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I’ve noticed something lately. Racism, fear, and hate are running rampant in this country.
Well, not just lately, it’s been bubbling under the surface for years — it just seems much worse and “in your face.” I would pinpoint the escalation at or about the time of the nomination of Barack Hussein Obama for the office of President of the United States. Little by little, insinuations and fear-mongering became the order of the day for some people. “He’s a Muslim!” “He’s not an American!” He’s a Socialist!!” Cue the scary music!
Recently, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to take the place of Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Judge Sotomayor has a typical American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” story — the kind we all love so well — and she’s totally qualified for a seat on the Supreme Court, having more experience than anyone currently sitting on that Court. But who cares about all that!? Apparently, she’s really a super-scary racist white-hating Mexican who wants to take away our guns! Eeeekkk!!!!
How about a little walk on the darker side of wingnuttia? Come on, I’ll hold your hand…just make sure you hold mine, ok?
Hal Turner, a white supremacist and anti-Semite internet radio talker/blogger, has been arrested for inciting violence against two Connecticut lawmakers, because they want to pass a bill changing how the Catholic Church operates in that state. Turner posted this on his blog:
“It is our intent to foment direct action against these individuals personally,” the blog stated. “These beastly government officials should be made an example of as a warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die.”
He also promised to list the home addresses of the Connecticut lawmakers. I’m thinking jail is a great place for Mr Turner right now.
Next, we have Rob Williams and Arnie States of the KRXQ radio station in Sacramento, California. These organisms (I hesitate to called them men — or human) went on a sickening rampage against gender dysphoric CHILDREN, calling them “freaks” and “idiots.” States even made the claim that if his own son put on a pair of high-heeled shoes, he would beat him with the shoes and mentally degrade him. Here’s a sample:
“I’m not open-minded once I look into sumpin'” one of the two men grunted at the beginning of the segment, their voices interchangeable. “I have every right to call you a freak and judge you on that. It makes me sick. ‘Mommy, I’m a girl trapped in a boy’s body,'” he simpered, mimicking an effeminate little boy. “I want to wear a dwess.”
It’s not good enough to shred adults they deem “effeminate” or “girly,” these two creepazoids are so inadequate that they have to go after children.
Are you still with me? Ok, let’s descend a bit further into this pit of horrors…
We find the next bunch of funsters at the website “American Life League.” No, I’m not linking to it, use the Googles.
Today they’re hosting “Protest the Pill Day ’09,” and their gimmick is that birth control kills women and doesn’t just prevent pregnancy, but causes “early abortions.” Yes, in order to protest the anniversary of the famous privacy case Griswold v. Connecticut — and coincidentally (?) the day of Dr George Tiller’s funeral — these life forms will gather at family planning clinics and pharmacies all over the country, and hold up signs that read “The Pill Kills.”
So abortion is very very bad, but don’t even think of trying to prevent that pregnancy. *sigh*
Speaking of abortion, next up is Jill Stanek (again, I’m not linking to her site). She’s just not satisfied that Dr George Tiller was slaughtered in church by an anti-choice fruitcake, she’s determined to get the two remaining doctors in this country who will perform late term abortions — by posting photos of them, their clinic addresses, and photos of their clinics on her website. I’m sure that if one of Stanek’s freak followers decides to blow away one of these doctors, she will cry “Who knew!?”
Finally, we arrive at Scott Roeder, the anti-choice “pro-life” assassin who killed Dr George Tiller in church — a doctor who provided needed therapeutic abortion services to women who wanted to have babies, but where something went wrong with the fetus or the mother.
Roeder is very upset. VERY upset. In a phone call to the AP, from the county jail where Roeder is enjoying a beating heart and regular respiration, he complained:
I haven’t been convicted of anything, and I am being treated as a criminal.
My, my, my…cry me a frickin’ river.
Roeder acted as judge, jury, and executioner against Dr Tiller, but complains about being treated like the criminal he is. I guess in his tiny murderous mind, Roeder was expecting a ticker tape parade.
When we live our lives in constant fear of “the other,” and hatred for those who do not live or think the way we do, it diminishes all of us — on an individual and societal level — and none of us will live up to our potential. There are no “winners” and “losers.” Only losers.
I weep for humanity, but I have hope. What else can I do?
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.
~Martin Luther King, Jr
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TheZoo 
Hey, wait a minute! What have you got against “Freedom of Speech”? Why do you want to violate the Reichwing ChristoFacists constitutional rights to say anything they want, regardless of the consequences?
I wonder what would happen if these whackjobs had their addresses, phone numbers and places of employment splashed all over the interwebs, with outragous, inflammatory retoric attached. I’ll bet my neighbor’s purple truck that they would scream “Violation of our Right To Privacy” long and loud, and the so-called Liberal Media would just eat it up with a spoon.
They’d be pissing their pants, mikerush, and demanding around the clock police protection — at taxpayer expense. 😆
Z, Great post!
Thanks, Paul. 😳
Excellent post, Zooey.
IMHO, the key common characteristic to all the right wing hate we see is fear, plain and simple. In and of itself, fear is not a bad thing. It is actually a necessary tool for survival. If you don’t have the sense to be afraid of something that you really should fear, you won’t live long.
The problem is that the right wing exploits fear in order to turn people against someone else. They don’t use fear to motivate people in a sensible way (such as by telling them to get out of the way of a major hurricane and showing their sincerity by helping them do that), but to frighten people into making bad political choices.
When we humans are frightened by something, we tend to act without thinking things through thoroughly. Our first instinct is to flee the danger we are told we are in. If someone runs toward you yelling “Run for your life!” odds are that you will start running first and asking questions second. It’s only when your brain starts engaging on a cognitive level that you slow down and say, “Wait a minute, I see no danger here. Why am I running?”
