A Deep Breath

So I calmed down some from last week. I'm hoping other people have done the same.

Maybe some of what happened had to do with tax day. That can make anyone a little crazy.

And a little perspective always helps. Even though we might disagree on the particular points, I think most reasonable people would agree that the previous administration, like all administrations before it, made a number of grave mistakes and exceedingly poor decisions. No doubt the Obama administration will also make its share of mistakes and bad decisions. But have any of the president's actions, not even 100 days into his presidency, warranted the hysteria generated from some particular sources? Have any of his actions warranted talk of secession--veiled or otherwise?

I think not.

A few months back, some Russian guy predicted the splintering of the U.S. Why would we even contemplate rhetoric that might contribute to proving that guy right?

When the likes of Charles Johnson and David Horowitz are telling you to calm down, then maybe you're a little overexcited. That's a little like Terrell Owens suggesting you whine too much.

So a Democrat got elected. It happens. I think you can learn to live with it. A lot of people didn't like it when George W. Bush became president, but they learned to live with it. For eight years. Eight very long years.

I like protest. Protest is good. And arguing is fine. But let's keep it in-house. In the family. I have to think that, whatever our problems, in the end we're better off together than apart, however much we may dislike each other some of the time.

I share many of the frustrations of at least some of the tea party protesters. I just don't think that a "movement" hyped like Live 8 by Fox News really ought be considered organic and grass-roots, any more than say, well, Live 8. (Plus, Live 8 had Pink Floyd, so the hype was at least somewhat warranted. But I digress.) To call Barack Obama a product of the media, and then to ignore similar tactics in the promotion of Tea Bag Day or whatever it was called, is just naive.

But whatever. Get out and protest. Demand accountability and responsible behavior. I'm for all that. While I'm much happier to see one party in power than the other, I've lived long enough to know that power corrupts, and often times the only thing standing in the way of corrupt power is a fierce but loyal opposition.

They Shall Overcome

In the tragic history of oppressed peoples, perhaps no group has become more oppressed more swiftly than the white conservative.

Though they held on with a Republican president for 27 of the last 39 years (and with white moderate Southern Democrats for the other 12), with the first 100 days of the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, the floodgates have at last given way to a hegemony of racist oppression heretofore unseen in the annals of history.

They shall overcome
They shall overcome
They shall overcome some day

The first ominous sign of this oppression came in the form of a Department of Homeland Security report warning of an increase in rightwing extremism and possible recruitment of returning veterans. This is obviously a racist document that sets the stage for pogroms and perhaps even internment of white conservatives.

To begin with, there is obviously no such thing as rightwing extremism. Some will cite the example of Timothy McVeigh, a Desert Storm veteran who blew up a federal building and killed 186 men, women, and children because taxes were too high and the government was becoming socialist. But one single example does not a movement make.

Then the craven leftists will cite Eric Rudolph, who while in the U.S. Army attended the Air Assault School at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, attaining the rank of Specialist/E-4. Rudolph went on to set off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics, killing two and wounding 111. Rudolph also bombed abortion clinics in Atlanta and my hometown of Birmingham, killing one and critically injuring another, and injuring five by setting off a bomb outside an Atlanta gay bar. But again, that's just a single example.

Then there are 7 murders of abortion providers between 1993 and 1998. But that was a lifetime ago!

Then there's James Adkisson, who in 2008 killed two in an assault on Knoxville, Tennessee, Unitarian church because "liberals are a pest like termites," and Richard Poplawski who just weeks ago killed three Pittsburgh police officers and apparently harbored fears that President Obama and the federal government were coming to take aways his guns.

Again, single examples don't prove anything.

Oh, deep in their hearts
They do believe
They shall overcome some day

Yes, there's a 2008 FBI report about recruitment of military veterans into rightwing extremist groups, but we all know how the FBI has long been a haven for communists.

And yes, there was a report about leftwing extremism issued by the Obama administration in January, but all that did was make the leftwing extremists look "hip" and "cool" by talking about how they were really sharp with computers. We see what's going on.

We should be thankful that there are patriots like Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck, champions in the fight against racism and oppression. The amateur citizen historian Malkin published a non-peer-reviewed book in 2004 entitled In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror, featuring a Japanese American and 9/11 bomber Mohammed Atta on the cover. In it, Malkin helpfully explains to us why the interning of people based on their ethnicity is sometimes necessary. But it's a gross perversion of Malkin's thesis to use it to justify the internment of white people, which the Obama administration is clearly planning.

And the patriot Beck, now recovered from his ass surgery and moved to tears about President Obama's choco-fascist takeover of all we hold dear, warned months ago about what might come:



They'll walk hand in hand
They'll walk hand in hand
They'll walk hand in hand some day

So when faced with a government that wants to take all the money from hardworking white conservatives, and then ultimately intern them because of trumped-up fears of non-existent "rightwing extremism," how should conservatives respond?

