Friends, Al Jazeera has an interesting opinion piece (Fear in America) which I would recommend that you all read (see site link under ‘News Links’ in sidebar). It was written by Rob Reynolds, a senior Washington correspondent for Al Jazeera.
I’ve taken the liberty of including a few quotes from the worrying article. Hopefully they will whet your appetite to read the whole post:
- ‘Tens of thousands of right-wing demonstrators march on the US Capitol waving signs reading “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy” and calling Obama a “bloodsucking Muslim alien”.’
- “There’s something loose in the land, an ugliness and hatred directed toward Barack Obama, the nation’s first African American president, that takes the breath away,” offered Colbert King in the Washington Post.”
- ‘Steven Anderson, the pastor of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, preached a sermon last month entitled “Why I hate Barack Obama”, in which he declared, “I’m going to pray he dies and goes to hell”.’
- ‘They are a motley group: white supremacists, Patriots, Sovereign Citizens, anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers, Neo-Confederates, Skinheads, Teabaggers, end-times prophecy adherents, birthers, Minutemen, New World Order conspiracists, Oath Keepers – the list is long and depressing.’
- ‘But while their numbers may be relatively small, the right-wing radicals – and the media bomb-throwers who fire them up – can do a lot of damage.’
- ‘Thousands of videos posted to YouTube show white militia members playing soldier – with real guns. What they have in common – besides hatred for non-whites – is their worship of firearms and their intense paranoia about the government.’
Ancient Rome was reputed to have fallen apart from within. Is this dangerous escalation in extremism going to tear America apart eventually?
I am concerned for all those decent, aware, peace-loving Americans who may become caught up in local violence. And I am also concerned that the government, seeing the trouble that is coming, may become more authoritarian which will egg the armed militias on.
America is a troubled, imperialistic, militaristic nation, one that is suffering harsh economic times. It is also a nation prone to violence.
That’s a dangerous mix!
I wonder if you have this sort of ignorant low lives in Australia. I have traveled to many places in the America’s from Canada to Argentina, Europe, Africa and Mid-East… never to Australia. With the exception of the United States of America I have never, never witnessed such abundant ignorance as in the USA. It’s actually very amusing to watch (moron pictured) because they haven’t a clue as to who their true enemy is and many even if unemployed and truly down and out still can’t figure it out. It is truly an amazing phenomenon!
Reply
David G Reply:
September 20th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
LT, we certainly have some ignorant lowlife in Australia but not these kind.
Religion in Australia is fairly low key, thank heavens. Most Australians are not very political and are more interested in sport. Most Australians don’t own guns. And Australians have no desire to run the world either.
I agree, it is an amazing phenomenon but a frightening one!
Reply
Makes u wonder how long this country last before these people decide to revolt and decide who is going to live and die.There are already reports of these people killing african americans in the aftermath of katrina .Free thinking americans beware these people are dangerous!!!!!!!
Reply
the colour scheme is appalling……………
Reply
“….a motley group: white supremacists, Patriots, Sovereign Citizens, anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers, Neo-Confederates, Skinheads, Teabaggers, end-times prophecy adherents, birthers, Minutemen, New World Order conspiracists, Oath Keepers – the list is long and depressing.’”
Who they are ? I think it’s the same ‘gene’ popping up everywhere in the west (the stupid white!) race, believing they’re superior to all other races!) ‘White supremacy’ parties is growing in, among other countries, here in Denmark, Holland, Britain.and in Norway, the latest election showed it.
In my opinion, a sick people, suffering first and foremost from racisme and Islam-o-phobisme, and lacks common brotherliness, deceiving themself to believe in their own perfectioness. — completely absorbed in taking care of their own complacency.
The only thing those people need for the world to end up in a disaster – is, – a leader, a Hitler like, to raise the army.!
The latest ‘happening’ of this kind (1930-45) luckily the then Hitler had no WMD.
Reply
Fear is the key word here in America. I’m 48 years old and as far back as I can remember it’s been a bombardment of fear thrown at us from an age so young that we could barely walk and talk when it started.
