I worry too much. I always have. In fact, I have wasted countless hours worrying. Now, granted, this behavior intensified when I had children. And if there was a contest for turning every sharp, hot, and moving object into a potential deathtrap I surely would have taken first place. Paddle fans and coffee table corners were the enemy. Oh yeah, I was pretty obnoxious.
And while I will continue to worry about my kids (what parent doesn’t?) my worries this morning center around a rhetoric that has slimed its way out of obscure blogs and white supremacist pamphlets and spilled its way into the main stream media. Alan Keyes is a fool by any sane person’s standards, and I usually ignore his delusional ranting because, well, he is a crazy person. But yesterday he used a phrase against President Obama that turned my stomach.
“Obama is a radical communist and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it is coming true. He is going to destroy this country and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist.”
Radical communist? Destroy this country? America will cease to exist?
Stop him?
Now maybe it’s just me being a worrywart (and I have worried about this before), but Keyes’ words strike me as a call to action. And if Keyes were the sole nutcase spouting this bile I might be able to dismiss the comments, but he isn’t.
There’s Michelle Malkin posing with a guy holding a sign with Obama’s name complete with Swastika, the New York Post’s stimulus/chimpanzee cartoon (and I know what I saw in that cartoon, and while others may disagree over the who there’s no disagreement that the cartoon symbolized the death of a person), and Rush Limbaugh’s latest foray into hate:
Within, within the confine of our Constitution and the political arena of ideas. They must be stopped. I don’t care why they see this county the way the see it. I don’t care why a murderer does it. I don’t care why a rapist does it. I don’t care why this Muslim guy offed his wife’s head. The “Now Gang” is out there saying “Ah now that’s not domestic violence, that’s just uh, that’s just uh, what’d they call it, “culturally honor killing” and this woman was gonna divorce him…it’s against the law, and, and, and, that’s that’s…that’s his diversity. You know it, uh, I don’t care… I don’t care why anymore. I mean, if I figure it out, I will be glad to tell you, because its interesting to know, but it doesn’t matter in terms of defeating them.
There’s the money quote. They must be stopped.
Nicole Belle, from Crooks and Liars, must be a worrier like me. “Good God. Aside from the really tenuous grip on reality, someone is going to be hurt by this kind of angry rhetoric (italic mine). It won’t be Rush, but some innocent person whose only crime will be hoping for progress.”
How long before some crazy person takes up the charge being issued from the right? Actually, some already have.