America Today

[Extra Stout]

I believe we are crossing the threshold away from an America where people, despite political differences that might be very large and be expressed quite boisterously, even up to the point of ascribing intellectual and/or moral deficiency to their opponents, still assumed that others within America were interested in the common good.

I believe we are moving toward an America where people believe that other groups are malevolent and wish them harm. I don't mean a phenomenon where people just say that rhetorically as an exercise in self-righteousness. I mean a phenomenon where people really believe it. Where Red State America views Blue State America as an enemy on the order of Al-Qaeda and vice versa.

I've been saying for a while that I believe the United States of America is going to explode in an orgy of violence in our lifetimes. Most have scoffed.

Look at the state of debate here in August 2009. Now imagine 10, 20 years down the road when the debt is twice what is now, or more, and the economy has been stagnant for years.

We're going to be killing one another.

[doobs]

Less federal power might help.

[Bender]

people are stocking up.

I've been involved in the shooting sports for 25 years, and I can hardly buy any reloading supplies anymore. I am always greeted with "Out of stock" or "sold out".

maybe I should take up stamp collecting.

[rjv]

maybe we're just dumber than ever.

[Bender]

maybe we're just dumber than ever.
well, the Gov't has been dumbing down the country for at least 25 years now

[angrydude]

There is just so much BS out there on both sides that its difficult for a sincere person to find the truth even if they wanted to.

[SonOfAGun]

people are stocking up.

I've been involved in the shooting sports for 25 years, and I can hardly buy any reloading supplies anymore. I am always greeted with "Out of stock" or "sold out".

maybe I should take up stamp collecting.

Yep. 2-3 months ago, before I gave up looking, small pistol primers were impossible to find. If you could find them, they were rationing them by individual purchase. The main manufacturers were all back ordered (with factories running 24/7) into the multi-millions.

I guess it's nice to know American citizens are more armed than Chinese and Indian armies combined, true story.

[Bender]

I used to only need lg rifle primers, and I've got 11k right now...
However, just got a .223, so now I need to start buying sm rifle primers. I don't expect much luck in finding them, as you say...

[boutons_deux]

The police and Army will lockup and/or kill any American citizen they are told to kill, just like the thugs in Iran or any country.

American "exceptionalism" from history and the rest of the human race is pure bullshit.

[boutons_deux]

AlterNet

Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?

By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future

Posted on August 7, 2009, Printed on August 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141819/

All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history's worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who'd made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet?

And every time this question got asked, people like Chip Berlet and Dave Neiwert and Fred Clarkson and yours truly would look up from our maps like a parent on a long drive, and smile a wan smile of reassurance. "Wellll...we're on a bad road, and if we don't change course, we could end up there soon enough. But there's also still plenty of time and opportunity to turn back. Watch, but don't worry. As bad as this looks: no -- we are not there yet."

In tracking the mileage on this trip to perdition, many of us relied on the work of historian Robert Paxton, who is probably the world's pre-eminent scholar on the subject of how countries turn fascist. In a 1998 paper published in The Journal of Modern History, Paxton argued that the best way to recognize emerging fascist movements isn't by their rhetoric, their politics, or their aesthetics. Rather, he said, mature democracies turn fascist by a recognizable process, a set of five stages that may be the most important family resemblance that links all the whole motley collection of 20th Century fascisms together. According to our reading of Paxton's stages, we weren't there yet. There were certain signs -- one in particular -- we were keeping an eye out for, and we just weren't seeing it.

And now we are. In fact, if you know what you're looking for, it's suddenly everywhere. It's odd that I haven't been asked for quite a while; but if you asked me today, I'd tell you that if we're not there right now, we've certainly taken that last turn into the parking lot and are now looking for a space. Either way, our fascist American future now looms very large in the front windshield -- and those of us who value American democracy need to understand how we got here, what's changing now, and what's at stake in the very near future if these people are allowed to win -- or even hold their ground.

What is fascism?

The word has been bandied about by so many people so wrongly for so long that, as Paxton points out, "Everybody is somebody else's fascist." Given that, I always like to start these conversations by revisiting Paxton's essential definition of the term:

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline."

Elsewhere, he refines this further as

"a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

.
Jonah Goldberg aside, that's a basic definition most legitimate scholars in the field can agree on, and the one I'll be referring to here.

From proto-fascism to the tipping point

According to Paxton, fascism unfolds in five stages. The first two are pretty solidly behind us -- and the third should be of particular interest to progressives right now.

In the first stage, a rural movement emerges to effect some kind of nationalist renewal (what Roger Griffin calls "palingenesis" -- a phoenix-like rebirth from the ashes). They come together to restore a broken social order, always drawing on themes of unity, order, and purity. Reason is rejected in favor of passionate emotion. The way the organizing story is told varies from country to country; but it's always rooted in the promise of restoring lost national pride by resurrecting the culture's traditional myths and values, and purging society of the toxic influence of the outsiders and intellectuals who are blamed for their current misery.

Fascism only grows in the disturbed soil of a mature democracy in crisis. Paxton suggests that the Ku Klux Klan, which formed in reaction to post-Civil War Reconstruction, may in fact be the first authentically fascist movement in modern times. Almost every major country in Europe sprouted a proto-fascist movement in the wretched years following WWI (when the Klan enjoyed a major resurgence here as well) -- but most of them stalled either at this first stage, or the next one.

As Rick Perlstein documented in his two books on Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, modern American conservatism was built on these same themes. From "Morning in America" to the Rapture-ready religious right to the white nationalism promoted by the GOP through various gradients of racist groups, it's easy to trace how American proto-fascism offered redemption from the upheavals of the 1960s by promising to restore the innocence of a traditional, white, Christian, male-dominated America. This vision has been so thoroughly embraced that the entire Republican party now openly defines itself along these lines. At this late stage, it's blatantly racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage. Worse: it doesn't have a moment's shame about any of it. No apologies, to anyone. These same narrative threads have woven their way through every fascist movement in history.

In the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics (citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that, if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.

Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner." He further noted that Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: "deadlock of constitutional government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement."

And more ominously: "The most important variables...are the conservative elites' willingness to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders) and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate."

That description sounds eerily like the dire straits our Congressional Republicans find themselves in right now. Though the GOP has been humiliated, rejected, and reduced to rump status by a series of epic national catastrophes mostly of its own making, its leadership can't even imagine governing cooperatively with the newly mobilized and ascendant Democrats. Lacking legitimate routes back to power, their last hope is to invest the hardcore remainder of their base with an undeserved legitimacy, recruit them as shock troops, and overthrow American democracy by force. If they can't win elections or policy fights, they're more than willing to take it to the streets, and seize power by bullying Americans into silence and complicity.

When that unholy alliance is made, the third stage -- the transition to full-fledged government fascism -- begins.

The third stage: being there

All through the Bush years, progressive right-wing watchers refused to call it "fascism" because, though we kept looking, we never saw clear signs of a deliberate, committed institutional partnership forming between America's conservative elites and its emerging homegrown brownshirt horde. We caught tantalizing signs of brief flirtations -- passing political alliances, money passing hands, far-right moonbat talking points flying out of the mouths of "mainstream" conservative leaders. But it was all circumstantial, and fairly transitory. The two sides kept a discreet distance from each other, at least in public. What went on behind closed doors, we could only guess. They certainly didn't act like a married couple.

Now, the guessing game is over. We know beyond doubt that the Teabag movement was created out of whole cloth by astroturf groups like Dick Armey's FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips' Americans for Prosperity, with massive media help from FOX News. We see the Birther fracas -- the kind of urban myth-making that should have never made it out of the pages of the National Enquirer -- being openly ratified by Congressional Republicans. We've seen Armey's own professionally-produced field manual that carefully instructs conservative goon squads in the fine art of disrupting the democratic governing process -- and the film of public officials being terrorized and threatened to the point where some of them required armed escorts to leave the building. We've seen Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to "a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress."

This is the sign we were waiting for -- the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America's conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country's legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America's streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won't do their political or economic bidding.

This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Hitler fascism begins. It's also our very last chance to stop it.

The fail-safe point

According to Paxton, the forging of this third-stage alliance is the make-or-break moment -- and the worst part of it is that by the time you've arrived at that point, it's probably too late to stop it. From here, it escalates, as minor thuggery turns into beatings, killings, and systematic tagging of certain groups for elimination, all directed by people at the very top of the power structure. After Labor Day, when Democratic senators and representatives go back to Washington, the mobs now being created to harass them will remain to run the same tactics -- escalated and perfected with each new use -- against anyone in town whose color, religion, or politics they don't like. In some places, they're already making notes and taking names.

