Outraged Republicans: 0
![quickhits:
If the Right Doesn’t Like Being Suspected of Terrorism, They Should Stop Talking Like Terrorists. I’m not sure how to start this one, but I know where I want to go with it. So let’s just jump right in.
Associated Press: FBI officials said Monday they foiled a terrorist attack being planned in a small western Minnesota town, but they offered no details about the exact targets of the attack _ or the motive of the man accused of having a cache of explosives and weapons in a mobile home. The FBI said “the lives of several local residents were potentially saved” with the arrest of Buford Rogers, 24, who made his first appearance Monday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Rogers, of Montevideo, was arrested Friday after authorities searched a mobile home he’s associated with and found Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and firearms, according to a court affidavit.
ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports via Twitter that the FBI told him Buford is a “militia type” — meaning one of those rightwing extremist domestic terrorists we’ve all been assured are imaginary. And that’s enough to trigger a whine from the right. The wingnut blog Jammie Wearing Fool would like to inform you that the real victim here is the Tea Party:
We’re just applying the mainstream media standard for reportage here. C’mon, a guy name Buford with a so-called assault rifle living in a trailer park? Why he has to be a tea party guy, right? He meets every possible stereotype. Of course we have no evidence to support that assertion, but that hasn’t stopped the left from wild speculation any time there’s a terror incident or mass shooting.
Yeah, no evidence of terrorism — other than the FBI saying they’ve stopped a terrorist attack. How completely irresponsible of the lamestream media to repeat the things they’re told by law enforcement. No one’s actually saying the guy’s Tea Party, they’re saying he’s a rightwing nutjob. Granted, those would seem to be the same thing at first glance — and most often are — but it’s possible to be one without being the other. Think vanilla and French vanilla. But how whiny is it that JWF feels the need to jump right in immediately and proclaim media victimhood? This seems a bit like a hangover from the Boston bombing. When news of that broke, a lot of people — responsibly, if you ask me — warned not to jump to conclusions. It could’ve been an Islamic terrorist or could’ve been a rightwing extremist; we didn’t know. And that was all it took.The rightwing blogosphere went nuts with victim cards. It turned out that acknowledging the very real possibility that the bombing was the work of a rightwinger was verboten by wingnut political correctness. And now they’re getting into niggling and pointless little distinctions; yes, the would-be mass-murderer was likely a rightwing fanatic — but don’t you dare say he was part of the Tea Party! Because… Well, I’m not sure about the because. Just because. Consider how silly this all is. Imagine that this was the first rightwing domestic terrorist ever. Imagine that such an animal had never been seen in the wild before. But imagine the Republican Party and the Tea Party were exactly the same. They’ve been openly hostile to the very idea of government. They’ve been obsessed with guns and the need for the ability to kill members of the police, military, and government (what do you think “fighting tyranny” would actually look like, after all?). And, while talking about the need to kill tyrants, they also accuse everything they don’t agree with of being “tyranny.” For chrissakes, curly fluorescent lightbulbs are supposedly tyranny. So you’ve got people who hate government and want to kill tyrants. And these are the same people who see tyranny under every rock. Polling shows that nearly half of all Republican voters think armed revolution “might be necessary” in the near future. A reasonable person wouldn’t be out of line to wonder when all this tyrant-fighting was going to start and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think it could be any second now. And when they hear about a terrorist attack with an unknown motive, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if maybe all this tyrant-killing has finally gotten under way. In other words; if you don’t want people to assume you’re a terrorist, don’t spend most of your time talking like a goddam terrorist. If you’re spending a lot of time talking about going to war with the American government and murdering and assassinating your fellow Americans, don’t whine when people assume you’re serious. And now that some rightwing nutjob is almost certainly an honest-to-goodness, for-real terrorist, we’ve got the right whining that Buford is not being classified as the correct kind of rightwing nutjob. Maybe it might be a good time to give it a rest, OK? Maybe turn off the victim machine for a bit, because it’s finally blown a logical gasket. But if being called a terrorist bothers the right so much, maybe using a threat to use deadly violence any second now as a mantra isn’t the best way to approach politics. Maybe the best way to avoid being accused of terrorism is to stop talking like you’re a terrorist. -Wisco [photo via HowieInSeattle]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/744feae686c3997a49d7132978b7e379/tumblr_mmfq9q1UeK1qfengno1_500.jpg)
If the Right Doesn’t Like Being Suspected of Terrorism, They Should Stop Talking Like Terrorists.
I’m not sure how to start this one, but I know where I want to go with it. So let’s just jump right in.Associated Press: FBI officials said Monday they foiled a terrorist attack being planned in a small western Minnesota town, but they offered no details about the exact targets of the attack _ or the motive of the man accused of having a cache of explosives and weapons in a mobile home.
The FBI said “the lives of several local residents were potentially saved” with the arrest of Buford Rogers, 24, who made his first appearance Monday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Rogers, of Montevideo, was arrested Friday after authorities searched a mobile home he’s associated with and found Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and firearms, according to a court affidavit.
ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports via Twitter that the FBI told him Buford is a “militia type” — meaning one of those rightwing extremist domestic terrorists we’ve all been assured are imaginary. And that’s enough to trigger a whine from the right. The wingnut blog Jammie Wearing Fool would like to inform you that the real victim here is the Tea Party:We’re just applying the mainstream media standard for reportage here. C’mon, a guy name Buford with a so-called assault rifle living in a trailer park? Why he has to be a tea party guy, right? He meets every possible stereotype. Of course we have no evidence to support that assertion, but that hasn’t stopped the left from wild speculation any time there’s a terror incident or mass shooting.Yeah, no evidence of terrorism — other than the FBI saying they’ve stopped a terrorist attack. How completely irresponsible of the lamestream media to repeat the things they’re told by law enforcement. No one’s actually saying the guy’s Tea Party, they’re saying he’s a rightwing nutjob. Granted, those would seem to be the same thing at first glance — and most often are — but it’s possible to be one without being the other. Think vanilla and French vanilla.
