That Is the Sound of Inevitability

While we're still in the early stages of fact-gathering following the attempted assassination of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona -- and I really don't like to jump to conclusions -- I can't deny the terrible feeling I immediately got when I heard about this.

It was heightened when I read this quote in the piece about the shooting currently running in the New York Times:

"During the fall campaign, Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, posted a controversial map on her Facebook page depicting spots where Democrats were running for re-election; those Democrats were noted by crosshairs symbols like those seen through the scope of a gun. Ms. Giffords was among those on Ms. Palin’s map."

So, yeah, anybody wanna put any bets down?

(Update: I likely won't be sitting here adding little tidbits as they come in all night -- there's the Huffington Post and Twitter for that -- but one thing is really worth reminding people in all of this: A federal judge and a nine-year-old girl are among the dead. Just unbelievable.)

Tuesday Is Recycling Day

I've republished and referenced this piece more than once since it was originally posted. But as a complement to last night's post on Glenn Beck -- and in deference to the new readers currently roaming around this place -- I'm putting it up again. Honestly, it's shocking to read this and think that I wrote it more than a year ago. As I said at the time, that was just the beginning of the madness.

"Revolutionary Goad" (Originally Published, 4.7.09)

Exactly how far is too far?

Several times over the past month or so, I've dismissed Glenn Beck, the new clown prince of Fox News, as being not much more than a guy doing Kaufman-esque stand-up -- an opportunistic little turd who's playing his audience of paranoid conspiracists like a badly tuned piano in the name of making himself rich. At one point, I even admitted that Beck was basically good, clean fun -- or at least would be until some tinfoil-hatted psychopath who took his nonsense way too seriously decided to fire off a few rounds at President Obama.

But given what we're now seeing, the question has to be asked: Is it just a matter of time before something like that does in fact happen?

Over the weekend, a man in Pittsburgh gunned down three police officers who showed up to the home he shared with his mother on a domestic disturbance call. He strapped on a Kevlar vest and armed himself with an AK-47, waited for them to come through the door, then picked them off one by one. The details that have come out about the shooter since the attack are as infuriating as they are not-the-least-bit-surprising: 22-year-old Richard Poplawski is identified as a Marine Corps wash-out, a recently unemployed white supremacist who believes that the Jews control the media and that, most tellingly, the Obama Administration is planning to ban his beloved guns. In other words, he's exactly the kind of guy who, if you went on TV and told him that his worst paranoid hallucinations were coming true and that the new left-wing government was indeed poised to kick down his door and take his freedoms away, would believe every fucking word of it and act accordingly.

And if you don't think that that's exactly the message the Richard Poplawskis of this country are being inundated with from the far right these days, you're even more delusional than Poplawski himself.

Over the space of just the past couple of weeks, Glenn Beck has warned his loyal, terrified viewership of the coming socialist junta; lunatic congresswoman Michele Bachmann has claimed that the U.S. dollar is about to be replaced by foreign currency, American youths will soon be sent to "re-education camps," and patriotic citizens should be "armed and dangerous" and ready for revolution; disgraced CNBC loudmouth Jim Cramer has called the Democrats "Bolsheviks" and compared the U.S. House of Representatives to the Politburo; and Dick Morris, the no-lie smarmiest shitbag alive, spat this little pearl of wisdom into the Fox News echo chamber:

"Those crazies in Montana who say, ‘we’re going to kill ATF agents because the UN’s going to take over’ -- well, they’re beginning to have a case."

In case you missed that, let's rewind: Dick Morris says that militaristic nutjobs willing to kill government agents now have a fucking case.

Once again, exactly how far is too far?

While free speech has to be respected and the right to it protected, is there no line of rhetoric so incendiary, so dangerous, so shameless in its aim of instigating simply for the sake of ad revenue, that it can't provoke absolute outrage? If you know that there are an inordinate number of Richard Poplawskis listening to you and that they already buy thoroughly into half-baked persecution fantasies -- and then you purposely try to at best validate their fears or at worst scare the hell out of them even further -- don't you bear at least a small amount of responsibility for the outcome? Shouldn't there be accountability?

