Thoughts From The Soapbox

I am sorry if this stuff makes some of your heads explode but in my travels today I have come across many good opinions on the Arizona Incident that I agree with.

These are FACTS that have to be acknowledge by everyone, including my conservative friends who are running from their actions and rhetoric faster than an Olympic sprinter.

We can never move forward until you admit that there is a problem in your movement that has been lurking for awhile now. Those who hate have only become bolder since Obama was elected President.

YOU have the power and responsibility to disavow them and their tactics of demonetization and fear mongering. We will work with you to improve the tone of the debate but YOU have to help us and do your part. If you don't see this I have no hope that things will get better and another such incident happens in the future (and it will) YOU will be the ones to blame.

“A 2009 Homeland Security study warned that the rise of right-wing extremism could spur violent attacks. But the report was attacked by Republicans, including now-Speaker John Boehner, blunting its impact.

Two years before the Tucson massacre, the Department of Homeland Security warned in a report that right-wing extremism was on the rise and could prompt “lone wolves” to launch attacks. But the agency backed away from the report amid intense criticism from Republicans, including future House Speaker John Boehner.

The report, which warned that the crippled economy and the election of the first black president were “unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment,” described the rise of “lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology [as] the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States,” according to a copy reviewed by The Center for Public Integrity.”

What would be you response to a conservative who says the Arizona shooter couldn’t have been conservative or influenced by Sarah Palin because he read Mein Keimpf and the tea party is absolutely against Nazism and Socialism?

Socialism is advocating for putting the means of production (factories, farms, etc) in the hands of the laborers (the men and women who do the actual work) instead of in the hands of capital (the men and women who have money to invest). In the United States, Socialism has a rich history of opposing oppression, supporting workers rights and being regularly busted by government violence.

Compare this to Nazism (often dubbed with the moniker National Socialism though it has little to do with labor), which is a fascist ideology (meaning it’s authoritarian and corporatist) that includes violent nationalism and biological racism (most notably, though not limited to, antisemitism).

These two are largely unrelated, except for the few times in American history when Nazis assaulted Socialists. Glenn Beck has done a great disservice to our conception of history by disentangling Nazism with Conservatism. Look at the Nazi revival movement in the 1950’s which was a direct response to integration and desegregation movements. The “National States’ Rights Party” was an American Nazi party that was far right, and very conservative. George Lincoln Rockwell led the Nazi revival in the early sixties, and he was undeniably a far right wing fanatic. You can find example after example of American Nazis being right wing fringe fanatics- this isn’t a matter of opinion, this is verifiable, historical fact. Look at the American Nazi Party, for instance, that rails against “illegals” and repeatedly declares the United States to be a “Christian Nation”. Sound familiar?

The Tea Party isn’t unified enough to say it’s for or against anything except being for Republicans and against Democrats. It’s members are a diverse group and while I’m sure the majority of them would recoil at the name Hitler, the label Nazi and the book title Mein Kampf, many would espouse a political philosophy that are nearly indistinguishable from modern American Nazis.

In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.

“It’s my belief, though, that American political violence is a direct legacy of the American Revolution, for the patriots’ victory in that conflict proved to the American people that violence could achieve a positive end: independence and the creation of a new nation. It is a troubling, but inescapable, bequest that stems from the fact that our nation was born in violence, and it derives from the reality that violence has ever since become not only the device of criminals, but also of government and those who disagree with the government. Public officials who condone the use of torture in recent times should, by rights, give pause when they try to condemn the actions of Jared L. Loughner, Timothy McVeigh or the Unabomber. But, typically, our public servants see no contradiction, no hypocrisy, in advocating extreme political violence against our alleged enemies around the globe while condemning political violence when it is aimed against the government — or, more precisely, against them. In other words, political violence is legitimate when the government commits it; but it is appalling when individuals commit it against the government or its representatives. Political violence committed by individuals is explained by marginalizing those perpetrators as crackpots. Political violence committed by the government is justified as guaranteeing national security."

"As Tea Baggers and Right Wingers try to distance themselves from the AZ shooter, deflecting to his mental illness, what kind of people do they think they were attracting all this time?

They were not exactly at top Universities recruiting the top minds.

You attract mental lightweights, and social malcontents, who you can convince that their irrational paranoid fears are for real. You love telling them how they should feel. Programming them with coded language and doomsday memes of lost freedom and impending dystopias.

You reap what you sow."