Where's the danger line? Paxton offers three quick questions that point us straight at it:

1. Are [neo- or protofascisms] becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene?

2. Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities?

3. Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

By my reckoning, we're three for three. That's too close. Way too close.

The Road Ahead

History tells us that once this alliance catalyzes and makes a successful bid for power, there's no way off this ride. As Dave Neiwert wrote in his recent book, The Eliminationists, "if we can only identify fascism in its mature form—the goose-stepping brownshirts, the full-fledged use of violence and intimidation tactics, the mass rallies—then it will be far too late to stop it." Paxton (who presciently warned that "An authentic popular fascism in the United States would be pious and anti-Black") agrees that if a corporate/brownshirt alliance gets a toehold -- as ours is now scrambling to do -- it can very quickly rise to power and destroy the last vestiges of democratic government. Once they start racking up wins, the country will be doomed to take the whole ugly trip through the last two stages, with no turnoffs or pit stops between now and the end.

What awaits us? In stage four, as the duo assumes full control of the country, power struggles emerge between the brownshirt-bred party faithful and the institutions of the conservative elites -- church, military, professions, and business. The character of the regime is determined by who gets the upper hand. If the party members (who gained power through street thuggery) win, an authoritarian police state may well follow. If the conservatives can get them back under control, a more traditional theocracy, corporatocracy, or military regime can re-emerge over time. But in neither case will the results resemble the democracy that this alliance overthrew.

Paxton characterizes stage five as "radicalization or entropy." Radicalization is likely if the new regime scores a big military victory, which consolidates its power and whets its appetite for expansion and large-scale social engineering. (See: Germany) In the absence of a radicalizing event, entropy may set in, as the state gets lost in its own purposes and degenerates into incoherence. (See: Italy)

It's so easy right now to look at the melee on the right and discount it as pure political theater of the most absurdly ridiculous kind. It's a freaking puppet show. These people can't be serious. Sure, they're angry -- but they're also a minority, out of power and reduced to throwing tantrums. Grown-ups need to worry about them about as much as you'd worry about a furious five-year-old threatening to hold her breath until she turned blue.

Unfortunately, all the noise and bluster actually obscures the danger. These people are as serious as a lynch mob, and have already taken the first steps toward becoming one. And they're going to walk taller and louder and prouder now that their bumbling efforts at civil disobedience are being committed with the full sanction and support of the country's most powerful people, who are cynically using them in a last-ditch effort to save their own places of profit and prestige.

We've arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we're slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return.

How do we pull back? That's my next post.

Sara Robinson is a Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, and a consulting partner with the Cognitive Policy Works in Seattle. One of the few trained social futurists in North America, she has blogged on authoritarian and extremist movements at Orcinus since 2006, and is a founding member of Group News Blog.

© 2009 Campaign for America's Future All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141819/

[DarrinS]

Pssst. boutons_douche.


Keep this on the down low.


Democrats control all three branches of the US government.


Don't tell anyone.

[SonOfAGun]

The police and Army will lockup and/or kill any American citizen they are told to kill, just like the thugs in Iran or any country.



Seriously doubt that.

There would have to be special variables thrown into the equation for that to become reality. Variables the far-left does not possess.

[rjv]

Pssst. boutons_douche.


Keep this on the down low.


Democrats control all three branches of the US government.


Don't tell anyone.


do you really think there is a dichotomous relationship between the GOP and the dems ?

[boutons_deux]

"Democrats control all three branches of the US government"

Control? GMAFB

Control SCOTUS? packed with pro-institution/anti-citizen radical right wingers. Watch soon as The Five remove all restrictions on campaign contributions as infringing 1st Amendment.

Control Senate? Blue Bitches will scuttle the Dems.

Control the House? Dems are a fucking herd of cats.

Control the White House? The Repugs, the hate-media, and the screaming, armed mobs of rabble will block every WH initiative.

An insurrection will come from the right, not the left.

[Crookshanks]

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating - boutons is an ass. That article should replace every bad thing said about conservatives with the word liberals - then it would be more accurate.

Boutons is very close to going on ignore because I've just about had it with his vile and hateful postings.

[boutons_deux]

Crooky, GFY

[ElNono]

Democrats control all three branches of the US government.

Why do you think that is?

[Nbadan]

You've been watching V...the wing-nut media is driving the wing-nuts crazy...we may need to actually start holding these guys like Beck, Hannity, and Rush accountable for some of the stuff they say on the air...

[ElNono]

You've been watching V...the wing-nut media is driving the wing-nuts crazy...we may need to actually start holding these guys like Beck, Hannity, and Rush accountable for some of the stuff they say on the air...

If by holding them accountable you mean not tuning into their shows, then go right ahead. Now, if you mean something along the lines of stepping over their 1st Amendment rights, then I completely disagree.

[Nbadan]

Think of it as akin to yelling fire into a theater...let's say a wing-nut, or group of wing-nuts start shooting up a townhall meeting (and of course, blames ACORN) , I think at the very least there may be some basis for a Civil suit on the part of any victims ...maybe criminal under RICO...

[jack sommerset]

You've been watching V...the wing-nut media is driving the wing-nuts crazy...we may need to actually start holding these guys like Beck, Hannity, and Rush accountable for some of the stuff they say on the air...

How do you feel about Olberman,Maddows and Chris Mathews?

[jack sommerset]

I am watching Hannity right now. He seems like a good guy. He has all sorts of people in his studio (like a small town hall) and they all get to voice there opinion and he is not telling the ones he disagrees with any names...

[Nbadan]

How do you feel about Olberman,Maddows and Chris Mathews?

I would think the same if they were inciting violence over the air, Olberman goes over the top a lot on TV, especially with O'Reilly? but he hardly incites the type of hate that Rush, Hannity, and Beck do for people who don't think like them...I would hold not only them accountable but stations like OAI and CCC that allow this type of vitrol to be broadcast on their stations 24/7 without rebuttle..

[jack sommerset]

I've seen Beck 10-15 times... He is a character that goes to far,,,I don't watch him.....I listen to sports am radio or music only on the radio so I don't know Rush. It's very very hard to watch Olberman (50-60 times) he makes fun of someone or something every 30 seconds then he changes topics and goes 30 seconds again making fun of someone or something for 30 seconds. That goes on for a hour with sometimes a small break with someone as far left as he is on for a interview. Maddows tries to be like Olberman but so far not pulling it off.

My point is people are not being led by any of these guys. I'm a big boy. I can watch Fox,NBC,CBS,CNN,etc and still come up with my own opinion. You shouldn't blame a show for how people think.

[Nbadan]

I am watching Hannity right now. He seems like a good guy. He has all sorts of people in his studio (like a small town hall) and they all get to voice there opinion and he is not telling the ones he disagrees with any names...

Your 'good guy' is driving a political wedge into our country and making millions in the process....he is a traitor, ...

[jack sommerset]

I would think the same if they were inciting violence over the air, Olberman goes over the top a lot on TV, especially with O'Reilly? but he hardly incites the type of hate that Rush, Hannity, and Beck do for people who don't think like them...I would hold not only them accountable but stations like OAI and CCC that allow this type of vitrol to be broadcast on their stations 24/7 without rebuttle..

I disagree with you and I'll leave it at that. Peace!

[jack sommerset]

Your 'good guy' is driving a political wedge into our country and making millions in the process....he is a traitor, ...

:lol:lmao:lmao:lmao and WOW.....Good night!

[Nbadan]

I've seen Beck 10-15 times... He is a character that goes to far,,,I don't watch him.....I listen to sports am radio or music only on the radio so I don't know Rush. It's very very hard to watch Olberman (50-60 times) he makes fun of someone or something every 30 seconds then he changes topics and goes 30 seconds again making fun of someone or something for 30 seconds. That goes on for a hour with sometimes a small break with someone as far left as he is on for a interview. Maddows tries to be like Olberman but so far not pulling it off.

My point is people are not being led by any of these guys. I'm a big boy. I can watch Fox,NBC,CBS,CNN,etc and still come up with my own opinion. You shouldn't blame a show for how people think.

...and I don't think that you would shoot up a town-hall..but there are some crazy wing-nut MF's...and they got guns, lots of guns...

[ElNono]

Think of it as akin to yelling fire into a theater...let's say a wing-nut, or group of wing-nuts start shooting up a townhall meeting (and of course, blames ACORN) , I think at the very least there may be some basis for a Civil suit on the part of any victims ...maybe criminal under RICO...

I'm sure you're free to sue anybody you want. I don't think you really have a case though.

