The danger for the GOP

Is this the end of a cycle in America? 

Just over 40 years ago, Bobby Kennedy was gunned down in the kitchen of a hotel in L.A., thus ending the longest spree of political assassinations in U.S. history. We had turned into a banana republic barely disguised as a Democratic Republic. 

Last time, the Democrats got the blame for everything they managed to accomplish, even though most of what they accomplished was good and has stood the test of time. 

We all paid with worsening and worsening right-leaning administrations. Now, we find our selves so tilted to the right that moderate programs, programs like Nixon and Reagan advocated in their days, are considered nothing short of communism, totalitariansim, even Nazism, in todays GOP. 

It is definitely the Right who are in the streets with hate contorted faces. How many are on drugs, as well? 

Is all that foul mouthed, hatred owing only to their own brain chemistry? I would feel better if we found out they were all on Cocaine or Oxycontin. Then, we could at least say, "well what can we expect from drug addled brains?" If no drugs are involved, we are dealing with something much worse. These states are permanent, just below the surface, ready to erupt when the fire is turned up by hateful tirades of disinformation, blasted over the airwaves 24/7.

Who is in the greatest danger? 

The ones who created the monster? Politically, it is the creator and Karma can be a  bitch

This monster has been in the making for close to 40 years. Since the heady days of Ronald Reagan, the monster was well known by people who pay attention, even with a certain detachment.

 Will this monster devour it's creator? The chances are good, if the stoking continues. I just hope that something really more horrible does not have to happen before before we all turn and address this nation threatening horror before it costs us dearly, a price we cannot afford to pay. Not again. 

When will the Right realize that they will be held responsible for what their monster does. They will not be allowed to simply walk away wiping their blood stained hands as mentally unstable people, riled by ugly hate speech, carry out their programming like robots who have been engineered for destruction; self destruction if not other destruction.

It is the people on the Right who are acting out this time. They, too, are motivated by fear, just as the anti-war movement was and the Civil rights movements, in certain quarters, was. None of these movements were filled with courageous people. 

There will always be people who want a revolution. Usually, they are the very ones who will nit be brave enough to fight it. Thankfully, there are those who believe in evolution, even in the angry glare of the faces that bear witness to it's opposite.

Change is coming. It has to. It must. 

We can no longer walk down this same tried path of deception in the form of fear-mongering. It will be the end of us all, in one way or the other

Who wants to die over it? 

Who wants to kill over it?

Those are serious questions and they need answers, individual answers. These are not questions that should be answered while in a group. This is an individual kind of thing. When we are angry and our anger is being fed by a group, it becomes a mob and mob mentality is psychotic.


Who wants to calmly work through the problems and solutions we have or might have?

Let The Sun Shine In......

Is All The Anger Messing with Our National Culture

I would say a big YEP! This is what deception, in the form of misinformation and over-stating, and fear-mongering does to a community and, if on a large enough scale, an entire nation.

Apparently anger has become the crucible upon which our national culture is to be forged - - an acceptable means of expression on the campaign trail, at town-hall meetings and in Congress. The lunatic fringe engages in the interchange of opinions without factual underpinnings or respect for rational debate. And since especially politicians on the right fail to condemn outrageous statements by political opportunists in their ranks the lunatic fringe moves ever closer to defining conservatives and the Republican Party.

There doesn’t seem to be any sense of honor among fanatics, just irresponsible partisan rage from politicians and media hucksters who say, with a straight face, that they are true patriots. Those Republicans in Congress who refuse to state unequivocally that they believe President Obama to be a natural-born citizen provide cover for ‘birthers’, the latest of whom is Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, who says he won’t follow orders issued by the president unless he sees his birth certificate. Will the Army actually put up with this, issue an order to cease and desist or go straight to a court martial proceeding?

Somehow we have reached a point in our history where civil disobedience has become synonymous with armed resistance and a total misreading of what our early forbears fought against in the early days of British dominance on our shores. “No taxation without representation” and the flinging of tea into Boston Harbor has morphed into a false analogy that even what an elected majority of our own citizens proposes is unacceptable, as if there were no such thing as free elections and legislative initiatives. Accompanied by blissfully incoherent rhetoric, supporters cling to irrational premises to feed their angst encouraged by irresponsible pols who turn logic on its head.

The recent arrest of homegrown insurgents who believed they could start an insurrection by attacking law enforcement personnel followed by armed assaults at their funerals is a disturbing extension of the violence and anti-government sentiment that has begun to permeate our world. When the initial shock wears off among the information-challenged rank-and-file voting public the inflammatory violence to decent discourse will no doubt continue unabated. Instigators are unlikely to acknowledge that words can have serious consequences and that their verbal assaults often bear bitter fruit.

It seems to amuse listeners when Sarah Palin tells them to stop motorists who have Obama stickers on their cars and ask them “how’s that hopey, changey thing workn’ out for ya?” Either she is unaware or doesn’t care that a driver in Tennessee was forced off the road by an angry partisan for just that reason. Neither does it concern her that her November electoral map highlights Democratic candidates in the cross-hairs that all gun handlers will recognize. In fact conservatives in general dismiss any connection between their overblown rhetoric and the behavior of would be government removalists.

And it isn’t just among the obvious disrupters in the political world where violence and incivility occurs. Anyone who has attended a child’s sporting event will probably have experienced a parent yelling at an official or even physically attacking a coach. At one game when my own eleven-year-old son was pitching I could hear “meatball, meatball” from the bleachers across the field and remarked that the coach shouldn’t allow his team to behave that way, only to be told it wasn’t the kids but the parents of the opposing team.

Sadly the lack of respect and deeply disturbing behavior of both adults and young people in our midst played out in the tragic suicide of a young female student at South Hadley High School last week. No adequate explanation has yet been made as to why members of the faculty and other students who knew of the bullying and harassment of the girl took no action or why such behavior is often tolerated nationwide. Is it a sign of our times that violent words and actions are simply accepted as part of growing up? And is it only after some dreadful incident that a knee-jerk response is generated in the community and guilt-ridden overreaction confounds the original transgression? A local resident told me that a friend has stopped going to meetings in South Hadley because there is such disruptive shouting and screaming on the part of attendees. Sound familiar?

Whatever disagreements continue to exist in the political world and in our communities it is well past time that we took a critical look at the environment we have created and for partisans to acknowledge that radical elements in the media and among supporters do great damage to our way of life.

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FINDING A VOICE by Ann Davidow

Let The Sun Shine In......