When the Bough Breaks
– by David Matthews 2
The video wasn’t up for very long. Those kinds of videos usually aren’t. The major news services didn’t even bother to mention it. But the websites that were looking for such a video found it and copied it and reposted it on their servers so their viewers knew what was being said.
It had no music with it. No background noises, no voice narration, just a simple visual message. It was a relatively cheap video, the kind you could make with readily available Windows software.
The message was directed at a group of political leaders. All of them, by no coincidence, Democrats. They were all told they had until October 15th to step down, or else they would supposedly be forced out.
Obviously the deadline came and went. So far nobody has tried to make good on the threat. And hopefully nobody will.
But this was just the latest in a series of threats made against Democrats that went beyond just the hate-filled rhetoric brought on by partisan sour grapes over last year’s election. Not too long ago someone posted a Facebook poll asking people whether or not the President of the United States should be assassinated. It was taken down and is still being investigated, but the rhetoric has certainly escalated.
It was hard to believe that it was just a scant fifteen years ago that this level of hate… and yes it IS hate… reached a point to where a couple of people took it upon themselves to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing not only men and women, but also innocent children. In their twisted minds they believed this act would spark others, and still more others, until the whole country imploded in nasty bigoted riots and anarchy.
That obviously didn’t happen. In fact just the opposite occurred. When faced with the sheer horror of the violence, Americans aligned themselves AGAINST the people behind the bombing. There was no civil war; there was no anarchy.
And yet one has to wonder given the outright animosity that has been generated of late if we are not too far off from something like it happening again.
It doesn’t take too much to push the buttons of a person riled up into a frothing rage, whether it is the passion of watching a really intense sporting event, the mechanizations of a political movement, or just a long string of perceived personal injustices and stresses. The sources may differ, but the reactions are still the same. When driven to rage, all it takes is just one seemingly insignificant event to turn that rage into an explosion of violence.
So the question is… if you’re getting people riled up enough to do something stupid, why aren’t you speaking out on the truly horrific?
I understand what the point of the conservatives and neo-conservatives is on this. I know WHY they’re stirring the hate-pot and bringing it to bubble. I know they want people frothing angry instead of being compliant of the stuff going on. They want the faithful focused on 2010, because they think they can repeat the results of the 1994 mid-term elections if they do. They do this because they really have nothing else they can offer to counter what the liberals are doing. Their political horses are either diseased or have broken legs.
But you would think after what happened that they would have a better handle at figuring out the difference between almost a boil and boiling over, wouldn’t you?
They only have to look back to their own party’s history, back to the very FIRST GOP President, to see where this unchecked hate leads.
If you ever get the chance, look up the name Mary Surat, the first-ever woman executed by the United States government for her involvement in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Her connection to the murder was tedious at best, and yet the government, and indeed the masses themselves, were so outraged over what had just happened that they didn’t CARE whether or not she was a woman. They had just finished a grueling civil war and they wanted blood for blood. They wanted the message to be expressed loud and clear that the people behind the assassination of the president were going to PAY. And there were quite a few people who did end up paying for it. Some, like Mrs. Surat, with the hangman’s noose; others with prison sentences.
You can remember what happened after Oklahoma City as well. Tim McVeigh, the man who actually carried out the bombing, was put to death for his premeditated mass-murder. His accomplice is rotting in a jail cell.
This should be a WARNING SIGN for the GOP and those within the con and neo-con circles who are continually stirring this cauldron of venom soup. You would think they would know better, wouldn’t you? After all, they are the ones who carry themselves as though they are the MASTERS of history, as the self-professed CHAMPIONS of heritage and of days long ago. You would think that with their obsessive fixation of the past that they would REMEMBER things like the Whiskey Rebellion and Shays’ Rebellion and what happened to those who stirred those pots up until they boiled over.
Senator John McCain certainly realized what was going on just a little too late in his failed run for the White House last year. Granted, he consciously tethered himself and his campaign to the Bush Imperium, which at that time was in the last stages of its Titanic-like submersion, and his campaign really had little else to go on that differed from the same-ol’-same-ol’. But, even then, I think he still was operating under the delusion that this problem was limited to just one confused little old lady that didn’t know or didn’t bother to check out Snopes.com to fact-check her chain-mail. I would like to think that if he DID know that he would have done something to try to bring civility back to the table so it wouldn’t make the GOP look like a bunch of latecomers to the Reichstag fire.
Let’s get brutally honest here… the GOP hierarchy needs to take ownership of this boiling cauldron, and they need to bring it under control BEFORE it boils over into something they won’t be able to step away from.
There is a difference between spirited objection and out-and-out insurrection, if not domestic terrorism. This is the party that CLAIMS to be all for law-and-order. They should KNOW that difference and should be the FIRST ONES to point it out and not crying “persecution” when other people do it. This is the party that CLAIMS to champion personal responsibility. Well it is high time that they PRACTICE WHAT THEY PREACH!
Remember what happened after the Ford Theater. Remember what happened after Oklahoma City. More importantly, remember what the sentiment was of the people behind those incidents the day BEFORE them. Your people are AT THAT MOMENT NOW!
You still have a choice at this point. Exercise it, before you forfeit it as well as forfeit any control over the outcome afterwards.
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