Onward, Christian Sulkers: Astroturf Radicalism Run Amok

"Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a
monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

--Friederich Nietzche

There's a frightened, angry mob that seems to be dominating the political discourse with threats of violence, childish outbursts, laughable allegations that our current President is Kenyan by birth or Indonesian (and, "even if he was born in Hawaii, it's not like it's really a state anyway"), as well as propagating irrational fear among the elderly that they will face "death panels" when their health care becomes to expensive.

This frightened, angry mob that I speak of is the Republican base. These were the people that John McCain tried to win over by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate--the ones who could deliver loyalty just short of insurrection, but couldn't persuade swing voters (like me) to put someone as pathetically stupid as Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the nuclear football.

Independents who did vote for Barack Obama didn't do it because he was black, because this was an historic moment in our nation's history or even because we were swayed by his inspiring life story or exciting rhetoric. We remembered the Clinton years with far too much clarity to let the Lincoln bedroom be turned into a hotel suite-cum-fundraiser for the next Clinton re-election campaign. We trusted the Democrats just about as far as we could fling them. But we'd had eight unapologetic years of conservative rule, which, for all of their talk of liberty and justice, led us into a quagmire of torture, unabashed corporate welfare and blood for oil, not to mention the greatest constitutional crisis in our nation's history. John McCain had the better health care plan. He had proven himself to be a bi-partisan leader in the Senate. He was, it appeared, a moderate. And he would be the President at this very moment, had he not abandoned his real base (i.e. independents) for the frightened, angry mob.  The Republicans earned our wrath fair and square--no small thanks to their base--and no amount of Orwellian changes to history or name calling from the right (e.g. "libby") when we didn't get down and kiss their sorry asses was going to win us over.

The Christian right for too long has viewed political power as something that belongs to them, not something they must win or earn.  Such an overwhelming sense of entitlement became a powder keg when a white-dominated patriarchal culture awoke to find a black family moving into the White House.  Glenn Beck Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News in general have lit the fuse, but they didn't pack the charge. Several witless Republican leaders have fanned the flames, illiciting cheers from the mob, but they haven't controlled or even directed its fury.  The result has been this frightened, angry mob.  I disagree with those on the left who pity the mob as "victims of right-wing propaganda"; no one put a gun to their head and forced them to surrender reason and accept madness.  Moreover, there enough self-pity in this mob to more than make up for what they neither want nor need from the bleeding hearts.  You don't pity a spoiled child.  You just keep your cool long enough to watch them explode all over the people who unleashed them on the world.

In the final analysis, Barack Obama is not blameless. As menacing as they are, the mob is the minority and needs to be told so. We gave our consent for Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress to pass whatever legislation they chose when we elected them. What we're seeing isn't buyer's remorse, but a bunch of sore losers who needed to be ignored and left to cry themselves hoarse until they accepted that there wouldn't be anymore lollypops, not coddled and told that their opinion still matters. The press that by and large ignored the usurpations of Bush until it was too late, has paid far too much attention to the electronic media-stoked astroturf radicalism, and in so doing, has welcomed the frightened, angry mob to take center stage.

This is not Brooks and Sumner. This is not Burr and Hamilton. Our problems are solved through reason, not violence or threats of violence. I have expressed my disagreement with health care reform, but I have done so in a civil manner, writing my Senators and Congressman to tell them that I didn't want it and why. The failure of the public option is bittersweet; sweet because it never addressed the real culprit, the exponential rise of health care costs, but bitter because the frightened, angry mob has now been emboldened to brandish their firearms and disrupt town hall meetings.  They held their breath and the President and the Congress let them eat dessert without first finishing their brussel sprouts.

This has all happened before and it will happen again. The events leading up to Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing were tame by comparison to the kind of political agitation of late. The militias McVeigh and Nichols cut their teeth on existed under a white President, one that was not (to my knowledge) being called the a socialist, a commy, a Nazi, and certainly not the Antichrist.

The assassinations have already begun.  The wheels are in motion and will turn until insurrection and/or domestic terror sobers the mob from its fear and anger and self-pity to realize that it has become what it hates most: the Western, Christian equivalent to Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda. Regardless, I take no pleasure in making the following prediction: the mob will grow angrier and less rational and will start killing those of us who have dared to speak out against them.  That is academic. The question is when, who, how many and what sorry excuse the murderous and morally bankrupt right will use afterward.

--AJ