reluctantly signed up for Twitter. I should have stayed at home. the necessity to keep it all idiotically short as brought out more unadorned ugliness than one finds on blogs.

"Kennedy was a special pile of human excrement,”

rages the ridiculous Breitbart

“IF a GOP possesses 1/100 of human failings of T. Kennedy he/she is TOAST,”

is another one of his staggering lies with endless examples to prove it false. Malkin laughs that he didn't go to France for his treatment as though it were funny or actually meant something, others follow suite and Chappaquiddick references spurt like pus from the septic boil of Republic sentiment; from those who would and do accept any act of Presidential treason, dishonesty and manslaughter -- and yes drunken driving. How many people died because George W. Bush was President? No, Kennedy was a “villain,” “a big ass motherf@#$er,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick.”

Pissing on Kennedy's ashes is just a small part of the psychotic rage that fills the void once filled by Conservatives. A conservative by nature does not respond to disagreement by using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, that's what a madman does, that's what Mr. Breitbart is, that's what Ms. Malkin is and this is what the end of everything sounds like.

WE RETURN TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED FREE-FOR-ALL

On Sunday evening, when I first posted this article , I asked for a moratorium on new posts to keep the healthcare debate in the forefront. The response has been informative, surprising in some instances, and engaging overall. I am breaking my own moratorium because the subject has run its course, other voices need to be heard, and another subject has reared an ugly head. Our esteemed colleague, Bloggingdino, brought this to our attention:



We can laugh at the refreshing candor of Barney Frank, but this is no longer funny:



We read about Ernest Hancock, an online radio host who interviewed an assault rifle-wielding associate at a recent Obama rally. Hancock, armed with a 9 millimeter pistol that he himself brought to the rally, is a vocal supporter of a right-wing anti-government militia group convicted of conspiracy and weapons charges in the 90s … plotting to blow up federal buildings.

Chants of “Heil Hitler" and the appearance of guns at meetings and rallies are meant to intimidate and silence people. It also exposes a disturbing fact: Freedom to dissemble appeals to the lowest scum ... anti-Semites, bigots, racists, white supremacists, and violence-prone militias. The GOP exploits the emotional fervor of malcontents and misfits for political leverage. In doing so, they have alienated Blacks, Hispanics, the LGBT community, academicians, artists, intellectuals, scientists, Muslims ... and now ... Jews.

As the saying goes, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Our so-called conservative friends might agree. They seem to prefer the company of bigots for allies. In bashing "Libtards," they act more like a lynch mob massing at the jailhouse door intent on stringing up scapegoats. In failing to condemn this rabble, they approve of them with their silence; and such so-called 'friends' are no longer deserving of our trust.

Democracy is not well served when hooligans take over. There are times when a Godwin Fallacy is no longer a fallacy ... and these are such times.