Right Wing Weirdness

There's an undercurrent of real weirdness in the right wing, conservative, Republican opposition to Obama these days.  In some ways it's pretty funny, and great to see these whackjobs in total disarray, but in other ways there is a disconcerting malevolence to it all.

April 15th was tax day in the US, and also a day for TEA (Taxed Enough Already) parties across the fruited plain. These things started out as a grassroots libertarian response to big government, but they soon became astro-turfed by Fox News and the right wing. The turnouts weren't huge, but they were very white and very angry. What they were angry at wasn't totally clear, but to my eye they looked like the bitter leftovers of a McCain-Palin rally. They hung tea bags from their hats and signs and talked of themselves as tea baggers out to tea bag anyone who disagreed with them. Are they really so clueless that they didn't know the street slang meaning of tea bagging? (If you don't know either, plug tea bagging into Google and see what the first entry is.)

Then you have elected Republican officials inflaming crowds with their rhetoric.  Last week, Rick Perry the governor of Texas, actually talked of federal oppression and that Texas had the right to secede from the union if it got bad enough.  Tom DeLay, former pest exterminator and Republican congressional whip, added fuel to the fire by saying that Texas might not have the right to secede, but it does have the right to break up into five states, thereby sending eight more presumably Republican senators to Washington. He mused that if they did that, the US would kick them out of the union, and Texas would get the secession they wanted. Is there something in the water in Texas? Maybe kool-aid?

The Republican senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, has told an anecdote several times about his reaction to the financial meltdown last fall. He called his wife on a Friday, and told her to go the ATM as often as she could and pull out as much cash as she could. Either he was trying to point out how human he was by getting panicked about the crisis, or he was trying to use his insider information to get his cash out of the bank before the coming bank run wiped everyone out. Either way, he's not very bright.

And how about Michelle Bachmann, the congresswoman from Minnesota?  A month ago, she said she wants Minnesotans to be "armed and dangerous" in confronting the federal government. She later said she was speaking metaphorically, but her history of whackodom suggests otherwise.

If you watch Fox News at all (I can't stand it for more than a few minutes at a time), you'll see a lineup of the strangest, craziest, and maybe most dangerous people in the media.  Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are virtually calling for armed rebellion. Bill O'Reilly is just plain nuts.

And don't forget about Rush Limbaugh.  He's in a class by himself.

A lot of this would be funny if gun shops across the US hadn't seen huge increases in sales since the election. Even supposedly liberal Seattle has seen a 30% increase over last year.  And last week I heard a report on NPR about a nationwide shortage of ammunition.

Maybe, in the words of Fred Eaglesmith, it's time to get a gun.