When a Fox News anchor, reacting to his own network’s surging Email traffic, warns urgently on camera of a rise in hate-filled, “amped up” Americans who are “taking the extra step and getting the gun out,” maybe we should listen. He has better sources in that underground than most.
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These are the words of NY Times columnist Frank Rich, who warned in his weekend Op-Ed column that conservative extremists who have been stirring the pot of hate against President Barack Obama, are causing a dangerous emergence of violence among Americans that may have already caused the murder of abortion Dr. George Tiller, and could soon cause more reaction. (EDITOR’S NOTE: OKWASSUP! reported on a similar story HERE just prior to the November election).
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HE WRITES:
What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it’s not change you can believe in.
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This article is truly a MUST READ, and can be found IN ITS ENTIRETY HERE!
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One reader refers to the GOP “loosing the hounds of Hell upon us.” I’d like to share a bit more of that readers response: Butler Crittenden-6-14-09: “Mr. Rich, you’re being too generous about Mr. McCain using his “guts and clout to step up . . . last fall” to “penetrate the alternative reality” that hysterical pundits and supporters were spewing at that time. It was too little, too late. He selected mindless Sarah Palin as a red meat sop to his irate base, and she didn’t step forward any more than he did.Clearly there was no honeymoon, unless perhaps you mean Mr. Obama’s offering the desperate Republicans one. But their echo machine never let up, never drew a deep breath. Millions of us noticed what Camille Paglia saw. Daily Thom Hartmann and Ed Schultz have calmly pointed out a few of the righties’ newest outrages. Website galore do the same. F.A.I.R. has done so. Yet Bill O’Reilly, as mad as a hatter, spews on. Finally he may have overstepped. For those who haven’t seen his attack on Joan Walsh over the Tiller murder, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com... .Essentially what we’re seeing is the end of an institution, the death of a political party. Lingering deaths due to a slow-metastasizing cancer tend to be painful and ugly, as is that of the Republican Party. In a sense their last great hope was Colin Powell, but Cheney trashed him by sending him to the U.N. with a false report to lie us into war. As Jonathan Shell put it in the Nation (Torture and Truth), torture was used by Mr. Bush (and the neo-cons) to get the false testimony to lie us into war and then used again after the war started in an attempt to cover-up the first lies. Desperate people use ever more desperate measures. Today we’re seeing Republicans freighted at seeing the end of their party, and a super-rich class well aware that so goes the Republican Party, so go they as well.”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14rich.html?_r=1
Extremist media minions are diseased parasites, feeding off their hosts, be they right-wing, left-wing, libertarian, independent, paleo-conservative….whatever. The GOP is dying. Since most right-wingers identify with the Republican Party, they are scared sh*itless that their world _their “way of life” is dying too. Paranoid and PUFFED UP with rage and insecurity, at the very prospect of “Change” and an inability to turn back Time OR hold back the “Winds” _Haters resort to using their trademark weapon_HATE. They let lose their Hate machine just as they’ve done so many times in the past expecting to achieve their desired goals, as they have so many times in the past. BUT I believe those days, for the most part, are GONE. The “hounds of H*ll” can NOT save the Republican Party this time because:1. Everyone’s on to their Vicious and intellectually vacuous game AND…. 2. Most Americans are fed up with it. This is NOT a fight between Republicans versus Democrat. It is a struggle between the Future-vs-the Past. Past incompetency, major muck-ups and colossal failures on the part of Our government has led this nation to a very BAD place. Now Americans expect Our government to provide effective solutions going forward in the 21st century. A reader on another site expressed that_We may actually be witnessing the emergence of “a New American Revolution of ideas and common sense” I’d also add “Intelligence” to the list; a New American Revolution of ideas, common sense AND Intelligence. As the number of “haters” continue to decline, I feel that EDUCATION and diverse populations of Young people growing up together is Key to this nation’s survival. And I believe the better angels of Ourselves (the majority of Americans) will prevail.