An outburst characteristic of, or resulting from, a mania fit or spell of violent mental excitement is considered frenzy, and regardless the subject, it can be used to drive a group of like-minded people frantic with the right motivation. Hitler used anti-Semitism to drive good Germans into frenzy to advance the Holocaust, and in the Dark Ages, the Vatican used fear of witchcraft to incite superstitious Europeans into frenzy that resulted in innocent men and women being burned at the stake. In America, the NRA, Republicans, and so-called patriots are driving gun fanatics and racists into frenzy by asserting President Obama is on a mission to confiscate guns, invalidate the 2nd Amendment, and establish a dictatorship.
Ever since the tragic slaughter of twenty children and 6 adults in Newtown Connecticut, the NRA and so-called uber-patriot gun fanatics have ratcheted up fear that President Obama’s appeal for gun safety laws is the first step toward outlawing firearms that elicited threats of a civil or revolutionary war against the government. Many of the same people advocating for rebellion have also trumpeted a “coming race war” because an African American man occupies the White House. Over the past month, a plethora of right-wing maniacs began warning gun owners and racists the President’s gun safety proposals are a precursor to all manner of fallacious scenarios, but none as disturbing as the contention the President is raising a private black army to massacre white Americans, or that gun control is a devious plot to make it easier to massacre hundreds-of-thousands of unarmed citizens.
These allegations would be laughable except that with a large segment of the population fearful of losing their guns and freedom to a Black President, coupled with escalating calls for a race war, the prospect of frenzied, angry, and fearful Americans mobilizing and opening fire is becoming worrisome. The common thread in antagonizing gun owners to action is the result of over four years of NRA propaganda the President will seize Americans’ guns, and it provoked a tea party “Day of Resistance Rally” held yesterday, 2/23 to signify the .223 caliber round used in the Sandy Hook massacre, and to show their assembly was “against President Obama.” The rallies were scheduled to take place in 100 cities across America, and in at least one Pennsylvania city, the special day included an “open-carry walk.”
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Last Tuesday, Larry Pratt, president of Gun Owners of America, asserted President Obama will start confiscating guns to provoke a violent response to justify further oppression, and incarcerate hundreds-of-thousands of gun owning patriots. Pratt also said the President is acting like King George III and will use his authority to “wipe those people out to set an example.” Another right-wing maniac concurred with Pratt and said “I believe they will put together a racial force to go against an opposite race resistance, basically a black force to go against a white resistance, and then they will claim anyone resisting the black force they are doing it because they are racist.” Pratt concluded the meeting of the minds with a warning to President Obama that “a lot of people resolved, that if Obama starts playing the massacre game the way you did at Waco, well, you’re going to get surrounded, you won’t be able to go home safely, your family won’t be safe.”
Last month, Buster Wilson of the American Family Association warned that President Obama was ready to establish a dictatorship and “start killing conservatives and Christians who oppose his administration” based on nothing more than an overactive imagination. However, all of these attempts to whip up armed resistance against President Obama, although insane, are in part because he won re-election, and like Republicans, right-wingers see their power and influence waning as more Americans understand the President is doing the job he was elected to do and looking out for all Americans. It is appalling that conspiracy theorists, disaffected evangelical maniacs, and gun fanatics incite fear and opposition to the legally elected President, but it has been a longstanding Republican practice. Last month Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sent out a frantic letter to gun owners warning that the President was “coming to get your guns” to provoke opposition to the President, and not just gun safety laws.
The Republicans, teabaggers, and neo-conservatives are like dying, critically wounded beasts who will lash out at anyone, even if they are attempting to help them, and it explains conservatives voting against their own interests, and supporting Republican policies that benefit the wealthiest Americans and their corporations. Republicans have spent over four years portraying the President as a foreigner, and not one of us “real Americans” that Willard Romney propagated during his failed run for president, and it demonstrates the desperation of a minority of Americans whose opposition to the President is founded in racial animus and little else.
It is getting to the point that there is nothing this President can do that will not evoke outrage and opposition from a sick segment of the nation regardless their imagined sleights are non-existent. The teabagger claims of tyranny and loss of freedoms began before the President completed a full month in office, and Republicans and their money machine, the Koch Brothers, took advantage of racial bigotry to incite teabagger opposition with no basis in reality. In January 2012, Virginia Republicans warned that if the President was re-elected, it would start a revolutionary war, and the warnings of armed resistance, secession, and attempts at revisiting Confederate nullification are the result of a majority of Americans re-electing the President.
There is little doubt that with much more antagonizing, there will an armed conflict, and like any frenzied group, it will spread throughout sick, racist Americans who are looking for any reason to use their arsenals. One hopes such an eventuality never takes place, but if it does, Republicans will bear the brunt of the blame because if they had any interest in America, or the people’s security, they would have squashed the racial, un-American, foreigner rhetoric in 2009. However, they could not comport that the American people rejected their agenda and elected the President the first time, and with his re-election they are desperate, confused, and still provoking opposition for opposition’s sake with tacit support of racial animosity, gun fanaticism, and fallacious loss of freedoms that threatens to whip their supporters into frenzy that will result in armed conflict and not an electoral victory, and maybe that is their goal after all.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
