How long before RW extremists shoot people in your city? Or, is "now not the time" to discuss this..

[nashville_brook]

The culture war has been threatening to turn violent for many years. Hate radio has manufactured thousands of sad nutters who want "to water the tree of Liberty" with the blood of people like us; people not like them.

The act of domestic terrorism at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin today, along with the Unitarian murders in Knoxville, the attack on Gabby Giffords (actually 2 attacks if you count the one to her office), the guy who tried to bomb the MLK parade in Spokane, and the American Front skinheads arrested here in Florida planning to start a "race war," were all acts intended to terrorize...us.



Following Facebook and Twitter today I see no one is terrified by these acts. We're repulsed and saddened that these people who are enabled by the Michele Bachmanns and the Sharon Angles who're calling out "foreigners" and screeching for "second amendment remedies."

We're not terrified. Instead we're sickened that our leaders have been so cowed and corrupted by the NRA that our communities are now supplied with enough arms and ammunition to sustain a violent revolution. We're tired of the excuses for not reigning in this madness.

And we're likely to see more of it, closer to home, because nothing...ever...changes. Because "now's not the time" to have the talk about guns. Because "now's not the time" to reflect on the political dimensions of these killings.


Because "now" is just too damn inconvenient...

[mucifer]

1. Here in Chicago apolitical people are shooting a lot of people.

[freshwest]

5. Which is what leads other non-political people to want to keep the RK & BR.

But I don't think grenades, automatic weapons and rocket launchers are needed for that ride home. Others may have different opinions. As I've stated before, we have a lot of cops where I live. If I need an armed person, I call 911. I paid for their guns and training.

For the areas where this is going on and has been going on for years, it's the result of degrading the social infrastructures that would give people something better and more satisfying to do. And those at the lower end of the scale are the ones who have been given the least social capital and help to eliminate the root causes of shootings.

[mucifer]

8. I just want to remind people that every 2 or 3 weeks 7 people are shot dead in Chicago.

Sometimes it's people in gangs. Sometimes it's a child sitting on her front porch hit by a stray bullet. I don't know how they can stop it from happening. This month there have been less killings than the last few months. I hope they figure something out.

[freshwest]

12. Everyone in a gang needs social services and so do their families. And the victims, but are ignored.

Allowing this to go on the way it has is like a sick form of population control. It's destructive to many who would not otherwise be involved.

The cost on the individual level is huge and unreported. Those in the gangs could be trained to do something else.

Those who have lost their children are devalued and are often those most insistent that ALL guns be removed from the country.

Those who were breadwinners for their families who get injuried or killed set off a ripple for those who counted on them.

But first, we have to get to healing those who are wounded, which includes the ones in the gangs. They are not just killing each other, which is what I think some people rationalize this as being.

Anyway, just a few thoughts.

[get the red out]

51. Agree absolutely

We really need to invest in social services, it would be far better for our country than more and bigger bombs.

[atreides1]

53. No offense

But apolitical people have been shooting people in Chicago for a long, long time...it's not unusual.

[TheCowsCameHome]

2. Look at those brave warriors.

All decked out with their steel dick-substitutes.

[Skittles]

4. they are the absolute worst kind of cowards imaginable

kin to Ted Nugent

[DirkGently]

3. Rightwingers chum the water we're all

swimming in, then shrug when the sharks show up, eyes rolling, to feed.

Violence would be the expected response if the things they keep saying we're true. If taxation was theft. If extremist foreign powers were infiltrating the government. If health reform was a Stalinist plot to euthanize your elderly relatives. If straight white Christians were being marginalized and oppressed for loving hamburgers and Jesus.

Then someone takes them at their word and sets up a rat-poisoned anti-personnel bomb on a parade route. Shoots another doctor. Slashes a gay person.

It's not their fault. It has nothing to do with either the ease of obtaining firearms or the constant drumbeat about how everyone needs to "stock up" on ammo before liberals disarm the real Americans.

And hey, look, someone spray-painted a funny sign on a chicken restaurant run by a proud bigot, so it all washes out.

Can't blame them. Who could predict all that bloody chum would attract a monster?

[nashville_brook]

42. this should be an OP...the chumming metaphor

is so apt that it's basically a description of the GOP's entire PR strategy.

[RKP5637]

65. Rightwingers today should be called out for what they are, "Domestic Terrorists." n/t

[nashville_brook]

73. cheerleaders for domestic terrorism: Bachmann, Angle, et al.

[Reasonable_Argument]

6. I don't agree with their politics

But they have every right to protest. What is it with people carrying guns that makes DU members go apoplectic? The "we came unarmed this time" signs are simply foolish though.

