Some of you have been critical of me when in previous posts I have written about the extreme right. You've told me it's only a fringe and it doesn't say much about the way our society really functions.
After Wednesday's murder at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., I'm not so sure.
An 88-year-old white supremacist walked into the entryway of the museum and opened fire. He reportedly killed a guard and wounded one other person before one of the other guards shot him and stopped him.
James Von Brunn, and didn't you know he would be of German descent, is also a Holocaust denier who once tried to kidnap the Federal Reserve Board. He also wrote an anti-Semitic book and said that Jews were "trying to destroy the Aryan gene pool."
Don't kid yourself that this guy is some lone lunatic. There are thousands of people like him in this country and they are all heavily armed. These are people whose hatred of people different from themselves has been festering for years and now they are forced to accept the indignity of a black man as president of the United States.
Surf the Internet a little. Enter words like "Aryan," "racist," "hate" and "white supremacy" and you will find folks who could easily live right down the street from you, spewing the most vile lies about Jews, people of color, people of ethnicity and of course, the president himself.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has a Website that exposes some of the worst of them. They have names like Stormfront, the National Alliance, the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger and that old favorite, the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
It's weird how people are perverting Christianity these days. I'm sure somewhere in Heaven, Jesus is weeping at Pastor Wiley Drake, a Buena Park, Calif., minister who admits he is praying for President Obama to die.
We're growing a strange crop of Christians these days, and a stranger crop of Americans.
I know the hosts on mainstream right-wing talk radio aren't saying things like that, but I'm sorry, when the Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys and Glenn Becks call Obama a Marxist and say he wants to take away our freedom, they have to know it's a call to arms for the lunatic right.
Even on Fox New Channel, no friend of the president, anchor Shepard Smith said he is getting hundreds if not thousands of horrific e-mails every day attacking Obama for non-policy reasons.
I'm worried. There are too many crazy people and too many guns in this country. If we get through Obama's tenure in the White House without an attempt on his life by the rabid right, I will be surprised.
I blame the Internet for a lot of it. For all the wonderful freedom the Net provides, it still serves as an anonymous meeting place for criminals, pedophiles and the scum of the Earth.
You think I'm kidding?
Check out these Websites and then tell me I'm overreacting.
I am reminded of W.B. Yeats' "The Second Coming."
"What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem, waiting to be born?"
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5 comments:
I checked them out and you're still overreacting.
Fringe groups and strange individuals.
When you give them as much thought as yu have, they will.
They're little men, little women (not midgets .. except in the integrity sense) and they become large in their eyes when you give them attention.
I've seen it too many times before. Joe McCarthy would have been a small news item and then forgotten if people had simply ignored the little gnat.
Ernie
The last thing I wish to be is an apologist for Christianity, or maybe just the most extreme and distorted views of Christianity, but Mike, you're teetering on the brink of a total overreaction.
I realize you're a columnist and that's what columnists do -- write provocative things -- but you're also the last great hope for a permanent MIDDLE viewpoint and you're whacking over nothing.
Relax.
Take chill pill.
There are always freaks in every movement, not just Christianity. In fact, I'll take the rare Christian freak over the ubiquitous Islamic freak any day of the week.
AMY
Amy, I am a devout Catholic who attends Mass most Sundays and I tend to agree with you, but there are a lot of people calling themselves Christians who are filled with hate.
I love real Christians, the ones who follow the teachings of Christ.
Wiley's an absolute nut. Has been for a long time. And the fact the man was on the ballot as a Vice Presidential candidate this past November scared the living daylights out of me.
And, sure, all the nuts do not represent the entire bag of trail mix. But when one comes out and does something like shoot up a Holocaust Museum, it calls into question all the other people who live close to the fringe. The worst part, they're probably just as, or more, dangerous than any out of country terrorist who might want to hurt us.
Mike, you wrote:
"Don't kid yourself that this guy is some lone lunatic. There are thousands of people like him in this country and they are all heavily armed. These are people whose hatred of people different from themselves has been festering for years and now they are forced to accept the indignity of a black man as president of the United States."
Hey, prove one iota of these completely fabricated and exaggerated claims.
I'm sorry, but for a liberal/MOR (middle of road) progressive, you do the cause a terrible disservice.
We don't need any more hot button issues and simple solutions. I agree with your buddy Ernie.
This is all much ado about nothing.
Earl
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