Butt Hurt Conservatives Talk Revolution

I think and expect that the right wing in America will calm down and stop spouting rhetoric like, "How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution?" A year or so and it will become apparent that it is just talk like the mutterings about escaping to Canada did for most liberals after Bush was elected.

Different people deal with disappointment in different ways, that's a key to understanding this. Some people think or talk about hurting the people they perceive as hurting them as a way to vent. I think what will actually happen is that most of the crazy people will go as far as buying a gun or two and making intemperate postings to the National Review Online about doing 'something' about gays, feminists, scary furrieners, blacks, and other liberal 'traitors'. A few people will take the rhetoric seriously and there will be some shootings and bombings with finally one getting so much attention that the movement will die due to backlash and the government doing something about it.

In other words I think sometime in the next three years there is going to be an event of the same impact as the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing. It is more or less inevitable given how much the conservatives are made nuts by the thought of a person with as much melanin as Obama in the White House. What will it be? No idea, but it is coming as sure as Rush Limbaugh saying something provocative.

It will fail because unlike in a Latin American country there are not a huge number of people with nothing to lose here combined with (and this is critical) an army that has a tradition of taking over/overruling the government. Because no matter what they might dream in their fevered imaginations militias cannot overthrow governments. Private citizens are just never as well armed or disciplined as units funded by the government. It is worrying how many right wing types there are in the army, of course, but the question is how many of them are led by officers willing to cross the Rubicon? Not many I suspect.

Could I be wrong? I suppose so, but unless things get much, much worse than they are right now the seeds of civil war will fall upon parched ground.

Reposted on Dreamwidth
 

Pulling the Arrow

When a person is shot with an arrow the wrong thing to do is just pull it out. Especially if done quickly it will do as much harm coming out as it did going in. Not to mention there is the possibility that, as with any impaling wound, the object will be preventing worse bleeding. I bring this up because it is my analogy for just pulling the funding on the Iraq war. It took months of preparation to get into this mess and it will take months to get out. Not to mention that I think the president is the sort of man who would strand the army to score a political point. I would be worried about thousands of American dead if funding were just cut off. The Democrats in congress do need to stand firm about having the power of the purse and get as much as they can, it is not only their right but their responsibility. But just cutting off funding is the same sort of ignorant idea that President George W. Bush is proud to advance.

Fear of Pyrrhic Victories

One of the worst things about politics is one never knows if a campaign might end up being a Pyrrhic Victory. One so dearly won that we would have been better off not to have fought for it. But what can we do other than to proclaim the right as we see it? I dearly, dearly hope that whoever wins the American Presidency in 2008 will do a good job. I fear, of course, that someone good might get the nomination, but be so bloodied that he or she might then lose the election. Or that I might be wrong about fearing this. I doubt my own decisions both ways.

I will be going to caucus here in Colorado in a few days. I'm doing it for Barack Obama and I hope that my humble individual decision will be for the best, win or lose.