An Equal and Opposite Reaction

[Joanne98]

Maybe I've been wrong all this time.

While a lot of the usual suspects on the left seemed to embrace victimhood at the hands of the Coulters, Limbaughs and Savages of the world, I always kind of dismissed the bellicose mouthpieces of the far-right as little more than Vaudevillian boobs. I looked at them as the media's equivalent of carnival barkers -- cut-rate provocateurs spouting amplified, affectedly shocking nonsense aimed at whipping their audience into a feeding frenzy while enticing new recruits into the tent by playing on their fears of liberal-agenda infestation. Sure, they were obnoxious as hell and probably deserved most of the blame for the complete erosion of civilized political discourse in this country, but in the end they were basically harmless; they'd simply stumbled upon a template for a brand of shtick sure to make them rich and it happened to involve, ironically, exploiting the lily-livered gullibility of Red State America better than anything their sworn enemies could've come up with. The best way to deal with their crap? Ignore it -- because anything else just emboldens the bullies and makes them not only increase the antagonism but laugh in your face for either not being able to "take a joke" or for failing to recognize just how powerless you are against them. Besides, I had always assumed that although plenty of people found these pompous loudmouths entertaining and bought wholly into the sentiment behind the saber-rattling, no one took them that seriously -- did they?

Somewhere along the line, I guess I forgot just who we were talking about here -- just what kind of people would listen intently to someone like Rush Limbaugh day after day and what they might be capable of.

The question, though, is this: Would some on the American far-right -- who've had it psychically drilled into them that liberals are to blame for all their ills -- be capable of murder?

What started as a mere whisper has turned into an unrelenting drone throughout the blogosphere after the shooting death of Bill Gwatney, the chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party. Gwatney was gunned down in his office at the Arkansas Democrats' HQ in Little Rock Wednesday by a man who had just been fired from his job at Target. Police say that after shooting Gwatney, 50-year-old Tim Dale Johnson led them on a high-speed chase for 30 miles; it ended with cops shooting and killing him. Although investigators are still trying to officially connect Bill Gwatney to the man who walked into a busy office and seemed to kill him in cold blood for no apparent reason, some are suggesting that the reason, in fact, is as obvious as it is disturbing -- that Johnson, a troubled loner, blamed liberal-leaning governmental politics for the loss of his job and exacted his revenge on the biggest target among Arkansas Democrats. They point to an arsenal of weapons found in Johnson's home after the shooting -- inarguably standard issue for right-wing psychopaths -- and, more disconcertingly, the fact that Wednesday's attack comes so soon after a deadly shooting inside a Tennessee church in which a gunman claimed to be out to kill the liberals who were supposedly controlling the country and preventing him from getting a job.

Is it irresponsible to question whether the two crimes are related? No. It's sort of a no-brainer to make the connection, as the shootings do seem similar and, like the police, most intellectually curious members of the public don't like coincidences. But are the crimes related? That remains to be seen; for now, absolutely not.

Which isn't stopping a vocal segment of the left from already jumping to the conclusion that these attacks on individuals whose politics take a liberal slant represent the inevitable next phase of a conservative "eliminationist" fantasy.

It's an agenda which has, admittedly, been proclaimed and perpetuated -- whether in jest or not -- by people like Limbaugh, Coulter and Savage for some time. These three and others like them have honed their talk of zero-tolerance for the people across the aisle to a knife's edge. For years, they've blanketed the airwaves, bookshelves and internet with ultra-nationalist agitprop which asserts that those who don't think like them are not simply to be argued with and voted down, they must be utterly crushed underfoot by any means necessary -- even if it involves, as Coulter once said, taking a baseball bat to them -- because they are nothing less than the enemy of the United States of America. In the words, if not actually the minds, of these seemingly fascist demagogues, liberals are as dangerous and absolute a threat to our way of life as the terrorists they supposedly coddle.

Continued>>>
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chez-pazienza/an-equal-and-opposite-rea_b_119130.html

[Waiting For Everyman]

1. There are none so blind as those who will not see

The Antichrist in the "fictionalized" Left Behind book series co-authored by Tim LeHay was called "The One". What did McCain title his recent Obama attack ad? Was McCain unaware of this "coincidence" when that title was chosen?


http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1830590,00.html (excerpt below)

The ad was the creation of Fred Davis, one of McCain's top media gurus as well as a close friend of former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and the nephew of conservative Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. It first caught the attention of Democrats familiar with the Left Behind series, a fictionalized account of the end-time that debuted in the 1990s and has sold nearly 70 million books worldwide. "The language in there is so similar to the language in the Left Behind books," says Tony Campolo, a leading progressive Evangelical speaker and author.

As the ad begins, the words "It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One" flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: "We Are God") and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, "A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we've been waiting for."
...
Two months ago, (Democratic consultant Mara) Vanderslice founded a Democratic PAC called the Matthew 25 Network and soon noticed that the negative e-mails she received from conservative Christians fell into two general topical categories: abortion, and the assertion that Obama is the Antichrist. The cataloging of similarities Obama shares with the Antichrist began nearly two years ago. But it picked up steam in February 2008 after he racked up a string of impressive primary victories. A Google search for "Obama" and "Antichrist" turns up more than 700,000 hits, including at least one blog dedicated solely to the topic. A more obscure search for "Obama" and "Nicolae Carpathia" yields a surprising 200,000 references.

It's not hard to see how some Obama haters might be tempted to make the comparison. In the Left Behind books, Carpathia is a junior Senator who speaks several languages, is beloved by people around the world and fawned over by a press corps that cannot see his evil nature, and rises to absurd prominence after delivering just one major speech. Hmmh. But serious Antichrist theorists don't stop there. Everything from Obama's left-handedness to his positive rhetoric to his appearance on the cover of this magazine has been cited as evidence of his true identity. One chain e-mail claims that the Antichrist was prophesied to be "A man in his 40s of MUSLIM descent," which would indeed sound ominous if not for the fact that the Book of Revelation was written at least 400 years before the birth of Islam.

The speculation reached a fever pitch after Obama's European trip and the Berlin speech in which he called for global unity. Conservative Christian author Hal Lindsey declared in an essay on WorldNetDaily, "Obama is correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him — a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib ... The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance." The conservative website RedState.com now sells mugs and T shirts that sport a large "O" with horns and the words "The Anti-Christ" underneath.

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What is being done by the RNC and McCain, is nothing less than an attempt to trigger a wave of Manchurian Candidates. They supply the brainwashing, and hope for the desired result.

It's like popcorn. The first two kernels just popped. Anybody who isn't very concerned about this is either extremely gullible or uninformed about what the religious right and its beliefs are like.

Why would we think that violence in movies and video games influences people, but constant violent punditry and virulent political ads doesn't? Influence is influence.

I'm very annoyed by assertions that both sides subvert the truth. Whenever that is stated, I never see an example given of Dems doing it. On the other hand, readers only know what's being referred to because Repubs doing it is so widespread. It's a glib thing to say that it's both sides, but that assertion in itself is a subversion of the truth.