In a display of hypocrisy that's almost staggering, many on the right who once railed against the twin evils of violent video games and Marilyn Manson and decried their supposed relation to teen violence are now hiding behind the very argument they say bleeding-heart liberals used against them way back when: that you can't blame the messenger for the effect the message might have on one or two unstable individuals. To his credit, Bob Cesca has a good take on this specious comparison; he points out that the difference between, say, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold -- the Columbine killers -- and someone like Richard Poplawski is that Harris and Klebold, while certainly being budding gun fetishists, hadn't yet developed the intransigent political ideology that goes hand-in-hand with a maniacal worship of weapons in this country. Harris and Klebold, like Cho Seung Hui -- the Virginia Tech killer -- were basically impressionable kids using guns to lash out and make themselves feel powerful (the latter, a trait they indeed shared with Poplawski and one that should have precluded them from ever owning a goddamned gun in the first place). They loved guns, sure -- but they didn't yet have the distrust of a government they feared would one day come and take their precious weapons away. Poplawski was impressionable in another way in that he did think that his weapons made him part of a larger culture of True Believers, and any confirmation of an attack on the way of life espoused by he and those like him would be all it took to set him off. And it did. Poplawski likely always figured his guns could be used to level the socio-political and economic playing field, and in his twisted mind, that's exactly what happened.

But for those who would still claim that everyone is impressionable in his or her own way and that, at some level, both the creators of GTA4 and Glenn Beck need to acknowledge that their actions may have unintended consequences: You're right, to an extent. The bottom line is that while free speech and expression must be respected, there has to be a level of responsibility attached. It's reckless, dangerous and immoral to knowingly stoke the demons of a person's nature -- and what's worse, to pass off fantasy as fact and do it in the name of making a buck or a political point. It's intellectually dishonest to pretend that you're operating in a vacuum -- whether you're Marilyn Manson or Michele Bachmann -- and that nothing you say will have an impact on the crazies within your target audience.

So, I ask yet again: How far is too far?

I talked to my father a few days ago. He's an ex-cop and ex-Navy SEAL who now lives part-time in a little Florida town called Sebring -- right in the center of the state's hyper-Republican I-4 Corridor. He's had a concealed weapons permit for decades and is about the most qualified and responsible person I can imagine being allowed to carry a weapon. He mentioned to me that he had recently been to the local Wal-Mart looking for ammunition for his handgun -- the kind of thing that's typically in abundance at a Central Florida big box store. But what he found surprised him, and scared him a little.

The place was almost completely out of ammo. In fact, it turns out they can barely keep the stuff on the shelves these days.

Somebody out there is listening to the "warnings."

And I'm betting that what we've seen lately is just the beginning of the nightmare.

Crazier Than a Fox

I'll make this relatively quick, because to be honest much of what I'm about to say isn't something that hasn't been said before by both myself and a hell of a lot of other people pathetic enough to spend most of their time quixotically fixating on the media.

If you've actually bothered to read Byron Williams's interview with either Media Matters or the Examiner, from start to finish, it's really a terrifying little snapshot of the paranoid psychopathy that's fermenting in the collective consciousness of the extreme right these days. Sure, Williams is as rat-shit crazy as they come, and in the end the responsibility for the act that landed him in the headlines and in jail -- that would be getting into a firefight with several California Highway Patrol troopers and injuring two of them -- is his to bear. But it's an absurd dereliction of reason to somehow claim that Williams's on-air idol, his indirect enabler and the man who essentially validated the paranoid fantasies in his head night after night, Glenn Beck, doesn't deserve to be forced to answer some very tough questions following the attack for which his message of an impending American Apocalypse was the impetus.

