Once again the face of terrorism arises in our country – Right Wing terrorism. A 40 year old Texan man has been arrested for allegedly lighting multiple “Molotov Cocktails” at the office of Democratic State Senator Wendy Davis, which led to a fire that her staffers were lucky to put out.
Fort Worth, Texas police announced this morning that they have made an arrest in the firebomb attack on the office of Democratic state senator Wendy Davis, says a report at NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.com. Cedric Steele, 40, has been arrested on charges of arson of a building and is being held on a $50,000 bond.
The attack came Tuesday night. Steele is accused of trying to light multiple “Molotov cocktails” (glass bottles filled with accelerant) outside Davis’s office door. The devices created a small fire that was extinguished by staff members who where present at the time. […]
… Davis called on fellow politicians to bring an end to vitriolic political rhetoric used in campaigning as it exposes politicians and campaign workers to potential violence as they try to serve the citizens of their community.
“It’s a reminder for all of us that people who are working on behalf of constituents … are particularly vulnerable and are being placed at risk. It’s especially incumbent upon us to remember … that when we demonize people who are in political roles and we invite responses that are unreasonable, these are the types of things that can occur,” Davis said. “We could be standing here today telling a very different story had they [law enforcement] not reacted as well as they did.”
I know the country is supposedly polarized between the right and the left, and that the Republican party has adopted the most extreme radical positions in my lifetime.
However, the numerous incidents of shooting and beating Democratic politicians and liberal activists, killing “liberal” church members, and police officers are all too frequent. We also know that right wing bomb and gun attacks planned against so-called liberal organizations such as the ACLU and the Martin Luther King parade in Tacoma were narrowly averted. Unfortunately, it comes as no surprise to see stories like this popping up everyday. Violence and hate speech is now apparently accepted as a legitimate political tactic by the right wing and the politicians who cater to them.
The people who have the means to put a stop to these incidents by condemning them and toning down their inflammatory, murderous rhetoric are the conservative media hatemongers on talk radio and Fox News, as well as radical Tea Party Republicans. Unfortunately they have shown no desire to call off the dogs, as it were. Oh they may make the obligatory non-apology apology (the aptly named “nopology”), when absolutely required, but more often than not they find a way to blame the victims of these outbreaks of violence, and then continue on their merry way, filling the airwaves with lies about Democrats being fascists and socialists and Muslim terrorists, and calling those who disagree with their political views “feminazis” “environmental whackos” and Communists.
Supposedly anyone who votes for Obama is either a dupe or a member of various grand conspiracies to (1) take away everyone’s guns, (2) destroy America’s economy, (3) create death panels and death camps to kill off old people, or (4) raise gas prices deliberately to make people suffer and Al Gore rich, (5) take away your right to practice your religion if you are a Christian or (6) [add your own outrageous Big Lie here – God knows there are enough of them and I’m tired of running them all down].
The constant drumbeat of these outrageous slanders and libels, the incessant demonizatrion of anyone who doesn’t bow down and kiss Rush Limbaugh’s ass, the messages of hate and fear spread by right wing bloggers, news anchors and “entertainers” that I hear everywhere I go, sickens me, but it is also a disease that is poisoning our country. A disease with only one cure: the Right Wing scum who preach these lies and distortions and incite these acts of political terrorism have to be repudiated and marginalized to such an extent that their foul stench will disappear from our political landscape for at least another generation.
Ah, but therein lies the rub. With their alliance to Big Business and the availability of endless mounds of money to fund the propaganda campaigns of conservative media and the political campaigns of the most radical of radical Republican politicians, the ability to fight the lies and the hate becomes more difficult by the day. Which is why I cannot see an end to the wave of right-wing terror, which is incited by the right-wing hate mongers, violence that continues to erupt across our country. Because just when you think you have these bastards down for the count the money flows in to prop them back up. Money cannot buy you love, but it can buy the destruction of our democracy by the very people who claim to love it the most, a claim that, like most of what they say, is an out and out lie.
Does it bother them that their disinformation has led to these not so random acts of violence against their political opponents? Not in the least my friends, not in the least. There are preachers who tell their congregations that it is no sin to kill your enemies in the Lord’s name, and there are business moguls such as the Koch Brothers who have spent hundreds of millions ensuring that their vision of an America crushed under a right wing jackboot in support of the ultra-rich and ultra-religious.
I wish I knew a way to end this unfolding nightmare, but I do not. I can only hope that the American people will begin to see through the lies, much as those who have participated in the Occupy Movement have done, But that is all I have: hope.