[Nbadan]

:lol:lmao:lmao:lmao and WOW.....Good night!

No...if the wing-nut media would turn down the rhetoric you would be surprised at how quickly things would calm down...but everyday 24/7 its hate, hate, hate...there are bound to be reprecussions...

[Nbadan]

I'm sure you're free to sue anybody you want. I don't think you really have a case though.

I wouldn't be the ones sueing, it would be any victims survivors...and in my opinion, they'd have a case...

[ElNono]

No...if the wing-nut media would turn down the rhetoric you would be surprised at how quickly things would calm down...but everyday 24/7 its hate, hate, hate...there are bound to be reprecussions...

I think there will be, in the form of votes. Eventually, some of this childish behavior comes back to bite you in the ass. I actually appreciate those that come with new ideas, regardless of their party affiliation, but obviously do it in a civil manner. A bunch of independents are going to look at some of these stuff and start thinking if they want to be associated with these people.
Democrats actually are in power, and maintaining it is probably the hardest thing to do, since you're under scrutiny all the time. But silly behavior like the shouting matches and those who incite it are only helping them. You would think that at some point they're going to figure it out.

[ElNono]

I wouldn't be the ones sueing, it would be any victims survivors...and in my opinion, they'd have a case...

I think right now there could be an isolated incident, but that's about it.
Other than the pandering to the camera, most of these people still know where's the line between breaking the law or not.

[Nbadan]

I think there will be, in the form of votes. Eventually, some of this childish behavior comes back to bite you in the ass. I actually appreciate those that come with new ideas, regardless of their party affiliation, but obviously do it in a civil manner. A bunch of independents are going to look at some of these stuff and start thinking if they want to be associated with these people.

.....this goes beyond just politics and votes....

[Nbadan]

I think right now there could be an isolated incident, but that's about it.
Other than the pandering to the camera, most of these people still know where's the line between breaking the law or not.

I think you are being naive...

[Nbadan]

...look at England..

[ElNono]

...look at England..

What about them Brits?

[SonOfAGun]

Beck is saying the same shit the founding fathers said. The founding fathers, as in America, as in we currently live in America, where Beck is speaking. (no fanboi)

It just is what it is.

The far-lefties saying how dangerous the right-wing talking heads are is just them playing the game to dissuade listeners from indulging their opposition.


I definitely agree they rile up the dangerous bubbas, but many government actions are just as guilty. Founding fathers saw fit to protect free speech because one day that free speech would be dangerous to those doing bad things. Not to say Beck is fulfilling that purpose at this point in time, but one day it will be needed so everyone must continue allowing free speech until that day comes.

[SonOfAGun]

No...if the wing-nut media would turn down the rhetoric you would be surprised at how quickly things would calm down...but everyday 24/7 its hate, hate, hate...there are bound to be reprecussions...


How quickly things would calm down? That'd be great for Obama wouldn't it? No one speaking up in defiance of his policies. Him going back to ramming all kinds of bullshit through the system.

What good little americans we all would be. :toast

Dems have control of government atm, people are just making politics more entertaining until 2010.

[Nbadan]

I definitely agree they rile up the dangerous bubbas, but many government actions are just as guilty. Founding fathers saw fit to protect free speech because one day that free speech would be dangerous to those doing bad things. Not to say Beck is fulfilling that purpose at this point in time, but one day it will be needed so everyone must continue allowing free speech until that day comes.

If it ever came to that point, our country would be cooked anyway...Glen Beck has no interest in finding a viable solution that would appease all political side in any important decision...that's the only purpose of all this talk of 'socialism'...GMAFB..we are the least socialized nation in the world..Beck, Rush and Hannity do the bidding of Corporations like the health-care and insurance industry that are pocketing record profits while denying critical patient care and benefits...they have owned the GOP for the last 10 years (at least)....they own some Democrats too, that's why Nanci Pelosi gave up on a single-payer system...which under any measure would likely be the most efficient way to restructure our health-care system...

[Nbadan]

How quickly things would calm down? That'd be great for Obama wouldn't it? No one speaking up in defiance of his policies. Him going back to ramming all kinds of bullshit through the system.

What good little americans we all would be. :toast

Dems have control of government atm, people are just making politics more entertaining until 2010.

That's nonsense.....people have a right to be heard, but not make asses of themselves at public forums...Bush used to keep people like the tea-baggers in free speech zones miles from the press....

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

"Democrats control all three branches of the US government"

Control? GMAFB

Control SCOTUS? packed with pro-institution/anti-citizen radical right wingers. Watch soon as The Five remove all restrictions on campaign contributions as infringing 1st Amendment.

Control Senate? Blue Bitches will scuttle the Dems.

Control the House? Dems are a fucking herd of cats.

Control the White House? The Repugs, the hate-media, and the screaming, armed mobs of rabble will block every WH initiative.

An insurrection will come from the right, not the left.

:lmao :rollin :lmao :rollin:lmao :rollin:lmao :rollin:lmao :rollin:lmao :rollin:lmao :rollin:lmao :rollin:lmao :rollin:lmao :rollin:lmao :rollin:lmao :rollin:lmao

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

You've been watching V...the wing-nut media is driving the wing-nuts crazy...we may need to actually start holding these guys like Beck, Hannity, and Rush accountable for some of the stuff they say on the air...

So what about people like Chris Mathews, Keith Olberman, Campbell Brown, Peter Gergen, etc.?

You are one hypocritical son of a bitch.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

I would think the same if they were inciting violence over the air, Olberman goes over the top a lot on TV, especially with O'Reilly? but he hardly incites the type of hate that Rush, Hannity, and Beck do for people who don't think like them...I would hold not only them accountable but stations like OAI and CCC that allow this type of vitrol to be broadcast on their stations 24/7 without rebuttle..

Mathews insinuated a guy who open carried in NH today was showing up to assassinate the president. Yep, nothing violent about those kinds of things...

[SnakeBoy]

No...if the wing-nut media would turn down the rhetoric you would be surprised at how quickly things would calm down...but everyday 24/7 its hate, hate, hate...there are bound to be reprecussions...

:lmao

Man, seeing your beloved one tanking in the polls is just causing you to lose it. Your sounding like Chris Mathews having a temper tantrum because The One isn't doing such a great job.

Politics is politics. The game the right is playing is the same game the left played. If you want to get mad then get mad at Obama. He's the one making one political blunder after another.

As for the OP, we survived the turmoil of the sixties so I think we'll survive a healthcare proposal. We survived the great depression, we'll survive this one as painful as it's going to be.

[spurster]

I believe we are moving toward an America where people believe that other groups are malevolent and wish them harm. I don't mean a phenomenon where people just say that rhetorically as an exercise in self-righteousness. I mean a phenomenon where people really believe it. Where Red State America views Blue State America as an enemy on the order of Al-Qaeda and vice versa.




Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?


Ironic.

[boutons_deux]

Hey Aggie, stick this up your ass and have a good :lol :lol :lol :lol


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Right-Wing Militias Haven't Always Been Racist -- But They Are Now

By Larry Keller, Southern Poverty Law Center
Posted on August 14, 2009, Printed on August 14, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141952/


In Pensacola, Fla., retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson tells a gathering of antigovernment "Patriots" that the federal government has set up 1,000 internment camps across the country and is storing 30,000 guillotines and a half-million caskets in Atlanta. They're there for the day the government finally declares martial law and moves in to round up or kill American dissenters, he says. "They're going to keep track of all of us, folks," Gunderson warns.

Outside Atlanta, a so-called "American Grand Jury" issues an "indictment" of Barack Obama for fraud and treason because, the panel concludes, he wasn't born in the United States and is illegally occupying the office of president. Other sham "grand juries" around the country follow suit.
And on the site in Lexington, Mass., where the opening shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in 1775, members of Oath Keepers, a newly formed group of law enforcement officers, military men and veterans, "muster" on April 19 to reaffirm their pledge to defend the U.S. Constitution. "We're in perilous times perhaps far more perilous than in 1775," says the man administering the oath. April 19 is the anniversary not only of the battle of Lexington Green, but also of the 1993 conflagration at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the lethal bombing two years later of the Oklahoma City federal building -- seminal events in the lore of the extreme right, in particular the antigovernment Patriot movement.

Almost 10 years after it seemed to disappear from American life, there are unmistakable signs of a revival of what in the 1990s was commonly called the militia movement. From Idaho to New Jersey and Michigan to Florida, men in khaki and camouflage are back in the woods, gathering to practice the paramilitary skills they believe will be needed to fend off the socialistic troops of the "New World Order."