I've done my best to shrug off the far-right's rodeo clown prince, eschewing outrage in favor of poking all kinds of very appropriate fun at him. Beck's always been full of shit; his conspiratorial carnival barking shtick is little more than a means of making himself filthy rich. But that doesn't mean the amalgam of half-baked 1950s anti-commie, Bircher-Skousen lunacy that he regularly passes off as the key to America's secret history isn't bloody fucking frightening in the wrong hands. And there's simply no denying that the longer Beck negligently throws gasoline on a fire that's already dangerous -- the longer he amps up a far-right that's angry, unemployed, terrified of the change it's seeing all around it and convinced that it's losing control of its country -- the more "wrong hands" will potentially be created and incited.

And you know something? Fox News knows this.

Say what you will about Fox, it has at the very least a tenuous grasp on the notion of responsibility. It may be the country's biggest cannon of right-wing fireballs -- a 24/7 GOP talking points machine -- but above all it's a business. And make no mistake: Glenn Beck is bad for business. Sure, he's great for his own business; he knows how to hawk the crap that sponsors the Glenn Beck Inc. multi-media empire. But he's already cost Fox more than 80 sponsors, and although Fox notoriously likes to publicly flip off its critics and their impotent indignation, FNC management knows that the God-awful publicity generated by a CEO -- one targeted for assassination by one of Beck's rabid acolytes -- penning an open letter to the CEOs who throw money at Fox has the potential to hurt the network's bottom line. And that's what it comes down to: At some point, if it hasn't happened already, sponsors will begin to fear Beck's incendiary rhetoric but still want access to Fox's mammoth audience share -- and so they'll quietly demand that Ailes pull Howard Beale into a dark conference room and put the fear of God into him, or pay dearly.

Because the way it stands right now, Beck is the David Lee Roth of Fox News. There's the band, and then there's him -- and what's good for one isn't necessarily good for the other.

If this keeps up, if Beck continues to put on his "history" professor's glasses, scribble nonsensical conspiracy theories on his chalkboard and in doing so willfully and cynically stoke the paranoia of an admittedly small but heavily armed and very fucking edgy far-right, there will be a breaking point from which we won't be able to easily come back. What he's doing is wrong. And at this point, Fox News, for all of its intransigence when it comes to the demands of critics who expect it to behave and play nice, should do what even it knows is right -- and distance itself from Glenn Beck.

Do it before the inevitable happens.

Related:

The Christian Science Monitor/Did Glenn Beck's Rhetoric Inspire Violence?/10.16.10

The New York Times/"The Rage Won't End on Election Day" by Frank Rich/10.16.10

The Washington Post: "Conspiracy Theorists Find Validation from Glenn Beck" by Dana Milbank/10.10.10

Quote of the Day

"Imagine, for a moment, that you were us and, had it not been for a sharp eyed highway patrolman, a heavily armed man in full body armor would have made it to your office with the intent to kill you and your colleagues. His motive? Apparently, it was because the charitable, nonpartisan programs we run are deemed part of a conspiracy to undermine America and the capitalist system, which is hogwash.

...While we may agree to disagree about the role our citizens and our government should play in promoting social justice and the common good, there should be no disagreement about what constitutes integrity and professionalism and responsibility in discourse -- even when allowing for and encouraging contending diverse opinions intelligently argued. This is not a partisan issue. It's an American issue. No one, left, right or center, wants to see another Oklahoma City.

The next 'assassin' may succeed, and if so, there will be blood on many hands. The choice is yours."

-- Drummond Pike, CEO of the Tides Foundation, which was targeted by self-proclaimed "progressive hunter" and Glenn Beck superfan Byron Williams, taking the staggeringly bold step of personally appealing to the companies which advertise on Glenn Beck's show on Fox News to drop their sponsorship or risk having blood on their hands

I'll have something more to say on this later this evening, but I had to just get this out there.

Assistant Quote of the Day

"I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind."