[DirkGently]

10. Because it's a goddamned explicit threat of violence, that's why.

[Reasonable_Argument]

13. Simply carrying a firearm doesn't show intent for anything

That's why it's legal for them to do so.

[Ikonoklast]

14. Then why did they choose this particular time and place to do so? A political gathering?

You are being disingenuous if you think they did so just to exercise their rights.

The threat is directly implied by showing up armed; if they don't get their way politically, they will resort to violence.

And the violence against those they disagree with politically or socially has been happening for some time now.

It will get worse as those that see themselves on the losing end of the political battle in this country resort to armed violence to achieve their goal of terrorizing those in opposition to them.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

48. Citizens can no longer excercise their 1st and 2nd ammendment rights simultaneously?

If the threats they make are, in your opinion, overt and explicit... why are they not being arrested for those actions (which are illegal).

[Ikonoklast]

52. They have every right to walk around with weapons.

They are well within their rights to do so.

But you are ignoring the fact that carrying a weapon to a non-violent political rally is also a demonstration, using arms as their symbol of choice.

They are conveying the message of the willingness to use the force of arms to support their political cause.

Any other excuse for that type of behavior is just that, an excuse.

[nashville_brook]

55. 2 separate things: it's legal to carry, but you're in denial if you don't see the threat.

[nashville_brook]

15. this is complete BS -- their intent is clearly to intimidate Obama and Obama supporters with threat

of being shot.

it really couldn't be any more clear.

[Zalatix]

17. And why didn't Homeland Security deal with them ASAP?

That's what I want to know.

[nashville_brook]

24. i'm actually amazed that the Florida American Front nazis were taken in before they could

carry out their plans.

it's a good question -- i'd love to know the politics of who's been able to investigate, and who hasn't.

[DirkGently]

19. Right. Just some dudes & their guns, calling Obama a commie.

They're just on their way to target practice, heh.

No one thinks that. No one ever thought that. This is exactly the issue.

[nashville_brook]

29. b/c it's all just "fun" -- why can't you let people have fun?

actual quote from gun rights fanatic.

[Downtown Hound]

20. LOL. You're not very bright, are you?

If you honestly think these people aren't threatening violence and haven't been threatening violence for years, then you are about as clueless as clueless can be.

[Reasonable_Argument]

22. Some have

These people obviously weren't or they would have been arrested.

[Downtown Hound]

26. There's a veiled threat in carrying their guns to the protest

You can bury your head in the sand and pathetically attempt to deny it, but that's all it is, a pathetic denial attempt.

[nashville_brook]

37. a not-so thinly veiled threat at that. it's actually quite blunt, and the poster's denial

doesn't ring true to me. no one can argue in good faith that those protests were anything but passive terrorism.

[DirkGently]

83. It's ugly. They snigger and ask "Whatcha 'fraid of, huh?"

Like punks standing on a street corner. Love to see the reaction if Obama walked up to the podium holding a rifle.

[TheCowsCameHome]

46. No, of course not.

It's just fashionable, and they're on the cutting edge of what's in vogue this season.

[nashville_brook]

75. Creep chic.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

36. "What is it with people carrying guns that makes DU members go apoplectic?"

Considering when Liberals protested the war the cops said we couldn't have sticks for our protest signs because they could be used as a weapon,....I'd say it's the double standard....

[nashville_brook]

43. that pretty much nails it

[socialist_n_TN]

64. I wonder what would they say if the New Black Panther Party..........

or even the old Black Panther Party or the Nation of Islam came to rallies carrying shotguns and rifles? The last time that happened in California in '68 or so, there was a quick banning of open carry.

I suspect just like in '68, they only want open carry if you're white and conservative.

[fascisthunter]

7. good question...

[Fawke Em]

9. They already have.

Knoxville, TN

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/feb/10/church-shooter-pleads-guilty-letter-released/

With what he believed to be his last pen strokes, Jim David Adkisson urged other suicidal soldiers against the “liberalism that’s destroying America” to leave their own trail of carnage behind.

“I’d like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I’ve done,” Adkisson wrote. “If life ain’t worth living anymore, don’t just kill yourself. Do something for your country before you go. Go kill liberals.”

Adkisson pleaded guilty Monday in Knox County Criminal Court to a deadly shooting rampage at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, the Kingston Pike home of what the 58-year-old Powell man deemed “ultra liberals” and “foot soldiers” for the powers-that-be in the liberal movement.

[EastTennesseeDem]

25. Same.

My cherry's been popped.

