Closure?

Well, I'll be....

Thank you Gov. Nikki Haley.  

150 years after the war that began in Charleston, your announcement today to finally rid the state capitol grounds of the flag of the slave state rebellion may begin the closure we need as part of the long healing process. 

The feelings for the Confederate battle flag seemed as divisive as the war itself. The fact the flag has been embraced and flown by racist extremists has finally sunk in. 

Let the descendants of Confederate soldiers privately fly it in commemoration. That is fitting.

What is clearly NOT fitting is for a state to fly it over the descendants of slaves and over their appropriate objections. 

The removal of the flag is a small, but not insignificant, consolation for the recent church massacre.

I hope the terrorist thug can see this event from his cell, and know that his evil plan had backfired.

It's not justice, but it represents a people's united revulsion against the racist and his slaughter of innocents.

Let this be fair warning to the rest of the racist sociopaths around the country. We reject your hate, your racism, your ignorance, and your entire un-American cult of evil. 

What Is The Problem?

Just in case anyone is wondering if my recent posts were about gun control as the solution to the wave of violence that has become the new "American Exceptionalism", let me be clear.

The problem is not merely the readily available weapons for those who shouldn't have them. It is about the far Right culture of hate, incessantly scapegoating and demonizing peaceful fellow Americans.   

The hate cult of the far Right blames liberals and blacks for almost every problem. They are as tenacious in their scapegoating as the fascists of the previous century were. Instead of Jews and Communists, the subjects of their hate are liberals and African Americans. 

The Radical Right Bubble Cult is a cauldron of racism, authoritarianism, and hate. 

The deep racism that lurks in the hearts of so many Americans is nurtured by the far Right. Everyone knows blacks and liberals are the targets of their hate. The Right Wing Terrorists have told us so in their own words. 

So what is the problem, if not gun control?

The problem is tolerance. 

For too long moderates, conservatives and liberals have tolerated the open hate from the far Right.

As I said previously, there is a great institutionalized evil upon our land that desires this mentality. Who feeds into this hate and paranoia? Who is intent on dividing us?

FOX News and talk radio have been working nonstop as propagandists for the far Right. They wrap their hate in the flag as they hoist their Bibles in arrogant certainty of their moral superiority.

I have to wonder if these authoritarian thugs hate Blacks and liberals more than ISIS. They seem to go out of their way to spew more venom in our direction.

And speaking of the threat of radical Muslim terrorists, Let's compare that threat to the threat from the radical American Right.

Before 9-11 the deadliest terrorist attack on the country was committed by a Right wing, anti-government Christian. It happened in Oklahoma City.

McVeigh admitted to holding the "core beliefs" of a Christian.

Since 9-11, who do you suppose has killed more Americans, Muslim extremists or Right wing extremists?

A recent New York Time article has some answers.

Despite public anxiety about extremists inspired by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, the number of violent plots by such individuals has remained very low. Since 9/11, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that were carried out accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.

In contrast, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities, according to a study by Arie Perliger, a professor at the United States Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. The toll has increased since the study was released in 2012.

Other data sets, using different definitions of political violence, tell comparable stories. The Global Terrorism Database maintained by the Start Center at the University of Maryland includes 65 attacks in the United States associated with right-wing ideologies and 24 by Muslim extremists since 9/11. The International Security Program at the New America Foundation identifies 39 fatalities from “non-jihadist” homegrown extremists and 26 fatalities from “jihadist” extremists.

- From The Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat

The hate from the radicalized far Right is not only destroying what democracy we have left, but it poses the greatest domestic terrorism threat to Americans.

This rabid ideology is dangerous, criminal in intent, and should not be tolerated any longer.

Unfortunately we can’t count on corporate media to focus on this. They are under the thumb of corporate interests who’d rather not expose the threat that emanates from the fringes of the Republican Party base.

These radicalized extremists claim to be conservatives. They are not. They are as radical as any extremist can be.

Where is the "personal responsibility" on the Right, to disavow the "take our country back" and the "Liberals hate America" crap, to cease the endless accusations, demonization, blaming and scapegoating? 

While liberals say there are other ways and ideas, the far Right attacks them personally, and as a group, and offer neither solutions nor compromise . Liberals and blacks have been literal targets for their hate. 

Look at the frickin' body count!! Do conservatives see this as a necessary human sacrifice to sustain some sick view of American Exceptionalism? 

Where to start? How about that damn flag that adorns the terrorist's car and still flies over the State House in South Carolina?

Who really thinks that symbol represents any good will or equality for African Americans? 

We’ve often heard from the Right, “Where are the Muslim moderates speaking out against the extremists? 

