You have to see it to believe it.

A couple of items concerning recent antics -- incendiary, despicable and (most of all) surreal antics -- that various portions of the Deranged Right have gotten up to recently. Everything from mean-spiritedness to mendacity to incitements to violence and paramilitary activity to -- last but not least -- calls for presidential assassination.

First, the blog PhuckPolitics shares with us a video clip taken from Fox News that depicts talking heads engaging in what appears at first glance to be their run-of-the-mill, neo-corporightist and/or crypto-racist rhetoric. Whereupon, the viewer realizes that that decrepit Aussie Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour gift to this here land has transcended itself as regards its capacity to produce reckless and shameful innuendo.

The matter-of-fact nonchalance in this instance becomes all the creepier as the viewer ascertains that the correspondent posing as a putative "healthcare expert"  -- naturally, a role delegated to a journalist on staff at the National Review -- is claiming that large-scale reforms to the present US healthcare system (which system is that, exactly?) will increase the threat to the Homeland of terrorist attacks.

And, of course, the anchorman interviewing this National Socialist Review stooge apparently sees no need to challenge -- however cursorily -- his colleague's 'hypothesis'. It's as though this bald-faced tidbit of demagogy were -- well, sir -- just plain old everyday common sense. The footage is about as offensive, twisted, wrong and evil as anything we've heretofore seen from these cynical manipulators of secessionist South fake-populism. I strongly encourage you to watch it.

Second, courtesy of an item posted by the blog DownWithTyranny, I learned a couple of new things. Apparently, the Deranged Right has become cyber-savvy. Who knew? Not many Republicans that I know are particularly skilled in the ways of the Internets, although that's probably because almost all of them are sexagenarians.

"Over the weekend," states the blogger (who I infer is an opponent of Tyranny and not Tyranny's homeboy),

a friend sent me a link for a Facebook polling [sic] asking whether President Obama should be killed. I called a friend of mine who works at the Secret Service. They were already on the case.

Whew. That's pretty damn shocking. Can you remember anybody sending around Internet surveys asking this question about the previous occupant of the Oval Office? I certainly can't. And neither I nor those who were/are inclined to circulate lame Internet surveys were exactly huge fans of that administration.

But if you think that's shocking/disgusting, DownWithTyranny follows it up with something even worse. Initially showcased by a Web site called Right Wing Watch, DWT presents an outcry

more disturbing than Joe Wilson's "You lie" screech at the Joint Session of Congress. This outbreak was from another extreme right wing Republican congressional backbencher looking for some attention, Trent Franks, whose Arizona district stretches from the suburbs west of Phoenix through Glendale and Sun City and up to the northwest corner of the state.  [...]

Franks is an angry and driven man who feels he was dealt a bad hand in life. He's filled with irrational paranoia, bigotry and hatred. And, of course, he's a birther. Normally the Republican leadership keeps him away from the cameras and microphones but this week he escaped from the reservation and found an opportunity to declare President Obama "an enemy of humanity."  [Emphasis mine - cft]

Take a look at the short video and transcript of Congressman Franks's remarks, which DWT points out was likely to have encouraged fanatics to advocate proceeding with the ouster of the current administration through the staging of a military coup:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic... Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

There are some scary people out there. Shouldn't more people be lambasting the Republican Party for encouraging this kind of extremism? There are probably people out there who have never quite gotten over the Civil War. Sure, in important ways, they're marginalizing themselves into their destiny of political irrelevance. But even so, don't these people have guns?

Now you'll have to excuse me as I proceed to retreat into my multi-racial, multi-ethnic Democratic-voting Chicago neighborhood and hope that, if I ignore them, these problems will go away....

A heroic moment in conversation with the Deranged Right on health care.

Anecdote time.

Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, a longtime friend of Crib From This, recently found himself at one of his local watering holes, engaged in a political conversation with his

good friend who also happens to be rightist ideologue, who claimed that there was a provision in the Congressional/Obama Health Care reform proposal that allows for abortions of people up to fifteen years old. Whew!

