Fox News is reporting wild “liberal mobs” storming the capitol building and shoving past police officers trying to shove them back out. Yeah, I know, it’s Fox News. So far I’m not seeing reports about “liberal mobs” anywhere else, so I’m not taking it seriously
From the videos, this group appears to be mostly younger people. Their anger is justified, but I caution the young folks — don’t give the bleepers what they want. And videos of angry and unruly liberals are what they want. Howard Fineman (yeah, I know, it’s Howard Fineman) said on MSNBC last night that the entire point of yesterday’s maneuver was to generate videos of “liberal mobs.” Fineman suggested the Wisconsin Republicans were acting on orders from the likes of Rick Perry and Karl Rove. They want to goad Republicans into overreacting, Fineman said. I think that’s plausible.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Never mind that the rhetoric of the Right is thoroughly soaked with suggestions that violence, blood, guns, etc., are necessary to check the tyranny of government. They think that only applies to them. When liberals get rowdy while standing up to right-wing tyranny, righties are outraged.
As c u n d gulag wrote in the comments, “They’re practically praying to Mars for violent reactions around the country, because they want us to fulfill their dreams of ‘the violent left.’”
I am very short of blogging time today, so please, feel free to add comments on ongoing developments in the comments.
One of the local TV stations finally did some journalism. They were talking to a Republican in Madison who was claiming what Fox was claiming. The reporter took the republican around the capital to see the broken windows and such; of course, there weren’t any. As I said in the other comment thread, I’m not sold on Fineman’s analysis. It may be a by-product of what they’re hoping for, but I think Walker and his legislative lakies did this because they just wanted to flex their muscles and thumb their nose at the ‘union thugs’. Expect to see 200K in Madison on Saturday, and a bunch of tractors.
I think this is when they seed the crowds with right-wing agitators disguised as workers and protesters to incite them towards violence.
I hate to get all Godwin (again), but this would be like Hitler using provocation that he created by sending his people into Poland, to give a justification for invading it. This has long been a strategy of ‘Conservative Fascism’ – witness the “Brooks Brothers Riots” only a little over 10 years ago. At least they didn’t come disguised that time. They were pretty brazen about it. *
*Reminder to Jonah “The Not At All Great White Whale” Goldberg (one of the greatest beneficiaries of The Lucky Sperm Meets Lucky Egg Club” in history- ’cause that fat tub of goo is too stupid, fat, and lazy to get a job stocking shelves at a backwater WaWa):
There has never, ever been any such thing as ‘Liberal Fascism.’ It has always, always been something that came from the right.
Jonah did, however, with that ‘novel,’ write the greatest seminal lie since “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Way OT – About Peter King and his Hate Committee:
This is a reminder of the Communist Witch Hunts of the past – the “House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).”
I suggest we refer to this as Peter King’s “‘Un-American'” House Activities Committee (UHAC)”
I like that UHAC – kind of like “You Hack!”
I think we have two flips of the same coin as far as what’s happening in WI and Kings “investigation.”
I think the right is hoping to provoke violence from both Liberals and Muslims. So far, since the ’08 election, most of the violence in this country has come from the right – over a 2:1 ratio, to acts of violence from Muslims – let alone any from the left.
They want, as I said before, for people on the left to help justify their ‘the violent left’ meme. They are also desperate for some sort of successful major terrorist attack from Muslims, foreign or domestic. They need something because their presidential candidates make “The Seven Dwarfs” look tall in comparison, let alone more stately. Right now, even if the economy stays bad, as they’re trying to assure, Obama will probably win by default, because the Republicans have no viable and electable candidate. So, they want the left to go ballistic, the Muslims to go ballistic, and the economy to stay in the shitter. Their fondest hope, and I really do think it is their startegy, is a mix of those three.
The Republican keys to keeping the House and gaining the Senate and Executive is:
-A bad, or especially worsening economy.
-An angry and violent left (even if it’s only a handful of examples).
-Inciting Muslims to commit acts of terror.
And they called us Liberals ‘treasonous traitors’ for opposing tax cuts, 2 wars, torture, etc.
Admittedly, this may all be some paranoid conspiracy that’s hatched in my mind. The result of crisis and disaster overload, with the cherry-on-top of blatant mendacity, and a healthy scoop of compliant or complicit MSM.