-- Byron Williams, who was arrested on July 18th after getting into a fire-fight with the California Highway Patrolmen who had just pulled him over, inadvertently stopping him from driving to San Francisco where he planned to kill members of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU

Beck gets out his chalkboard and tells whack-job the Tides Foundation is subverting America. Whack-job arms himself to the teeth and hits the road with the intention of killing people at the Tides Foundation. Nope, no connection there.

The Rebel Baseless

"It's not a far-right crazy plan or anything like that. This would be done with the full cooperation of the state legislature."

-- Oklahoma tea party leader J.W. Berry on a proposed plan to create a new volunteer militia to help protect and secure the sovereignty of that state in the face of intrusion by the federal government

I keep trying to figure out a way to make this almost incomprehensible brand of batshit lunacy funny -- and it's just not possible.

We've crossed a very serious, very frightening line in this country where sedition, treason and armed revolution aren't held as unthinkable, un-American concepts but instead are offered as some sort of reasonable response to what's really nothing more than a paranoid persecution fantasy. Admittedly the swaggering blowhards who pitch this kind of taking-up-arms crap would piss their pants if push ever really came to shove and they found themselves staring wide-eyed down the barrel of a mounted .50 cal, but before it gets anywhere close to that, somebody really needs to put a goddamned foot down and tell these assholes that enough is enough.

Sorry you don't like Congress, taxes, health care reform, the fact that Reagan isn't on Mount Rushmore, whatever-the-hell -- and sorry you feel like the Great Kenyan Usurper stole the country you're entitled to out from under your white, Christian feet -- but this is the hand America's legitimate electoral process has dealt you, so until the next time you're given the opportunity to express your disapproval by way of a ballot, sit down and shut the fuck up. Don't drive your little Fat-eze scooter up and down each aisle at the local Wal-Mart, stocking up on beef jerky and ammo for the coming Armageddon. Don't preach secession and revolution and violence. Don't try to form your own goddamned army to fight the U.S. troops you so often genuflect before but who will be the first ones to kick in your front door if you try to, oh you know, wage war against the United States of America.

Just read Sarah Palin's book a few more times (making her grifting ass millions), stay right there on the couch with your canned beer glued to Fox News, say a few rounds of the Lord's Prayer and circulate a couple more of the idiotic e-mails your cousin Junior sent you offering proof that Obama's the Anti-Christ, maybe borrow your neighbor's "Confederate Heroes of the Civil War" documentary on VHS again. Do whatever you have to do, to do essentially nothing. Nothing that will affect the lives of the 92% of this country that's thoroughly sane and therefore wants no part of the apocalyptic, insurrectionist horseshit you're shoveling.

The Right Thing

Interesting piece on the member of the Michigan Militia who helped to hand up the Hutaree group -- which was allegedly planning an attack on the U.S. government -- to the cops over the weekend. We do our best to be as fair as possible around here, and while I really don't much care for anti-government rhetoric or militaristic behavior from civilians across the board -- this proves that not all "militias" are created equal, apparently.

MSNBC/The New York Times: Michigan Militia Member Turned In Hutaree/4.1.10

The Enemy Within

Remember back in July of 2007 when a U.S. Attorney, the FBI and the NYPD trumpeted the capture of four men they claimed had been trying to engineer "one of the most chilling plots imaginable" in New York City: the detonation of fuel lines under JFK airport? Chances are you do, the same way you likely remember every other self-congratulatory press conference held over the past several years in which the government announced with supposedly appropriate bombast that it had thwarted an imminent terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Thing is, though, quite a few of these plots -- to say nothing of the more than a dozen times that the terror alert level was raised based on nebulous information and with politically suspicious timing -- turned out to be a lot of horseshit. It's not that the actions of some truly dangerous people weren't uncovered; it's that there were more than a few times that the would-be terrorists hyped as being directly related to al-Qaeda turned out to be more like the Keystone Kops, their plans for mass destruction nothing more than the product of a lot of bravado and maybe a little too much to drink.

