Violence breaks out at Tampa forum. Outside agitators bused in by Republican operatives and operating according to a plan created by top GOP leaders stormed a building today where a healthcare forum was scheduled to happen and attacked organizers and people who wanted to hear the Congressmen speak. They succeeded in winning the battle -- they managed to disrupt the forum to the point it had to be cancelled. But in the process they lost the war.
Violence is all the right wing has today. Their ideology has been discredited by the 8 years of Republican failure that preceded the election of President Obama, where family income declined for the first time since WWII. A sizable majority of Americans have repudiated the Republican ideology and the ignorance and hate that it embodies. The overwhelming majority of Americans want universal healthcare for all Americans -- 65% to 80% of Americans in every poll taken on the subject. Like with desegregation in 1965 where America decided that it was time for all African-Americans to have equal rights, America has decided that now is the time to defend the most fundamental right of all: the right to life. Now we shall make sure that not a single American dies for lack of health insurance -- unlike, alas, the 22,000 or more who die from lack of healthcare per year today. This is what America wants. The right wing has lost, been repudiated, failed, and has nothing to counter this -- nothing except their fear of a black President, their hatred of all those who don't look like them, and their willingness to commit violence.
But it did not work last time, and it will not work this time either. Angry mobs organized by this same segment of the population, angry mobs intent upon overthrowing rule of law and the democratic process, have been the norm with these people since the 1950's and 1960's, when they used violence against those who worked to end segregation in the South. The only reason we didn't see these mobs from the Reagan election until the Obama election was because the Republicans won -- they dominated politics from 1980 to 2008, a period of 28 years. But now they've lost, and it is getting ugly again. Well, I have this news for them: Organized violence against those standing up for the rights of African-Americans only discredited the cause of segregationists during the 1950's and 1960's, and organized violence against those standing up for a right to life for all Americans will only serve to further discredit the cause of you "deathers" who battle against hope and progress today. You "deathers" are on the losing side of history today as you were in the 1950's. The moment you resorted to violence you admitted that you were on the losing side of history. And as in the 1950's, we will overcome, we will prevail, and in forty years you, too, shall be grainy photographs in the back pages of history books, as relevant to everyday life as buggy whips and horse-drawn carriages.
- Badtux the Righteous Penguin
The amount of money being poured into the opposition, it does worry me. But if violence is what they are already resorting to, then they have lost, praise jeebus.
ReplyDeleteLove you, BT!
ReplyDeleteKeep speaking out and telling the truth about the violent rightwingers.
It's the only defense that works.
S
It seems to me that the GOP and the special interests are going to win this one again (or if the dems win, it will be a Pyrrhic victory). While the majority wants health care, the support for the democrat's proposals is low. Logically, that does not make sense unless you consider the fact that the FUD is working.
ReplyDeleteOh my God , I can not wait till the gas and pepper fog starts to fly like whiffs of refuse from the dump . I was living in Berkeley in the late 60's , I saw cops cracking heads under the gas clouds . I heard the way the other side talked with disgust about the protesters . Well , these guys have no better way in sight they have nothing new to propose , no 'mandate' . Turn loose the hounds I say ! Right winger protest jingles to come . Where's my old peace button , I want to wave it in front of them before the cops haul them off .
ReplyDeletean aging w3ski
"Deathers" -- that's good! Did you come up with that?
ReplyDeleteWhat I want to know is, how long will it take before some right-wing terrorist sprays gunfire at a health care forum? That would be SO Repiglickin -- killing people to prevent them from having government life care. (Which, as all reichies know, is a plot to kill old people and babies. That's why there are none of them alive here, under the socialistic medical system bequeathed to us by Joe Stalin and propogated by tje small-frog fascist John Howard, amongst others...)
Yeah, I keep asking the Deathers, "Where are the bodies? Why do the people in these countries with 'socialist' healthcare live so much longer than Americans if 'socialist' healthcare kills the elderly?" They go back to sputtering talking points and nonsense, they literally cannot answer the question, because it completely conflicts with what they "know" because their Party commissars on Hate Radio or Faux News told them what to "know".
ReplyDeleteI don't know who created the term "Deathers" for those who support a system that kills over 20,000 Americans per year due to lack of care and spin imaginary conspiracies to attempt to derail reform of this system. But it's a pun on the term "Birthers" for the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theorists. All these losers have today is imaginary conspiracies and violence, much as they imagined that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and NAACP were part of a Communist conspiracy to destroy America as part of their justification for violence against civil rights workers. They have no reason, no logic, for their positions, just a fear of "other" that is leading them into irrational and violent acts. We will have to see what happens, but I will tell you this: I was pessimistic about the chances for health care reform passing before the Deathers started their mob violence. But now I know we've won. Maybe not this year with HR3200, any more than Little Rock 1957 led directly to the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But when the Deathers literally have nothing left but violence, it is only a matter of time.
- Badtux the Righteous Penguin
As you point out, these people are farking stupid and cannot answer questions with logic. But pointing out their illogic only enrages them further. I have seen this when I reasoned logically with paranoid schizophrenics or people in the middle stages of dementia (i.e. the ones who were still capable of responding to speech.) It might be the psychiatric equivalent of Godwin's law (is that the one about bringing up Nazis in a political argument?), but I see the same characteristics in reich-wingers as I do in people who have been clinically diagnosed as insane or demented.
ReplyDeleteWhat it boils down to is that the Right's base is people who are so stupid that they believe this shite. There are a lot of them, but how much political or economic power do they have? If your army depends on gullible idiots, that's not an effective force. You wouldn't want to be the boss of a bunch of babboons. Unfortunately, what they have is the power of irrational violence. Politics as berserkergang...
They might have made more ground by parroting false right-wing talking points forcefully, but peacefully. Hell, George W. won one election and kept his Presidency alive by doing nothing more than repeating stupid fallacies while failing the country over and over and over...
ReplyDeleteIt's the violence that brings their stupidity to light. This country has an abnormally high tolerance for stupidity, but violent and stupid together is a combination that is too scary for REAL Americans to tolerate.
And of course for a beautiful example of stupid, you have to just LOVE the elderly right-wingers who are violently screaming that the government keep their hands of their Medicare. DUMB ... AS ... STUMPS.