One big difference from the militia movement of the 1990s is that the face of the federal government -- the enemy that almost all parts of the extreme right see as the primary threat to freedom -- is now black. And the fact that the president is an African American has injected a strong racial element into even those parts of the radical right, like the militias, that in the past were not primarily motivated by race hate. Contributing to the racial animus have been fears on the far right about the consequences of Latino immigration.

Militia rhetoric is being heard widely once more, often from a second generation of ideologues, and conspiracy theories are being energetically revived or invented anew. "Paper terrorism" -- the use of property liens, bogus legal documents and "citizens' grand juries" to attack enemies and, sometimes, reap illegal fortunes -- is again proliferating, to the point where the government has set up special efforts to rein in so-called "tax defiers" and to track threats against judges. What's more, Patriot fears about the government are being amplified by a loud new group of ostensibly mainstream media commentators and politicians.

It's not 1996 all over again, or 1997 or 1998. Although there has been a remarkable rash of domestic terrorist incidents since Obama's election in November, it has not reached the level of criminal violence, attempted terrorist attacks and white-hot language that marked the militia movement at its peak. But militia training events, huge numbers of which are now viewable on YouTube videos, are spreading. One federal agency estimates that 50 new militia training groups have sprung up in less than two years. Sales of guns and ammunition have skyrocketed amid fears of new gun control laws, much as they did in the 1990s.

The situation has many authorities worried. Militiamen, white supremacists, anti-Semites, nativists, tax protesters and a range of other activists of the radical right are cross-pollinating and may even be coalescing. In the words of a February report from law enforcement officials in Missouri, a variety of factors have combined recently to create "a lush environment for militia activity."

"You're seeing the bubbling [of antigovernment sentiment] right now," says Bart McEntire, who has infiltrated racist hate groups and now is the supervisory special agent for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Roanoke, Va. "You see people buying into what they're saying. It's primed to grow. The only thing you don't have to set it on fire is a Waco or Ruby Ridge."

Another federal law enforcement official knowledgeable about militia groups agrees. He asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak publicly about them. "They're not at the level we saw in '94-'95," he says. "But this is the most significant growth we've seen in 10 to 12 years. All it's lacking is a spark. I think it's only a matter of time before you see threats and violence."

Shots, Plots and 'Sovereigns'

In fact, threats and violence from the radical right already are accelerating (see last section of this report, a list of 75 domestic terrorist plots and rampages since 1995). In recent months, men with antigovernment, racist, anti-Semitic or pro-militia views have allegedly committed a series of high-profile murders -- including the killings of six law enforcement officers since April.

Most of these recent murders and plots seem to have been at least partially prompted by Obama's election. One man "very upset" with the election of America's first black president was building a radioactive "dirty bomb"; another, a Marine, was planning to assassinate Obama, as were two racist skinheads in Tennessee; still another angry at the election and said to be interested in joining a militia killed two sheriff's deputies in Florida. A man in Pittsburgh who feared Jews and gun confiscations murdered three police officers. Near Boston, a white man angered by the alleged "genocide" of his race shot to death two African immigrants and intended to murder as many Jews as possible. An 88-year-old neo-Nazi killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. And an abortion physician in Kansas was murdered by a man steeped in the ideology of the "sovereign citizens" movement.

So-called sovereign citizens are people who subscribe to an ideology, originated by the anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus of the 1980s, that claims that whites are a higher kind of citizen -- subject only to "common law," not the dictates of the government -- while blacks are mere "14th Amendment citizens" who must obey their government masters. Although not all sovereigns subscribe to or even know about the theory's racist basis, most contend that they do not have to pay taxes, are not subject to most laws, and are not citizens of the United States.

Authorities and anecdotal evidence suggest that sovereign citizens -- who, along with tax protesters and militia members, form the larger Patriot movement -- may make up the most dramatically reenergized sector of the radical right. In February, the FBI launched a national operation targeting white supremacists and "militia/sovereign citizen extremist groups" after noting an upsurge in such organizations, The Wall Street Journal reported. The aim is to gather intelligence about "this emerging threat," according to an FBI memo cited by the newspaper.

Increasingly, sovereign citizens are claiming they aren't subject to income taxes -- so much so that the Department of Justice last year kicked off a National Tax Defier Initiative to deal with the volume of cases. At the same time, more and more seem to be engaging in "paper terrorism," even though more than 30 states passed or strengthened laws outlawing the filing of unjustified property liens and simulating legal process (by setting up pseudo-legal "common law courts" and "citizens' grand juries") in response to sovereign activity in the 1990s.

A Michigan man whose company allegedly doubled as the headquarters of a militia group, for example, was arrested in May on charges that he placed bogus liens on property owned by courthouse officials and police officers to harass them and ruin their credit. In March, authorities raided a Las Vegas printing firm where meetings of the "Sovereign People's Court for the United States" were conducted in a mock courtroom. Seminars allegedly were taught there on how to use phony documents and other illegal means to pay off creditors. Four people were arrested on money-laundering, tax and weapons charges.

Due to a spike in "inappropriate communications," including many from sovereign citizens, the U.S. Marshals Service has opened a clearinghouse in suburban Washington, D.C., for assessing risks to court personnel. The incidents include telephone and written threats against federal judges and prosecutors, as well as bomb threats and biochemical incidents. In fiscal 2008, there were 1,278 threats and harassing communications -- more than double the number of six years earlier. The number of such incidents is on pace to increase again in fiscal 2009. Sovereign citizens account for a small percentage of the cases, but theirs are more complex and generally require more resources, says Michael Prout, assistant director of judicial security for the marshals. "They are resourceful groups," he adds.

Some sovereign citizen attempts to skirt the law have been farcical. An Arkansas jury needed only seven minutes in April to convict Richard Bauer, 70, of robbing a bank. Bauer had argued that the government took his money several times, leaving him with almost nothing. "I'm a constitutionalist," he insisted, adding that "every single act was justifiable." A month earlier, a Pennsylvania man charged with drunken driving told court officials that they lacked jurisdiction over him because he was a "sovereign man." Then he changed his mind and pleaded guilty. In Nevada, a sovereign citizen -- perhaps a Dr. Seuss fan --used the peculiar punctuation of names that is favored by the movement; his name, he declared, was "I am: Sam."
But few of the cases are that amusing. In February, a New York man who once declared himself a "sovereign citizen" of the "Republic of New York" and said that he enjoyed studying "the organic Constitution and the Bill of Rights" allegedly shot and killed four people. His murder case was pending at press time.

Swearing at the Government

Oath Keepers, the military and police organization that was formed earlier this year and held its April muster on Lexington Green, may be a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival. Members vow to fulfill the oaths to the Constitution that they swore while in the military or law enforcement. "Our oath is to the Constitution, not to the politicians, and we will not obey unconstitutional (and thus illegal) and immoral orders," the group says. Oath Keepers lists 10 orders its members won't obey, including two that reference U.S. concentration camps.

That same pugnacious attitude was on display after conservatives attacked an April report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that suggested a resurgence of radical right-wing activity was under way. "We will not fear our government; they will fear us," one man, who appeared to be on active duty in the Army, said in an angry video sent to the Oath Keepers blog. In another video at the site, a man who said he was a former Army paratrooper in Afghanistan and Iraq described President Obama as "an enemy of the state," adding, "I would rather die than be a slave to my government." The Oath Keepers site soon began hawking T-shirts with slogans like "I'm a Right Wing Extremist and Damn Proud of It!"
In April, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes -- a Yale Law School graduate and former aide to U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (a Texas Republican and hard-line libertarian) -- worried about a coming dictatorship. "We know that if the day should come where a full-blown dictatorship would come, or tyranny it can only happen if those men, our brothers in arms, go along and comply with unconstitutional, unlawful orders," Rhodes told conspiracy-minded radio host Alex Jones. "Imagine if we focus on the police and military. Game over for the New World Order."

He's not the first to think so. In the 1990s, retired Phoenix cop and conspiracy enthusiast Jack McLamb created an outfit called Police Against the New World Order and produced a 75-page document entitled Operation Vampire Killer 2000: American Police Action Plan for Stopping World Government Rule.

It's not known how large Oath Keepers is. But there is some evidence beyond the group's mere existence to suggest that today's Patriots are again making inroads into law enforcement -- the leak of the DHS report, along with those of a couple of similar law enforcement reports, was likely the work of a sworn officer. Rhodes claims to know a federal officer leaked the DHS report, and says Oath Keepers is "hearing from more and more federal officers all the time."