Why, by peacefully protesting, like these patriots did on Teabagging Day:







Here's a young patriot, wise beyond her years:



And here's a wonderful quote from a teabagger and great American:

"I love my country and I don't like what's going on," Smith said. "Government -- to be honest with you, and this will probably be misquoted, but on 9/11, I think they hit the wrong building. They should have gone into the Capitol building, hit out, knocked out both sides of the aisle, we'd start from scratch, we'd be better off today." I pointed out that "they" did try to hit the Capitol. "Yeah, I know, they missed," he said. "The wrong sequence. If someone had to go, it should have been the Capitol building. On that day I felt differently, but today that's the way I feel."

Oh, deep in their hearts
They do believe
They shall overcome some day

And if the peaceful, loving protests don't work? We'll then maybe it's time to . . .



Time to . . .



Time to . . .



Now at other times, in other places, the parties involved might be urged to give up such hostile talk and work for peace. But these aren't brown people we're talking about.

They shall all be free
They shall all be free
They shall all be free some day

Of course there will always be communist America-haters like Jon Stewart who weakly attempt to point out hypocrisy on the part of Fox News and other conservative entities regarding protests against government:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Nationwide Tax Protests
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

What the lover of fascism and racism Stewart obviously doesn't understand is that righteousness always trumps hypocrisy. Why don't you move to China, Stewart?

Don't fall for the likes of David Frum, David Horowitz, or Charles Johnson. They have obviously gone over to the enemy, and have lost all perspective about the coming apocalypse! Perhaps they have been sipping a few too many martinis and nibbling on a few too many cocktail wienies to see the oppression of the white conservative.

There are, of course, some long-term benefits to oppression. I'm thinking of art. Just think of only a few of the cultural contributions to arise from slavery of, and bigotry against, African Americans: blues, jazz, gospel, R&B, rock and roll, Native Son, Invisible Man, Beloved. I don't think Ted Nugent, the poetry of Glenn Beck, and The Turner Diaries quite measure up--time to get to work!

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

Just a Good Patriotic American

From Salon:

Another seemingly sedate protester, Brian Smith, a marketer from Greenville, S.C., who was in Washington on business and came by the rally, wandered equally off message. "I love my country and I don't like what's going on," Smith said. "Government -- to be honest with you, and this will probably be misquoted, but on 9/11, I think they hit the wrong building. They should have gone into the Capitol building, hit out, knocked out both sides of the aisle, we'd start from scratch, we'd be better off today." I pointed out that "they" did try to hit the Capitol. "Yeah, I know, they missed," he said. "The wrong sequence. If someone had to go, it should have been the Capitol building. On that day I felt differently, but today that's the way I feel."

But he loves his country.

About Those Tea Bags . . .

So the right wing nutjobs, whipped into a frenzy by their corporatocratic handlers, are piqued about all the teabagging jokes.

You know, it's just those Muslim-homosexual-socialist-liberal pre-verts and their dirty minds, trying to demean a sacred re-enactment of that great moment in American history, Boston Tea Party.

Thing is though, the teabaggers deserve it. And one of the reasons why is that their great symbol, the tea bag, has nothing to do with the Boston Tea Party.

I thought I remembered from my high school American history class that protesters in 1773 threw chests of tea into Boston harbor, not chests of tea bags. But hey, that class was over 20 years ago, back when I was thinking about girls and where we were going to get booze for the weekend, so maybe I remembered wrong.

Nope. Colonists dumped chests full of loose-leaf tea into the harbor. Here's some info on one of the surviving chests.

Tea bags weren't invented until 1903.

So as I see it you have no reason to complain about teabagging jokes if you're all about tea bags and there weren't any at the Boston Tea Party. It's as if there were once something called the Philadelphia Tuba Party, in which angry Philadelphians threw imported tubas into the sea, you emulated it by dumping not tubas but another member of the brass family, and then got mad when everyone made rusty trombone jokes.

"But it's a symbol!!! It's symbolic!!!"

As George Carlin said, I prefer to leave symbols to the "symbol-minded."

And that's why the symbol-minded right wing teabaggers deserve all the teabag jokes they get.

Thought for the Day

A comment I found at HuffingtonPost:

If Obamas teenage daughter had been knocked up by her black boyfriend, and Obama had paraded the young unwed couple up on stage at the Democratic Convention, the media would have decried the moral lapses, cultural depravity, baby daddy, etc.

If the black boyfriend's Mom was then busted for drugs, the couple split, and the teenage boyfriend went on TV to talk about sharing a bedroom and lack of condoms, Faux News would have to start a whole new network just so they could dedicate 24/7 coverage to it. GOP members would be mugging for the cameras and rending their garments over the the fall of our Christian Civilization.

But when it's Palin's family, silence. Hannity? O'Reilly? Rush? Cantor? Newt? Where are these guys?

I tried to think of something to add, but he pretty much says it all.