Alienated & Radicalized
In the brief age of Obama, we have had "truthers," "birthers," Tea Party activists and town-hall dissenters.
Comes now, the "Oath Keepers." And who might they be?
Writes Alan Maimon in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Oath Keepers, depending on where one stands, are "either strident defenders of liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia."
Formed in March, they are ex-military and police who repledge themselves to defend the Constitution, even if it means disobeying orders. If the U.S. government ordered law enforcement agencies to violate Second Amendment rights by disarming the people, Oath Keepers will not obey.
"The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here," says founding father Stewart Rhodes, an ex-Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer. "My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can't do it without them.
"We say if the American people decide it's time for a revolution, we'll fight with you."
Prediction: Brother Rhodes is headed for cable stardom.
And if the Pelosi-Reid progressives went postal over town-hall protesters, calling them "un-American," "Nazis" and "evil-mongers," one can imagine what they will do with the Oath Keepers.
As with Jimmy Carter's long range psychoanalysis of Joe Wilson, the reflexive reaction of the mainstream media will likely be that these are militia types, driven to irrationality because America has a black president.
Yet, the establishment's reaction seems more problematic for the republic than anything the Oath Keepers are up to. For our political and media elite seem to have lost touch with the nation and to be wedded to a vision of America divorced from reality.
Progressives are the folks who, in the 1960s, could easily understand that urban riots that took scores of lives and destroyed billions in property were an inevitable reaction to racism, poverty and despair. They could empathize with the rage of campus radicals who burned down the ROTC building and bombed the Pentagon.
The "dirty, immoral war in Vietnam" explains why the "finest generation we have ever produced" is behaving like this, they said. We must deal with the "root causes" of social disorder.
Yet, they cannot comprehend what would motivate Middle America to distrust its government, for it surely does, as Ron Brownstein reports in the National Journal:
"Whites are not only more anxious, but also more alienated. Big majorities of whites say the past year's turmoil has diminished their confidence in government, corporations and the financial industry . . . Asked which institution they trust most to make economic decisions in their interest, a plurality of whites older than 30 pick 'none'—a grim statement."
Is all this due to Obama's race?
Even Obama laughs at that. As he told David Letterman, I was already black by the time I was elected. And he not only got a higher share of the white vote than Kerry or Gore, a third of white voters, who said in August 2008 that race was an important consideration in voting, said they were going to vote for Obama.
With black voters going 24 to 1 for Obama, he almost surely won more votes than he lost because of his race.
Moreover, the alienation and radicalization of white America began long before Obama arrived. He acknowledged as much when he explained Middle Pennsylvanians to puzzled progressives in that closed-door meeting in San Francisco.
Referring to the white working-class voters in the industrial towns decimated by job losses, Obama said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Yet, we had seen these folks before. They were Perotistas in 1992, opposed NAFTA in 1993, and blocked the Bush-Kennedy McCain amnesty in 2007.
In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.
They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care, and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on—then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.
They see Wall Street banks bailed out as they sweat their next paycheck, then read that bank profits are soaring, and the big bonuses for the brilliant bankers are back. Neither they nor their kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and Michelle Obama.
They see a government in Washington that cannot balance its books, win our wars or protect our borders. The government shovels out trillions to Fortune 500 corporations and banks to rescue the country from a crisis created by the government and Fortune 500 corporations and banks.
America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.
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It will all be utterly useless if the Republican party is allowed to coopt and neutralise the discontent.
But that's exactly what is happening isnt it? Look how quickly the Tea-Parties were co-opted by the misnamed Grand Old Party.
Good heavens, positivity at Chronicles is as rare as hen's teeth.
The Oath Keepers have a good looking hat for $25, made in the US, not China, featuring a minuteman logo.
Samual Francis wrote of the coming middle American revolution.
So true, Dr. Wilson. The entire purpose of the GOP is to gull any and all dissenters into joining together under their big tent, where they can be controlled and their efforts hamstrung.
#3 Good heavens, positivity is rare...
Well, I liked Pat and still do. Worked for him and helped him in every campaign he ever ran which is why I don't "think"Clyde Wilson is right, I KNOW CLYDE WILSON IS RIGHT.
Pat was like all of us who were ever duped by the GOP. So long as you sing their songs,worship at their altars and unite your sacrifices to their own desires, you too can be a rich man or at least eat the scraps that fall from their banquet tables. Yet, if you utter any truth about war or peace,share any pathos with the common man or uncommon free citizen, you can count on medicine that is worse than the disease from the party bosses,Bush Bots and McCaniacs who the oligarchs ordain as "Our Leaders."
They especially hate these sociological truths:( which is why they need repeated early and often in the Public Square)
"In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.
They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care, and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on—then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand U.S. citizenship.
They see Wall Street banks bailed out as they sweat their next paycheck, then read that bank profits are soaring, and the big bonuses for the brilliant bankers are back. Neither they nor their kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and Michelle Obama.
