Unrest. Civil war. A United Nations occupation. According to Tom Head, the county judge of Lubbock, Texas, armed conflict and insurrection will surely greet President Barack Obama’s reelection. “And we’re not talking just a few riots here and demonstrations,” Head said recently. “We’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.”
Up in Lexington and Concord, the comments from Lubbock County’s top elected official sound like the ravings of a man on his way to the state hospital at Bridgewater. But Head’s paranoia about UN storm troopers and an invasion by his own government is far from unique. For the better part of the past four years, Republicans have fanned radical fever dreams as a get-out-the-vote strategy.
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Well by golly maybe we need another civil war to deplete the surplus population. Or, we could peaceably break up the Union and become 50 sovereign states and see how well that works. It didn't work so well between 1781 and 1788, but why let that detail get in the way?
Ask any historian. Western societies that have fallen to plutrocracy have engendered civil unrest for the last couple hundred years. The author cites extreme right-wingers but historians cite extreme left-wingers as well. The most stable, productive and peaceful developed country was here in the USA during the 1950s, with the 1990s having similar benefit. In both cases a burgeoning middle class provided both opportunity and, in total, tremendous consumer buying power so that most in private industry succeeded and government was an affordable guide. The VietNam war crashed the 1950s peace and the "deregulated" Wall St debacle crashed the 1990s bubble. But the form of civil unrest has changed and modernized, replacing the 1960s VietNam street-protesters with online bloggers and, sadly, these militia. One must wonder how much a role the shadow puppeteers play, perhaps providing more than just PAC funding.
Everybody's paranoid. The left-wingers are paranoid that the right-wingers are getting too paranoid about the left. The Internet enables the spread of so much misinformation, in addition to the recruiting of suggestible partisans. It's a vicious circle, apparently. It's truly a strange time for "Old Weird America".
The GOP mantra used to be "Get out there and sell!" But that's been replaced with the new message from the GOP leadership: "Get out there and lie!"
Judge Head better watch his tongue. Those particular quotes might squeak by, but sedition is a federal crime and I'd feel safer if he was in prison.
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HH: Lubbock Texas may be a non-entity to you, but a county judge no matter where the county has sworn to uphold the consititution and should know better. He's not just a ranting loonie, he's a ranting loonie empowered to uphold the law. People might get the wrong idea that what he says would be not just righteous but legal. As a jduge he should be held to a hire standard. Of course I also think that Mitch McConnell bordered on sedition when he stated just days after the President Obama's swearing in that McConnell felt his chief responsibility as minority leader of the senante was to make sure that President Obama "failed". Outrageous rhetoric that should have been denoucned by responsible RNC but its been downhill from there.
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What we really need is a man of solid principles! Like Mitt Romney! Here's Willard telling it like it is... "I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years we should sustain and support it." "Roe v. Wade has gone too far." "I don't line up with the NRA." "I'm a member of the [NRA]." "I like mandates. The mandates work." "I think it's unconstitutional on the 10th Amendment front." "I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose." "I never really called myself pro-choice." "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King." "I did not see it with my own eyes." "I supported the assault weapon ban." "I don't support any gun control legislation." "I think the minimum wage ought to keep pace with inflation." "There's no question raising the minimum wage excessively causes a loss of jobs." "I will work and fight for stem cell research." "In the end, I became persuaded that the stem-cell debate was grounded in a false premise." "I would like to have campaign spending limits." "The American people should be free to advocate for their candidates and their positions without burdensome limitations." "I'm a strong believer in stating your position and not wavering." "I changed my position." "Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." "I'll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry's come back." "I'm not in favor of privatizing Social Security or making cuts." "Social Security's the easiest and that's because you can give people a personal account." "I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush." "Ronald Reagan is... my hero." "I've been a hunter pretty much all my life." "Any description of my being a hunter is an overstatement of capability." "If Massachusetts succeeds in implementing it, then that will be a model for the nation." "What works in one state may not be the answer for another." "It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam." "I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there." "It's a tax cut for fat cats." "I believe the tax on capital gains should be zero." "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person." "He's going to pay, and he will die." "The TARP program... was nevertheless necessary to keep banks from collapsing in a cascade of failures." "When government is... bailing out banks... we have every good reason to be alarmed." "These carbon emission limits will provide real and immediate progress." "Republicans should never abandon pro-growth conservative principles in an effort to embrace the ideas of Al Gore." "Those... paying taxes and not taking government benefits should begin a process toward application for citizenship." "Amnesty only led to more people coming into the country." "When I first heard of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, I thought it sounded awfully silly." "Don't Ask, Don't Tell has worked well." - Mitt Romney Words to live by, eh, Mitt?
A bit off target, System.
Nobody took the radicals of the National Socialist Party seriously either until it was too late.
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Not trying to hide anything. In this instance the National Socialist Party is the proper analogy.