I'm beginning to feel as though I'm being too flippant about the wingnut revolution talk -- perhaps I should be taking it a little more seriously. Charles Blow writes in the NY Times:
My read: They’re apocalyptic. They feel isolated, angry, betrayed and besieged. And some of their “leaders” seem to be trying to mold them into militias. [...]
According to the F.B.I., there have been 1.2 million more requests for background checks of potential gun buyers from November to February than there were in the same four months last year. That’s 5.5 million requests altogether over that period; more than the number of people living in Bachmann’s Minnesota.
One can only wonder what someone they perceive as a black muslim intent on installing Sharia law will prompt them to do. And because these psychos form the activist base of the Republican party, congress will just encourage them.
Until they hurt somebody. Although that might not even stop them.
During the Bush years, even the most extreme liberal voices always limited their "take back the country" rhetoric to discussions of electoral victories, protests and the occasional impeachment talk on the blogs. The arguments were largely based on intellectual reasoning or pacifistic morality.
But this -- this wingnut talk from Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michele Bachmann and the like tends to stir up the dangerous gun-toting poseur military set. The white male reactionaries who look for any excuse to burn powder. And for all his faults and crazy, Glenn Beck knows how to talk to -- how to manipulate -- these American jingoists. The ignorant types with hair-triggers. He's a master performance artist if nothing else. He's a real life Barry Champlain, with the potential for exhuming the worst tendencies in people. Talk of being surrounded. Talk of a march towards tyranny. Talk of feeling helpless. He's begging for a outward reaction.
The success of Glenn Beck on FOX News can only mean more and more of this crap. I'd like to continue to think it's funny, but as they say: it's all fun and games until, you know...