Roping a Whirlwind

Politics

If anybody thought that passing the health care bill was the end of bitter discourse, they were wrong. It seems to be just one more piece of wood on a fire that is building toward more and more violence. This is not new but it has more fuel now with the fear being stoked against President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Socialists! Hate this country! and worse insults being thrown.

We saw the recent arrests of a Michigan so-called Christian militia, whose members plotted to kill a sheriff, planning to bomb his funeral with the hope it would lead to civil war in this country [Armies of Hate].

[Oath Keepers] is another of these groups but one that is encouraging subversive action. Their members are part of our military or police force but have promised to not obey the laws of the land but to stand against the government for which they are currently being paid and have promised to serve. Lies only matter when exactly?

Where is this kind of revolutionary thinking taking us? Everybody knows about Timothy McVey, is that what is wanted by the extremists? If you don't win at the polling place, you start breaking things? Do people like those in that militia have any idea what a revolution would be like, what it would mean to have neighbor shooting neighbor, what it'd be like to force the government to declare martial law? That could be what they want but what do they gain by it?

For many years on talk radio, I have heard these groups out in the back country of the West. They are almost uniformly white. They fear change and differences. They treat those who disagree with them as the enemy. They have distrusted our government to some degree for a long time, but Obama's election and now the agenda under which he was elected is even more threatening to them. I am not sure most of them even understand what that is.

Hate groups want a world that never existed. They want a world where their values are the only ones that matter. It is becoming a mania but the question has to be for how big a part of the country? They are dangerous, but they think it's people like me who are dangerous. They are the ones who burned witches in the past because of hysteria aroused in them by others who profit from what they do. Anarchy might seem pointless until you find who is behind much of it, you find out -- then it's not so much.

The recent poll of the Republican party shows that a majority of them believe President Obama is a socialist. Over half of them believe he's a Muslim and about one-quarter of them think he's the Antichrist. These are the ones who will be choosing a presidential candidate soon to run in 2012. Within them are violent subsets but all of them will be deciding what kind of person should run this country.

Extreme righties, what we call wingnuts, don't get their information where you and I do. They get it from their own sources, the ones who say what makes them comfortable. They trust emails. They trust right wing blogs. They don't trust the media other than Fox and it will be interesting to see how much Fox would be trusted if it should say they are too violent or anything they don't like. They call it roping a whirlwind when you start something but you really have no control over it.

The extreme right does not trust the educated nor anybody who walks to a different drummer. They say they fear socialism but they operate in a totalitarian mode which they would subject the country to if they got into power.

The Republican party seems to be currently embracing them and people like Sarah Palin in an attempt to regain their own power. They have left behind their conservative principles for this new philosophy that is anything but truly conservative. I think they hope to use the tea partiers but they might get a surprise.

Before he was fired, David Frum said that the Republican party thought they were using Fox News but has discovered they are instead being used by it. Republican leaders have lost control, they can barely bring themselves to condemn violence, and unless the rank and file Republicans regain that control, it's going to get worse.

The health care issue is a good example of the craziness. If you read what is in it, you find it's mostly regulating and helping people get the kind of coverage most hoped they already had. What is being proposed by Republicans besides keeping the status quo?

One example of their ideas would be letting insurance companies sell across state lines. This would take the power of insurance companies possibly even out of the United States and as with the credit card companies, let them base themselves in the Marianna Islands where they can ignore any state regulations. The Republican party thinks this is a solution, taking away from states the right to regulate their own businesses? Currently, states like Oregon often have regulations limiting where a company can sell based on counties but the party that wants less federal control would instead hand this over to the corporations?

The anger and threats being stirred up by those who actually distrust democracy is going to get worse if responsible people don't stand against it. Are there any like that in the Republican party or do those who call themselves Republicans really only care about winning and it doesn't matter how they do it?