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Waiting For the Other Shoe To Drop

Over the course of President Obama’s presidency I have been watching the right’s reaction to having Barack Obama as the president, as their president, and it was clear from the moment that he won the general election they were not taking it well.  For a long time I have been chalking it up to many things, but mainly that the right are very bad losers, but I knew in my heart that there is more to it than that.

Since Obama won the election I have been watching the right over react, first it was with running out and buying guns and ammunition with the false fear that, “Obama is going to take our guns.”  It does not matter that he never said he wanted gun control or to take away guns from Americans, but there was a rush on guns and ammo to the point that an ammo shortage was created.

Since Obama won I have watched his former rival in the presidential contest continue her pattern of playing the victim and blaming everyone else for it.  She started her sermon “Obama is a Marxist/Terrorist/you’re a victim because of him (and later added Speakers Pelosi and Reed) and because I tell you are” in the campaign and has not stopped.  I watched her quit her governorship and launch a career based on nothing more than continuing those speeches, which is like throwing gasoline onto the fire of a very frightened and angry right wing.  She likes to use a lot of fear, and self righteous rhetoric to attack Obama with.  She likes to use violent imagery when talking about Obama and our speakers of both houses, plus the Democratic majority.  She is fueling hate and making a living at it, at the expense of Obama and more than half the people in America who voted him.

Since Obama won I have watched FOX News go on 24/7/365 days a year campaign, we are going to do whatever it takes to make Obama a one term president, even it means fabricating stories and outright lying about him.   I have watched the ant crawlers at the bottom of the screen “promoting” a special show “Obama A One Term President” for hours at a time.   I have witnessed FOX News become the Tea Party Channel.

I have watched the rise of the right visa vie the Tea Party and have listened to their use of terms like “liberty,” “freedom,” “tyrant,” “tyranny”, and other words from the American Revolution, which somehow makes them the final authority on it.  I have listened to them speak as if they are the only ones who know what freedom is and that they feel they need to “restore America to their brand of freedom” not realizing that they are contradicting themselves.  I listen to them speak for our Founding Fathers as if they are channeling them.  I listen to them warp the message and meaning of the Era of Good Feelings when myths were created about our Founding Fathers, the Enlightenment, and the Revolution that were designed to keep a new country together because we had no history.  But, unlike that time period that was steeped in nationalism, I only hear the Tea Party’s exaggerated jingoism.

Since Obama won the election I see people taking guns to Tea Party rallies, or signs that read “did not bring their gun – this time.”  I hear their calls of Marxist, of Socialist, of Fascist, of “liberal,” and I hear their hyperbolic anti-government message.

Since Obama won the election I have heard Tea Party organizers call for the hanging of a congresswoman in the state of Washington because they do not like her politics.  I have witnessed Sarah Palin become their unofficial leader and tell them to “not to retreat, reload” and put rifle crosshairs over congressional districts of Democrats who she wants to see get defeated in the mid-term elections.  I see Teabaggers deny they are not inciting violence; it is a “political revolution,” or “voting”.  I see the Tea Party trying to hijack the Republican Party and evict moderate Republicans, because they do not represent real conservative values, aka “RINOS”, people who are Republican in Name Only from the Republican Party.  I see the Tea Party trying to force their political philosophy on to a legitimate political party and send everyone who does not embrace their beliefs packing, so much for a big tent party, so much for freedom.

Since Obama won the election I have seen the Tea Party penetrate one state government, Oklahoma, wanting to start a state militia to protect themselves from the Federal government’s intrusion into a state’s sovereignty.  It was that morning not so long ago that when it all started sinking in, the over the top out of control, the far right are going over the edge.  Not only are they sending messages, intended or not, that they want violence, but wanting to start a state militia for the previously mentioned reason smacked of violent civil war, or something that over the edge and extreme because the far right lost the general election by a sound margin one night early in November of 2008 and that man and both of the houses are doing what the majority voted them into to do that night.  It began to sink in that they are unable to accept that simple truth and because of this things are going to end, and end badly.

Then it happened, and then I was reminded by former president Clinton today about:

Bill Clinton Wolf Blitzer Interview (video)

Clinton Warns Against Violent Anti-Government Attitude

Former President Bill Clinton said he sees parallels in the mood of the country now and on April 19, 1995, when the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City killed 168 people while he was in the White House.

“There’s the same kind of economic and social upheaval now,” the former president told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview to air on Friday on “The Situation Room.”

“Then you had the rise of extremist voices on talk radio. Here you have a billion Internet sites,” Clinton said.

And while the hard-core, anti-government radicals are still a minority, “they can communicate with each other much faster and much better than they did before. The main thing that bothered us since the time of Oklahoma City was that already there was enough use of the Internet that if you knew how to find a Web site – and not everybody even had a computer back then, but if you knew how to find it, you could learn, for example, how to make a bomb.”

“Now everybody has got a computer, Web sites are easily accessible. And you can be highly selective and spend all of your time with people that are, you know, kind of out there with you,” he continued.

Clinton said the Oklahoma City bombing – then the worst terror attack in U.S. history – was the “last in a series of very high-profile violent encounters” during the 1990s between anti-government activists and authorities.

Clinton said that the country is better protected to prevent such an attack now than it was then but when asked if the anti-government mood now is more intense than in the 1990s, Clinton said, “Now there are all of these groups, you know, saying things like the current political debate is just a prelude to civil war, all of that kind of stuff.”

In an interview with the New York Times on Friday, Clinton warned of the affect that angry political rhetoric might have on anti-government radicals like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, pointing to Rep. Michele Bachmann calling the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress “the gangster government” in speaking to a tax day Tea Party rally on Thursday.

“They are not gangsters,” Clinton told the newspaper. “They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do.”

Clinton said demonizing the government with incendiary language can have effects beyond just rallying a crowd.

“There can be real consequences when what you say animates people who do things you would never do,” Clinton told the newspaper – pointing out that McVeigh and his conspirators “were profoundly alienated, disconnected people who bought into this militant antigovernment line.”

But Clinton said he didn’t want to draw too tight of an analogy between then and now. And that it’s not his intent to stifle criticism of government.

“I’m not interested in gagging anybody. I actually love this political debate,” Clinton said.

“Most of the Tea Party people, though, are explicitly political. You’ve got to give that now,” he said. “Forget about whether we disagree with them or not. It’s really important to be able to criticize your government and criticize elected officials. That doesn’t bother me.”

“Most of them have been well within bounds,” Clinton also said. “And they’re harsh but limited criticism, in other words, they’re not advocating violence or encouraging other people to do it.”

“But I just think that we have to be careful,” the former president added. “We’ve been down this road on more than one occasion before. We don’t want to go down it again.”

It is like waiting for other shoe to drop.  It is like waiting for the far right to explode, only this time bigger.

Tea Party Attracts National Attention

Oklahoma Tea Parties and Lawmakers Envision Militia