Friday, January 14, 2011

"A Mob Intent on Violence" and the Second Amendment Solution

Here's Bob Filner:



Yep, that describes the Republicans pretty well.

Oh, perhaps you were expecting me to say "the Tea Party"? HELL with that. The Republicans embraced the Tea Party throughout the election and continued to do so right until it became inconvenient now that they've been reminded that violent nutballs are not just volunteers, donors, and convenient campaign props but are actually violent nutballs.

Here's the thing: it doesn't matter whether the Arizona shootings were inspired by "left-wing" grievances, "right-wing" grievances, both, or neither.  Everybody has issues. Everybody has grievances. You're never going to achieve consensus. What matters is how the Republicans and their pet Teabaggers advocate the resolution of those grievances.

No, what's fucked up about the Rebaggers, what makes them dangerous, is their method of conflict resolution. They don't care about democratic activism, or rhetoric, or debate. That shit's for pansies. No, they're doing everything but out-and-out telling America that the solution is to grab a gun, the biggest clip you can find, lock 'n load, and start airing out anybody who gets in your way. Good ol' "Second Amendment solutions", as they put it.

So you get crazed mobs like this. You get people who can't accept that their chosen candidate was beaten by a filthy lieberal Jew Democrat, and who are told (according to Filner) by various psychotic right-wing blogs that "democracy has failed them" and that it's time to grab the AKs and go to town.

You get people like Loughner, who was deluded into thinking that he could resolve his grievances (real or imagined) with Rep. Giffords at the point of a gun.

You get self-described "foot soldiers" like Scott Roeder, who decides to resolve his grievances against abortion providers through first degree murder. 

You get ex-felons like Byron Williams who do their damnedest to kill every member of the ACLU and Tides Foundation that he can lay his hands on because Glenn Beck all but told him to.

And you get people like Jim David Adkisson, who slaughtered 3 people in a Unitarian church in Knoxville because "all liberals should be killed because they're ruining the country".

That's what you get when you have an entire party, an entire movement, that is built upon telling people that the only thing between them and prosperity, safety, security and happiness is firing as many rounds as they can into the Other.

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