HOMELAND SECURITY WARNS OF GROWING RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM
As their power spirals downward, the Right's rhetoric gets nuttier and nastierDavid Weigel of the Washington Independent was out at a gun show in Tennessee this last weekend. If you haven't gotten a look, you should.
It's real real familiar for me. Deja vu from 1994, when I was regularly attending militia meetings, all over again: The president-bashing. The gun fetishizing. The paranoia. The unstated old bigotry. And sometimes, all of them would come together at once.
They're ba-a-a-ack. Check out the story out of Stockton, California, where the locals plan to start up an armed citizen militia to patrol the streets, since the local police are facing such severe cutbacks:
STOCKTON - A retired truck driver and Vietnam War veteran said Monday that he is forming an armed militia - mostly men with rifles and armbands, four to a car - to patrol Stockton this summer, when at least 43 police officers are to be laid off.
Alan Pettet, 66, said he has recruited 18 men, most of whom are ex-military. He said the militia will train at a firing range and "activate" if the city lays off any officer, as it intends by July 1.
But this time, there's a difference. This time, they're not just getting whipped into a paranoid frenzy by their fellow paranoids, which was generally the case in the 1990s, with a few exceptions -- namely Rush Limbaugh. In their latest immanation, the old Patriot movement is getting stoked by a whole slew of ostensibly mainstream conservatives broadcasting daily and constantly on mainstream news media.
Here's a sampler of recent-vintage wingnuttery being broadcast on supposedly mainstream venues by people who call themselves mainstream conservatives: Continue reading ยป
It's real real familiar for me. Deja vu from 1994, when I was regularly attending militia meetings, all over again: The president-bashing. The gun fetishizing. The paranoia. The unstated old bigotry. And sometimes, all of them would come together at once.
They're ba-a-a-ack. Check out the story out of Stockton, California, where the locals plan to start up an armed citizen militia to patrol the streets, since the local police are facing such severe cutbacks:
STOCKTON - A retired truck driver and Vietnam War veteran said Monday that he is forming an armed militia - mostly men with rifles and armbands, four to a car - to patrol Stockton this summer, when at least 43 police officers are to be laid off.
Alan Pettet, 66, said he has recruited 18 men, most of whom are ex-military. He said the militia will train at a firing range and "activate" if the city lays off any officer, as it intends by July 1.
But this time, there's a difference. This time, they're not just getting whipped into a paranoid frenzy by their fellow paranoids, which was generally the case in the 1990s, with a few exceptions -- namely Rush Limbaugh. In their latest immanation, the old Patriot movement is getting stoked by a whole slew of ostensibly mainstream conservatives broadcasting daily and constantly on mainstream news media.
Here's a sampler of recent-vintage wingnuttery being broadcast on supposedly mainstream venues by people who call themselves mainstream conservatives: Continue reading ยป
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 3:45 PM
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