They bring guns and slogans about killing tyrants to a tax protest and talk about "Second Amendment Remedies" if things don't go their way, and the police stand respectfully by. When progressives gather, their signs are considered possible weapons and Homeland Security is alerted and batons and economy-sized tanks of pepper spray are prepared to fend off the threat of college students and women, lest they get out of hand.
They race-bait talking about the "bla... people" and turning schoolchildren into janitors because they have no hardworking role models and it's smirkily dismissed. Biden mentions the chains Wall Street has busily wrapped around us already and it's "a new low" in politics.
There are a shocking number of American conservatives who embrace absolutely batshit ideas. One person I had always believed reasonable recently mumbled something about Obama being "crafty" about his birth certificate. Many mainstream conservatives would ban abortion and think climate change is a hoax created by scientists.
And the others will not speak up. They hear the crazy. They see it. But this is their group. Their identity. Their church. A few may get out of hand occasionally, shoot a doctor or a some churchgoers, but to many in America, including an unfortunate bulk of law enforcement, you only really have to worry when "those people" get out of hand. The commies. The hippies. The women. The gays and minorities. The educated. The godless.
We are "those people." From Hoover hounding John Lennon out of the country to Reagan denying AIDS and siccing shotgun-wielding police on people making a garden, we have been marginalized as the anti-normal force. The threat to stability. Our motives are as suspect as our birth certificates. We are the Other.
We have to speak up and make ourselves known. A rock-ribbed fan of W. Bush recently observed to me that a free market "finding equilibrium" after a series of violent highs and lows is not a helpful thing, and that Wall Street insiders in government bode ill for everyone. Another hardy mainstream conservative observed that endless wars drain lives and money for no apparent good.
We're Those People, and we are The People. And there are more of us than is supposed.
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