They see a government in Washington that cannot balance its books, win our wars or protect our borders. The government shovels out trillions to Fortune 500 corporations and banks to rescue the country from a crisis created by the government and Fortune 500 corporations and banks.
"
Where were these ex-military and police who "repledge" themselves to defend the Constitution nine years ago when Bush/Cheney carried out their coup d'etat against the Constitution, i.e., suspending habeas corpus, the Military Commissions Act (which Bush intended to apply to all Americans, not just the aliens he was forced to limit it to, although without habeas corpus, how would one have proved they were a citizen), along with the rest of their "unitary executive theory (which even Chronicles own Steven Presser lent support to when testifying in support of Bush's constitutional violations).
Between the oath-keepers and the guillotine-swingers of the left, are a few realists who understand that the only wise course is to disengage to then extent possible and start building something new.
As long as we don't appear on TV or apply for government grants and subsidies, the chances are in our favor that it will not be recognized. While it is an 'underground' existence, it is probably better than going down in flames or worse, doing serious damage to innocents only to empower a dictator or fiend of anotehr stripe.
Cheers!
Edmond #8:
Fair questions! Many conservatives, including, sadly, myself, have ignored or been oblivious to the violations of the Constitution by Republicans for far too long. Partly, it has been due to the takeover of the Democratic Party by the radical left that many of us came over to the Republicans, forming its grassroots. If the Democrats are radical-left, then it follows that the Republicans, as the oppostion party, would be the guardians of all things conservative.
Yes, a non-sequitor, attributable to faulty and lazy thinking, but nonetheless largely applicable to many of us. Mea culpa!
Yet, it has taken the even more egregious violations of the Constitution, both actual and threatened, by Obama and the Democrats to awaken such organizations as Oath Keepers and others to the threat. With guarded optimism, I am also heartened that Republicans, in turn, are beginning to receive from our ranks long overdue scrutiny and condemnation for their many and often equally outrageous power grabs. This is why I am still encouraged to see Oath Keepers committing themselves to standing by their promises, even if they do seem a bit tardy. Better late than never!
Incidentally, brand and label loyalty, despite the facts, is as frustrating to me coming from my kin here in Tennessee. "Grandaddy was a Democrat; Daddy was a Democrat, and I'm a Democrat. I'll never be one o' them money-grubbing, country club Republicans." They certainly don't live like leftists, but they still hold to an outdated paradigm of what the Democratic Party once was. It's no longer the party of Jeffersonian traditions such as states rights, limited government, etc. The Republican and Democratic Parties: a pox on both their houses!
#10. Mr. Smith. It is true that the Democratic party is no longer the party of Jefferson. But then, the Republican party never was, never has been, and is not.
The Protocols mention that invisible power has control over 'both' political parties in this country. Of course there are two parties to give the simpleton masses the illusion that there is a choice, when of course there is no choice. This mulatto clown of president was hand picked and groomed years ago surely.
Since we are going head-first into this New Order, do Chronicles readers ever give this a thought?
"Progressives are the folks who, in the 1960s, could easily understand that urban riots that took scores [sic] of lives and destroyed billions in property were an inevitable reaction to racism, poverty, and despair. They could empathize with the rage of campus radicals who burned down the ROTC building and bombed the Pentagon.
The 'dirty, immoral war in Vietnam' explains why the 'finest generation we ever produced' is behaving like this, they said."
Fact: the 60s urban riots, which took hundreds, not scores, of lives, and destroyed, along with everything else that was good in my neighborhood, the storefront of the our three-flat, the home of my birth, which I live in to this day, were made possible by the open invitation given to blacks by King, SNCC, Malcolm X, etc., in general, and, in the particular case of Chicago, by the Daley gang's surrender order to the Chicago Police Department, in the full knowledge that no one he cared about would be harmed in the resulting carnage; that, on the contrary, said carnage would work to his advantage by giving more living space to his most fervent supporters. Hyde Park surfer boy Barry knows little of the causes of the bitterness of which he informed his San Francisco audience; he knows nothing of its depth and intensity.
Fact: The 60s campus cowards, dopers, seduction specialists, Che wannabes, etc., could not tell an immoral war from a moral one any more than they could tell the difference between their pampered selves and the black bad boys with whom they fancied they were in solidarity, that is, until they started getting beat up by them and having their girlfriends stolen by them. In turn, they were completely incapable of looking at the inner-city white ethnics who made up the bulk of the fighting forces, of whom many, including this one, volunteered out of a simple sense of brotherhood with and desire to come to the aid of the troops already there, who, in our case, were often the year or two older guys from our own neighborhoods, with anything but implacable hatred for the refutation of their selfishness we embodied.
From such lies, immorality, irrationality, and cowardice as this, that formed the dung heap out of which this generation emerged to its present positions of power, it is easy to see how they will react to the Oath Keepers.