I was raised in the “bible belt” where every thing you do wrong is going to cause you to go to hell and burn forever. Then when I was old enough to start school, that’s when they really started to scare the crap out of me about commies wanting to attack and destroy our country.
Of course now it’s terrorists abroad and possibly behind every tree and bush waiting to get us! The bible thumpers are calling this “the end times” and Obama is the antichrist or the beast or something.
The media is playing the race card over and over again. They can’t seem to get past it. It feels like someone is trying to start a bloody civil war or revolution in this country. Very sad indeed that the powers that be keep dividing America’s anger along party lines and race lines. Divided we fall right?
The possibility of martial law in America has been a hot topic this year. Whether they would impose martial law to keep civil unrest down in case of an economic collapse, or whether it would be used to control a pandemic, or possibly another false flag terror attack, I don’t know. Oath keepers is a group of veterans and law enforcement trying to assure Americans that they will not obey any order to fire on the American people in case martial law is imposed so I would not clump them in with any racist militia group. But again, the media wants to portray them as a bad group. Go to http://www.Oathkeepers.org and see what they stand for. You will see they aren’t dangerous.
Reply
“We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.”
- Hunter S Thompson (writing about the US not long before he committed suicide)
Reply
coco Reply:
September 21st, 2009 at 5:18 am
i haven’t seen that quote from mr. thompson, but funny when i saw the title of this article, i immediately thought of ‘fear and lothing in las vegas’……………
Reply
Spike Reply:
September 25th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Hey Hunter, Speak for yourself with that all-inclusive ‘we’.
Y’all just don’t understand the bubba flipping you off. He doesn’t want anybody, left/right/dem/rep, telling him what to do. If you ask him he will give you some pretty good thoughts about what he thinks is good for him and his family — if you patronize him he’ll just flip you off again. The psychotic monkey flipped you off out of contempt and nobody seemed to care.
Reply
The crazy part to me is how radio show personalities stoke guys like the above’s fire! I t is a fire that is manipulated. Because as you say, David, if they researched the true cause and effect that made their jobs go away. Outsourcing at the highest levels. Crushing the Unions that gave us tha five day, 8 hour a day workweek, with a decent retirement to look forward to. That is the thing with ignorance. It is like Mad-cow disease; the disease is pernicious and yet cases and numbers and true state of affairs are hidden and they are in our food supply!!. But, fags marrying, now, that is a real problem. Especially with all the plastics in our lives altering men and women hormonally, creating excessive estrogen in men. Or a frog slowly boiling and not noticing.
Reply
Thanks for all the great comments. I thought the best quote from the article was from the Baptist pastor who wants his God to kill Obama and cast him into the flames of hell.
There’s nothing quite like Christian love (or Judaic love or Muslim love, etc) is there?
Reply
It is very scary. The US ruling class uses divide and conquer to destroy other countries, and it looks like they’re turning on us. They are stoking the hatred to keep us from uniting against them.
I know so many armed and dangerous people who are just waiting. Waiting for things to get bad for them personally.
I may have mentioned the coworker who told me that he would come to my house, steal my food, and kill me and put my body on a stake in my front yard “as a message”. This guy is armed to the teeth. His brother is in Iraq working as a mercenary. His dad was a Green Beret. He is Christian, right wing, armed and convinced that he is a “good guy” who needs to protect himself from the “bad guys”.
This is the American way, to believe that they are good guys who need to kill all the bad guys, just like John Wayne. They talk about the bad guys in Iraq, the bad guys in Afghanistan, the bad guys in the ghetto, the bad guys in the congress.
Only they are the good guys, thereby licensed to kill.
If they stay employed it will be OK. If not, we’re screwed.
Reply
David G Reply:
September 21st, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Wagelaborer, I think you have put your finger on an important aspect of this phenomenon when you mentioned about so-called ‘good guys’ wanting to kill all the ‘bad guys’.
That these slime could consider themselves ‘good’ is bad enough but that they also consider their country to be ‘good’ and believe that it should control the world is downright scary!
I just noticed a breaking news item about McChrystal demanding that more troops be sent to Afghanistan. I keep thinking about where all this is going to end!
