Noted in Politics Daily, that all these scary guns nuts are coming down for a big rally on April 19th, which happens to be entirely associated with terrorism, and nothing else, of course. It’s just filled with scary Oath Keepers, a group who promises to throw down their government-issued arms and not follow unconstitutional orders. The horror! Because we all know that leads to bombing federal buildings:
Put this all together — saber rattlng, militia fomenting, demonizing government — and you have a brew of far-right paranoia mixed with guns. When have we seen this before? Oh yeah, Timothy McVeigh and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. And here’s the kicker: this pro-gun march will happen on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma tragedy. This is not insensitivity; it’s a message.
I’m pretty sure that was paranoia mixed with diesel fuel and fertilizer, but that’s splitting hairs to the nuts on the other side of this issue. I don’t want to detract from their condescension:
That’s right. When people are blasting the federal government as tyrannical, suggesting that government-imposed concentration camps are around the corner, encouraging people to threaten the government with force, or comparing the president to the Nazis and accusing him of being a secret Kenyan-born Muslim imposing socialism on the United States, they are setting the stage for violence. The Tea Partiers are extreme in their hatred of the Obama administration, but these gun-rights radicals are downright dangerous. They talk of insurrection — and they do have guns.
Except many of us here on this loony right fringe have been debunking and denouncing much of this fear mongering and rumor mongering. And I seem to specifically recall stipulating that we don’t start shooting people because we lose an election. I also haven’t made any secret my low opinion of Larry Pratt, who this article paints as a leader in this issue, and someone associated with neo-Nazis.
The problem I have with so many of these so-called pundits and journalists is they assume the people who believe these things are being manipulated and egged on by leadership on the right, who are clearly the masterminds behind the quackery. I suspect behind that belief is a prejudice that the people who believe these things are probably too stupid to think for themselves. These ideas clearly could not have sprung from an organic social movement of thinking people. The great irony is this kind of condescension is what’s partly responsible for a lot of this movement to begin with. If you believe these people are wrong, say why they are wrong. But give them the dignity of being able to come up with their own ideas. I agree that many of them are bad ideas, but there’s a way in our society we fight bad ideas, and it’s not what we see from the VPC or Politics Daily.
Comparing Obama to the Nazi’s!? OH NO! The horror! As if that’s never been done before….
What’s ironic is that the author himself is actually fomenting fear and paranoia.
The problem I have with so many of these so-called pundits and journalists is they assume the people who believe these things are being manipulated and egged on by leadership on the right, who are clearly the masterminds behind the quackery.
I’m going to be very slightly snarky at them, but mostly serious.
I think the reason they think like that is because that’s how they operate.
Remember the left-wing journalist mailing list that made such a furor a year or two ago? Notice how the Coffee Party and the like are all astroturf run by a few lobbyists?
They think that’s how the other side operates because it’s how they operate, and they can’t fathom a popular, spontaneous (or at least not-centrally-run, and spontaneous in origination) movement.
When one is a dedicated statist and one’s entire worldview, politically, orbits around a philosophy of central control by a technocratic elite, of course one won’t believe the other side isn’t run by a technocratic elite. That’s how things work, after all!
I agree with Sigivald on this. After all, a sheep can’t be expected to imagine life outside of a flock.
The problem I see is that it only takes one “nut” or one small group of nuts to create real problems. We’ve had assassinations in this country (the Kennedys), and attempted assassinations (Reagan), and then the Oklahoma City bombing…
The leadership only needs to reach a couple of unbalanced individuals and you could see real action instead of words. One of the quotes from the article in Human Events: “My question to everyone reading this article is this: ‘For you, as an individual, when do you draw your saber? When do you say “Yes, I am willing to rise up and overthrow an oppressive, totalitarian government?’ ”
Where does the rhetoric stop and the action begin? There are people out there who will take this seriously and they won’t care what you or anyone else has to say about “not shooting people.”
OMG ! Because the left has NEVER compared POTUS Bush to the Nazis, right? Wrong. http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/ed_schultz_the_tea_parties_are_about_race/
You just dont understand the leftists JD. It’s wrong when it’s done to their idol but it’s ok when they do it to someone else.