I’m just throwing it out there. Do you see some of this, too?
Or, should someone be calling and requesting the men with the van and butterfly nets to come and take me away, hee-hee, ho-ho, haha, to the Funny Farm?
Gulag, I think it’s the same old divide and conquer crap that Corporatists have used so successfully in the past:keep the peon tribes fighting among themselves, lest they figure out what’s going on and storm the Bastille. The more controversy Republican front-men can gin up, the easier it is to keep Americans from realizing our pockets are being systematically picked, and have been for some time. Shoving, stomping and head-thumping are marvelously divisive, whereas reasoned debate not so much. So I’m pretty sure that’s what the Right is hoping for in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Fox is indulging in wishful thinking, again.
“Or, should someone be calling and requesting the men with the van and butterfly nets to come and take me away, hee-hee, ho-ho, haha, to the Funny Farm?”
I have been feeling that way periodically since “Little Bush” was elected. There was a short, pleasant respite, but now things are back to the “new normal” which is to say unsettlingly abnormal, with a strong scent of dytopia.
There are notable signposts on the road to fascism or whatever its post industrial, Libertarian successor will be called. The one at hand is when the government acts as the arm of a political party. We have seen this happening for some time, but one current change is that there is no longer any effort to conceal it, because, sadly, and very significantly, there is no longer any need to. The propaganda device has been brought to near perfection. The elegant proof of which is that colossal failures and crimes of the Bush Administration have all been swept neatly down the memory hole in just two short years. The concept of justice has morphed into a kind of one way justice. Some religions have moral codes that apply only to other members of the religion. Killing and stealing are wrong, unless you kill or steal from a member of another belief system, because they are not “people” in the full sense of the term. But, if one of “them” gets out of line, well there will be hell to pay. Does that ring any bells?
The last signpost is when the raw, unmitigated violence of military power is displayed as a means of crushing opposition and will. Weekend militias for the “soft targets”, i.e. you and me and Xe, formally Blackwater, to dispose of the militias when they have served their purpose. They wouldn’t want to suffer those fools any longer than needed.
Yes, it’s quite clear. either I am mad as a hatter or I have the bones of a plot for the “Plan 9 From Outer Space”. That’s probably all it is. But, it’s a hell of a world world where thoughts like these cross our minds. Life used to be so pleasant.
Cue “Concentration Moon” by Frank Zappa and the “Mothers of Invention”. And I used to think they were being silly.
Be sure to see Michael Moore interviewed by Amy Goodman, an hour after the Wisconsin Senate passed the union busting bill, and a few hours after the Michigan Senate seconded its House in passing a draconian emergency powers bill. Some choice quotes:
As newly defined, Class Warfare is NOT when there is one of the greatest discrepancies between rich and poor in America, with most of the money residing with the top 2% of our population.
But it IS inciting Class Warfare for that bottom 98% to wonder why nothing’s trickling down and to even question asking the top 2% to help pay their fair share.
And the very definition of the new Class Warfare is when you ask the top 2% to pay an additional 3 to 4%.
And if you ask for more, it’ll be called a Class Holocaust.
And yeah, moonbat, you’ve got a great point. These thieves didn’t break in during the dead of night. They pretty much announced themselves, if anyone was paying attention, stole the money, left and spent it brazenly – and no one complained too much, and no one punished them.
What lesson did they learn? LOL!!! What they’re doing right now – doing it again.
You know how we kept Willie Sutton away from robbing the banks ‘because that’s where the money is?”
We locked him up.
Maybe we will get mad enough eventually so that the Class Warriors may ask us to lock them up – for their own protection. I’d be glad to do that. And throw away the key.
Walker is just doing his best to make sure Liberals become 2nd Amendment supporters. I think he is succeeding beyond his own dreams.
Hey, I’m a “second amendment supporter” in as much as I support the Bill of Rights and their protections of U.S. citizens. What I don’t support are “second amendment solutions,” or the idea that a gun is a legitimate political tool. There are exceptions to everything, but I think liberals on the whole look to the processes of elective government before they think about violence. It’s the Right that thinks if they can shoot it, they can control it, and screw government.