Dittohate

Meet Jim D. Atkisson. He hates Liberals enough to shoot up a Unitarian Church during a children's program, killing two in Tennessee.

Here's my declaration of bias- I consider MOST right wing people in this day and age to be cut of this cloth. Uneducated/Undereducated, reactionary, cruel and violent. I have no doubt that in time it will out that this guy is fond of Limbaugh/Savage/Hannity. On the one hand, I don't believe in God, so shooting up churches is of limited affect to me, but as Pastor Martin Niemöller said of the Nazi's (and yes- that's a comparison I'm entirely comfortable making):

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

My version starts:
"In Neocon America, they first came for the educators, And I spoke up, but no one seemed to care;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I spoke up, but no one seemed to care;
And then they came for the dissenters, And I spoke up, because I am a dissenter, and no one seemed to care;
They were all watching television."

It would be unfair to hold an ideological movement accountable for the actions of one person (who is/was not in leadership), but in this case, I believe it fair to hold a movement accountable for the product of their efforts. The "right wing" has delivered to us far more rage filled murderers than you ever hear about in the corporate news. Barry Goldwater was a Conservative, these people are fascists, and they are flirting with an American Kristallnacht. I am amazed in my fellow countrymen's ignorance, rage, violence, and absolute unwillingness to think. Frankly, it scares me. I'm finding myself thinking about emigrating more frequently these days, which is quite a shift from my historical pig-headed stubbornness in which I felt a part of this nation.

Maybe some northern European nation would be willing to take in a family of American refugees. I hear it's harder to do at my age, since they don't want to take in those that will be a burden to the medical/social support programs without having paid in to the system for the earlier working years. Perhaps I can make a case for political amnesty before some mouth breathing, NASCAR loving, Fox News watching, monster truck driving, high school dropout decides to shoot me and my family for daring to disagree.