It's a rainy day in Streeterville. It's coming down pretty hard out there and the view of Navy Pier is somewhat obscured. Of course, that may be due to the fact that I'm breathing too hard and fogging the windows. Or not. Geek man in me tells me that the windows are fogging due to the temperature differential. Cold rain on a warm window pane. When I went to the grocery store, it was 65 degrees at the Mini. The newspaper tells me that Lake Michigan water is testing at about 53 degrees currently. Needless to say, it is not a day for going out and about or attending baseball games or swimming in Lake Michigan without a wet suit for that matter. I've elected to stay inside for the evening. The view from the 14th floor isn't that great this evening so the view from the big old flat screen TV will have to do.
I've been thinking a lot about the right wing nuts in the country and their verbal assault on President Obama, and just about anything considered liberal or rational. A guy associated with Operation Rescue or one of those Pro-Life/Anti-abortion groups kills a doctor in Kansas because he claims the doctor was a murderer. And how does one justify murder of the doctor, even if one believes the doctor to be a murderer? An 88 year old man walked into the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and shot the first man he saw, a security guard who had opened the door for him, a black man as it turns out. The shooter is a white supremacist with a website where he rants about Jews and blacks.
Meanwhile Jon Voigt spoke at a Republican fund-raiser and called President a "false prophet" and spoke of the need to free Americans from the "Obama oppression." Republican leaders applauded the speech and lauded as a great speech, telling him to come back any time. No doubt there are some extremists out there from the fringes who believe that in light of this Old Testament style Biblical comparison, some Old Testament Biblical style punishment should be visited on the "False Prophet."
Rush Limbaugh continues his daily verbal assaults on the President. Newt Gingrich presses verbal attacks on the Democratic administration. Dick Cheney refuses to remain a retired Vice President and he continues to assert that the Obama administration is making the world a more dangerous place. The President's nominee for the Supreme Court is being called a racist by people whose whole lives have been spent promoting the interests of rich white people over all.
In a recent verbal attack on the President, it was suggested that they should no longer call him a socialist because people don't have negative connotations regarding socialism anymore. They went on to suggest that he be called a "Fascist" and went on to compare Obama's leadership to the oppression of leaders such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. This is coming from the right fringes of a party who were responsible for advocating the bypass of basic Bill of Rights rights, guaranteed in the Constitution, so that we could combat terrorism. This is coming from the agents who support and advocate torture of prisoners during interrogation. This is coming from those who advocate holding people without charges or access to a lawyer for indefinite periods of time, based solely on the fact that someone accused them of colluding with terrorists.
Then these right wing Republicans have their supporters in the news media, notably Fox News, whose reports and commentary on the current administration often go beyond slanted to total fiction. Sadly a lot of Americans depend on TV for their news and depend on Fox for their TV news, thus getting a very skewed view of reality. With all of this slanted, and in some cases totally false information, when does it reach the point that the speech or written word goes beyond "Freedom of Expression" and cross over into libel or slander? I submit that at many times in recent memory it already has.
Is it any wonder that with this kind of vituperation on a daily basis, that right wing nuts pick up on it? Is it any wonder that they feel justified in their violent actions when the apparent justification is all over the TV and written news? Is it any wonder when some of the leadership of the Republican Party openly admit that they feel that if someone took out the opposition it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Yet they have the unmitigated gall to call Obama a fascist. Who's the fascist here? Sadly, the Republican Party in the U.S. has become the closest thing to a genuine "Fascist Party" that this country has ever seen. From their promotion of a military-industrial complex that dominates the country to their blame-placing on liberals and minorities and anyone who doesn't see eye to eye with them, they come closer every day to resembling the traditional "Fascist" parties of the 1930's and 1940's.
Enough is enough I say. Sadly, those who are being attacked, from the political left, to the gay rights community, to those who believe that women should have a choice about bearing a child, to those who think this should be a country where religion and governance are separate are the ones who are most likely to support the basic rights of individuals to make hate speech and encourage intolerance, and in some cases violence. Where is our resolve to end the violence, to end the hate speech, to end the slander of those who just want equality and the good life for all? This is what I ask. Is it really so much to ask?
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