[nashville_brook]

49. dittohead suicide 'bombers'

they are losing their "black swan" status.

[Zalatix]

11. We should walk up to them, unarmed, and ask them to disarm.

Anyone want to volunteer to bell the cat?

[DonCoquixote]

16. if

If you are asking hiw long till they use covert assassins to do their dirty work, it has happened, as Gabby Giffords can tell you.
The real tipping point will be when they actually start lynching and fox gives a wink.

You think they will be content with lone wolves doing surprise shootings? Hell, these folks are planning for days when they can simply mow liberals down and pile the bodies into trenches.

[nashville_brook]

21. look no further than Trayvon Martin for FOX to wink

and look no further than your local neighborhood skinheads for the people who're planning to mow down liberals. these conditions aren't contingent. they're existent.

[DonCoquixote]

30. True, but

I mean for the time when some bunch of loons actually grabs a liberal and kills them execution style. You know they are itching for that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. It is never time to talk about this

Silly wabbit.



Actually Lemon said that on tv, it's not time.

[nashville_brook]

23. i know, i'm so inappropriate.

[DirkGently]

27. Just like raising taxes on the rich.

Can't do it when things are good, but you really can't do it when things are bad!

Tiresome, tiresome bullshit.

[nashville_brook]

34. and just like protecting reproductive rights

just f'n inconvenient. some RWer will squeal. can't have that.

[Le Taz Hot]

28. I thought about that

at Friday's protest and Chick-fil-Hate. It would be at just one of these gatherings that it would happen, too. And goddess knows this place has just as many gun-crazed idiots as anyplace else. You never know who's been listening to hate radio/tv all day, had 12 too many beers and decides to "teach them queers a lesson."

[nashville_brook]

31. it's a scenario that's bound to play out sooner than later.

and it's something that every activist has thought about.

[coalition_unwilling]

76. Not just 'thought about' but experienced in some degree. To wit, during

Operation Shocking and Awful, I was physically assaulted once (while demonstrating by myself), in the presence of eye-witnesses, mind you. On a separate occasion, I received death threats from an individual.

My wife refused to allow me to demonstrate by myself after the death threat and physical assault incidents. Of course, as yesterday's events illustrate, protesting in groups offers no absolute defense. But I would say that groups offer a significant measure of risk reduction. (Our peace vigil in Mar Vista did experience one of these souped-up monster trucks taking the curb when it took a right turn to quickly in what some of us thought was an attempt to hit one or more of us.)

[DirkGently]

84. The whole RW culture is based on the idea they need to kill their enemies.

They'll make up or inflate any fear or outrage necessary to get there. The language is the language of mortal conflict. FEMA *death*camps. Obama's *death*panels. Gays and lesbians trying to "force their lifestyle down our throats." Liberals who "hate America." Minorities and immigrants "taking American jobs." And of course, the ever-present certainty that the left in general is straining at barrier precariously held in place by the NRA, for its chance to "grab our guns." Sharia law is coming. Michelle wants to make our kids eat broccoli. An endless array of lethal threats to God, guns, Jesus, and the right to exclude gay people from marriage and women from exercising control over their reproductive organs.

They speak in this bloody hyperbole of life-and-death struggle about every day things. Taxes. Healthcare. Who's getting married.

A lot of them are playing at it, reveling in crazy rhetoric, but then they act surprised when someone acts as if what they were saying were literally true.

[RKP5637]

32. And when will hate radio/tv start to be held accountable for inciting

violence and an overthrow of the government.

[nashville_brook]

33. f'n [phone]

[jillan]

38. Michelle Bachmann comes to mind on this one.

Her ignorant followers don't know the difference between a Sikh or a Muslim - (or a muslin - just a reminder how stupid these people are!).

[RKP5637]

41. She, Palin and those like them give to them their marching orders and

fill whatever reason they might have with hatred. They cross the line from politicians to instigators of potential violence through their rhetoric. They do not heal the nation, they cause the wounds to fester, and are a cancer to society.

[nashville_brook]

54. i have a theory about why this is the case: tickling rage nuts (email spam)

In the early days of the conservative movement, Direct Mail was the ascendant means of communication. With the advent of electronic communications they adapted the apoplectic style for viral dissemination.

There's been studies of what makes a story go viral, and one of the main factors if a story inspires outrage and righteousness people the piece will get more clicks, more forwards and more attention.

So, they've adapted ALL their communications to tickle their readers' rage nuts. Rarely do you see these pols issue a statement that isn't engineered to spark outrage.

