Saturday, June 30, 2012

U.S. Slides Further Toward Civil War. No One Cares.

Think I'm joking? I'm not. In Michigan, one Republican attorney, Mr. Matthew Davis, a former spokesman for the Michigan Republican party, called in print for an armed insurrection against the legally constituted government of the United States as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to sustain the hated (by Republicans) Affordable Care Act. That attorney later retracted his comment, perhaps because being an attorney he realizes that bandying about that sort of call for action is legally actionable. You'll find his comments here: The 10 Most Hilariously Unhinged Right-Wing Reactions to the Obamacare Ruling. And Mr. Davis was hardly alone.

The Mississippi Tea Party Chairman had this to say:


"When a gang of criminals subvert legitimate government offices and seize all power to themselves without the real consent of the governed their every act and edict is of itself illegal and is outside the bounds of the Rule of Law. In such cases submission is treason. Treason against the Constitution and the valid legitimate government of the nation to which we have pledged our allegiance for years. To resist by all means that are right in the eyes of God is not rebellion or insurrection, it is patriotic resistance to invasion.
May all of us fall on our faces before the Heavenly Judge, repent of our sins, and humbly cry out to Him for mercy on our country. And, may godly courageous leaders rise up in His wisdom and power to lead us in displacing the criminal invaders from their seats and restore our constitutional republic."


None of the above is really all that new, of course. Ever since the election of 2008, various right-wing personalities, including at least one former Republican governor and at least one current member of Congress, have been hinting at, or leading up to calls for open rebellion and advising constituents to prepare for such an eventuality. One such exhortation can be found here: Michele Bachmann: I Want People "Armed And Dangerous" Over Obama Tax Plan. Others have called for a "2nd Amendment solution" (i.e. assassination) to be applied to public officials with whom they take issue. One such is here: Sharron Angle Floated '2nd Amendment Remedies' As 'Cure' For 'The Harry Reid Problems'.

In short, prominent adherents of one of the country's two major political parties have called for or are calling for political assassinations to take place or for outright armed rebellion to occur, all because they disagree with decisions made and legislation enacted by the legally constituted government of the United States, elected to power in the election of 2008. At the same time, gun dealers have reported record sales throughout the period in question, while the number of Americans interested in gun-ownership has remained relatively unchanged. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that the political Right, already fanatical about the private ownership of firearms and mostly having owned firearms all along, have really been stocking up on yet more arms and ammunition. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security has reportedly purchased some 450 million rounds of ammunition.

Thus far the mainstream U.S. media has only barely even noted this kind of talk, and even in doing so has pretended that such treasonable utterances and/or exhortations are merely another perfectly reasonable political point of view. As for Fox News, which airs such points of view all the time, often in the form of their own paid commentators, there have as yet been no calls even for an investigation into their propagation and broadcasting of treasonable propaganda. And the vast majority of the American people seem not to care, perfectly content as long as they are permitted to continue to tune in to their so-called "reality television" shows.

As for the government in question, minus those of its traitorous members who are calling or have called for armed rebellion, it has remained largely silent. The Department of Justice, so far as is publicly known, has undertaken no investigation of, let alone filed any charges against, groups or persons who have advocated or are advocating armed insurrection. The President of the United States, so far as I have been able to discover, has himself taken no official notice of any of this, still traveling overseas regularly to consult with other world leaders, and still engaged in his political campaign for re-election at home as if nothing in the world is wrong.

Something does not compute here. It seems clear that much more is going on than meets the (public) eye, but what may be happening behind the scenes remains a mystery. And frankly, that worries me. At a guess, I would say that, if all of the treasonable talk on the Right is more than just talk, if an armed rebellion is actually envisaged by persons on the Right, it is likely to take place immediately after the President is re-elected should that eventuality occur. And God only knows what might happen then, let alone what the government's response might be.