You Don't Have To Go To A Tea Party Or To CPAC To Be A Teabagger-- Flying A Plane Into A Building Will Do Quite As Well

There are points being made by the Tea Party Movement that sound very attractive. It even makes some naive and disappointed Democrats think there could be common ground with them. And some of the young Tea Partiers-- high school kids who are attracted to the stated ideals-- are all about the refreshing idealism. But, as I've said before, when you scratch beneath the surface of the actual teabaggers you find one of two strains: the virulent racists and Know Nothing xenophobes or the partisan Republicans with the same old anti-working family agenda.

I have no way of knowing if Joseph Stack ever went to a teababagger gathering or if he was a follower of Glenn Beck's, Rick Perry's, Ayn Rand's, or Michael Savage's. And no one at CPAC has been spotted wearing "Free Joseph Stack T-Shirts"... yet (not even Scott Brown, who dismissed the tragedy by saying that the people who voted for him feel the same way about paying taxes. I bet they do; most of them are thoroughly brainwashed by right-wing propagandists like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and the rest of the anti-tax/anti-government choir singing nightly for their suppers for the 500 families who own most of America and don't want to share it with anyone else.

John Aravosis did use a screenshot to capture a Facebook page by far right fanatics lionizing the latest in a string of domestic terrorists from the fringes of the Republican Party. Teabaggery at its essence:

It's pretty hideous. The page has the "Don't Tread On Me" flag that Tea party teabaggers like to use, and it has a wonderful Thomas Jefferson quote that domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh used. A lot of the nastiest stuff got deleted the first time around. Including a number of anti-Obama comments.

The mainstream media may have decided to not call flying a plane into a government office building "terrorism" since there were no Muslims involved, but as domestic terrorism/right-wing fanaticism expert Dave Neiwert explained at Crook and Liars yesterday, Joseph Stack was another violence-prone malcontent encouraged by right wing propaganda to act out Republican social nihilism that is just a few steps beyond standard operating procedures of your Mitch McConnells, Jim DeMints, Virginia Foxxes and Michele Bachmenn.

Since when, after all, is attempting to blow up a federal office as a protest against federal policies NOT an act of domestic terrorism?

You know, Timothy McVeigh used a "dangerous instrument" to kill 168 people in Oklahoma City. He too was angry at the federal government, and was converted to the belief that acts of violence was the only means possible to prevent the government from overwhelming our freedom and replacing it with tyranny. He also believed that his act of exemplary violence would inspire others to take up similar acts to stave off the threat of tyranny.

And that's exactly what Joseph Andrew Stack believed too:

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. ... I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.

Digby summed it up nicely: "Nobody should be surprised that the right wing doesn't see anything wrong with nice white, anti-government lunatics try to kill people, that's for sure. Their leaders certainly aren't. And Sean Paul Kelley took on the task of explaining it to our friends in Engalnd with a column at the Guardian:

While members of Washington and Wall Street elites transfer the accumulated wealth of 200 years to themselves, the desperation in the rest of America becomes palpable. And today it hangs in the air like the smoke billowing from the Echelon Building here in Austin, into which Joseph Andrew Stack crashed a Piper Cherokee PA-28.

Stack's chief complaint was the American tax code, the right's go-to instrument of class warfare in America since Ronald Reagan's presidency. This warfare accelerated during Bush's tenure, as David Cay Johnston writes: "The effective income tax rate [of the top 400 family earners] fell to 16.62%, down more than half a percentage point from 17.17% in 2006, the new data show. That rate is lower than the typical effective income tax rate paid by Americans with incomes in the low six figures, which is what each taxpayer in the top group earned in the first three hours of 2007."

And now, instead of condemning the violence and loss of innocent life, as every citizen of the United States should do, many on the right are lionising Joseph Andrew Stack. While Massachusetts' newest Senator stopped short of praising Stack, he hardly condemned the violence. The right wing is riding the populist tiger.

There's a national mood-- an insanity that's overtaken a third of the country-- brought about by Obama's election. The far right has gone loco and the teabagger "movement" is one manifestation of that. Anti-social propagandists and nihilists made it clear from the very beginning that they are willing EAGER to see America fail rather than see Obama succeed. And that trail of treachery leads from your Michael Savages, Glenn Becks, and Rush Limbaughs right up to partisan hacks and demented ideologues like Jim DeMint (R-SC), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC). Let me offer you something I'm lifting out of Rick Perlstein's marvelous most recent book. While you're reading it, try to imagine who it's directed at and who spoke it-- and who wrote it for the speaker:

"Every Americans has the right to disagree with the president of the United States and to express publicly that disagreement. But the president of the United States has a right to communicate directly with the people who elected him, and the people of the country have the right to make up their own minds and form their own opinions about a presidential address without having the president's words and thoughts characterized through the prejudices of hostile critics even before they can even be digested" by "this little group of men who not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to every presidential address, but more importantly wield a free hand in selecting, presenting and interpreting the great issues of our nation." They became, "in effect, the presiding judge in a national trial by jury.

"... What do Americans know of the men who wield this power?... Little, other than that they reflect an urbane and assured presence, seemingly well-informed on every important matter... To a man, these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City... Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism... They talk constantly to one another, thereby providing artificial reinforcement to their shared viewpoint." That viewpoint, what was more, did "not represent the view of America. That is why such a great gulf existed between how the nation received the president's address-- and how the networks reviewed it.

"The American people would rightly not tolerate this kind of concentration of power in government. Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in the hands of a tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one, and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government?"

No, that was not Van Jones calling for an investigation of Clear Channel, Murdoch, Cheney, Limbaugh and O'Reilly. It was Vice President Spiro Agnew before he resigned in disgrace after being caught pocketing bribes from wealthy interests, reading a speech written for him by President Richard Nixon before he resigned after being caught subverting American democracy, calling for populist censorship against... Averell Harriman and David Brinkley.