Watch Daughter Of John Birchers Explain Why Tea Party Idiocy Is No Laughing Matter

[Triana]

http://www.occupydemocrats.com/watch-daughter-of-john-birchers-explain-why-tea-party-idiocy-is-no-laughing-matter-2/

[JDPriestly]

1. This is an important message to us.

Don't dismiss her warnings as a paranoid conspiracy theory. The right wing extremists are a real threat to our country.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

11. No it's not.

It's not a paranoid conspiracy theory. It's just overstated.

That "army" she's talking about is shrinking, day by day, as old white blue collar racists, the "useful idiots" of the ultra hard right, die off.
Just volunteer on a Democratic campaign once in a while. That will help.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[markpkessinger]

14. My own experience as a 53-year-old gay man tells me . . .

. . . that it is wise to remain very wary of the belief that bigotry and prejudice will ever simply die off. I came out of the closet in 1979, a couple of years before AIDS hit (at least that we knew about). There was an abundance of gay literature, social theory and criticism, a burgeoning gay press. We were 10 years out from Stonewall, and the lessons of the various liberation movements of the '60s and '70s, including the sexual liberation movement, were widely accepted among folks of my generation. Cities across the country were beginning to enact gay rights legislation. It certainly seemed as if continued progress on this front. as well as on other areas if bigotry and intolerance, was both certain and inevitable.

Then came 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan, which owed at least part of its success to the Reagan campaign ground organization's vigorous efforts in churches across the rural South and Midwest. Reagan launched his 1980 bid with a speech near the town of Philadelphia, MS, where just 16 years before three civil rights workers had been brutally murdered for their work in registering African American voters there, on the theme of states' rights. A small-town southern audience knew what that coded language meant -- Reagan was personally welcoming them and their bigotry back into the mainstream

And then I watched, for the better part of the next three decades, as states and cities enacted new, even more homophobic legislation, in some cases repealing the gay rights bills they had previously passed. I watched as the show, "Cosby," effectively convinced sold the country a bill of goods about what life was like for a typical African American family, and convinced many American Whites that the playing field for blacks had been leveled with that of whites, and that racism concerns could be relegated to a bygone era. I watched as organized labor was undermined at every turn, and as care for the environment was newly disparaged as "tree hugging."

I had some hope that things would change in 1992, with the election of Clinton. But the right, through its machinations, managed to warp even the presidency of a Democrat they despised into a tool of the right, who then went on to sign things like NAFTA, Graham-Leach-Bliley, DOMA and Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Progress is never a given. Bigotry is believed by many psychologists to be a hardwired tendency as a result of our evolution, a relic from a time when being able to quickly and accurately identify who was and who was not part of one's extended familial structure was a critical survival skill. People can overcome it IF they (a) recognize it in themselves; (b) recognize that it is wrong, and (c) are sufficiently motivated to counter it in themselves whenever they see it occurring.

Radical right wing movements can sometimes arise with astonishing speed. If you really think we can afford to just sit back and wait for bigots to die off, then you and I don't live in the same world.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

15. Listen to what you yourself are saying...

...that bigotry is a healthy mechanism gone bad. To translate into modern terms - identifying terrorists is still good, but not if you imagine you see them on every street corner.

How do you "fight" this kind of stuff then? The answer is to be friendly towards bigots. The hatred, fighting, rage, that you see constantly on the D.U. by the left doesn't work. That makes poor Republicans even more fearful, angry, etc.

There is a reason why gays aren't hated in cities anywhere near as much as they are in the countryside: it's hard to hate someone you've actually met.

So yes, it's important to get rid of bigotry. But the way you do that is to be friendly in non-political ways.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[markpkessinger]

16. Where in the OP, or in JDPriestly's post, or in my post, does anybody . . .

. . . suggest that we need to "hate" right-wing bigots, or that we shouldn't be civil to them? You seem to be having an argument you want to have, rather than arguing with what has actually been said, and in the process you are reading words and imputing intentions into what I, JDPriestly and Ms. Conner in the video have said.

There is a reason why gays aren't hated in cities anywhere near as much as they are in the countryside: it's hard to hate someone you've actually met.

I think that familiarity accounts for some, but certainly not all, of the reason there tends to be greater acceptance of LGBT folks in cities. But I would suggest to you that equally operative is the fact that in many larger cities, considerable social opprobrium attaches to openly expressed anti-gay bigotry. Oh, and by the way, I have many close family members, whom I love very much, who are very hard-line right wingers, and I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. So I don't really think I need to be told how to deal with such folks constructively, thanks.'

My post in reply to your reply to JDPriestly was simply taking issue with your assertion that the message of the video -- about how the far right operates -- is not an important one. I believe it is not only important, but critical, for as many people as possible to hear and understand this message. That has nothing whatsoever with hating, or being hateful towards, right wingers.

[cprise]

2. A good follow up read:

http://www.alternet.org/story/141819/is_the_u.s._on_the_brink_of_fascism?page=0%2C2&paging=off

[canoeist52]

3. Just finished Claire Conner's book, "Wrapped in the Flag".

More detail about her experience.

[Triana]

4. I have it on Kindle

Read it in a couple of days. It's IMO a very important book to read! My aunt had a mother-in-law who was a John Bircher and I get the same types of stories from her about what MIL was like. Horrible, evil, greedy, mean-ass woman who treated my aunt like shit.

So that's two sources with a lifetime of direct experience dealing with JBS/TeaBagger crap - and I believe what they tell me. They are evil and dangerous and they need to be neutered somehow.

[belltower]

5. threads converge

So we developed this addiction to cheap oil
supplied by pushers who assassinated JFK/MX/RFK/MLK/PW
and anyone else with a capacity to speak truth to their power,
plutocrats who form an oligarchy who bankroll
the Tea Party, big media, big data, big money
to be told by noone what they can do (to us).

This woman's book reveals their aims
to plunder a paralyzed government
to manipulate a hypnotized public.

So to end this clear and present danger
we MUST end this filthy addiction
... and perhaps save the human species.

The Republican Party MUST be labelled
a fundamentally seditious organization.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

6. saving for later. n\t

[kairos12]

7. She has it nailed. Was always my thinking.

[jtuck004]

8. Awww, too bad. She's missing the real story. It's not the army that's marching at you

that should worry you.

It's when half the army you are in is on the side of your enemy...

[arcane1]

9. Kicking to watch later!

[wandy]

10. Unfortunately their is truth in what this person says.............

You can laugh at the idiot in the three cornered hat that spells worse than I do.
But you Can NOT laugh at the money and power that encourages them to align with such folly.
Considerable KochCorprat cash is spent on bringing more and more fools into the fold.
The more of them their are the more it becomes "you are with us or against us".

It might be tiering to hear such foolishness.
It would be nice to believe that people can not be deceived in that manner.
Even if you know they are deceived, you're nature might be to forgive/ignore them. "For they know not what they do"

Still it comes down to this.............

Which side are you on.

Yup. One of those days when the nickname of "Grumpy old disliker of Teapublicans" apply.

[RoccoR5955]

12. I have been saying for many years:

Why do people vote for people that say that the government can do no good, then when elected, to on to prove it?

[freshwest]

13. Thanks, Triana for keeping this alive. But it's just so cool to trash democratic government. n/t