[RKP5637]

59. Yep, I agree, excellent points! Nice things often do not spark as

much attention as rage. I think the "fight or flight" response kicks in which is a strong stimulant to the psyche.

Yep, everything that comes from the republicans is, as you said, "engineered to spark outrage." That, is so sad. Seldom do you hear a well thought out intelligent approach to solutions by the republicans, what I hear, generally, is they don't have any solutions that are intelligent and fair, if, any solutions at all.

[nashville_brook]

74. this approach started in the 80s in evangelical circles -- worship turned to warfare

it's a story about as old as Christianity itself.

[RKP5637]

78. Yep, I remember that well, one could feel the shift in the nation from

'we're in this together' to 'we hate you if you're not one of us.'

[jillan]

35. It's time to make some noise. Write, call, fax your Senators & Congresspeople - especially if

you are in a red state.

They need to hear from us. We need to drown out the powerful and almighty NRA.

This is getting ridiculous.

[nashville_brook]

40. totally and completely agree. enough's enough.

it can fall on deaf ears or waste their time, it doesn't matter. the old ACT UP tagline "silence = death" can easily be applied here.

[Pacafishmate]

77. Good luck!

You will stop caring once this is not in the news. Gun owners care all the time.

[jillan]

81. Do you stalk me? thank goodness for the ignore feature.... bye!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

39. Wanna bet....

[img][/img]

.....those jeans were made in China?

[DirkGently]

44. ... In 1985, by the looks of them.

[TheCowsCameHome]

47. What makes them bulge like that?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

58. A sock.

[nashville_brook]

71. blahahaahhhaha!

[AsahinaKimi]

45. I was surprised to see

according to one website, that San Francisco has a neo nazi group here. (National Socialist Movement) One recent story popped out
recently; (http://blog.sfgate.com/abraham/2010/04/09/san-francisco-neo-nazi-girl-upsets-marina-district/) and its scary to think these people are in our back yard. But, San Francisco has many Progressive/Liberals/Democrats here, and so a counter protest would probably be over whelming. I hope no one starts shooting, but in these highly charged political days.. It would not surprise me if it did happen. I hope I am never downtown when it does!

[nashville_brook]

50. California has the most active hate groups in the country according to SPLC

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map#s=CA


it doesn't seem like northern Cali has as many as southern parts of the state, but it would seem to me that the Northern parts of the state would draw a lot of attention from these groups.

[arcane1]

79. I've seen those kooky people at the corner of Market and Montgomery

[snooper2]

56. I can't tell if that top picture is a chick or a dude

Those look like womans jeans, but there is an ever slight bulge, small chest?


Can't figure it out great camera shot

[nashville_brook]

72. the shirt also looks feminine.

[DirkGently]

85. The hips do look strangely feminine. And are those ... Jordache?!

[Kaleva]

57. Detroit has a homicide rate of about 43. Very little of that, if any, is politically motivated

[nashville_brook]

67. and?

[Kaleva]

68. Discussing your OP would have little to no impact on the vast majority of homicides.

[nashville_brook]

69. you don't have to discuss this particular OP if it's not a concern of yours.

[Kaleva]

80. It interests me but I'm under no illusion that discussing guns here will actually do anything

Those that agree with you will continue to agree with you and those that don't will continue to disagree.

[nashville_brook]

82. this isn't just about the guns

it's about making the connection between hate-spewing electeds like bachmann and the armed militias that are out there ready to gun us "libtards" down.

[Blue_Tires]

60. Way ahead of you

This area was one of the frontlines in the abortion clinic shootings and bombings 20 years ago

[nashville_brook]

70. First they shot up abortion clinics, and no one cared because it's a "women's issue,"

Then they shot up Unitarian Churches, and no one cared because who even knows a Unitarian...
Then they shot up a Sikh Temple, and no one cared because per CNN "they look a lot like Muslims"...


i'm being partly facetious and partly dead serious. this isn't acceptable.

[cali]

61. Unlikely to ever happen.

The nearest cities to me are Burlington Vermont and Montreal Canada.

I live in a village of 300 people.

[flamingdem]

62. good point! n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

63. In 2009 someone shot at my Democratic Rep's office 4 times. DU yawned, did not care

and the thread got a few wise cracks and very little else.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4125423

[nashville_brook]

66. I notice the same reaction whenever these things happen...they are no longer "black swans"

it's become all too common, which i believe is reinforcing the 'acceptability' of it for the crazies.

[RebelOne]

86. I live in the Atlanta, GA, area.

Though I am northwest of Atlanta, there are shootings and killings every day in the city of Atlanta.

[bobthedrummer]

87. K&R n/t