The Second American Civil War
Sunday, September 20, 2009
I woke up this morning with this hangover from a dream that I was being hunted in the streets of Jersey City by a pack of blood thirsty right wing extremists.
This, of course, has been on my mind lately since I discovered the build up of private arms going on around military bases throughout the country, current soldiers, ex soldiers, private contractors and their families getting ready for the insurrection their national policies have inspired.
While I knew for some time that they want violence to start, I always assumed it was the usual collection of whackos and not a national movement.
The Christian Right has been seeking the end of the world so that they can hurry up and go through Rapture and meet their final reward.
This is the inevitable conclusion to the right’s use of religion in that it is not enough to wait for their just reward, they got to hurry it along. Since they couldn’t get Reagan to push the button and bring on doom, they have taken to new strategies called “Starving the Beast.”
In this, they cut off all social services to all the poor and then prepare themselves to greet the eventual holocaust as poor people rise up.
Not everyone on the right is so crazy, but it is clear that we have long since been in civil discussions and have seeped over the edge into open civil war.
Democrats and Republicans – from many right wingers point of view – are not from the same country at all, and Democrats in this have become the enemy the Soviets used to be.
They tried to and continue to build up terrorists into a serious threat. But after 9/11 the terrorist movement really isn’t the kind of thing that brings on the end of civilization.
Seeing us as enemies, the Republicans can now be as uncivil as they like, even going to the point of refusing to have their kids listen to a speech by President Obama or even calling out “liar” when he speaks.
We Democrats foolishly believe that there is a place where both sides can still agree, and this becomes our weakness.
We really do have to get into a war mode or we will be overrun. We need to gear up somehow, and if not arm ourselves with weapons, then with some other means of power, taking control of key institutions before the Republicans do.
We have to stop thinking that the people across the Aisle can be reasoned with. They do not wish us well. What they want we don’t want, and they are rapidly getting to the point of using any means to achieve their ends – including violence.
Since most of us on the left can never be the cold blooded killers the right is capable of being, we really need to use our intelligence to counter them, perhaps finding ways to show just how mean-spirited and cruel the right wing can be and may already be, hoping that by making their intentions fully known, we might embarrass them into civility they can no longer obtain on their own.