The group does seem to be on the radar of federal law enforcement officers. In May, a member complained on the group's website of a visit to his farm by FBI agents who asked him, he said, about training he provides in firearms, survival skills and the like.

One Oath Keeper is longtime militia hero Richard Mack, a former sheriff of a rural Arizona county who collaborated with white supremacist Randy Weaver on a book and who, along with others, won a U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakened the Brady Bill gun control law in the 1990s. "The greatest threat we face today is not terrorists; it is our federal government," Mack says on his website. "One of the best and easiest solutions is to depend on local officials, especially the sheriff, to stand against federal intervention and federal criminality." Mack's views echo those of the Posse Comitatus, which believed that sheriffs are the highest law enforcement authorities in America. "I pray for the day that a sheriff in this country will arrest an IRS agent for trespassing or attempting to victimize citizens in that particular sheriff's county," Mack said in a video he made for Oath Keepers.

Why the Return?

Why are militias and the larger Patriot movement making a comeback?
The original militia movement took off in the mid-1990s, with the first large militias appearing in 1994 and growth continuing over the next several years. The movement reflected widespread anger over what was seen as the meddling of a relatively liberal administration in Washington -- from gun control to environmental laws to a variety of other federal mandates. But what really ignited the movement was the bloodshed in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas. In 1992, during a standoff between white supremacist Randy Weaver's family in Idaho and federal agents -- a confrontation that began with Weaver's sale of an illegal weapon -- Weaver's son and wife were killed, along with a U.S. marshal. The following year, some 80 members of the gun-loving Branch Davidian cult died in a fire that ended a 52-day standoff with federal agents in Texas. Thousands of Americans saw these events as proof that the federal government was prepared to murder its own citizens in order to enforce a kind of liberal orthodoxy -- a so-called "New World Order" (NWO) that reflected the economic and political globalization that militia backers felt was robbing their country of its independence and unique culture.

The movement was animated by a welter of conspiracy theories, the bulk of them decrying NWO plots that were said to be aimed at imposing socialism on the United States, sending patriotic Americans to prison camps, destroying farmers with secret weather machines, and so on. Most militia enthusiasts also blamed the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing on the government -- it was a "false flag" operation carried out by the Clinton Administration, they contended, and designed to soften up the American public to accept draconian anti-terrorism legislation.

But the movement of the '90s ultimately wound down, almost petering out after the turn of the millennium. That was for a variety of reasons, including the arrests of many militia backers in terrorist plots, the jailing of hundreds of others on weapons violations, and the violence the movement continued to produce even after 168 people, including 19 children, were murdered in Oklahoma City by men steeped in the ideology of both militias and racist hate groups. The failure of any of the many dire Patriot predictions or conspiracy theories to come true also hurt the movement, as did the 2000 election of a conservative president, which had the effect of defusing militia backers' anger. Apocalyptic warnings from militia leaders about an expected "Y2K" collapse on Jan. 1, 2000, also turned out to be entirely without merit, becoming a kind of final nail in the coffin of the movement.

Now, it seems, they are back. Every month, there are militia trainings announced around the country -- and untold numbers that are not publicized. The Internet teems with training videos, information about meetings and rallies, far-fetched rumors and conspiracy theories. Joining 1990s militia stalwarts like Gunderson and Mack is a new generation of activists, as exemplified in the case of Edward Koernke. Koernke's father, Mark Koernke, was a prominent '90s militia propagandist known as "Mark from Michigan." The elder Koernke served nearly six years in prison on charges that included assaulting police. Today, his son hosts an Internet radio show devoted to all things militia.

The current resurgence has several apparent causes. In the largest sense, it is again a response to real societal stresses and strains, from the seemingly inevitable rise of multiculturalism to the faltering economy to another liberal administration, this one headed by a black man. Similar factors have driven the number of race-based hate groups, as distinct from Patriot groups, from 602 in 2000 to 926 in 2008, according to research by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"This frequently happens when elections favor the political left and the society is seen as moving toward greater social equality or away from traditional societal hierarchies," Chip Berlet, a long-time analyst of the radical right at Political Research Associates, said in a June newsletter. "In this scenario, it is easier for right-wing demagogues to successfully demonize liberals," immigrants and others.

In fact, the anti-immigration movement is both fueling and helping to racialize the antigovernment Patriot resurgence. More and more, members of nativist groups like the Minutemen are adopting core militia ideas and fears (see next section of this report). And they have contributed their own conspiracy theories -- about the secret Mexican "Plan de Aztlan" to reconquer the American Southwest, and another involving the secretly arranged merger of the United States, Mexico and Canada into a "North American Union" -- to the long list of nefarious plots already identified by the Patriot movement.

Far-right fears of conspiracies have come from other quarters, as well, most notably from the so-called "birthers" who have filed a series of lawsuits making the claim that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. These spurious claims first gained traction when prominent extremists like writer Jerome Corsi, politician Alan Keyes and Watergate felon and radio show host G. Gordon Liddy questioned the validity of the president's birth certificate. Many Patriots have also adopted conspiracy theories about secret government involvement in events like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996.

"The current political environment is awash with seemingly absurd but nonetheless influential conspiracy theories, hyperbolic claims and demonized targets," Berlet concluded. "And this creates a milieu where violence is a likely outcome."

Going Mainstream

A remarkable aspect of the current antigovernment movement is the extent to which it has gained support from elected officials and mainstream media outlets. Lawmakers complaining about the intrusiveness of the federal government have introduced 10th Amendment resolutions (reasserting that those powers not granted to the federal government remain with the states) in about three dozen states. In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry raised the prospect of secession several months after Obama's inauguration -- a notion first brought up there in the '90s by the militia-like Republic of Texas. U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she feared that the president was planning "reeducation camps for young people," while U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), evoking memories of the discredited communist-hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy, warned of 17 "socialists" in Congress. Fox News host Glenn Beck, who has called Obama a fascist, a Nazi and a Marxist, even re-floated militia conspiracy theories of the 1990s alleging a secret network of government-run concentration camps.

The original movement also had its mainstream backers, but they were largely confined to talk radio; today, Beck is just one of the well-known cable TV news personalities to air fictitious conspiracies and other unlikely Patriot ideas. CNN's Lou Dobbs has treated the so-called Aztlan conspiracy as a bona fide concern and questioned the validity of Obama's birth certificate despite his own network's definitive debunking of that claim. On MSNBC, commentator Pat Buchanan suggested recently that white Americans are now suffering "exactly what was done to black folks." On FOX News, regular contributor Dick Morris said, "Those crazies in Montana who say, 'We're going to kill ATF agents because the U.N.'s going to take over' -- well, they're beginning to have a case."

At the same time, players like the National Rifle Association, which in the 1990s publicly attacked federal law enforcement agents as "jackbooted thugs," are back at it. Two months before the election last fall, firearms manufacturers joined forces to promote NRA membership in a national campaign ominously dubbed "Prepare for the Storm in 2008."

Gun shows, too, are back as major venues for militia-like ideology. In a video produced in April by Max Blumenthal, senior writer at the online news site The Daily Beast, one man interviewed at a show said, "If Obama tries to get rid of our guns, it's just a step away from trying to take away everything else." Another said show attendees were "preparing for the worst."

Patriot ideology also has crept into the anti-tax "tea parties" that were staged by conservatives around the country in April and July. In addition to protesting government spending and taxation, some demonstrators called for the sovereignty of the states, abolition of the Federal Reserve (a long-time bogeyman of the radical right), and an end to "socialism" in Washington. At the Jacksonville, Fla., July tea party, some protesters carried signs that compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler.

Once again, fearful Patriots are scurrying to prepare for what they see as the coming societal meltdown, stockpiling not only weaponry but food and an array of other items. Newsletter publisher Lee Bellinger, for instance, peddles Social Chaos Survival Guide: Smart, Savvy Precautions to Make You Self-Reliant in These Dangerous Times and warns of "impending national social chaos." The book, he says, is "for people who want to stand their ground without attracting a whole lot of attention -- either from the authorities" or "mobs of desperate fellow citizens."

The recent Department of Homeland Security report also pointed to the role of the Internet in the current movement: "Unlike the earlier period, the advent of the Internet and other information-age technologies since the 1990s has given domestic extremists greater access to information related to bomb-making, weapons training and tactics, as well as targeting of individuals, organizations and facilities, potentially making the consequences of their violence more severe."

Whither the Militia Movement?