Reply
LT Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Good guys, bad guys, more troops to Afghanistan… I know someone who is a “former” US Marine (don’t call him X-Marine because you’ll be promptly corrected). Anyway, this individual eats, sleeps and breaths US Marine Corps and his son just joined the “Corps” also. He tells me that his son wants to go to Afghanistan so he can kick down doors and kill bad guys. You are right… the way events are unfolding is downright scary and I believe one step closer to the midnight hour.
Reply
“That these slime could consider themselves ‘good’ is bad enough but that they also consider their country to be ‘good’ and believe that it should control the world is downright scary!”
David and all, this guy is the most typical American. Sure there are lots of variety and not everybody sports his demeanor. However, This guy is as American and prevalent as apple pie.
My 90 yr old neighbor listens to all those right wing radio shows and is full of fear. Talks about is Obama REALLY an Ammerikkan??? Storing food and keeping guns. There are scores of guys just like Wagelaborer described. God help us all when these guys lose their jobs (gulp).
Reply
I guess this guy really typifies the moronic thinking. My favorite was “Get a Brain MORANS” right after the controlled demolitions of 911, but this guy really hits it home.
Although, I wouldn’t say so much that something’s loose in the US, than I’d say that something’s been concocted, nurtured, fostered and propagated. Good article though. Thanks.
Reply
Amerikagulag and LT, the world is full of indoctrinated humans. Most of them are brain-dead and peaceful but many are brain-dead and filled with a desire to kill. Unfortunately, neither group realize that they are brain-dead and hence they are easily manipulated by the Masters of the Universe.
How we, the thinkers (the ones who see how different the world could be) can change this situation is the billion dollar question. Perhaps when the masses are starving they might begin to think for themselves. But then it might be too late!
Reply
A picture is worth a thousand words. This immature man is an adult? Unfortunately there are many like him around. It gets increasingly embarrassing to be a citizen of this country. I feel more and more like moving to some civilized country like Canada next door.
Reply
I agree that he trends in the U.S. right now (the country in which I live) are very frightening. Fewer and fewer Americans seem willing to actually listen to other points of view (this is one of Obama’s strengths, BTW, especially when compared to his predecessor), and more and more Americans seem to react out of knee-jerk emotion that is expertly manipulated byby talk-radio and Fox ‘News’ [sic] preaching fear. As opposed to Americans thinking for themselves.
But I don’t think this is because the average American is any smarter or dumber than any other world citizen. I think it is because we have almost completely handed-over the running of our country to corporate interests.
Corporations control most of the news coverage (either directly or indirectly through their advertising). Corporations control most of the election choices through direct and indirect contributions to candidates (we don’t have publicly-financed elections as in many other developed countries). Corporations quickly mobilize “astroturf” assemblies of the sheeple to lobby against their own economic self-interests any time legislators consider doing anything that might affect the Corporate bottom-line. It’s simply stunning how pervasively only corporately-defined alternatives have permeated U.S. culture and are taken for granted.
It doesn’t help that we have a Supreme Court that is sympathetic to granting corporations the same “rights” that individual citizens have. At face-value that might sound tolerable, but the reality that corporations hold the vast share of the wealth in this country — and thus the vast bulk of power — turns that into a very un-level playing field. It’s a joke.
I don’t know how we get out of this dilemma. It would help for Americans to wake up, think for themselves, and occasionally tell the corporations to get out of the way and go fuck themselves.
Instead, the corporations — Fox ‘News’ [sic] being a great example — keeps the sheeple in line by continually and shamelessly bludgeoning them with a message of fear, fear, and more fear. Which would be comical, except that it’s so damn effective.
Reply
Kristen, Canada is a great place. I lived there for three years.
Don, fear is a weapon of the Masters of the Universe. In Australia, it is also used to manipulate but we are amateurs compared with the U.S. Our news was filled with the story of an Indonesian terrorist who planned to destroy Australia. Of course, such an objective is ridiculous but most people don’t think to question it!
Reply
Don’t blame the Jew’s goyim. Many, Jews and non, even present substantial evidence to prove that Christopher Columbus was a Jew, looking for the promised land. Certainly the USA is the New Jerusalem.
Reply