Republicans Aren’t Hostage Takers, They’re Political Terrorists
Back in the late 1970s, Richard Pryor had a routine where he gave a rundown on the various factions he’d encountered inside prison. There were the black Muslims, he said. They were fairly rough customers. Then there were the Double Muslims. The Double Muslims, he said, “can’t wait to get to Allah, and they wanna take a bunch of muthafukkas with them.”
Pryor obviously wasn’t talking about today’s Republicans, but he was describing them better than they’ve been described anywhere. They know they’re going to bear the brunt of the blame if the government shuts down—at least some of them do, the ones who have the ability to think beyond the boundaries of their districts. And the thing is, they don’t care. As long as they can drag Obama and the Democrats down with them, dropping in the polls is fine by them. And that’s why we’re in this situation. We have here people who are participating in the democratic process, and who respect certain of its rules and practices because they know they must to attain legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the media, but who at the end of the day—and the end of the day means now—operate and act with the mentality of Pryor’s Double Muslims; which is to say, the mentality of terrorists.
It’s naive to call them anything else. What they’re doing here is not hostage taking, the most commonly used metaphor in the media. It’s political terrorism. When hostage takers see that their demands are met, they release the hostage. But what makes anyone think today’s Republicans will ever release the hostage? No—if the Democrats agree to negotiate, the demands will never stop. Every pivot point on the legislative calendar will be an opportunity to make demands without precedent in our system.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/30/republicans-aren-t-hostage-takers-they-re-political-terrorists.html
Democrats ought to point this out on the floor of both the House and the Senate. Teabagger heads are going to explode, but that's the whole point: the teabaggers can't take what they dish out.