Evidence that angry Americans are arming themselves for action is growing. In March, for instance, a Spokane, Wash., man pleaded guilty to illegally possessing two grenade launchers, 54 grenades, 37 machine guns, eight silencers and a variety of explosives in a storage unit. The man had an "End the Fed" bumper sticker on his vehicle. In May, another Washington resident was charged with keeping an illegal cache of weapons that included an M-16 machine gun, four silencers, and two guns made by a local gunsmith and inscribed with "Christian warrior" and "NObama."
In Nebraska, a jury convicted Allison Klanecky for possession of unregistered grenade components. Prosecutors said that a search of Klanecky's barn and an underground bunker turned up dozens of containers of explosive powder, fuses and other components that could be used to make up to 93 grenades, plus an unregistered 12-gauge military shotgun called a "Streetsweeper." Klanecky was involved in an end-times group called The Prophecy Club that sells conspiracy books and DVDs on everything from the New World Order to globalism and the 9/11 attacks.

A good illustration of antigovernment Patriot movement paranoia was the reaction to a National Guard exercise planned for April in the little town of Arcadia, Iowa. The guardsmen had intended to conduct a four-day mock search for an arms dealer that would include patrolling the town's streets, distributing photos of the fictional bad guy and knocking on doors of residents who agreed to participate in the drill.

Alex Jones, the radio host and conspiracy theorist, got wind of the plans and interviewed a National Guard official, setting off an avalanche of angry calls and visits to his website from people who feared the exercise was really about imposing a dictatorship or martial law on the country. "Tell them that ANY violation of your rights will result in a 'Live Fire Exercise,'" one such person wrote on Jones' Infowars.com website. "If they come, come loaded for war!"

That incident showed how quickly militia enthusiasts now mobilize, thanks to the Internet. The National Guard rapidly scaled back its planned exercise, although it denied that the deluge of complaints had anything to do with its decision.

The sounds of violence are growing louder. The Idaho Citizens Constitutional Militia recently posted an opening for a "field sniper." Around the same time, an Ohio Militia member, face hidden by a bandana and voice distorted electronically, posted a video to YouTube. "People need to wake up and start buying some of these," he said as he displayed a semi-automatic rifle. "Things are real bad, and they're going to get a lot worse."

This is part of a special report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, "Return of the Militias (http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?pid=414)."

© 2009 Southern Poverty Law Center All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141952/

==============

So, Aggie, are you armed to the teeth and ready to shoot up some guvmint agents?

The only good guvmint agent is a dead guvmint agent.

Thank you, St. Ronnie Reagan, for officializing the Hate Government movement from your WH pulpit, as HEAD of that fucking guvmint. The evil that you did lives on.

[DarrinS]

LMAO at boutons posting threads about hate.

[Viva Las Espuelas]

LMAO at boutons posting threads about hate.
i wonder if he'll post any about democrats and kkk way back in the day.

[DarrinS]

...and I don't think that you would shoot up a town-hall..but there are some crazy wing-nut MF's...and they got guns, lots of guns...


This, coming from a twoofer.

[boutons_deux]

Darrin

There are FACTS in that article. Please refute them.

What the "Christian" white supremacists (mostly red-state losers where their state is happiloy on the take from federal handouts), incited on by corporate employees in the hate/wing-nut media, are doing is exactly spelled out in the article I posted about how fascism is installed.

[Crookshanks]

This is for all you libs who think these townhall meetings are going to backfire on the Republicans. I took this excerpt from an article in the Financial Times.
=============================

Billed as a chance to sell healthcare reform to the American people in small meetings across the country, the town hall debates have seen protesters screaming at their elected representatives.

In spite of hopes by proponents of reform that voters would be turned off by the sometimes ugly scenes, a poll yesterday from USA Today gave an indication that the debates were having the opposite effect.

Some 34 per cent of respondents said the demonstrations had made them more sympathetic to the protesters, while 21 per cent said they were less sympathetic. In the all-important independents grouping, 35 per cent against 16 per cent said they were now more sympathetic to the protesters – a margin of more than two to one.
==========================
People are finally waking up and the blinders are coming off - and now there's going to be hell to pay. Sucks to be a politician in support of this so-called health insurance reform.

[LnGrrrR]

Think of it as akin to yelling fire into a theater...let's say a wing-nut, or group of wing-nuts start shooting up a townhall meeting (and of course, blames ACORN) , I think at the very least there may be some basis for a Civil suit on the part of any victims ...maybe criminal under RICO...


No, no, no and no.

Yelling fire in a theater is prohibited due to a very good reason... if there ISN'T a fire, then people could be injured due to stampeding mobs. The only usage of shouting "Fire" is if there IS a fire, which would theoretically lead to more deaths.

That type of concern obviously isn't apparent with TV shows. If he wants to go on air and incite people to kill Nancy Pelosi, he could for all I care, as long as he's not pulling the trigger or making the plans.

[spurster]

I think the birthers, deathers, gunners, and teabaggers are bad for the GOP, very bad in the long term. It all seems designed to turn away everyone except southern white males.

[Extra Stout]

This is for all you libs who think these townhall meetings are going to backfire on the Republicans. I took this excerpt from an article in the Financial Times.
=============================

Billed as a chance to sell healthcare reform to the American people in small meetings across the country, the town hall debates have seen protesters screaming at their elected representatives.

In spite of hopes by proponents of reform that voters would be turned off by the sometimes ugly scenes, a poll yesterday from USA Today gave an indication that the debates were having the opposite effect.

Some 34 per cent of respondents said the demonstrations had made them more sympathetic to the protesters, while 21 per cent said they were less sympathetic. In the all-important independents grouping, 35 per cent against 16 per cent said they were now more sympathetic to the protesters – a margin of more than two to one.
==========================
People are finally waking up and the blinders are coming off - and now there's going to be hell to pay. Sucks to be a politician in support of this so-called health insurance reform.
This is another example of a phenomenon that had giant question marks of befuddlement growing above my head. Democrats were gleefully claiming that the health-care protests were turning off ordinary Americans and galvanizing support behind health care, while poll numbers showed support for health care reform, for Democrats, and for Barack Obama hemorrhaging! Barack is down to 47%!

MIDDLE AMERICA IS IDENTIFYING WITH THE PROTESTERS!! THEY ARE SYMPATHETIC!!

And yet every day there is another Democrat on TV calling the protesters un-American racist Nazi brownshirt fat idiot buffoons!! Don't the Democrats get it? Middle America thinks you're calling THEM un-American racist Nazi brownshirt fat idiot buffoons! Not the right-wing base! The middle-of-the-road voters who decide elections!!!!!!!

The Democrats aren't "finishing off the last of the angry white males" like they think they are. They're revitalizing the right all by themselves!!!! It's like a soccer team that is gorging itself kicking the ball over and over into any empty goal -- without ever figuring out that it's their own goal!

I don't get it. Do they just not see it? Are they so cloistered in their like-minded enclaves that they really think everybody is curling their noses in disgust at the protesters like they are? Are they really that dumb? Or is this some kind of Saul Alinsky judo where they're just trying to instill despair that the existing system could ever work? But in that case doesn't alienating the middle class totally defeat the purpose and hand the reins of radical reform to their opposition?

What the hell are they thinking?

[clambake]

This is another example of a phenomenon that had giant question marks of befuddlement growing above my head. Democrats were gleefully claiming that the health-care protests were turning off ordinary Americans and galvanizing support behind health care, while poll numbers showed support for health care reform, for Democrats, and for Barack Obama hemorrhaging! Barack is down to 47%!

MIDDLE AMERICA IS IDENTIFYING WITH THE PROTESTERS!! THEY ARE SYMPATHETIC!!

And yet every day there is another Democrat on TV calling the protesters un-American racist Nazi brownshirt fat idiot buffoons!! Don't the Democrats get it? Middle America thinks you're calling THEM un-American racist Nazi brownshirt fat idiot buffoons! Not the right-wing base! The middle-of-the-road voters who decide elections!!!!!!!

The Democrats aren't "finishing off the last of the angry white males" like they think they are. They're revitalizing the right all by themselves!!!! It's like a soccer team that is gorging itself kicking the ball over and over into any empty goal -- without ever figuring out that it's their own goal!

I don't get it. Do they just not see it? Are they so cloistered in their like-minded enclaves that they really think everybody is curling their noses in disgust at the protesters like they are? Are they really that dumb? Or is this some kind of Saul Alinsky judo where they're just trying to instill despair that the existing system could ever work? But in that case doesn't alienating the middle class totally defeat the purpose and hand the reins of radical reform to their opposition?

What the hell are they thinking?
solid sucker punch. you think they'll figure out who hit them?

