Palins hit list was over 50% Effective

Palin Hit List Shows Pattern of Successful Targeting for Terror

Palin’s hit list involved 20 Democrats who voted yes for healthcare. The Republicans ran on repealing healthcare in the 2010 elections. The Republicans also spent the last two years rabble rousing over healthcare reform. The legal definition of terrorism is: “Terrorist involves the systematic use of terror or violence to achieve political goals. The targets of terrorism include government officials, identified individuals or groups, and innocent bystanders.” Terrorism involves acts by subversives, acts of annihilation, criminal acts, demolition, destruction, extermination, fanaticism, revolution, terrorist act, or tyranny. The
political goal of the Republicans is to keep the Obama administration from reversing the last 20 years of loose oversight over corporations. In order to accomplish this, the Koch brothers funded the Tea Party and set their foot soldiers into motion. Obstructing healthcare reform was their first goal and the Koch brothers would tell you that this is because they are free market liberty ideologues (ironically, healthcare reform uses free market principle of competition among private entities to achieve its goal but it also involves stronger regulations and this is what the corporatists feel they must fight).

Historically, ideology has motivated Middle Eastern terrorist regimes, where religious fundamentalism is now combined with secular opposition as a source of violence. This sounds frighteningly like the merger of the hard Dominionist New Apostle Reform fundamentalist Christians (Palin) with the far right Tea Party. An important psychological component of terrorism is the symbolism behind it, and hence the targets of terrorism are symbols of the state (your elected representatives) or of social norms (civility, not showing up with assault weapons at a townhall meeting) and structure (townhall meetings, meet and greet with your representative). Thorton defined terrorism thusly: “In an internal war situation, terror is a symbolic act designed to influence political behavior by extranormal means, entailing the use or threat of violence. And that’s the real point – the threat of violence is enough because terrorism works on the psychology of the targets. It’s a form of extreme political behavior and its effectiveness in influencing political events depends on arousing emotions. Does this sound familiar? Recall the fear of the townhall meetings, the outrage when the average citizen couldn’t be heard, the outrage over Palin’s hit list, Bachmann’s call to raise arms against this government and Angle’s second amendment remedies. Recall how we adopted to this behavior, subtly adjusting our expectations and reactions so as not to provoke the beast. In order for political terrorism to be successful, the target audience must feel psychologically threatened.

The target audience would be the majority of Americans and our elected officials. And this is why as we try to hold these folks accountable for their actions, we’re getting nothing but push back, further fanaticism and deliberate invoking of our outrage with their staunch denials of responsibility. They know how to control the reaction. If they keep mounting and escalating their offense, it will keep us hopping from one crisis to the next without our ever being able to adequately deal with any of them. This is a common tactic used by anyone employing psychological terror in order to effect control. Terrorism requires more than the lone gunman. Effective political terrorism involves leaders and a network of supporters. Studies show that leaders of terrorists regimes are often what we refer to as the narcissistic personality type, people with the charisma to make violent behavior seem attractive and who fail to take or feel responsibility for their actions. This can combine with what is termed neurotic hostility, which involves a sensitivity to criticism and a deeply suspicious, aggressive nature. The network of supporters take on the tasks of public relations, fund raising, and propaganda in addition to the actual perpetrators of the violence. It could be suggested that the Republican Party leaders mounted the public relations campaign against healthcare reform using violent rhetoric and inaccurate characterizations of the bill (with the larger target being to disrupt and disempower the Obama administration), funded by the Koch brothers who propped up the Tea Party foot soldiers “grass roots movement”, while Fox News provided the propaganda necessary to form the complete network in order to create the climate for political terrorism.

A perfect example of this would be the successful systemic disruption of townhall meetings by Tea Party foot soldiers, which resulted in the political goal of creating chaos and fear. Lawmakers were afraid to vote for it and citizens were afraid to go speak to their representatives. While healthcare miraculously got passed even after months of political threats and violence, a part of the terrorist’s mission was accomplished. The lawmakers were now afraid of the Tea Party. Note that the mainstream media was complicit in this effort as it took the media a long time to begin to identify that perhaps the Tea Party was not a grassroots movement of angry people but rather a well-funded astroturfed missile aimed at healthcare reform by financial interests.

http://www.politicususa.com/