The point, though, is that you always heard about it -- shouted far and wide across the media landscape -- when the United States had supposedly foiled a terrorist attack from outsiders. We're always eager as hell to call someone not from this country who desires to attack us and spread fear and chaos a terrorist -- as well we should. What we're not as eager to do is call someone from within this country -- like, say, a far-right, white Christian militia member who believes the government is evil -- a terrorist even if he or she hopes to accomplish the same goal.

Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that nine members of an ultra-right Christian militia group known as Hutaree had been arrested across the Midwest on charges of seditious conspiracy and the attempted use of weapons of mass destruction. Investigators claim the group was planning to wage war against the U.S. government -- a war that would begin with the murder of a Michigan cop, followed by a coordinated attack on that officer's funeral procession. The hope, supposedly, was that the strike would inspire a bloody, Turner Diaries-style uprising against the government. Needless to say, relatives of those arrested deny that the group is dangerous, one of them going so far as to make the not-very-reassuring statement that if the good people in Hutaree were going to kill somebody they would've done it already. It's a bit of a dubious claim, regardless, considering that a quick scan of the material posted on the internet by the group and its leader, David Brian Stone, reveals them to be every bit the standard paranoid white-guy gun fetishists with delusions of militaristic grandeur who've occupied a tiny portion of the cultural imagination for decades.

Back in late 2008, right around (surprise, surprise) the election of Barack Obama, one member of Hutaree, a guy who menacingly called himself "Pale Horse," posted a video on YouTube which showed him armed with a Kalashnikov and spouting all kinds of extreme-right bromides about how the U.S. was in peril and it was time for freedom-loving people to arm themselves, etc. etc. Whether or not he was ever truly on the verge of trying to turn his revolutionary fantasies into cold-blooded reality is anybody's guess. But that's not really the point; the point is that even after, say, the Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City or the Austin IRS building plane crash -- Timothy McVeigh and Joe Stack's proven actions -- many in this country are still reluctant to label an American citizen a terrorist. Maybe it's because to do so would cause all kinds of cognitive dissonance, since it would put that person on the same level as the foreign insurgents raging against their own governments oversees whom we're more than happy to call terrorists but who refer to themselves as merely freedom-fighters (a lack of distinction, ironically, that militia members here at home have accepted for years).

What's really ironic, however -- and more than a little frightening -- is that not only will yesterday's announcement be unlikely to stick in the minds of many Americans or in the media's collective consciousness; it'll actually go a long way in fueling anti-government sentiment. In the absence of widespread outrage that it's entirely possible a burgeoning new anti-government movement bent on redneck revolution may be out there plotting murder and mayhem, the movement itself can only flourish under the weight of a federal law enforcement crackdown, since such action just proves the point of those who believe the government is comprised of jack-booted thugs who aim to trample free, decent, heavily armed Americans. In the cataractous eyes of guys like "Pale Horse," the fact that the feds are willing to arrest the Hutaree group only shows how much Hutaree is necessary to fight off the feds.

Remember, Oklahoma City was considered a direct response to both Ruby Ridge and Waco. And while each of those impetuses may have indeed involved gross federal overreaction, it doesn't change the fact that until we admit that there are potential domestic terrorists among us -- not patriots, terrorists -- and refuse to let that be deflected by the contrived indignation it may incite from one group or another, we'll continue to be at their mercy.

We need to stop hedging and call those Americans who want to wage war against our nation or simply kill other Americans in the name of a political end what they are. Because there are far, far fewer of them than there are of us.

Dangerous Mindless: Update

So somebody sent a threatening letter containing a white powdery substance to Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner of New York -- who's been an outspoken proponent of health care reform.

Hazmat units are conducting tests on the powder and thirteen people who came into contact with it are being decontaminated.

In case you're looking for the right word to describe this, let me see if I can help you out: terrorism.

