Cornered rats

I have often said that I find Joe Bageant’s blog depressing because of his merciless depiction of the decline of the West. Well, I can’t exactly say I find Muskrat Hunt depressing, mainly because it is somewhat lightened by Doogman’s acerbic and jaundiced sense of humor. But although not depressing, it is, underneath the humor, scary—and getting scarier by the day.

What scares me is the many links he posts to YouTube clips showing the disgusting depths of racist hatred being displayed at pro-McLame and/or anti-Obama rallies (e.g., “Very white kinda pride” 10/19; “This is un-American” 10/19 ; “These white people ARE trash” 10/15). But what really raised the terror alert to code red was “The cycle of violence” 10/21, which linked to a podcast on “Campaign for America’s Future” that featured someone discussing what she called “far-right eliminationist rhetoric,” which is a fancy way of referring to rabid wingnuts talking about killing us. To put it bluntly, if you think the far-right rhetoric is ugly now, wait until they feel really threatened by the resurgence of liberal activism and start violently acting out their rage and fear. Wild animals always fight most fiercely when they’re cornered, and the far-right is, quite correctly, beginning to feel cornered and very threatened, and they’re going to be acting it out in increasingly nasty, vicious ways. I’ve already mentioned (8 Sept “Who cares? It’s all lies.”) the possibility of Obama getting assassinated, and the meaner and scarier the racists get, the more imminent the threat becomes. He combines the vulnerability of Martin Luther King with that of John F. Kennedy, and no number of Secret Service men can ultimately protect him from another Lee Harvey Oswald in another school book depository, particularly if the agencies responsible for protecting him suddenly and mysteriously get negligent in doing their job. The racist thugs may be losing political power, but they still have influence and probably money, and money has its own power. And where money fails, sheer evil meanness can always accomplish a lot.

Perhaps the scariest thing about these maniacs, and one of the most difficult for us to comprehend, is that they are convinced they’re right and are thus impervious to any kind of argument or dissuasion. In fact, the attacks and criticisms they get from people for whom they have nothing but hatred and scorn simply convince them all the more firmly that they’re right. They believe firmly and unshakably, by upbringing and acculturation, that America is or should be a white Christian nation, and that they have a God-given duty to eliminate anyone who tries to make it otherwise. Atheists may blame this belief primarily on the perverted dens of iniquity which masquerade as Christian churches in Dixieland and its cultural extensions, and they doubtless do share a large part of the blame, but I suspect it has its followers among people who got it from elsewhere. This conviction is based on the simple fact that racism is not part of Christian belief in any of the mainstream churches outside the Deep South, and is in fact vigorously (but not vigorously enough) opposed and condemned by them. Racism has cultural and psychological roots much deeper than simple heretical belief.

Still ten days left for an October Surprise. Halloween would be a good time to scare the living shit out of the whole nation, woonit?