"The lunatics committing these crimes don't even know what they're so upset about"

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_03/023043.php

snip//

What do Republicans expect to happen? They've told confused, misguided activists that health care reform it a "totalitarian" scheme that attacks our "freedom" and represents the "end of America as we know it." The policy breakthrough is, as several GOP leaders have put it, "Armageddon."

It's quite likely that most Republican lawmakers know that their over-the-top rhetoric is just a political gambit, and that their more insane attacks on the new law have no foundation in reality. But therein lies the point: their base doesn't know that Republican officials are lying. When enraged activists are told by leaders they trust that health care reform will destroy America, these activists actually believe the nonsense.

When Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele demands that Pelosi get "ready for the firing line," the GOP base gets the message. When Sarah Palin's Facebook page shows 20 gun sights over Democratic lawmakers, some of whom are colored in red, the GOP base gets the message.

And now we're seeing the results of Republicans' irresponsibility.

The most farcical angle to this? The lunatics committing these crimes don't even know what they're so upset about. The things they think they hate about health care reform aren't real. They're lashing out violently to protest a law they don't understand. Ironically, many of these same people and their families stand to benefit as a result of reform.

Republicans have quite deliberately exploited the ignorance and hatred of their own supporters to create a toxic political environment, which in turn leads to the violence we've seen over the last several days. Responsible GOP leaders, if any still exist, must do far more to lower the temperature before conditions take a more tragic turn.

—Steve Benen

[chill_wind]

1. It's called Machiavellianism. n/t

[LuckyTheDog]

2. This is serious

For some reasons, this verse from a Talking Heads song keeps going through my head:

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
this ain't no fooling around
This ain't no mudd club, or C. B. G. B.
I ain't got time for that now

[GoCubsGo]

3. That is not the song that goes through my head...

I'm thinking of one by Green Day:

Don't want to be an American idiot
One nation controlled by the media
Information age of hysteria
Calling out to idiot America


I think of "American Idiot" every time I see someone watching FoxPropaganda.

[Spazito]

4. They know what they are angry about...

they are angry a black man is President, they really don't give a crap about healthcare, etc, except as a cover for their racism, imo.

[LynzM]

5. Or they're actually scared.

Anger, especially misdirected and irrational anger, is often really a fear response. I think they're afraid because things don't work the way they expect them to, and they can't control that...

[tabatha]

6. These Republican liars are no better than

Ahmadinejad denying the holocaust.

[Martin Eden]

7. "Republicans have quite deliberately exploited the ignorance and hatred of their own supporters"

Yep, that is their modus operandi.

[Cha]

8. So true ..that's what's so tragically

frustrating.

They fire all the responsible gop leaders.

[BlooInBloo]

9. Yes, they do. The President is black.

[babylonsister]

10. That doesn't explain the black 'lunatic' interviewed on m$nbc

today, definitely a teabagger involved with the cut gas line and posting the address.

[BlooInBloo]

11. To explain why a volume of gas moves the way it does...

does not require that the motion of every molecule of that gas be explained. Only the volume's center of mass.

[Swede]

12. They really believe Glenn Beck's blackboard scrawling.

[jenmito]

13. One of the threatening phone-callers to a Dem. "yea" voter said the congressman

better look over his shoulder for the rest of his life for getting between her and her doctor. I don't know the exact words but she was repeating the Repub. talking points.