On the right, hateful words are fired like bullets - Richard Cohen

[sinkingfeeling]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/04/AR2010100403856.html

Saturday, on the bike, I listened hard: "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming. We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming. Four dead in Ohio."

But it is a story no more and so, on the bike, the full horror of it came through: My God, American soldiers had shot American college students. This was not China, not Tiananmen Square, and not Iran and the pro-democracy rallies of last year -- not any of those places. This was America, just yesterday (take my word for it) and yet it had happened. How? I thought hard and then I remembered. Bullets had killed those kids, sure -- but they were fired, in a way, from the mouths of politicians.

The governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, demonized the war protesters. They were "worse than the Brownshirts and the communist element. . . . We will use whatever force necessary to drive them out of Kent."

That was the language of that time. And now it is the language of our time. It is the language of Glenn Beck, who fetishizes about liberals and calls Barack Obama a racist. It is the language of rage that fuels too much of the Tea Party and is the sum total of gubernatorial hopeful Carl Paladino's campaign message in New York. It is all this talk about "taking back America" (from whom?) and this inchoate fury at immigrants and, of course, this raw anger at Muslims, stoked by politicians such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Lazio, the latter having lost the GOP primary to Paladino for, among other things, not being sufficiently angry. "I'm going to take them out," Paladino vowed at a Tea Party rally in Ithaca, N.Y.

I hear the song more clearly now than I ever did. It is a distant sound from our not-so-distant past, but a clear warning about our future. Four dead in Ohio. Not just a song. A lesson.

[MadMaddie]

1. It's a lesson that does not penetrate the Right and the Teabaggers

they willfully have become ignorant of history. When disaster strikes they will claim they didn't know about this history. They are truly dangerous and I stopped laughing at them along time ago. Many say ignore them and their antics......I have always said that we should not ignore them, we should pay attention to what they are saying.

My prediction is that the Repugs and the TeaPartiers will lose Nov 2nd and we will see unprecedented violence against moderates and left leaning folks in this country. They crossed the line a long time ago so it's just a matter of the right catalyst for the violence....

[snappyturtle]

3. I hope you're wrong about unprecedented violence against moderates and

left leaning folks. I just read about OP about the silent majority and hope it is correct that many are listening to the nonsense coming from the Right and the Teabaggers.

[nxylas]

8. I think most of the violence will be verbal

Having lived in South Carolina, I've met quite a few teabagger types, and they're all different people on Facebook and internet discussion boards than they are in person. They'll continue to e-mail out Youtube videos about how the scary liberals are coming to get you while being nice as pie to your face.

[RKP5637]

4. The RW is a bunch of violent thugs, as you say, waiting for the right catalyst for violence. They

are the terrorists of this country.

[Doctor_J]

5. Good

My prediction is that the Repugs and the TeaPartiers will lose Nov 2nd and we will see unprecedented violence against moderates and left leaning folks in this country.

would you rather bring it to a head, or live with this terrorism forever?

[Old and In the Way]

6. We've been treating this cancer with a cold press for 40 years.

Never fails...Republicans get in charge, they break the law. Every time, we let it slide (for the good of the country, you understand). Every time, it comes back, stronger and more corrupt then ever. I think the next time will be the last time. The forces of corporate corruption want permanent power...that'll require a lot of stupid people to vote against their best interests, a corrupted corporate media providing misinformation, a corrupted corporate polling industry that provides corrupted polling results, and corrupted corporate voting machines that can match the desired results to the predetermined narrative/outcome. The 5-4 Republican majority on SCOTUS pretty much rubber stamped out the final act of the independently owned and operated US of A.

What's needed is a full scale invasive action to save the patient...it will be rough and the it could still die, but the option of sewing it up and sending sending it home to die amongst its loved ones is not acceptable, either.

[babylonsister]

2. Rec'd. This guy isn't exactly a liberal either, so his words

seem more important to me.

[Demoiselle]

7. You're correct, he's no Liberal.

He's been pissing on Democrats for years.