CBS News: Anthony Weiner's Office Receives Threatening Letter Containing White Powder/3.25.10

Dangerous Mindless

And so it begins.

The Huffington Post: Extra Security for Members of Congress After Activist, Tea Party Threats/3.24.10

Fox News: FBI Investigates Possible Threats Aimed at House Democrats/3.24.10

Atlantic: After Threats and Vandalism, Democrats Meet with Capitol Police/3.24.10

(Update: Cesca actually puts it all together with some great commentary in his latest piece for HuffPo.)

Angels of Death

Watch this.

The pertinent information begins about at about 1:25.

Related:

DXM: Revolutionary Goad/4.7.09

Threat Assessment

Yesterday I asked, admittedly unsure myself, if this country could be heading toward some kind of violent upheaval.

Today, there's this:

Southern Poverty Law Center: Militia's YouTube Video Warns President Obama To Leave by October 15th, "Or Else"/10.7.09

WTF?

I'm all about the First Amendment, but at what point are we going to start arresting these assholes for incitement?

Talking Points Memo: Newsmax Columnist: Military Coup May Be Needed "To Resolve the Obama Problem"/9.30.09

...Fear Itself

Remember back in April of this year, when the Department of Homeland Security issued a reported warning of a rise in dangerous right-wing extremism. Now remember the response to that report from the right -- the shock, the outrage, the general apoplexy, the demands for an immediate apology? Okay -- now remember not long after, when right-wing psychopaths began, you know, gunning people down in places like Pittsburgh and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC (to say nothing of the church shooting in Tennessee last year)?

Yeah, that stuff.

Well take a look at this:

The Washington Post: Republicans Denounce Pelosi for Warning Against Right-Wing "Incitement"/9.17.09

Okay, now read one of the first comments posted in response to the story:

"Ms. Pelosi:

Shut up...

You started this... you and your buddies Obama, Harry Reid, Barney Frank and the rest of the Democrats.

You Democrats launched an all-out assault on Middle Class America. You are trying your best to destroy the middle class and make us all poor so we need to rely on you and your henchmen...

Don't think so? Community Re-investment Act... ACORN... Socialized Health Care... A Stimulus Package that pays off your Union Buddies and Community Activist Organizations.

When we protest, you call us Nazi's, Brown Shirts, Un-American and Evil-Mongers.

Finally, your doddering old fool of an EX-President, Mr. Carter, acuses us of being Rascists...

Yes, Ms. Pelosi... YOU started it... now we are going to finish it..."

It's damn scary out there, kids.

(Thanks to Alert Reader Riles for the tip.)

The S.S. Traitor

Well, you knew this was coming.

For having the temerity to point out the obvious -- namely that Fox News's audience is made up at least partly of rabid whack-jobs with a tenuous grip on reality -- there's a push from some on the right to get Shepard Smith canned. Last week on the air, you'll remember, Shep read a few of the e-mails he's been getting recently from the Fox Fanatics, castigating him for attempting to shove a stick in the spokes of their paranoid delusions -- the ones in which Barack Obama isn't a U.S. citizen, America is on the way to full-blown socialism, the DHS report on right-wing extremism was a meaningless political hit job, and James Von Brunn is, in fact, a leftist hippie.

From the Washington Monthly:

"Rush Limbaugh complained that Smith is 'whining and moaning.' Atlas Shrugs' Pamela Geller accused Smith of 'scary stupidity' and being a 'pompous elitist,' before arguing, 'Shep sucks. And Shep has always sucked, and it's time to get rid of the deadwood.... He has got to go.' WorldNetDaily responded by talking about an alleged auto incident involving Smith in 2000. An item on HotAir.com said Smith believes 'his own viewership is teeming with would-be presidential assassins. If he truly believes that, why doesn't he quit?'"

