Sunday’s “Million Vets March” turned into an impromptu Klan rally at the White House gates. Reports say a few hundred people (although in the videos show a much smaller group), including non-vets Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, participated, waving a Confederate flag and hurling racist epithets to get their point across — their point being, apparently, that they are impossibly stupid and bigoted assholes.
Comment I saw on another site yesterday — The new motto of the GOP should be “We throw temper tantrums like a 2-year-old. And we vote!”
House baggers think the rally was a “game-changer” that will give their side momentum. If my Bigger Asshole Rule holds true, the House baggers may be disappointed.
Spurred by outrage at the closure of federal war memorials they demanded be closed along with the rest of the federal government, the crowd symbolically ‘stormed’ two closed memorials and then headed to the White House where at least one Confederate Flag proudly flew and far-right gadfly Larry Klayman, who has of late been calling for an uprising to unseat the President (scheduled for Nov. 19th), told the crowd to “demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up.”
The protesters, some of whom appeared to be actual veterans, took barricades that had been placed around war memorials and piled them up in front of the fence around the White House. Seeing a possible threat to the perimeter, police came in to protect the fence and be sure the protesters stayed outside White House grounds. (Not unreasonable, after one of the speakers had just “figuratively” threatened the President.) An even bigger temper tantrum ensued. “Looks like something out of Kenya!” yelled one “vet.”
As Tommy Christopher pointed out at Mediate (link above), police usually are tolerant of protests outside the White House as long as nobody messes with the fence. When tourists so much as climb on the base of the fence to get a better view, they are firmly told to get down. It was obvious from the video at Mediate that the cops weren’t trying to shut down the protest; they were protecting the fence. See more videos at the NBC Washington affiliate.
Some of the vets were sincerely upset about the war memorials and the disruption of some of their services. If you are among these, here’s a clue for you:
If you are angry about the closure of the government, including the barricading of war memorials, do try to grow a brain and pile the bleeping barricades up outside the bleeping Capitol Building, not the White House. Congress is responsible for this mess, not the President. By allowing yourselves to be duped into marching against the White House, you were being used by political forces that do not give a bleep about your memorials or your benefits and would happily scrap both in exchange for bigger tax cuts for billionaires. Way to go.
Update:
Sarah Palin Decries the Use of Vets as Props While Using Vets as Props at Million Vet March http://t.co/GczLQVdwhc
— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) October 14, 2013
Update: Brian Beutler:
Conservatives see Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz and imagine a national groundswell — not the two widely loathed politicians who bespeak the House GOP’s total isolation so exquisitely. They believe the latest small crowd of white conservatives protesting the closure of war monuments (which would be open had they not shut down the government) will upend the whole debate and reverse the tide of public opinion against them.
Or at least they believed it.
Moments after the story overtook nearly every significant conservative news outlet in the country, the narrative those outlets were trying to create ran headlong into the reality that the constituency for continuing to fight overlaps significantly with the constituency that bemoans the outcome of the War of Northern Aggression.
At least the Klan was smart enough to hide under hoods. The brilliant Senator Cruz dons a barn coat and puts on a show for us.
I’ll admit it, I am entertained.
How much more can the poor regular people in DC stand?!?!?!
First, they had “The Million Trucker DC Shutdown!” – minus, oh, about 999, 970 truckers!
Now, they have their “Million ‘MORAN!’ March!” – minus, oh, about 999,900 ‘MORANS!”
I’ve heard my entire life, that ‘Conservatism can’t fail – it can only BE failed!”
(Not-at-all) Dear Conservatives,
Uhm…
How is what we’re seeing a passing grade?
And how are epic twit’s like “The Whore of Babblin-on” and Cruzader, not ‘failing’ Conservatism.
Oh, yeah, never mind.
They ARE modern Conservatism – in a nutshell.
It’s just too bad that those two nuts, aren’t in a shell – aka: an insane asylum!
So many of us have been comparing the shutdown tactics to the behavior of the South in the pre-Civil War years, and reaching back for Lincoln quotes that seem to resonate, and now, like they desperately needed to prove us right, they ‘storm’ the White House with Confederate flags trying to get at the black man inside.
It’s never been hard to miss the racism and throw-back qualities of the right-wing, if you scratched below the surface, but now they are actively showing it off.
biggerbox–I know what you mean. The Lincoln-Douglas debates are helpful in understanding the Tea Party’s attitudes, for instance. When I read that Stephen Douglas explicitly took the position that “All men are created equal” only applied to white men, I could see there was a direct line between that Sarah Palin’s bullshit about “real” Americans. This whole Tea Party nonsense isn’t anything new at all. It’s just the latest uprising of the barbarians.
Stephen — And let us not forget that southern radicals eventually turned on Stephen Douglas because he wasn’t pure enough on the slavery issue. Douglas was behind the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed states entering the Union to determine by vote (by white men) whether they would be slave or free — i.e., “popular sovereignty.” When Kansas voters rejected slavery, and Kansas entered the Union as a “free soil” state, Douglas became persona non grata in the South. Southern Democrats rejected his nomination for the presidency in 1860, split off from the rest of the party, and nominated another presidential candidate, John Breckinridge. A split in the Democratic Party made it possible for Lincoln to be elected.
Then as now, the extremists would rather be defeated than compromise.
Pingback: The Mahablog » The South vs. America
Hey, we got Oath Keepers too! In the photo in the Brian Beutler piece, you can see an Oath Keepers flag to the right of Ted Cruz. Yes, how dare the police keep self-proclaimed insurrectionists away from the White House fence!
I noticed quite a few professional veterans in the crowd. I know it’s becomes harder and harder to get your fair share of recognition for military service, so hard in fact that one might be tempted to dilute that recognition by allowing people like Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz to exploit your contribution to America.
So here’s a little tribute to all you vets that is given with a sense of purity in knowing that it is a sincere honoring given in a place where Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz cannot go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYqsExfQc_w
Is Oath Keepers the militant wing of Promise Keepers?
It seems the organizers of this event were, by and large, quite upset by Cruz, Palin, etc. using the march as apolitical forum.
http://1mvetmarch.wordpress.com/
Lynne ..They were only upset because Palin and Cruz exposed them for the Teabaggers that they are. It kinda shows the disarray within the bagger’s ranks. When they have to put out a statement to distance themselves from themselves.
Or it could be in order to account for the 999,900 participant shortfall they laid the failure for their march on the founder of the tea party express.
I did not read all that into what the organizers had to say. I think you are mistaken, Swami.