Sticking my head in the lion's mouth--just this once

[DFW]

I usually don't go to right wing sites and boards. I still work for a living, often 20 hours
a day, and have better things to do (even when I take a day off, like today). However, I do
have this friend--an oddball kind of guy to have as a friend, but the world isn't always as
cut and dried as we want it to be, and much as I was prepared to hate this guy when I met him,
it turned out we got along great--sympathy for the devil, maybe, but there it is. His name is
Richard Viguerie, and politically, he is the polar opposite of just about everything I believe
in. We only agreed once on one thing--that Bush was a f***ing disaster. For different reasons:
that goes without saying.

Richard has his own website and sends me links to it. This time I saw something interesting: he
ran an article about how right-wing and conservative (at least Richard knows there IS a difference)
people were getting riled up over the DHS telling its agents to watch out for terrorism from the
right. To them, I guess, there was no Timothy McVeigh and no 9/11 (Bin Laden is, after all, nothing
if not a deeply conservative Muslim). They are still going on about the Weather Underground (!!).
Check out the Bill Ayres/Obama connection that they were trying to conjure up during the presidential
campaign. Who knows what they'll bring back next week? Maybe Neil Cavuto can find some descendant of
the Rosenbergs with a radium dial watch or something. They seem to be running out of gas, that's for sure.

Anyway, for the first time, I decided to post a response to Richard's article+links about their
puffed-up offended sense of something-or-other over the DHS RW-terror watch ("so we're armed to
the teeth and we're a little crazy. That doesn't make us dangerous!").

I am stationed overseas, so if they come looking to toss a few bricks through my windows, they'll
at least have to do some serious research, breach some security, and spend quite a bit on air fare.

Here's what I posted:

"I wouldn't let myself get too worked up over this. With the huge increase in gun sales and unemployment, along with Timothy McVeigh still fresh in the mind of law enforcement, this kind of notice was bound to show up. After 9/11, the same watch for ultra-conservative Muslims was sent out, and American Muslims screamed just as loudly as Boehner & Co. are screaming now. I'll bet with anyone who thinks that American conservatives, or even non-conservative right-wing extremists will be given the same treatment as Muslim Americans (not to speak of Muslim foreigners!) were given in the years following 9/11. There will be plenty of things for true conservatives to toss at the Obama adminstration come the mid-term elections. This will not be one of them. Relax, guys. They are NOT 'coming to take you away, ha-ha.'"

What I neglected to post is that a good number of them DO deserve to be taken away ha-ha. But I figure if
I posted THAT, then some of them WOULD cough up the air fare.

[trotsky]

1. Should be interesting to see the responses you get.

Because yeah, Tim McVeigh never existed to them. OR they've somehow twisted him into a liberal villain. (Don't ask me how, it's right-wing "logic.")

Make sure you check in here to let us know if ANYONE responds to your post with a "Yeah, you're probably right." :)

[DFW]

2. Don't hold your breath!!!

I usually don't give Richard's posts a second look. And he's the most rational one of the bunch--the
others who post on his blog are usually total whackos.

[Democracyinkind]

3. Maybe you should have mentioned that it was a report demanded by the Bush admin.

... I think they would sleep better then... Maybe even better if they knew that there was the same report on the left 8 years ago. The timing always seems to be so... perfect.... As if the DHS report was meant to kickstart the oppositions fear and paranoia. I remember that I didn't react all that cool when I first heard of the DHS report on the left wing.

Whatever. Good job answering them. Though it might be senseless in the big picture, them reading a sane perspective for once really can't hurt.

[DFW]

4. My biggest problem with these people is this:

Their reading a sane perspective for once will go right over their heads, or,
more likely, be dismissed as the rantings on one more America-hating libbrul.
After all, anyone who disagrees with them is a tax-and-spend socialist, right?

I think they have finally accepted that in the last election, a majority of
Americans voted against them. Emotionally, they are light-years away from it.

One thing about Richard--he asked me to congratulate Howard Dean on his brilliant
victory last November. Not the sort of thing you would have expected from someone
of his political persuasion, but like I said--it's not always as black and white
as so many of them want it to be.

[elleng]

6. As Viguerie's an expert at finding one's supporters

and getting out the vote, his congrats to Dr. Dean are not unexpected!

[JHB]

7. Richard V is one of the people who put together the modern conservative coalition...

...so I'm not surprised he's able to take a detached-enough view that he can appreciate the strategey on its own terms. And somehow I'm not all that surprised that he seems like a decent guy at a personal level.

But as I said, he's one of the people responsible for the Conservative movement, RWers, and Republican Party as we know them today. His direct-mail fundraising techniques empowered the hard-line, uncompromising, single-issue special interests that had previously been on the political fringes, and gave them enough clout to pry apart the New Deal coalition, form the Reagan coalition, and reshape the Republicans in their image. If he doesn't like how it turned out, he can complain to the guy in the mirror.

[DFW]

8. He knows all too well about complaining to the guy in the mirror

As much as he worked to get Bush in office, he later wrote a book trashing Bush called "Conservatives
Betrayed." Richard knows full well that he had assumed the role of Faust in that one.

[JHB]

10. Even so, he still sounds as though he's missing key points and obsessing over boogeymen

Then again, I'm of the perspective that Bush didn't "betray the Reagan legacy", he was its end product.

[DFW]

11. Richard is nothing if not a purist

And he actually believes a lot of the stuff he puts out, as opposed to Fox types, who play to
an audience. He truly takes the point opposite yours, i.e. that Bush betrayed rather than
polished up the Reagan legacy. But then, Richard believes, too, that Reagan was wonderful,
a point of view 180° opposed to the way I see it.