[LnGrrrR]

Extra Stout... cmon. You've seen Democrats in and out of power. are you really surprised that they have no idea what they're doing? :D

To be fair, the Democrats are really made up of two different parties: Blue Dogs and Progressives. They both vote different ways in many cases, support different things, etc etc. It's just that, in a two party system, they've joined up together to beat Republicans. But that leaves Democrats looking neurotic when they have to vote or even function, in many areas.

[DarkReign]

Extra Stout... cmon. You've seen Democrats in and out of power. are you really surprised that they have no idea what they're doing? :D

Dont fall for it.

[DarrinS]

This is another example of a phenomenon that had giant question marks of befuddlement growing above my head. Democrats were gleefully claiming that the health-care protests were turning off ordinary Americans and galvanizing support behind health care, while poll numbers showed support for health care reform, for Democrats, and for Barack Obama hemorrhaging! Barack is down to 47%!

MIDDLE AMERICA IS IDENTIFYING WITH THE PROTESTERS!! THEY ARE SYMPATHETIC!!

And yet every day there is another Democrat on TV calling the protesters un-American racist Nazi brownshirt fat idiot buffoons!! Don't the Democrats get it? Middle America thinks you're calling THEM un-American racist Nazi brownshirt fat idiot buffoons! Not the right-wing base! The middle-of-the-road voters who decide elections!!!!!!!

The Democrats aren't "finishing off the last of the angry white males" like they think they are. They're revitalizing the right all by themselves!!!! It's like a soccer team that is gorging itself kicking the ball over and over into any empty goal -- without ever figuring out that it's their own goal!

I don't get it. Do they just not see it? Are they so cloistered in their like-minded enclaves that they really think everybody is curling their noses in disgust at the protesters like they are? Are they really that dumb? Or is this some kind of Saul Alinsky judo where they're just trying to instill despair that the existing system could ever work? But in that case doesn't alienating the middle class totally defeat the purpose and hand the reins of radical reform to their opposition?

What the hell are they thinking?




They should have at least remained consistent. At first it was people like Robert Gibbs and Barbara Boxer insuating that this was an astroturf movement orchestrated by BIG insurance because they were "too well dressed". Soon afterward, you have Dipshit Pelosi calling them Nazis and un-American. The next theory floated out there was that all of these people were just racists because we have a POTUS that is half black. Finally, Harry Reid calls these people "evil-mongers".


I guess their strategy was to try and marginalize these people, but it appears to be having the exact opposite effect.


I have to hand it to the Democrats. This is the only thing that is unifying conservatives, moderates, and independents.

[ChumpDumper]

Neither party has proven competent at actual governing.

Winning elections? Somewhat.

Being the insurgent party out of power? Definitely.

[Duff McCartney]

I think I agree with Extra Stout in a few ways. But mainly the fact that I'm terrified of right-wing conservative idiots.

I have absolutely no fear of North Korea with nukes, Iran with nukes, or Al-Qaeda with nukes. They don't scare me at all...because if you look back in history people are always taken down by psychos in their own country.

Gandhi, Rabin, MLK, Kennedy, Sadat...all taken down by some of their own countrymen..not some outside threat.

I'm terrified of these psychos who want nothing but to stock up on guns and hate the government. I'm terrified of these nuts who go into townhall meetings and just start shouting shit without having an intelligent thought in their head. Rather than speaking and listening all they can do is shout as loud as they can.

It's like Morgan Freeman says in Chain Reaction..."There are many threats to our way of life...and not all of them wear uniforms and carry guns."

[Homeland Security]

Hey, I'm all about killing liberals. When do we start?

[Homeland Security]

Once we muster up the balls to make a few liberals bleed and die, they'll surrender like they always do and we'll take total power.

[Nbadan]

That type of concern obviously isn't apparent with TV shows. If he wants to go on air and incite people to kill Nancy Pelosi, he could for all I care, as long as he's not pulling the trigger or making the plans.

but that's conspiracy...and since these wing-nut organizations share resource, many times where you can't tell a teabagger from a birther, that's crimnal conspiracy under RICO...

[doobs]

I have absolutely no fear of North Korea with nukes, Iran with nukes, or Al-Qaeda with nukes.

I'm terrified of these nuts who go into townhall meetings and just start shouting shit without having an intelligent thought in their head. Rather than speaking and listening all they can do is shout as loud as they can.


Are you serious?

You're more terrified of gramps screaming at a congressman at a townhall you're not attending than you are of terrorists acquiring and detonating a nuclear weapon in a major American city?

[Homeland Security]

I honestly believe that if an 84-year-man in a wheelchair started yelling at Duff McCartney about health care, Duff would curl up into a ball and start whimpering "Please don't hurt me! Please don't hurt me!" Typical liberal pussy.

Guess what Duffy boy. We ARE coming for you.

[Duff McCartney]

Are you serious?

You're more terrified of gramps screaming at a congressman at a townhall you're not attending than you are of terrorists acquiring and detonating a nuclear weapon in a major American city?

It's not "gramps" that's screaming at town halls. It's half of America that to quote someone before me..."clings to their guns and religion."

This country is gonna be destroyed but it's not gonna be by liberals. It's gonna be by those psycho conservatives that just want their guns and by hook or by crook will do anything to get them.

Al-Qaeda are thousands of miles away...I live in Texas...these gun toting nuts are the majority of the population here. They live in my neighborhood..not in the desert of the Middle east.

[Nbadan]

:lmao

Man, seeing your beloved one tanking in the polls is just causing you to lose it. Your sounding like Chris Mathews having a temper tantrum because The One isn't doing such a great job.

Politics is politics. The game the right is playing is the same game the left played. If you want to get mad then get mad at Obama. He's the one making one political blunder after another.

What happened to organizations like Code Pink when they started shouting out anti-war rhetoric at townhall meetings or other legislator appearances? Escorted out if they were lucky, tazed if not...why aren't these anti-reform protestors being escorted out? Why aren't they being tazed?

oFZZqshdpGM

...it's not the same, nothings the same..

[Duff McCartney]

I honestly believe that if an 84-year-man in a wheelchair started yelling at Duff McCartney about health care, Duff would curl up into a ball and start whimpering "Please don't hurt me! Please don't hurt me!" Typical liberal pussy.

Guess what Duffy boy. We ARE coming for you.

I wouldn't curl up. I don't give a damn about an 84-year old man. He'll be dead in less than 20 years..while I'll still be alive. What do you think I'm gonna do? Drop kick an old man in a wheelchair? Please.

I have no reason to do anything to an old guy in a wheelchair. He has done nothing to me.

[Nbadan]

Good blog entry by Michelle Goldberg on topic...are we on track for something bigger than Oklahoma City?

Why the White Militias Are Back
by Michelle Goldberg



Outbreaks of this sort of thing often happen when conservatives are out of power. With Republicans in office, the right wing doesn’t generally mind expanding government. During the Bush years, the dominant movements on the right were neoconservatism and a nationalist evangelical Christianity that was more interested in merging with the government than overthrowing it. Now, with the Obama administration, we’re seeing the emergence of an older, perennial style of American reaction that often accompanies periods of liberal ascendancy. It is isolationist and defensive, paranoid about government, and prone to conspiracy theories about subversive global elites.

“It helps to step back and see the militias as a particular manifestation of a form of right-wing populism known as the Patriot movement,” says Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a think tank that studies the right wing. “The Patriot movement has been around a long time. Probably the best-known precursor in recent times was the John Birch Society, which was big in the '60s. They made pretty much all of the claims you’re hearing now—tyranny, income tax as socialism, the United Nations, gun control. There’s nothing new in any of this except the Obama birth-certificate stuff.”

And even that has precedents. With FDR, Berlet points out, there were rumors that his name was really Franklin Delano Rosenfeld. “The idea that aliens are secretly taking over—it’s the same narrative writ much larger {now} because of white fear.”

Race adds a particularly combustible element to the mix. “A key difference this time is that the federal government—the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy—is headed by a black man,” says the Southern Poverty Law Center report. “That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate.”

Essentially the anti-immigrant movement, the Patriot movement, and old-fashioned Dixiecrat racism are all merging. “The fast growth of the militias is troubling, but it’s in the context of something that’s more broad, and that’s in some ways more troubling,” says Levin. “This underlying stuff—whether it’s manifested at town halls, manifested on talk radio, manifested by lone wolves, it’s all part of a spectrum of the same phenomenon.”

In the past, the combination of fury, dispossession, wild suspicion, and weaponry has led to serious violence, and few who study the right wing expect things to be different this time around. “I’m not sure we’re at the same point we were right before the Oklahoma City bombing, but certainly things are continuing to heat up and could really become explosive,” says Potok.

