When Wingnut BS Goes Bad [View All]

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/4/4/19227/19363

When Wingnut BS Goes Bad

by Steven D
Sat Apr 4th, 2009 at 07:02:27 PM EST

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Yep. That's right. Three police officers were ambushed by some idiot who believed this insane confabulated fever dream of a rumor that Obama was going to come in the night and take away all his bang-bang toys. It's sickening. It's disturbing. And, for the families and friends of the three dead officers it must seem like some bizarre, surreal, absurdist farce. Except, of course, that it actually happened, and they will have to bury and mourn their loved ones because a band of ignorant jackasses (and more than a few right wing opportunists) invented a story that had no basis in reality, a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, but in this case tragically signifying the needless death of three public servants paid to protect their fellow citizens.

Just like the poor innocent congregants of Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church who witnessed the murders of two of their community because a deranged individual by the name of Jim D. Adkisson, a connoisseur of right wing hatemongers like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, decided to commit a hate crime as revenge against liberals, once more we see how the inane lies and fantasies spread by of a minority of spiteful, fearful, ignorant, bigoted and small minded people have resulted in the deaths of innocents. We keep saying it can't happen here, that we will never see a movement among certain members of our society to kill fellow Americans simply because of their political beliefs or status "government employees" or immigrants, or gays, or blacks, etc. We keep saying this country is not like Cambodia, or Rwanda, or other places where mass violence has erupted because of the hateful propaganda preached by a few power mad demagogues. And yet . . .

And yet these deadly incidents keep happening. And evil media clowns like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and even politicians like Michelle Bachmann keep screaming their twisted diatribes of hate over the airwaves, ratcheting up their deceitful, mendacious and dangerous rhetoric to levels we haven't seen since the days when the Klu Klux Klan dominated vast regions of this country in the twenties and thirties. Days when lynchings were common. Nor do we need to look that far back. It was only 14 years ago, during the administration of another centrist Democratic President that we suffered the worst act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by another crazy bastard who swallowed the far right lies hook line and sinker: a bastard named Timothy McVeigh.

McVeigh's tragic attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City came at a time when right wing hate radio talk shows and the National Republicans were in full on attack mode against President Bill Clinton and the evils of "Big Guvmint." The rise of right wing militias were in full flower. A time when a white supremacist made a Jewish community center in Los Angeles a free fire zone. And this all occurred during a time of economic prosperity and relative stability. Before Fox News had fully mutated into the master manipulator and fear monger it has become today. A time before Hannity and O'Reilly were household words, and Glenn Beck was just a small time radio personality and recovering ex-alcoholic, not the self described leader of the 9/12 Project whose motto is "We Surround Them," the "them" in this case being anyone who voted for Obama, or who isn't a white, gun loving, tax hating conservative Christian.

The longer the Becks and the O'Reillys and the Hannitys and the Limbaughs and the Savages and all their little wannabe imitators continue this campaign of fear and distortion, spreading hate and lies to their audiences and anyone those gullible enough to believe every misleading canard that they screech from their media pulpits, the more incidents like the murder of these three Pittsburgh police officers by deluded and unstable individuals will continue to occur.

Their eliminationist jokes regarding the deaths of liberals and other "Un-American traitors" were never funny, but they are quickly becoming downright dangerous to our public safety. To Your safety. My safety. Our children's safety. As more and more people lose their jobs the audience for this kind of deluded, scapegoating rhetoric grows larger every day. As does the chance that the violent language of these radical right wing agitators will erupt into more and more instances of actual violence. We already know that President Obama received an unprecedented number of death threats (and several actual foiled conspiracies) before he won election. How long will it be before one of these fruitcake dittohead followers of Beck and Limbaugh and Hannity and Savage make an attempt on his life, or the lives of other prominent liberal spokespeople and/or Democratic politicians?

Downplay the danger all you want, but remember, an animal is at its most dangerous when it is wounded and cornered. We are watching the devolution of the Mighty Right Wing Wurlitzer into an engine of mass insanity, one that could lead us all down a very dark and destructive path if we are not careful and cognizant of the very real danger it represents to our democracy and to our security.