Let me turn it to them and now ask, Where are the conservative voices against extremists of the far Right? Can we count them on more than one hand?

They are either with them or against them. What are we to presume by their silence?

Why?

I posted yesterday's piece a day too soon. It didn't take long for another act of domestic terrorism by "Second Amendment Remedy". 

Now in Charleston South Carolina we have yet another church massacre by the crazed hate cult of the American radical Right.

"I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go." – Right Wing terrorist Dylann Roof, according to survivors.

I'll say it again.

What's wrong with this picture? Who feeds into this hate and paranoia? 

Remember that incident in a Universal Unitarian Church in Tennessee when a right wing terrorist killed and wounded the parishioners for being "liberals"? Adkisson even wrote a manifesto urging the ideological murder of every liberal. He immersed himself in the writings of Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage and other right wing extremists. 

How much human sacrifice is enough? 

There's not much an individual can do, except to call out the hate and ignorance that so often perverts Americans into seeing other Americans as the enemy.

There is a great institutionalized evil upon our land that desires and nurtures this mentality...as the flag of the American slave states proudly flies over the State House in South Carolina...


Post Script:

I would add this.

"I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go." 

If either God or the voices in his head told him to do this, he would be delusional and psychotic.  Otherwise he's likely a homicidal racist and terrorist. If not psychotic, his lack of regard for human life and suffering would present him as a sociopath at minimum. The "taking over our country" bit is standard rhetoric of the far Right and hate groups who have demanded, "We want our country back", since Obama took office.

“Real American” Values and Personal Responsibility

The recent shooting at a Dallas police headquarters offers a disturbing glimpse into the crazed hate cult of the American Right.

After James Boulware was convicted of domestic violence his child was taken by Child Protection Services and placed in care of his grandmother.

Since the police were the ones carrying out the action, Boulware became very angry with them.

We all know what can happen when we add anger plus weapons and mix with untreated mental illness.

 Apparently Texas won’t confiscate guns from those with mental illness and domestic violence convictions.

It seems some of the mental illness and anger were inherited from the shooters father.

When interviewed, the father told us who was really to blame.

Yup. It was all the liberals’ fault.  Big surprise.

James Boulware Senior explained.

“I knew he was angry at police, he blamed them for taking his son. I tried to tell him the police didn’t do it. The police were doing their job to enforce the laws. If you want to get to that, you’ve got to go back to the liberal people that put these laws in place, to where CPS and all can grab kids.”

When asked, “Why didn’t he get some help?”

“Where? Where does a white male get help?”

And there it is. The perfect snapshot of the American Right, wrapped in white male victimhood while scapegoating liberals.

FOX Nation on display. They’ve done their job well.

There’s your gun-totin' personal responsibility and freedom for ya.

And there’s this tale of another "good guy with a gun"... until he isn't:

“An Iowa mall cop — with a Facebook account loaded with open-carry and right-wing memes and photos of multiple weapons — is under arrest for shooting and killing a fellow mall worker because she filed sexual harassment complaints against him.”

Samples of his “Gun-toting Constitution loving American” facebook gun nuttery are posted at Raw Story .

America, land of the "Second Amendment Remedies".

George Carlin was right. This country is finished.

What? A Republican Lie?

These days we are witnessing the real Obama, showing his true corporatist self. He has joined the rest of his Republican majority in pushing a secret corporate written trade agreement and the fast track authority to make it law of the land. 

As he submissively follows the will of Republicans and their "Golden Rulers", (those with the most wealth make the rules,) it should make me despise Republicans a bit less.

But Nooo. 

Obama's shilling for the elites isn't enough to stop Republicans from calling him a commie and telling lies about him. Vipers will be vipers. 

Scott Walker is playing the same old dishonest bald faced lying game the Republicans mastered, and cannot exist without employing.

This time the Ayn Rand zombie and Koch sucker is making up lies and attributing them to European leaders. 

“I heard that from David Cameron back in February earlier when we were over at 10 Downing. I heard it from other leaders around the world. They’re looking around realizing this lead from behind mentality just doesn’t work. It’s just not working.”

Yeah, the European leaders are using GOP propaganda terms like "leading from behind".

Right, as if the Chicken Hawks Bush and Cheney led the charge into Baghdad.

“The Prime Minister did not say that and does not think that,” a Downing Street spokesperson told TIME.

As noted in the famous Downing Street Memo that proclaimed Bush's war in Iraq was based on intelligence "fixed around policy", the Republicans just love to lead by lies.

And why not? Americans are stupid enough to have believed Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qaeda. They have proven, and will prove again, they will be led by lies.

George Carlin was right. This country is finished.