Trolling for Assassins
November 17, 2009
By Steve Klinger
The new slogan bouncing around the Internet is also showing up on bumper stickers, T-shirts, caps and teddy bears (check out www.zazzle.com).
It simply says, “Pray for Obama. Psalm 109:8.”
The psalm itself reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.”
That’s ominous, but maybe it only implies a wish that Obama not be re-elected. Pretty tame stuff, and fairly harmless for a $4.45 bumper sticker, you say.
In the context of American politics, harmless isn’t the word that comes to mind. Even more troubling is the verse immediately following the psalm referenced: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” Are we going too far to stir those words into the brew?
I guess it depends if your religious fanatic cup is half empty or half full. Actually, recalling the history of violence in this country, much of it in the name of Christianity (from lynchings to assassinations), my cup runneth over. Given the religious right’s glee over the recent slaying of abortion doctor George Tiller, and a presidential campaign tinged with threats of violence, followed by a summer of simmering tea parties, I’m reading the tea leaves right now and they look a little bloody.
Free speech? Protected speech? Sure, and the guys toting weapons outside the town hall meetings were just exercising their 2nd Amendment rights, and Tim McVeigh was just spouting off when he wore a shirt to the federal building in Oklahoma City that said sometimes the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants.
It’s all well and good until the unthinkable happens, and then a nation is suddenly wringing its hands once again and asking why no one did anything to stop it.
I shouldn’t say “a nation” but rather “most of a nation,” for it is abundantly clear that beyond the solid minority that wishes Obama would be defeated in 2012 there is a hard-core fringe that hopes he has a close encounter with a widow maker right here in 2009. To stimulate that smoldering, irrational anger and cloak it in biblical language is to send a wakeup call to the crazies author Frank Schaeffer calls the American Taliban. A former fundamentalist firebrand, Schaeffer ought to know what makes them tick, so my ears perked up when he said tonight on The Rachel Maddow Show that this particular marketing campaign is deadly serious and totally sinister. Said Schaeffer, “They’re trolling for assassins.”
And it says a lot about the Republican Party and those religious and secular leaders on the right who have been silent in the storm of ugly innuendo and blatant threat, assenting by their refusal to condemn what is obviously a movement to seize power in this country by whatever means necessary, bloody or otherwise.
It also says a lot about those on the left who are too busy tearing Obama to shreds to worry about the hellish nightmare that would be unleashed on this country if he were to be assassinated. When will those on both ends of the spectrum grow up and see that the danger is precisely from the extremities? And right now, from where I sit, Obama’s failings, and they are many, can’t hold a candle to the ugliness lurking beneath the fundamentalist mantle.
Where are those self-righteous Americans who criticize Muslim leaders for not more forcefully denouncing their extremist minorities? Their silence about the hatred festering at the edge of their own movement right here in Amurrica speaks volumes about their hypocrisy — and their complicity in what is waiting to happen.
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Steve,
I just like to comment on this statement: And right now, from where I sit, Obama’s failings, and they are many, can’t hold a candle to the ugliness lurking beneath the fundamentalist mantle.
1. I am glad that you are also witness Obama’s failings
2. I agree that it can’t hold a candle to the ugliness lurking beneath the fundamentalist mantle.
But, are you trying to tell us that we should never, ever critizing Obama for not standing up to his promises, because this criticism will support the rightwing fundamentalists??
Not at all, Barb. Just that we shouldn’t lose sight of how much worse things could get if we allow the right wing fundamentalists to foment some kind of coup or revolution because we’re preoccupied with criticizing Obama. I feel the system is rigged, and while he could and should (and we should push him to) be stronger and show more leadership on torture, climate change, Wall Street corruption, escalating wars especially, we know there are limits on what any president of this corporate-run government will be “allowed” to do.
I don’t agree by a long stretch with those who say he is as bad as Bush. The federal agencies, which had grown incredibly corrupt under GWB, are finally starting to function and regulate a little bit, which directly affects people’s lives; and he did make a vital Supreme Court nomination, and other good judicial appointments, from what I hear. He’s trying to close Guantanamo. There is some movement toward clean energy and disarmament, but more lip service than substance. Some of the stimulus measures did stave off a total collapse, but appeasing Wall Street is infuriating and just invites more of the same. He certainly should be pressured to dump Geithner and Summers and to keep from escalating Afghanistan, etc.
It’s a matter of emphasis to me. If we keep focusing only on Obama’s failings we embolden the fanatic right, maybe even play into their hands rather than standing up against them. We want a more progressive president, yes, but what we are more likely to wind up with is fundamentalist fascism.