He who rides on a tiger can never get off.~ Chinese Proverb
I admit that I spent the last eight years hating the Bush administration. I confess to equating Dick Cheney with a certain evil emperor in the Star Wars saga. Repeatedly and oftentimes in the past I have voiced the opinion that the Iraq war was a complete fiasco and a needless waste of life and resources for all parties concerned.
But to watch the tea baggers and the wacko wing of the Republican party have their bizarro Woodstock moment forty years too late is truly frightening to me. I'd rather take my chances with the bad green acid than wonder if the right wing nutcase who's standing next to me's automatic weapon is really loaded. And just remember, we had Santana and Sly, you guys were still grooving to Pat Boone and the Four Freshman.
It was a new lowpoint in our history to watch Congressman Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) call the President a liar. To see the Republican Congress heckle the president and hold up stupid signs throughout his speech. Like a bunch of goofy third graders or Dartmouth frat boys. To see Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia) refer to our leader as if he deigned to sit at the front of the bus or drink out of the wrong drinking fountain. To hear the lynch mob's angry call for anarchy, for vigilantism, their behavior sprinkled with a heapin' helpin' of racism, treason and sedition. Keep Obama away from the schoolchildren and Grandma and Grandpa too.
I just can't see liberals behaving the way that the birther, truther, anti- health care right wing protesters are now carrying on. The racist emails I have received, the threatening signage at the rallies, the breakdown of civility in general is pretty astounding and dramatic. I was on youtube today and noticed the word "nigger" popping up in a lot of commentary. The hatred for Obama on the right is having a trickle down effect and seemingly grants legitimacy to a most hateful kind of speech that is starting to seep through society.
I heard a tea bag spokesman say that they learned their lessons from the leftist sixties radicals. Maybe this is just a late adolescence for dumb white conservatives who never got a chance to play? Without the sex or the psychoactives? And take a look at the composition of these rallies. Bit monochromatic if you ask me. David Duke would be so pleased.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas says that the Obama administration needs to come meet the conservatives half way. That we should respect if not the message, at least the numbers and the great dissatisfaction that is evident in these teabagging freedom rallies. John Boehner says we mustn't underestimate the emotion in the ranks. I think that the republicans feed this tiger at their own peril. Eventually, they eat you. Last I heard, we decide how things will proceed in this country through elections. And last I checked Obama won. He has a mandate and a right to take his country in what he deems is the proper course. The conservatives have marched in a perfect goose, er lockstep to date, and any promises of bipartisanship should be looked upon with utmost suspicion. Grassley and Enzi have exposed the Republican Senate as being merely naysayers who never had any real intention of compromising.
You own the teabaggers, Republicans. In the same way you want Barack Obama to own William Ayres. You will be tarred by the same brush. What did the sticker say last year, keep the white house white? The gun carrying, bigoted idiots who couldn't spell socialist if you spotted them eight letters. They make me feel sort of ill but they don't intimidate me. Their townhall tactics of drowning out anyone who doesn't agree with their mindless mantras, even people like John McCain, remind me of the tactics of Joe McCarthy. Egged on by the tinpot dictators like Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh. Why should we bother to have legitimate discourse with these kind of thugs? It will be fun to watch their coming exercise in self immolation.
It is also apparent that there have been few if any disavowals of the language and lunacy of the teabaggers from the Republican orthodoxy. Joe Wilson is a new darling and an apparent cash cow. The GOP wants to use the momentum of the lunatic lynch mob and their hatred for this black president as a way to springboard their return to the grand stage. Even if they aren't necessarily totally on board with the ugly message. I am reminded of the old saying, Go to bed with dogs and wake up with fleas. So a word of warning, GOP - don't get any on you. And come back and talk when you are prepared to converse like adults.
Scream and rant as loud as you want, wingnut wackjobs. There's a new sheriff in town. Get used to it.
9 comments:
Very timely, as four Negros dressed like Malcolm X just knocked on my door, took away my guns, and left an abortion machine for use in my neighborhood. They also told me a death panel would be contacting me soon so I could be "assigned a date" whatever that means.
Truly Robert, it amazes me what people are willing to believe, or aspire to believe, or are feared into believing. I have not yet read Max Blumenthal's, Republican Gomorrah, but after hearing this interview, (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112683449) on Fresh Air last week, it has earned it's way to the TOP of my reading list.
