Goodness-gracious. Via Lew Rockwell is this ridiculous rant by Frank Rich essentially naming the entire populist right and libertarian movements as culprits in the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, the recent Austin Kamikaze attack and, well, pretty much anything bad that happens from here on.
I have about as much truck for these torture, war, George Bush-mongering Tea Party idiots, who’ve seemed to discover the danger of state power only in the last year-and-one-month, as I have for the current imperial president and his pep squad, but Rich’s fearmongering about the danger of working class Rightwingers launching some giant terrorist war against the state and the establishment is overblown by a factor of about a hundred-million. And no doubt betters of ours all over America found themselves nodding and clucking their tongues as they read the NYT this morning.
“My Gosh!” They must have said to themselves and each other over whatever the chef made for breakfast. “Did you see this Rich column about all these low-lifes trying to engage in the democratic process?! The next thing you know they’ll blow up Oklahoma City again!”
Is the average New York Times editor really that frightened of the American people? Are his readers? If so, do you think he (they) could imagine there’s anything those with the power have done to the rest of us that could give cause for people to be angry?
Perhaps they don’t like having their country sold out from under them, leaving them broke, unemployed and living in their cars? Maybe they’re beginning to resent their sons being killed for nothing in bogus wars based on forged lies, or paying billions in bonuses for those who’ve ruined the economy and received trillions of our bailout dollars? Has Frank Rich ever met anyone who doesn’t like cops? Has he ever asked them whatever could be their problem?
If the dollar really does break in some worst-case crack-up boom as Ron Paul and others have predicted, this nation could start looking a lot more like the 1991 L.A. riots on a regular basis. If that happens, it’s already clear what the response of the state and its apologists will be: The American people hate the government because it represents freedom, and they just hate freedom. Then I suppose we can expect Frank Rich and Tom Ricks to endorse a true-genius 21st Century clear-hold-build counter-insurgency strategy to win back our hearts and minds. What’s the point of having an Army Northern Command and Department of Homeland Security, if we can’t use it? Then when their occupation provokes more resistance, it will only prove to them how right and just they are in arming-up to protect the people from themselves.
In truth the American people’s breaking point was passed long ago. But rather than fighting back in ways that might have frightened Frank Rich, they simply broke. The Right for the most part still supports the empire and police state, and the Left for the most part can’t imagine life without an unlimited national government to accomplish all of their great goals and plans. Any real grass roots Rightwing movement in Congress would simply devolve into another meaningless-or-worse Ronald Reagan or Contract With America-style Republican “revolution.” Just as all the anti-Bush outrage on the Left was turned out in favor of Wall Street butler Barack Obama. It’s highly unlikely that even the worst-case economic situation could break though their basic mindsets. And if they won’t do anything about our most obvious problems through ballots, they sure as hell aren’t going to put their lives on the line.
In other words: don’t cry Frank. The elitist-statist dollar-counterfeiting sadists have already won, and the only people who got hurt was everybody but you.
