There Will Be Blood

This is what the conservative movement looks like. Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Fox News, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, John Hagee, etc. etc. A daily dose of right wing propaganda, and this will be the end result.

We should all be very concerned and worried about this. Two things are happening which will throw a match to this tinderbox. The first is the collapse of the Dow Jones and the economy. Americans have not experienced a true economic crisis, or a serious recession, in many decades. The recessions of 1982, 1992, and 2001 were relatively short-lived. This downturn will last several years, and nobody knows where the bottom will be. There may be no bottom. Life is going to become very difficult and it's going to stay that way for a long time.

Second, the Republican Party is headed for a spectacular defeat in next month's elections. Barack Obama will win by a very sizeable margin, and Democrats will increase their majorities in Congress. We may even reach the magical 60 seats in the Senate. Add this to the 2006 election, which tossed the Republicans out of both houses of Congress, and consider the prospects for 2010, where even more GOP seats are vulnerable.

The Republican Party has made a complete wreck of America and the world, and they are about to be banished for a very long time. I personally hope that it is for a generation; nobody truly knows. But they will be out of power for a long time.

For a conservative base fed constant propaganda from talk radio, Fox News and the GOP, this is a devestating blow. They've been told that they are the chosen ones, the true Americans. They've been told those evil libruls are the fault of everything, that they vile, corrupt, evil. Bill Clinton secretly murdered people in Arkansas. Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster. They smuggled drugs into the country. Democrats steal votes and steal elections (the "dead votes" line from the video is a throwback to Kennedy-Nixon in 1960). Libruls are baby killers. Libruls are terr'sts. Libruls Hate Mur'ka.

And conservatives are the true Americans. That is the thrust to GOP propaganda. These people are sold a constant diet of fear and loathing, and a sense of superiority. It's a mixture of arrogance, paranoia, and self-pity that can become extremely dangerous in this political climate. These people will have to face the complete destruction of this fantasy narrative. It's a difficult thing to see your worldview collapse into the dust. It causes great dissonance, and many will retreat further into paranoia and hatred.

The danger is that this will spill over into violence. Today's threats become tomorrow's actions. And America forgets, all too easily, that terrorism doesn't just come from the scary-looking foreigners on the other side of the globe. Terrorism is found here, from Timothy McVeigh to Eric Rudolph to the Unibomber. And everyone knows the names James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman, John Hinkley.

And then the very final ingredient to the mix: a nation with a long and troubled history of racist violence is about to elect its first African-American President.

It is impossible to conceive of this scenario without the shedding of blood. I fear it is inevitable. I hope that enough voices are raised, and we work hard to stop this cancer before it spreads. We need to put an end to the violent, xenophobic, racist rhetoric that fuels this madness. If John McCain were an honorable man, he would be fighting back this rising tide of anger, instead of throwing more gasoline. But he made his decision many years ago, just as the Republican Party and the conservative movement have.

This is why I champion honest conservatives and Republicans. It doesn't matter whether I agree with their politics or thier ideas to the nation's problems. We all share a common goal in stopping extremism and violence, and we need to work together now to put an end to it. We have the truth on our side, and we have the power of the internet to shine the light of truth on this ugly darknes. If this isn't stopped and stopped now, I promise you, there will be blood.