The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-13/why-the-white-militias-are-back/full)

[doobs]

It's not "gramps" that's screaming at town halls. It's half of America that to quote someone before me..."clings to their guns and religion."

This country is gonna be destroyed but it's not gonna be by liberals. It's gonna be by those psycho conservatives that just want their guns and by hook or by crook will do anything to get them.

Al-Qaeda are thousands of miles away...I live in Texas...these gun toting nuts are the majority of the population here. They live in my neighborhood..not in the desert of the Middle east.

That's a real mature attitude.

So, to be clear, if al Qaeda gets nuclear weapons, you're not worried. Is that right?

[Duff McCartney]

That's a real mature attitude.

So, to be clear, if al Qaeda gets nuclear weapons, you're not worried. Is that right?

Yep.

[clambake]

an al-qaeda attack would unite everyone.

a redneck right-wing fuckball would incite everyone.

you understand that, right?

[doobs]

Yep.

Why wouldn't that worry you?

Give me something more than "they live thousands of miles away." The al Qaeda operatives who attacked us on 9/11 were living in the United States.

[Crookshanks]

I find it very funny that libs like Duff and others on this board are so afraid of conservatives - you know, us bitter people clinging to our God and our guns. And the libs are deathly afraid of Rush Limbaugh - that's why they can't stop talking about him.

What you should be afraid of is us taking back our government from the liberal idiots.

[ChumpDumper]

Why? Wouldn't you make everything better?

[Winehole23]

I believe we are crossing the threshold away from an America where people, despite political differences that might be very large and be expressed quite boisterously, even up to the point of ascribing intellectual and/or moral deficiency to their opponents, still assumed that others within America were interested in the common good.

I believe we are moving toward an America where people believe that other groups are malevolent and wish them harm. I don't mean a phenomenon where people just say that rhetorically as an exercise in self-righteousness. I mean a phenomenon where people really believe it. Where Red State America views Blue State America as an enemy on the order of Al-Qaeda and vice versa.

I've been saying for a while that I believe the United States of America is going to explode in an orgy of violence in our lifetimes. Most have scoffed.

Look at the state of debate here in August 2009. Now imagine 10, 20 years down the road when the debt is twice what is now, or more, and the economy has been stagnant for years.

We're going to be killing one another.

[baseline bum]

An insurrection will come from the right, not the left.

Well boutons called that one right.

[baseline bum]

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating - boutons is an ass. That article should replace every bad thing said about conservatives with the word liberals - then it would be more accurate.

Boutons is very close to going on ignore because I've just about had it with his vile and hateful postings.

So what did you loot from the Capitol, bitch?

[baseline bum]

You've been watching V...the wing-nut media is driving the wing-nuts crazy...we may need to actually start holding these guys like Beck, Hannity, and Rush accountable for some of the stuff they say on the air...

25 years of radicalizing the base to finally get a Limbaugh clone in office. Wonder if it's going to be straight fascist Nazis from here on out now that Trump has shown you can get elected on outright white supremacy.

[ElNono]

To be fair, the economy wasn't stagnant for years. While there's a lot to agree with ES post, I also don't see an orgy of violence coming.

Frankly, the Capitol attack, despite being 100% an affront to our democracy, was largely carried out by dumb people (thankfully, a more organized attack would've been much more disastrous) and generally not that many people. The fallout from it, it appears, will be swift and diligent. If that's truly the 'revolutionary movement', I don't think there's much to be afraid of. Probably being vigilant will be enough.

I think it's safe to say marxist left-wing violence in the 70s and 80s was much more violent.

[DMC]

I'm building an AR-10 6.5 Creedmoor. If that helps.

[baseline bum]

I think it's safe to say marxist left-wing violence in the 70s and 80s was much more violent.

More violent than El Paso, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, Pittsburgh, and Las Vegas?

[ElNono]

More violent than El Paso, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, Pittsburgh, and Las Vegas?

Groups that splintered from Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army certainly were just as much if not more. That included actual bombing of the Capitol, for those that don't remember.

Murder, bank robberies... that's why Republicans were desperate to associate Bill Ayers with Obama.

[baseline bum]

Groups that splintered from Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army certainly were just as much if not more. That included actual bombing of the Capitol, for those that don't remember.

Murder, bank robberies... that's why Republicans were desperate to associate Bill Ayers with Obama.

Mass shootings though?

[CosmicCowboy]

Well boutons called that one right.

Its coming from both sides. You already forget that shit last summer where they were burning their cities?

[SnakeBoy]

To be fair, the economy wasn't stagnant for years. While there's a lot to agree with ES post, I also don't see an orgy of violence coming.

Frankly, the Capitol attack, despite being 100% an affront to our democracy, was largely carried out by dumb people (thankfully, a more organized attack would've been much more disastrous) and generally not that many people. The fallout from it, it appears, will be swift and diligent. If that's truly the 'revolutionary movement', I don't think there's much to be afraid of. Probably being vigilant will be enough.

I think it's safe to say marxist left-wing violence in the 70s and 80s was much more violent.

Yeah both the summer riots and the Capitol Hill protest are pretty mild historically. I think it will take a depressed economy combined with a significant war to trigger widespread violence. China will most likely take Taiwan by force this decade so that could be the trigger.

[pgardn]

Yeah both the summer riots and the Capitol Hill protest are pretty mild historically. I think it will take a depressed economy combined with a significant war to trigger widespread violence. China will most likely take Taiwan by force this decade so that could be the trigger.

One was a riot the other was a protest... A protest in which Nationally elected officials were chased underground.

OAN snake news coming at you.

Mild in numbers, extraordinary in purpose.

you are funny snake man. if Obama had called BLM activists to raid the Capitol... no hypocrisy here.

[ElNono]

Mass shootings though?

Well, you can rank them however you want, but bombings are nothing to sneeze at.

[SnakeBoy]

One was a riot the other was a protest... A protest in which Nationally elected officials were chased underground.

OAN snake news coming at you.

Mild in numbers, extraordinary in purpose.

you are funny snake man. if Obama had called BLM activists to raid the Capitol... no hypocrisy here.

:depressed

I was trying to catch a trout but all I got was a hardhead

[pgardn]

:depressed

I was trying to catch a trout but all I got was a hardhead

You were walking through a parking lot and decided to go fishing?

Sure thing.
You can do better.
" Would you believe I was..."

[baseline bum]

Its coming from both sides. You already forget that shit last summer where they were burning their cities?

Guess I missed the Biden flags at that burnt down Minneapolis police station. I do remember the Boogaloo Bois shooting it up though. Did they have Biden hats like Nikolas Cruz?

https://i.ibb.co/ZWDVqXW/cruz.webp

[DMC]

:depressed

I was trying to catch a trout but all I got was a hardhead

I'd call him a gafftop. He leaves a slime trail and you don't want him in your boat.

[pgardn]

I'd call him a gafftop. He leaves a slime trail and you don't want him in your boat.

Just leave your boat sissy man.
Get out and wade.
"But, but, the water is too deep.."

You bet it is old man. Its tough when its over your head.

[DMC]

Just leave your boat sissy man.
Get out and wade.
"But, but, the water is too deep.."

You bet it is old man. Its tough when its over your head.

So you wade in water over your head?

[pgardn]

So you wade in water over your head?

Yes, you butt into subjects in which you have no idea what is going on.

[DMC]

Yes, you butt into subjects in which you have no idea what is going on.

It's a public forum, dipshit. Try PM if you don't like it.

[pgardn]

It's a public forum, dipshit. Try PM if you don't like it.

there’s nothing wrong with you making a fool of yourself.
keep up the good work.

people like you know exactly what I’m talking about when I call you out.
I don’t want to and I do not need to PM you.
when I say you were an editor for Time Magazine you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Do you think it matters if anybody else does, because they don’t.

you go PM yourself. Have your medical supplies ready, there will be blood

[DMC]

there’s nothing wrong with you making a fool of yourself.
keep up the good work.

people like you know exactly what I’m talking about when I call you out.
I don’t want to and I do not need to PM you.
when I say you were an editor for Time Magazine you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Do you think it matters if anybody else does, because they don’t.

you go PM yourself. Have your medical supplies ready, there will be blood

Your were compared to a trash fish.

[pgardn]

Your were compared to a trash fish.

oh my...

By someone covering with the famous trolling escape excuse.
And please don’t PM grumpa

[DMC]

oh my...

By someone covering with the famous trolling escape excuse.
And please don’t PM grumpa

Hardheads are smarter than you.

[pgardn]

Hardheads are smarter than you.

K

I trust you know.