Thanks. roy
well stated. I still believe that most of us have a conscience and that is why BO got elected. Too often it can feel as if the goofball media and the goofball politicos represent some sort of consensus. In reality, they do not.
In the end, either the assholes will come along kicking and screaming much as they always have, or they can revolt and destroy the country. It's not as if this has not happened before in history.
My guess is, this is directly related to a failure by one of our most recent social inventions, Public Education, which, if you care to look, has helped turn us into a nation of ill and mis informed morons. I point not a finger. It was a social experiment that has failed. Critical thinking? GONE! Understanding of history and fact? GONE!
I remember back in high school, reading about the Scopes (?) trial and chuckling to myself that nothing like that could take place 'today.' That was Forty years ago. We used to laugh about nutjobs like Billy Graham not realizing he would one day be a 'spiritual advisor' to a President, or that Oral Roberts would be the name on a 'University' let alone be made a stop off point for rising political stars. Sorry, but this nation has taken a moral and cultural low road. I don't know how this happens. No idea. It sucks. We have not seen this type of behavior since the 1930's.
Chomsky stated this in a book he wrote immediately after 9-11 when he pointed out that the most fundamentalist nation, per capita, in the world, easily was the US and not some forgotten out of the way nation in the middle east.
In truth, it kind of scares me.
I suppose it could be said that it's nothing to do with a non-american but it is. These loons could take the rest of the world down with them given their hands on the levers of power.
Nice one! I blogroll you...
You acknowledge some of your outrageous commentary from days, weeks and months gone by, and then climb back on your hobby horse and begin to froth at the mouth regarding the coarseness of society and the "breakdown of civility" while referring to people of different political persuasion as "teabaggers", a not so subtle reference to a sex act.
Labeling your opponents "wackos" and then berating them for their lack of tolernace casues me to recall the fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Your condemnation of a grass roots movement, driven by Obama's wildly out of control spending,(Bush was lambasted for a single trillion dollar deficit, while Obama pushes for ten years of trillion dollar deficits), as a late adolesence by "dumb white conservatives who never got a chance to play" is nothing more than you not accepting the answer to your query to the mirror on the wall. The answer you ignore is, "Joe Wilson didn't define the basement, it had been dug by liberal radicals who acted with craven disregard for civility when they called for the execution of George Bush, when they said the President of the United States was stupid, when their political heroes said our Marines behavior in Iraq was the same as the My Lai massacre, etc...."
There is nothing sacrosanct about liberal use of uncle Saul Alinsky's teachings. When it begins to haunt the left wing, it is suddenly the "lunatic lynch mob" that is attacking and not the same as what was done by the sophisticted, uber hip liberal crowd.
When has the left ever participated in a reasoned dialogue? The conservative entertainers are "Tin pot dictators." Yet no mention of the fact that the left is saran wrapped with the wholly biased and irrational screeching of Keith Olberman or one of the many MSNBC puppets.
Before you pronouce guilt from the high court of liberal standards and set about to mock the conservatives as a rabble of gun toting, religous fools, I suggest you find some level ground to stand upon. Because until then your slant will continue to cause you to stand in the vast pool of waste you and your fellow liberals created.
Another very well written rejoinder MMWB - thanks!
MMWB - just one question? Does the racist nature of some of the opposition bother you at all? I hear what you are saying about fear of out of control spending being a big motivator for the movement but a lot of the signage looks very course and threatening. If this populist movement matures do you think the shrill name calling and red baiting will be disavowed? And as you know, I speak as a shrill name caller.
This was a great one...bull's eye robert. -v
Yes, it bothers me. Racism and bigotry are evils that should have no place in our nation or anywhere else in the world. They are stains upon the people who practice these wrongs and they obscure and mar the goodness produced by our citizenry. Regardless of where it is directed, right or left, across the color spectrum, or at any person because of their beliefs, it is wrong.
My guess is that there will always be bigots and racists. I think that their presence is easily brushed onto those who happen to be in the same area. The person who holds a racially offensive sign, or the person who attempts to shake down a business with the threat of a racism claim, they are both in the wrong. These people exist in greater numbers than I wish they did. However, I do not think that there is a groundswell of racism. I think more and more Americans realize that goodness crosses lines of gender, age, color, belief and so on.
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