Is America heading toward a "dirty war" at home?

[swag]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2010/04/09/bloody

Media-inspired death threats against politicians, and real extremist violence, pose a bloody threat to democracy

By Joe Conason

AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich.Bart Stupak says he will retire from Congress after nine terms because he wants “to spend a little more time with my family” -- and who are we to question his reasoning? He says anyone who thinks he was intimidated by the death threats, harassing phone calls and assorted other abuse, or the vow by tea party activists and other Republicans to unseat him, simply doesn’t know him very well. The Michigan Democrat is a former state trooper from the Upper Peninsula, so there is no reason to assume he's a wimp.

But Stupak wouldn’t have to be wimpish to worry about the blasts of violent rhetoric (complete with little drawings of nooses and racial invective against President Obama) directed toward him since he voted for healthcare reform. As a target of verbal and potential physical assault, he is not alone, of course. Today’s Washington Post reports that the number of threats against members of Congress has tripled since last year, with several cases deemed sufficiently serious for investigation by the Capitol Police or the FBI.

Many if not most of these threats come from obsessive losers like Gregory Giusti, the Fox News fan who made a series of disgusting threats against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (The pathetic Giusti, now under arrest, was just following the lead of wealthier and more celebrated but otherwise oddly similar figures in the media, such as Glenn Beck, who once “joked” about poisoning Pelosi.) But the growing extremism of the right is a combustible force that could easily combine with the personal pathology of an individual winger in a violent tragedy. As reactionary anger is amplified and encouraged by the Republican noise machine, in fact, the likelihood of political assassination is increasing.

Threats and violence culminating in murder has long been an accepted strategy among antiabortion extremists, and they have long allied themselves with the most extreme elements in the reviving militia movement. Both have significant followings in Stupak’s home state, and as a former law enforcement officer, he must be well aware of the potential danger from those groups. When the antiabortion zealots threaten to kill you, they often mean it -- as they have proved over and over again during the past three decades.

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[RKP5637]

1. Sadly we have the same crap in this country we are supposedly cleaning up in other

countries. We just call it different names here, but it is the came crap.

[Ozymanithrax]

2. In my opinion, there is high probability of a intifada style unrest...

in our future. We will see ethnic, ideological, and political cleansing. The dominant party in the region will force people out who are not like them with targeted violence and murder.

This will likely begin when the first state carries out its threat to secede.

I don't think it is a sure thing, but I think it likely.

[zeemike]

3. One only has to look at history for the answer.

the civil war started like that...in Missouri and Kansas when the southern slavery supporters tried to take over the state and started a bloody struggle between them and the abolitionist.
We have the same dynamics today though the race thing is always kept under the surface.

[AlinPA]

4. My gut feeling is that this country is headed toward violence between the two political

parties. I'm 73 and have never seen the hate level from the right like this. No president in my lifetime has been hated as much. It started the day he won the elction. The republicans are now crazed and it is getting worse every day.

[Demeter]

5. The Violence Will Come From the Dispossessed

who will break down the gated communities, burn Wall Street, and drive the Obscenely Wealthy into the sea, never to return. The dollar will be repudiated and replaced by a new form of currency, not subject to the Federal REserve, which will be dismantled and its directors imprisoned for economic terrorism.

Regulation will be the rule of the land, and corporations will be time-limited as well as voiceless. Globalism will find the US is out of its loop entirely as multinational corporations will be prohibited from doing anything beyond selling goods to export/import firms.

How long this purgative process will take is anyone's guess. When it will start is a mystery. But it will unite the country like nothing else has ever done.

[Doctor_J]

6. No they won't

Big Media has convinced them that people like Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi are their enemies. The dispossessed will be the shock troops for Wall Street, and it will be left to the remaining sane people of the country to subdue them. Whether we are up to the task is unknown - my reading of DU, and the fact that we have yet to take any retribution for the carnage they have already delivered make me dubious (not a single casualty suffered among the teabaggers, Fox "News" personnel, hate radio, or Big Media).

On the other hand, we might just succumb, like the large majority of decent, hardworking Germans did in the 1930's. I hope we fight back, but who knows?

[Demeter]

8. The Teabaggers Aren't the Dispossessed

They are the Possessed.

I'm talking about the foreclosed, the unemployed, the ordinary citizens who are falling off the radar. Their numbers are still growing, and they have friends and family.

[subaltern]

9. I think your analysis is correct, unfortunately.

Populist anger can be co-opted by the left OR the right. The teabagger movement was bought and paid for by insurance companies. But the people in it actually believe they are a grassroots movement fighting some sort of vague concept of elitism. If the economy gets back on track, and there are some signs it is, this won't even be an issue. But the longer that things stay in the crapper the more angry people there will be, and they won't necessarily be angry at the right culprits. We really do live in interesting times.

[troubledamerican]

7. Learn or die: Wikipedia -- "Dirty War"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War