The right wing knows that they cannot convince people intellectually that they are right and we are wrong (primarily because it isn’t true), so they try to get people to react against liberals by telling them that we are endangering them. And because they will never have the intellectual arguments they need to win people over, they won’t bother to try. Instead, they will do what any other unoriginal capitalist would do – they use what works. So they keep trying to keep their current batch of supporters (which is shrinking by the day across all demographic groups) in a perpetual state of fear in order to turn them against our side.
And notice that they aren’t really trying to get people to support them so much as trying to get people to be against us (and, therefore, view them as the only viable alternative.) They won’t tell you why you should support them, only why you should fear us. And because they think that every choice in the world is between two, and only two, things, they assume that if you don’t support us, you’ll support them. It’s just another example of how limited and short-sighted their thinking is. Maybe “thinking” wasn’t the right word there. 😉
Again, great post, Zooey.
The problem is that the right wing exploits fear in order to turn people against someone else. They don’t use fear to motivate people in a sensible way (such as by telling them to get out of the way of a major hurricane and showing their sincerity by helping them do that), but to frighten people into making bad political choices.
They go with what works, what is the most effective way of controlling people. Using fear as a tool has proved the most effective. Not intellectually honest, but hey, it’s worked so well for them up till now.. I think more and more people are waking up to their game.
Thanks for posting this Zooey.
What Wayne said!! 🙂
Thanks.
I should have added “irrational” in front of the word “fear.”
I think of normal fear as more like “caution.”
Really good post, Z.
As for the gender dysphoric, these organisms that are trashing these children are really stupid. I don’t know the number, but many babies are born that are hermaphrodites and the parents are encouraged to choose a gender for the baby before they leave the hospital. The wise thing to do would be for the parents to wait until the child reaches puberty because that is when the hormones will determine the true gender of the child.
Thanks for putting this post together. You must have had enough. Good job.
Thanks, Cats.
I agree completely on letting children of indeterminate sex decide for themselves. Deciding for a child while they’re infants carries a 50% chance of being wrong — way too high, IMHO.
Hal Turner’s blog post that got him in trouble had these additional words that I found particularly disturbing:
“If any state attorney, police department or court thinks they’re going to get uppity with us about this; I suspect we have enough bullets to put them down too.”
This quote was in the original Hartford Courant article, but was omitted from revisions, for some reason. It was not omitted from the Crooks And Liars’ post linked in 5thestate’s story.
I thought it was pertinent that Turner managed to threaten officials from all three branches of government at the same time. Maybe he wouldn’t have been arrested if he had only threatened the legislators?
I knew I forgot something, House! Thanks for adding that quote.
I slept late today for some reason, sorry I wasn’t here earlier.
No worries, House. You must have needed it!
I wonder what would happen if these whackjobs had their addresses, phone numbers and places of employment splashed all over the interwebs,
If I recall correctly, someone dared publish Michelle Malkin’s address -she and the wingnuts became apoplectic. How dare them evil “libruls” disseminate personal, private information!?
Apparently, what is good for the goose ain’t good for the gander in wingnutland…
I used to work in the greater Sacramento area at some point, a few years ago.
Sacramento is not a small town by any means, and yet what dominates the airwaves is the conservative discourse in all of its splendor -in a Howard Stern sort of way.
The first time I ever caught the Rob, Arnie, and Dawn radio show I was in shock over the prejudice, bigotry, and flat out ignorance of the hosts -specially Rob & Arnie. Dawn seemed the only one with a little common sense.
I would sometimes tune back, whenever I felt like getting annoyed or even angry, and they never failed me. Bigoted, ignorant, racist, prejudicial, with pretensions of higher status with talks of wine parties and weekend golf games, that’s who they are.
Funny thing is, Arnie is some tattoo-laden, overweight white trash from Texas. From his descriptions of himself, he sounded like a Larry the Cable Guy look alike.
Larry the Cable Guy on the green, ready to putt? Yeah, imagine the picture… and you thought people couldn’t putt with a Budweiser Lite in their right hand….
I don’t play golf, Gregor, but I have caddied, and holding the beer is part of the job!
Jeez Zooey, I thought I was entering the depths of hell when I was researching my recent posts–but I was just dipping my toe.
Excellent, excellent post!
Most excellent and circumspect Wayne, you write:
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“IMHO, the key common characteristic to all the right wing hate we see is fear, plain and simple. In and of itself, fear is not a bad thing. It is actually a necessary tool for survival ”
I’v heard this before.from others, and used it myself, and I have come to reject that basic prototypical argument.
But the truth of the matter is somewhat buried in the final sentence of your paragraph (which seems uncharacteristically a bit confused)
“If you don’t have the sense to be afraid of something that you really should fear, you won’t live long.”
Fear is an instinct triggered by ignorance the other. Ignorance is the domain of the self absorbed and self-serving ‘reptilian’ and reactionary psyche
There’s really no excuse in this interconnected world for anyone with access to education and communications to be preponderantly fearful and reactionary all the time.
Wary.?..Certainly!
But fear is really far more of a choice than an instinct, and useful fear that serves survival should be be informed fear, not fear derived from simple ignorance, especially not ignorance that results from choosing ignorance as some 20-25% of the population seems to do. .
Thank you, 5th. There was so much more, but I couldn’t bring myself to go there.
Excellent post, Lady Z.
Finally finished finals?
Finals went well, BnF. Top marks! I’m taking a summer course now — biology.
Severe storms are on their way, so I’m shutting down. Nice to see you here! I hope things are going well in your world. 🙂
HouseofRoberts,
Heh. Good one.