Very Bad Idea: Rightists With Weapons

The Best People by Chip Proser

I'm old-- and for all my life I've heard the corporate media (and the Republican Party) pushing this equivalence between the extreme right and some mythical "extreme left." With a couple of short-lived exceptions, there's never been any "extreme left,"-- and certainly not in Congress. Which Democrats are as far left as, for example, the Freedom Caucus? I would call Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee, Judy Chu, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, Keith Ellison, Yvette Clarke, Jim McGovern, Ted Lieu, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Raul Grijalva, Alan Lowenthal and Jerry Nadler, a baker's dozen of the most progressive members of Congress, left-of-center moderates. The corporate media would rather refer to far right Democrats who vote most of the time with the GOP, like Kyrsten Sinema, Collin Peterson, Tom O'Halleran, Jim Costa, Josh Gottheimer and Henry Cuellar moderates, even though they are significantly to the right on the issues American care about. As for the Republican Party, find me some congressional Democrats as far left as Jim Jordan, Steve King, Ted Yoho, Glenn Grothman, Louie Gohmert, Marsha Blackburn, Karen Handel, Dana Rohrabacher, Rod Blum, Mo Brooks, Jody Hice, Dan Webster, Ron DeSantis, Ron Estes, Scott DesJarlais, Virginia Foxx, Jeb Hensarling, Joe Wilson, Diane Black...

The last radicals I can recall getting into Congress were Vito Marcantonio, from East Harlem, who first in 1934 (as a Republican), Leo Isacson, who represented NY-24 (the same part of the Bronx that just nominated Alexandria Ocasio for Congress) and William Meyer, elected from Vermont in 1958. Marcantonio entered congress as a Republican, switched to the Socialist Party ands defeated by a Democrat in 1950 for opposing the Korean War. Isacson was also defeated by a Democrat (1948) and Meyer lost his seat to a Republican in 1960.

Many people are hoping that Alexandria won't be the only Democratic Socialist in the House come January. The best bet is Kaniela Ing in Hawaii, although there are a number of superb candidates with primaries coming up running on basically Bernie platforms, and who have good chances to win in November, like James Thompson (KS), Tom Guild (OK), Rashida (MI), Randy Bryce (WI).

So I got a little off the track. And the track leads to American neo-fascist and Trumpite, Steve Bannon. On Sunday, another neo-fascist, Britain's Nigel Farage, interviewed Bannon for his right-wing website, LBC. Farage was joined by some other fascists for the interview. Bannon starts the monkey-business: "If I was in middle England, and said this wasn't what i voted for, I would rise up and make sure the guys in parliament knew it. You're going to have to fight to take your country back, every day. Whether it's Italy, France, England, or the United States. If we quit, they're going to be in control."

Theo Usherwood, LBC's political editor: "That sounds like a call to arms."

Bannon: "Absolutely. This is war."

Nigel Farage asked the former strategist whether he saw everything "in terms of this great sort of military style battle."

Mr Bannon's response: "It is.

"It's war.

"This is this.

"War is politics by other means, well politics is war by other means.

"This is a war.

"This is a war for control, this a war for the little guy."

Speaking about the President, Mr Bannon said: Trump is in your grill from the beginning, he's not going to back off and that's what you... if you're going to back off, they're going to win.

"The problem is, the conservatives and people in the United States and England have been too nice."

Several of the folks who Sacha Baron Cohen interviewed are serving in Congress right now and will, in all likelihood, be voting to impeach Rod Rosenstein very soon. Of course Trent Lott no long does serve in the Senate, but he was the Republican Senate Majority Leader in the recent past. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) should both be eschewed by the GOP and sent for some serious psychiatric help. And Joe Walsh... a rudimentary knowledge of mortars? In kindergarten. "In less than a month, less than a month, a first grader can become a first grenader." And this NRA guy, Larry Pratt? You tell me there are crazier people locked up in insane asylums that Larry Pratt. You want to trust this guy walking around with assault rifles?