Mobile
Monday, March 8, 2010
Boomer with Attitude / News Right-wing nuts increasingly on parade
Posted By John Grooms on Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 11:20 AM
The Great Conservative Mental Breakdown of 2010 continues unabated, and it’s reaching alarmingly weird depths. We’ve written before about the American right wing’s collective panic attacks since Barack Obama’s election as president, but compared to some of the things going on these days — the Tea Partiers’ weird claims that Obama is a socialist dictator from the Planet Xylon and so forth — seem like reasoned discourse. Granted, most conservatives are not this crazy, but on the other hand, and more importantly, you don’t hear a lot of responsible conservatives calling their more extreme brethren on the carpet, either. Examples:
1. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) expressed sympathy for the beliefs of the terrorist Joe Stack, who flew his plane into IRS offices in Austin, Texas, and rightwing blogs were filled with posts from people who declared Stack a “true American hero.”
2. A growing number of Indiana residents are following the beliefs of the “Tenther” movement (which claims the Constitution endows states and citizens with sovereign rights) to their logical extreme. These nutcases are declaring themselves “sovereign citizens” who are thereby exempt from all federal law, and, naturally, from paying taxes. They also claim that their homes are embassies, and have created identification papers that describe them as “diplomats.” One such “sovereign citizen,” Jonathan Dilley, is in federal prison for 4 years after he paid off $800,000 of debt by making his own currency.
3. A well-known religious right group, the American Family Association, has let it be known that the tragic death of trainer Dawn Brancheau, killed recently by a killer whale at SeaWorld in Orlando, could have been avoided if the marine animal park had only obeyed the Bible. No, I’m not making this up. The AFA says Brancheau would still be alive “If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed” — specifically, owners of a Vancouver theme park, where the same whale killed a trainer in 1991, should have followed rules laid out in Exodus and stoned the whale to death at that time. Of course, following Exodus would have also meant stoning the whale’s owners to death, but hey, it’s in the Bible, so whadda-ya-gonna-do? The AFA is no small-potatoes group, either, as a number of GOP lawmakers and leaders kowtow to them regularly and take part in their radio shows and meetings. One of their big fans in Congress, in fact, is Sen. Jim “Hair Dye” DeMint of South Carolina.
4. And last but definitely not least, a far-right “Christian” group called “Repent Amarillo” has been terrorizing citizens of that Texas city. They see themselves as a type of militia, and refer to their group as “The Army of God,” although opponents have begun calling the group the Texas Taliban. They have publicly “outed” a local swingers’ group via harassment and illegal surveillance; they bullied a theater company into canceling a production of Bent, a play about persecution of gays by the Nazis; have tried to equate a nature preserve with solicitation for witchcraft; and declare they will go after environmentalists, Halloween, “spring break events,” and even breast cancer events that do not condemn abortion (?!).
All we'll say at this point is thank God more sane groups and journalists are keeping an eye on these nuts.
Speaking of Boomer With Attitude, News
Comments (5)
Showing 1-5 of 5
Latest in The CLog
More by John Grooms
-
Knight and Day: Plot eclipsed by stars 1
Cruise and Diaz are main reasons to consider seeing mindless action flick.
-
Lunch Break (9/1/16): Organizers unveil "People, Not Polluters" platform in Charlotte as McCrory officials testify in Raleigh
The morning already passed us by. What the hell happened?
-
Jigsaw, Dating App That Hides Users’ Faces, launches in Charlotte, NCTo Fight Superficial Dating App Culture 3