Richard catches points often enough, but he glides over them when they are inconvenient. He
obsesses far less over bogeymen than many of his nut case colleagues, but he is clever enough
to take advantage of their paranoia when it suits him. He may be on the dark side of the moon
politically, but he is anything but stupid.

[drm604]

5. Richard Viguerie

You know this guy? He's one of THE big names in conservative circles. He has his own Wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Viguerie

Richard Art Viguerie (born September 23, 1933 in Golden Acres near Houston, Texas, USA, North America) is a conservative figure and writer on American politics. He is the current chairman of ConservativeHQ.com.

In Viguerie's own words:

"Pioneered political use of computerized direct mail. That technology was the Internet of its day: it enabled conservatives to get around liberals' dominance of the mass media; it allowed thousands of conservative candidates, organizations and causes to get their messages to grassroots Americans."

In 1977, Viguerie worked on a project to raise money for Sun Myung Moon's Children's Relief Fund, which reportedly only received 6.3% of the $1,508,256 raised. $920,000 went to Viguerie according to New York State charity auditors.

[DFW]

9. Yeah, yeah, I know. How could I be friends with a guy like that?

But I've known Richard for as long as I've known Howard Dean. Richard is a whole other
category, but he can still be a hell of a nice guy. When the Freedom Toast put on their
first live show in Washington, and plenty of progressive friends came to see it, who was
THE only right-winger to venture up and see it? Richard Viguerie.

He mixes it up every December with Howard, sometimes the Clintons, Rush Holt, Wes Clark,
Gabrielle Giffords, Patrick Murphy, Emily's List members, just a whole host of people
(including me) to whom he's the political Prince of Darkness. We might argue like cats
and dogs, but I can't help it if we get along on a personal basis. He's just a really
personable guy in the flesh, and the fact that he has his head screwed on backwards
politically (he thinks the same of me, of course) doesn't change that.

*on edit--I sure meet enough people with whom I think I agree with politically, but who
don't seem to be able to come up with a civil word on any subject. Anger isn't the sole
proprietary domain of the far right, so it stands to reason that the left doesn't hold
a monopoly on civility, either--unfortunately!

[drm604]

16. I have no doubt that he's civil and personable.

I just wanted to point out who he was for people who may not have heard of him before.

[DFW]

20. No sweat. Always better to know than not to!

[drm604]

17. Sorry, dupe.

This was a dupe caused by a server error. What's with all of the server errors on DU recently?

[Lex]

12. pointing out that Bin Laden is an ultra-conservative religious nut

always makes them sputter and snort

fundies of any religious stripe are a danger

[DFW]

13. Here's a typical reply:

"It makes me proud to included in the class of our Founding Fathers, who were considered extremists and terrorists by the British government at the time. I believe in God and Jesus, the Constitution, the right to life, private gun ownership, secure borders, SMALL and LIMITED federal government, and my right to live my life as I see fit ... God Bless America and Americans!!! Hey, OBIMBO!!! Come and get me!!!"

So, the nut case right, as usual, glides over facts, and regurgitates their spoon-fed Fox propaganda.
I don't think they even caught the Bin Laden/fundamentalist/conservative connection. Nowhere Men, all
of them:

"He's as blind as he can be
Just see what he wants to see
Nowhere Man, can you see me at all?"

And the American radical right shouts with one voice: NO!

[trotsky]

14. And when the big bad gubmint DOESN'T come get them...

it certainly isn't proof that they were wrong about being paranoid, it just means that the gubmint really WAS scared of them and wouldn't dare crack down on the brave patriots. *sigh*

[DFW]

15. Exactly (unfortunately)

They never hear us. We can never win.

[BlooInBloo]

18. +1 Just for the reference!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnzHtm1jhL4&feature=PlayList&p=511A10DAB7A1AEE0&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=26

[davsand]

19. Sometimes you have to step outside the echo chamber.

As much as I enjoy DU, I still have regular haunts that include a conservative board or two. As left as I am, I still claim some folks as friends that are pretty staunch conservatives. I don't think any of us benefit by hiding in our political cellars.

It still amazes me how much the honest to gosh fiscal conservatives hated Dubya and his pals. Seriously, I think maybe those guys disliked him every bit as much as the average DUer--maybe more.

Have fun playing with the other kids, and don't get too worried if they are from the "wrong side of town."

:evilgrin:


Laura

[DFW]

21. Oh, fear not

I know Richard will never see things my way, and he knows I will never see things his way.
It doesn't get in our way if we don't want it to. I was born in northern Virginia and have
had my residence in Texas for over a quarter century, and Richard was born in Texas and has
now been living in northern Virginia for decades. We consider it a wash.

"Oh, east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet," as Kipling put it.

I never go to right wing boards, both for reasons of time constraints and because it depresses
me to see how many mindless angry people are out there back in my homeland (and it's 1-2-3 what
are we fighting for?), having no clue about reality, and not being in the slightest way curious to
inform themselves. If Fox/Rush/Drudge/Newsmax/takeyerpick says it's so, than it is. You can no
more have a meaningful dialog with most of those people than you can ask a CD to play a song
in a different key for once. A brick wall is more open to meaningful dialog. Richard in not like
that, but he knows how play such people like a Stradivarius, and has becomme very wealthy in the
process. This does mean he is not a true believer. He is, but he also knows which way is up, which
is more than I can say for 99% of his loyal followers.