For them, mistrust of government is only allowed to the left; i.e., only the party of government can be trusted to criticize it.
For them, only blacks and other approved "victim" groups have a right to rage. That this rage comes at the expense of their old enemies, conservative, patriotic whites, serves as an inexhaustible fountain of youth, always at hand to serve them its refreshing elixir as they slide into their senescence.
Mr. Jacobi, your description of the horrid 60s is eloquent and accurate.
Dr. Wilson@14,
Thank you. I beg your pardon for forgetting to mention above the many Southern boys - grandaddies now! - who were among those "who made up the bulk of the fighting forces". The war in Vietnam was very likely the last place Americans openly carried the Southern battle flag onto the field of battle, and Vietnamese communists the last soldiers ever to flee the fire of those who proudly brandished it.
@15 Gilbert
Regarding the Battle Flag, I met a reporter who covered the rallies I European capitals as their communist governments got toppled. He said he saw the Confederate flag at all of them, including Moscow. Fire was not involved too much, but our TV boys tried to exclude them from the crowd scenes lest the wrong message be sent to us.
*in European ...*
i think the truthers have been around quite a bit longer than the hope and change yes we can man. they have the facts to back up their claims too. i'm now convinced that those buildings were wired for controlled demolition. rummy outside the pentagon helping the wounded while our country was supposedly under attack seems pretty fishy too. i'm no loony toon either so save the tin foil hat remarks. and the vietnam war was no place to be carrying a rebel flag. unless you happened to be vietnamese.
Etienne Gervaise,
One wonders what the newly free East Germans thought the Stars and Bars represented, and what it meant to them. Or was it just another forbidden item, like foreign-made jeans were, something the possession of whch provided the thrill of defiance without much risk? In any case, it must have made for an electrifying image.
BTW, your comment awhile back about the Southern blacks being encouraged to go north upon the passage of the '64 Civil Rights bill, "to piss in the elevators of Chicago high-rises" is one of my favorites.
tgreen,
I'm stumped as to what you could mean by "the vietnam war was no place to be carrying a rebel flag. unless you happened to be vietnamese."
To which persuasion of Vietnamese could the Battle Flag pertain, communist or non-communist? And why was Vietnam "no place" to carry it? Do you mean to say it was disrespectful? That most certainly was not the intention of the American troops I saw displaying it on my firebase. The only point of my mentioning it was to catch the irony and poignancy of its final appearance in battle, so far from home, in yet another lost, though honorable, cause.
19. well one reason i wrote that is because of the nature of our presence over there. we were invaders. another reason is our unsouthern cowardly retreat. leaving the people that trusted us to protect them to be slaughtered. i hope there weren't any flag carriers knocking over women to get to the choppers. i don't think the rebel flag should have been carried to any of our recent wars. none of them were/are fought for freedom but rather to enrich the bankers that finance them and the munitions industry. my opinion. i was only seven when it ended so i don't want to pretend like i know everything there is to know about the vietnam war but if i was old enough to be drafted at the time i hope i would have played queer or ran to canada. i mean no offense to you mr. jacobi. i'm sure i could learn a lot from you regarding that conflict. and to answer your question i would say non communist since they were non agressors. thanks for your kind response!
@19 Gilbert
It may be that the reporter carried the rebel flag himself.
And thank you for your quote about the elevators, but it was not only Chicago, but also Baltimore, Detroit, Washington and New York didn't fare very well from an influx of lawless dimwits unwilling to assimilate. The hardest hit were the established black neighborhoods in those cities.
Furthermore, Washington DC would be as bad off as is Detroit were it not for nominal congressional oversight. The bad news is that the District's suburban counties are easing out their Anglo employess leaving the severely untalented to conduct county business. It's very frustrating.
tgreen@21
No offense taken. I had a hunch your reasoning went something like that. We were not invaders, though, except in the view of the far left, having been invited in by the government of South Vietnam. Many charges have been made against this government, some true, but it did reflect the desire of most of the South Vietnamese to remain independent of the North. Very true about the un-Southerness of our retreat and abandonment; I wish I could say it was un-American, too, but, sadly, that ceased to be the case even before Vietnam.
#19. Mr. Jacobi, in those days Southern black people were too well-mannered to do what you suggest. They would only act that way after they had been in the North a few years.
@24 Dr. Wilson,
Point taken, and I am well reminded of some of the first Colored people I met, as a boy of eight or nine, before the rights movement and the welfare state wreaked their havoc. Their pride was the real, quiet, but steely pride of people who had done something useful with their lives, not the unearned, bloated, hence easily lost "self-esteem" of today, and their stoic sense of humor and reserved, almost grave demeanor toward a curious white boy made a lasting impression. An exchange with one old gent in particular, probably in his cups a bit, wherein he launched into an impassioned attempt to explain the mysterious (so it seemed to my innocence) difference between being a Negro and a being black man, is a scene I've gone over many a time since, while wondering how it all went so wrong.