Whew, indeed! But that's the kind of dissembling that is so incomprehensible that even the person who believes he believes it can't actually, at the end of the day, believe it.

I mean... Cause, how would that work, exactly? Kind of difficult to picture... That's what happens, Republicans, when you simply memorize talking points without actually thinking through what (or, for that matter, whether) they mean!!

But wait: It gets better! I give you, the Crib From This community, courtesy of Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, the Deranged Dixiecrat Right in its full glory:

Also, we were at a bar and a random drunk dude came to our table and my friend and he struck up a conversation and he happened to also be a rightist ideologue who predicted (with my friend) that Obama was leading the United States into the worst depression in history AND that we would have another Civil War within the next two years. Whew!

Yes, you read correctly. This man thinks that there's going to be another CIVIL WAR within the NEXT TWO YEARS! To which our correspondent, Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, responded, in the heroic moment to which our title refers:

When the guy brought up the Civil War thing, I said: "Yeah, if it happens, it will because of people like YOU."

YYYYEEEEESSSSS!!! And Gypsy Sun knocks one clean out of the park!!!

I think that I am not the only one for whom the Rightist rhetoric is increasingly alarming/disconcerting: Where does this venom and hatred come from? Why are so many people making themselves impossible to talk to? What's behind all this? Just incoherent hatred of taxes?

(Incoherent because Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security combined are currently by far the biggest national expense, and we are borrowing trillions of dollars from China to pay for it, instead of just taxing the Viagra-addled dicks off of those crusty old bastards!!! ["Greatest Generation," MY ASS!!!!?])

Just racism? Just propaganda about "socialism" and whatever? What the hell is behind this out-of-control turn that Rightist rhetoric has taken?

A few Right-wing apologists say: "These health care protests are no worse than the Left-wing protests during the lead up to the Iraq War!"

But that's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?

Why is it a stretch? Because nobody took those war protesters seriously. Tell me I'm crazy, but that seems fairly obvious to me.... Was there any moment during the run-up to Iraq upon which you recall thinking: "Maybe we're not really going to go to war??!!!"

No. The Iraq War was a done deal, long before it was even mentioned to the American People, and we all knew that at the time. The Right-wing anti-health care astroturf campaign, by contrast, threatens to derail the entire debate.

But, I repeat: What the hell is behind the disturbing militarization of Rightist rhetoric?

Gypsy Sun and Rainbows weighs in:

Yeah, kind of brings us back to our Sarah Palin debate. Since this health care stuff began, I think I am beginning to understand your concern [about the Right's increasingly ominous and irresponsible rhetoric]. Death Panels? It's been debunked, but people still believe it. Same with Obama's birth certificate thing.

Right. What I personally find alarming is the sheer number of people who seem to be obsessed fanatically with these kinds of bizarre things.

Now, admittedly, I've never exactly met these people, but from what you and some others have said, it seems like a lot of the people saying this type of thing are people of whom you'd expect different -- more sober and less hysterical -- behavior.

Fortunately, unlike the health care nut jobs, I gather that the "birthers," as people seem to be calling them, are not exactly ever going to have the numbers to make anybody have to care about their bullshit, which I think makes it unquestionably a GOOD thing for the Democrats and for Obama: Even though all of the rhetoric and posturing is extremely unsettling, it definitely helps keep the Republican't Party* submerged in its present untrustworthy/uneducated/fanatic/non-mainstream cesspool.

By the way, although by no means do I wish to legitimize these so-called 'birthers', I would like to point out that there is so much evidence out there at present of Obama's having been born in Hawaii that it is almost unbelievable that anyone -- even mentally unbalanced people -- could actually continue to harbor doubts about this.

Specifically, in addition to all of the other evidence, there are numerous clippings from different Hawaii newspapers announcing Obama's birth!

Click here to see one of them. Ha ha ha!! Are there people who actually see stuff like this and STILL BELIEVE that he wasn't born in Hawaii??



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* I just thought this up as I typed it. I'm sure I can't be the first. It's just too obvious.