Yes, another one. First a right wing terrorist flies a plane into an IRS office. Now one attacks the Pentagon. From TPM:
The California man who opened fire last night outside the Pentagon was a property rights extremist who railed against the government's ability to "confiscate the resources of their citizens to fund schemes that need only be justified by lies and deception," and wanted to "eliminate the role of the government in education."
In a recorded manifesto called "Directions To Freedom", the audio of which he posted online in 2006, John Patrick Bedell, of Hollister, California, praised private property as "the most successful basis for structuring society that humanity has ever known."
Bedell shot two police officers last night during the rampage, before being mortally wounded himself.
"Communist and socialist governments that abolished or disregarded private property," said Bedell in the recording, "created poverty, repression and murder on a truly enormous scale." But, he continued, "Even in the United States, however, there has been a continual erosion of protection of private property justified by the belief that government is an efficient instrument for the positive direction of society."
If the American middle class collapses, the first order of the day will be assigning blame and settling scores. This is a task that the right is much better prepared to do than the left, simply because the right controls the corporate media/propaganda apparatus - and with it the social narrative and the conventional wisdom. You can bet that, instead of trying to fix problems or help ordinary people, the right will redouble its normal scapegoat patrol. This is presaged in their incessant screaming of "socialism" - in homage to obsolete "red scare" tactics - such as the Palmer Raids of the 1920s and the McCarthy witchunts of the 1950s, which really took off with the loss of China.
When the Chinese Communists declared victory in 1949, an immediate outcry asked "Who lost China?"...Senator Joe McCarthy expanded these accusations...
The irony in my not-unlikely blame-casting scenario is that the roles are now reversed. A corrupt American government is totally dependent on a lifeline of Communist Chinese loans and trade imbalances. As we shall see, America is at risk today for the same reasons Nationalist China was.
Since a group of tea bagging protestors comprised of mostly white people have the cojones to burn Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressmen Tom Perriello in effigy, I thought it would be a good idea if someone in the media would go so far as to ask these people why they don't just go all the way in their supposed "defense of freedom and liberty" and burn President Barack Obama in effigy as well. I mean, if they are really brave and all, why shouldn't they?
Michael Scheuer: "Oh sure we're going to be attacked, Brian, and it doesn't carry, and, you know, Rahm Emanuel wants an attack. He loves crisis, and crisis, the Democrats, he says, can get all of their programs through. These people simply do not care."
WTF???
And this isn't the first time Michael Scheuer has said something as horrible as this, nor is it the first time Fixed Noise has given him the air time to do so.
It's something out of a twisted wingnut fantasy: 25,000 identically-dressed, tough-looking men and a charismatic leader with a simple, strong motto (in this case, "Believe! Obey! Fight!") barge into the capital city and bully their way into a leadership role in the government. No complicated voting, no messy democracy, no stupid consensus; just a bunch of ballsy, take-charge kinda guys who know what's best for the nation and its historically-destined people - and woe unto he who disagrees with their image of what "the nation" ought to be...
And yet, like so many bizarre, terrifying, and ultimately uncivilized events, this one actually happened. Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we'll take a peek at Italy in 1922 - and if we're lucky, we'll even be able to discern how the shadowy rightists behind Santelli and the Teabaggers have moved beyond simply genuflecting before Zombie Reagan, and may now actually be trying to resurrect Benito Mussolini himself.
I am always amazed when in the company of other progressives and liberals how truly regressive and unwilling to change we can be. Diary after diary, comments by the thousands about what? How we can't, how we shouldn't and how Obama is going wrong. Well Obama hasn't gone wrong, we've just stopped listening and started grinding the same old axes. We spend too much time bashing and not enough time listening, fear and ignorance is abundant on BOTH sides of the ideological divide. Follow me below the fold for hopefully some insight into how all the fears of your worst nightmares coming true are in fact the realization of your most heartfelt dreams for this country.
Now that even the corporatist beltway elite lackey media has slowly come to recognize the inevitability of the political version of the unbeatable New England Patriots losing the big one it's time to put the intramural pissing matches aside and to start reorganizing for a shot at the true target. The Hillary Rodham-Clinton campaign now faces fourth and thirty-two, has the ball at it's own twenty yard line, is down by eight and there are sixteen seconds left in the Super Bowl. It's not exactly officially in the books yet but the fat lady is humming and the opposing team has just administered the traditional Gatorade baptism to their head coach on the sidelines.
You know what's missing on the Intertubes? (well, if you read my title the cat is already out of the bag)
Haiku written for the right wing!
For some inexplicable reason the right has not yet embraced this literary form. Maybe that's because right-wingers can't use the left half of their brains. Or is it the right half? OK, they generally don't use either half. So being a generous soul, I'm offering some haiku written from a right-wing perspective to get them started.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