You know, when Shep tore into these lunatics last week, my first thought was, "Damn. He's doing this on the same day that a guy completely blinded to reality by his own hatred shot two people. I really hope Fox security is planning to walk him home after the show." It sounds far-fetched, sure. But is anything that far-fetched given the climate we're seeing now. These people are so militant in their psychotic ideology -- so terrified that their way of life is under attack -- that not only will they not listen to reason, they aren't even willing to hear a dissenting opinion from among their own ranks. This is how strictly the battle lines are drawn in the minds of these clowns.

Oh, and for the record -- Shep isn't going anywhere. Fox loves him, even if some viewers are staging an internal revolt. Plus he allows the network to subtly promote itself as being open to all viewpoints. Not that Fox really gives a shit about the illusion of credibility.

(h/t Cesca)

Sound and Fury

I know how everyone hates it when I use a news item -- especially a big and depressing news item -- to illustrate the validity of one of the opinions I'm regularly espousing around here. It's admittedly a pretty exploitative tack to take, but I never claimed to be above that sort of thing.

Which brings me, once again, to James Von Brunn and yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

There's a decent piece in Salon.com this morning, written by Joan Walsh, that asks the same question you've heard here and a lot of other places recently: Does crazed right-wing rhetoric bear any kind of responsibility for the rash of far-right extremist attacks that have left more than a half-dozen innocent people dead since the inauguration of Barack Obama? Walsh succinctly expresses the implications of the paranoid fantasy-world nonsense that the right-wing echo chamber has been amping up lately:

"There's clearly been an uptick in rhetoric suggesting that white men are having their rights abridged by the Obama administration, especially since his pick of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. In a debate with (Pat) Buchanan a couple of weeks ago, he told me that what was happening to white men was exactly what happened to black men -- he didn't give me any examples of lynching -- and that it was open season on white men. Wealthy Sen. Lindsay Graham suggested an average white guy like himself wouldn't get a fair shake from Sotomayor, and now even the new face of the GOP, Michael Steele, has said the same thing. If I were a marginal, unemployed, angry, racist white man right now, I'd be hearing a lot of mainstream conservative support for my point of view. Can that help create a climate for more violence?"

That last question is, of course, one worth asking -- and I'm not going out on a limb of logic by saying that the answer is inarguably "yes." But the setup for Walsh's column wonders aloud whether right-wing media bullhorns like Fox News and talk radio, being ostensibly responsible broadcasters and taking into account the potential dangers of riling up the conspiracy-minded loonies, might finally ease back on the crazy talk in the wake of the violence. The answer to that question, of course, is "no." They won't change a goddamned thing because as far as they're concerned they're not responsible for any of this -- the murder of an abortion doctor, five cops and a security guard (so far) -- in any way. You can't make someone tone down their dangerous and incendiary rhetoric when they refuse to acknowledge that what they're saying is dangerous or incendiary. If anything, I'd be shocked if blowhards like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity and so on didn't respond to this latest attack by shouting even louder (if such a thing is possible), their increased volume a natural reaction to having been persecuted by their political enemies for something they obviously had nothing to do with.

The real question though is: if they won't cut this kind of malignant shit out, what can anybody do?

We've come to a truly unprecedented moment in the evolution of the American media. Throughout history, the writers and broadcasters who practiced journalism and offered commentary in this country were, for the most part, responsible adults who understood the awesome sway they held over the public's imagination. They adhered to a gentleman's agreement that was largely unspoken because it didn't have to be spoken: You don't just go on the air or off to press spouting completely ridiculous, inflammatory crap without the slightest concern for the facts or for the potential consequences of your claims. You weren't running Fisher-Price's "My First Television Network"; the airwaves and print outlets weren't your own personal goddamned sandbox where you were king and could say whatever you pleased. Yes, you had the Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, but you knew full well that with that came responsibility -- and since you were a grown-up and not some asshole schoolyard bully obsessed with the sound of his own voice and drunk on his own power, you behaved accordingly.