But how whiny is it that JWF feels the need to jump right in immediately and proclaim media victimhood? This seems a bit like a hangover from the Boston bombing. When news of that broke, a lot of people — responsibly, if you ask me — warned not to jump to conclusions. It could’ve been an Islamic terrorist or could’ve been a rightwing extremist; we didn’t know.
And that was all it took.The rightwing blogosphere went nuts with victim cards. It turned out that acknowledging the very real possibility that the bombing was the work of a rightwinger was verboten by wingnut political correctness. And now they’re getting into niggling and pointless little distinctions; yes, the would-be mass-murderer was likely a rightwing fanatic — but don’t you dare say he was part of the Tea Party!
Because… Well, I’m not sure about the because. Just because.
Consider how silly this all is. Imagine that this was the first rightwing domestic terrorist ever. Imagine that such an animal had never been seen in the wild before. But imagine the Republican Party and the Tea Party were exactly the same. They’ve been openly hostile to the very idea of government. They’ve been obsessed with guns and the need for the ability to kill members of the police, military, and government (what do you think “fighting tyranny” would actually look like, after all?). And, while talking about the need to kill tyrants, they also accuse everything they don’t agree with of being “tyranny.” For chrissakes, curly fluorescent lightbulbs are supposedly tyranny.
So you’ve got people who hate government and want to kill tyrants. And these are the same people who see tyranny under every rock. Polling shows that nearly half of all Republican voters think armed revolution “might be necessary” in the near future. A reasonable person wouldn’t be out of line to wonder when all this tyrant-fighting was going to start and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think it could be any second now. And when they hear about a terrorist attack with an unknown motive, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if maybe all this tyrant-killing has finally gotten under way.
In other words; if you don’t want people to assume you’re a terrorist, don’t spend most of your time talking like a goddam terrorist. If you’re spending a lot of time talking about going to war with the American government and murdering and assassinating your fellow Americans, don’t whine when people assume you’re serious. And now that some rightwing nutjob is almost certainly an honest-to-goodness, for-real terrorist, we’ve got the right whining that Buford is not being classified as the correct kind of rightwing nutjob. Maybe it might be a good time to give it a rest, OK? Maybe turn off the victim machine for a bit, because it’s finally blown a logical gasket.
But if being called a terrorist bothers the right so much, maybe using a threat to use deadly violence any second now as a mantra isn’t the best way to approach politics. Maybe the best way to avoid being accused of terrorism is to stop talking like you’re a terrorist.
-Wisco
[photo via HowieInSeattle]
Still, what they don’t realize is that they are making a larger gamble. They are playing with the future of the Republican Party. Yes, while some democrats are to be blamed, this is overwhelmingly a GOP issue. The Republicans are not getting closer to the mainstream, they are not getting closer to responsible governance, they are not getting nearer to making pragmatic steps toward more centrist policies. And with each step they take further down that road, especially at this point, after this last election, the alienation factor only grows that much stronger. And so while they may win individual battles, and retain their individual seats, they are losing the collective war. They are ignoring so much of what America is today, shredding their national contract with so many in this nation, and climbing that much more deeply into the bed with a few. And I sit back and watch this unfold, and I think: Don’t they know this is killing their party? I know I spend more time in progressive circles, and that colors perception, but as Dylan said, you don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing. The social conservative wing of the Republican Party is riding the momentum of past culture war victories but that momentum is fading fast. And however much that may not seem true in the backstreets of Bozeman, or the deserts of Arizona or the Bible Belt sensibilities of my own home state of Oklahoman, it is true. The generations are a’ changin. The baby boomers are moving on. The country is evolving. These may be real victories for the NRA and real victories for the Senators who will keep their seats, but for the Republican party as a whole this is a pyrrhic victory, and one drenched in the worst kind of compromise, survival for nothing but its own sake. We need a healthy Republican party, one that champions meritocracy and individual achievement, our religious heritage and civic duty, genuinely free markets and open societies, freedom and restrained, accountable government. But that seems more of a fantasy than ever. The people who voted against what seemed to be such a reasonable, sensible bill are doubling down on the past. And doubling down on death.
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| — | Doubling Down on Guns (via azspot) |
Reaganomics started the assualt on the middle class. W Bush’s ‘ownership society’ pushed on-your-own extremism. The current teabilly Right Wing wants austerity over social welfare reflexively. Thirty years of conservative failure propped up by corporate dollars and billionaire donors. Let’s change things in 2014.
If [Senator] Portman can turn around on one issue once he realizes how it touches his family personally, shouldn’t he take some time to think about how he might feel about other issues that don’t happen to touch him personally? Obviously the answers to complicated public policy questions don’t just directly fall out of the emotion of compassion. But what Portman is telling us here is that on this one issue, his previous position was driven by a lack of compassion and empathy. Once he looked at the issue through his son’s eyes, he realized he was wrong. Shouldn’t that lead to some broader soul-searching? Is it just a coincidence that his son is gay, and also gay rights is the one issue on which a lack of empathy was leading him astray? That, it seems to me, would be a pretty remarkable coincidence. The great challenge for a senator isn’t to go to Washington and represent the problems of his own family. It’s to try to obtain the intellectual and moral perspective necessary to represent the problems of the people who don’t have direct access to the corridors of power.
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| — | Matt Yglesias (via ericmortensen) |
