Earlier in the week, there was a blog post by a guy who calls himself American Dad posting at Talking Points Memo called “An Open Letter To Conservatives”. In it, he offers a vast laundry list of all the appalling behavior, thuggish tactics, and outright terrorist acts that have been committed by elected Republican officials, right-wing “political action” groups, straight-up right-wing wackos, and that gaggle of morons known as “The Tea Party”. It’s a pretty damning list of lies, hypocrisies, petulant behavior, and serious acts of violence, and yet he says “we need you” to them, arguing that somewhere, somehow there is something beneficial about trying to reason with these people and bring them back into the fold of normal, civil, rational political debate.
And that sounds all nice and fuzzy and conciliatory and such, but I am here to tell you that it’s totally wrong-headed. We don’t need any of that bullshit, and to pretend that just sitting down over a cup of coffee with these people will turn them back into rational, thoughtful people who just differ a little bit in opinion is not only foolish, it is quite likely dangerous.
Since the passage of the health care legislation Sunday night, right-wing groups have begun shattering windows, tried to blow up the house of a Democratic member of Congress (except they got the wrong house and almost killed the guy’s brother and his family), and have instigated so many death threats against members of Congress that no fewer than 10 of them have had to be given round-the-clock police protection. Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the looming threat of widespread right-wing violence and it’s beginning to look like the passage of the health care bill was exactly the match needed to set off their tinder.
So what can anyone expect to gain from trying to reason with people who have concluded that the best course of action is to threaten, intimidate, and kill? That’s not “meaningful political dialogue”, it’s terrorism plain and simple. “Conservatism” is a meaningless term in the present context, because there’s nothing conservative about the actions and agendas of these groups. Mollycoddling them with the notion that they might have something positive to offer is like hand-feeding steak to a starving grizzly bear.
The time has come to take a tougher stance in response to these people and instead of offering them a seat at the table, pushing them back under the rock they crawled out from.
I think you meant, “hand-feeding chicken strips to a swarm of wasps.”
Duly noted.
I think you are 100% right. This behavior is not only unacceptable, it is dangerous.
Last week I watched the first segment of the classic WWII documentary series, “The World At War”, which documents the rise of the Nazis. I know the word “Nazi” is bandied about a little too lightly these days (by no less that the righties themselves), but damn if I wasn’t chilled to the bone seeing the parallels between Hitler’s rise to power and the increasing activity of the Tea Party and other extreme right-wing groups. As they started agitating over the passage of the health care bill, it only solidified my belief that we could be on the brink of something unstoppable, particularly since the Republicans in Congress seem all too inclined to turn a blind eye. Everybody laughed at Hitler and said he was ridiculous and that the Nazis could be easily controlled if they were given political legitimacy, but before anyone had time to put them in check, they had seized everything.
This November’s elections will be the turning point, I think.
Time was when Conservatives had more to offer than rage, hatred, ignorance, and racism. When Conservatives embrace zealots like the Tea Party, they expose themselves as hollow shells concerned with only one thing: political power. How sad that Conservatism is now merely a shadow of what it used to be.
This country needs a functional, lucid opposition party. It’s just too bad that Republicans are demonstrably not up to the task