Not anymore, though. The Limbaughs and Fox News Channels of the world don't behave responsibly. Very much the opposite, in fact. But what can be done about it? What do you do when someone stands there in front of you, like a bully does so well, a smug look on his face and his chin raised high, taunting you with the fact that there's nothing you can do to make him behave like an adult? The entire Republican platform these days seems to be based around the notion that you can't force somebody to do the right thing. So what can you do?

I honestly wish I had the answer, because if somebody doesn't come up with something quickly -- if average people don't stand up and tell these clowns to knock it off -- things are going to get a hell of a lot worse before they get better.

It's one thing to have a dissenting, even controversial, opinion and to express it. But if you can't do it responsibly, you don't deserve the forum that allows you to shout it to the masses.

(Revisited) Quote of the Week

"Anti-Semitic extremists attribute these losses to a deliberate conspiracy conducted by a cabal of Jewish 'financial elites.' These 'accusatory' tactics are employed to draw new recruits into right-wing extremist groups and further radicalize those already subscribing to extremist beliefs."

-- Department of Homeland Security report, issued this past April, warning of a potential rise in far-right extremism in the U.S. due in part to the election of Barack Obama (the report was loudly criticized by the right-wing mouthpieces, who claimed that it was a politically motivated attack on Republicans)

Hate is Enough

I'll make this quick -- and I admit that maybe I'm being a little optimistic here.

It's always seemed a cop out to me to suggest that violence and hatred are products of fear, but what we're seeing right now seems to prove that assessment pretty handily. The most maniacal among the far right are completely losing their minds these days because they realize that they've lost the country -- and it terrifies them.

A popular black president. Legal gay marriage. A decline in the number of people who call themselves Christian. Talk of acceptance and conciliation toward the Muslim world. The realization that abortion will likely remain legal and the overturning of the ban on stem cell research. The politicians who once obsequiously pandered to the lowest common denominator now marginalized, their party in chaos.

It's all a lot to take.

And so they're fighting back the only way they know how: through violence -- in the case of 88-year-old James Von Brunn, the alleged Holocaust Museum shooter, by making a pathetic attempt to go out in one final blaze of hateful glory by taking down a few of the Jews and blacks who, in his addled mind, were responsible for ruining his life and the future of his beloved white nation before he himself was killed.

But, as with everything else in Von Brunn's long life one would imagine, he failed miserably. Von Brunn succeeded in killing an innocent man, yes -- a black man even. But rather than terrify the intended targets of his wrath and the millions of us whom he believes to be coddling them, he just galvanized his enemy -- making them not only stronger but likely larger as a force. What James Von Brunn, that right wing lunatic of the most inexcusable kind, did today may in fact be the tipping point that leads to a deafening outcry from average people against the forces of hate and ignorance in this country, the ones whose death throes are putting our lives and our way of life in jeopardy.

And the best part: It looks like Von Brunn may live to see the damage he's done to his own cause.

Because as it stands right now, this fucking idiot couldn't even get being a martyr right.

Crazy Talk

The gravity of what Shepard Smith, seemingly the lone voice of reason at Fox News, is saying here can't be underestimated.

He's not only confirming the kind of delusional lunacy Fox is stoking these days -- he's putting the crazy in its rightful place.

Kick ass, Shep.

The Enemy Within

I'd ask what in God's name is happening out there, but unfortunately I already know the answer.

It's just staggering what we're witnessing right now: a new dawn of Right Wing Extremist terrorism in this country, undertaken by psychotic white men with paranoid persecution fantasies and nurtured by an echo chamber of irresponsible media who don't care about the consequences of the shitstorm they stir.

The New York Times: Two Shot at Holocaust Memorial in D.C./6.10.09

The Huffington Post: Holocaust Memorial Shooter is White Supremacist with Conspiracy Theories About Blacks, Jews, Barack Obama/6.10.09

Related:

DXM: Bill Kill/6.1.09

DXM: Revolutionary Goad/4.7.09

DXM: An Equal and Opposite Reaction/8.15.08