Accidental Blogger

Frank Rich of the New York Times sums it up, providing the relevant historical and psychological underpinnings for the rage that is fueling the angry rhetoric and violence of the right wing of American politics.  The last few paragraphs of the article: (please read the whole thing)

Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

… they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can’t pretend that we’re talking about “isolated incidents” or a “fringe” utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

I won't go over the public incidents that have been widely reported in the media and are methodically listed by Rich in his article. Rather, a bit on  what I observe around me, coming from everyday "normal" folks. Many of my Republican neighbors and acquaintances describe Obama as un-Amerian (in his attitude as well as by virtue of his birth), socialist, terrorist sympathizer … and yes, that catchall pejorative for all uppity minorities, arrogant. He is so undeserving of their respect, they say, that they cannot in a "million years," bring themselves to call him the president of the United States. Yet, if you ask them to specify the evidence for the charges, the most common answer is, "He is destroying the country as we knew it." Actually, he is not. The country is changing due to societal and cultural forces long in coming and Obama, a dark skinned man at the helm, is the scapegoat for the right wingers' paranoia. Here are a couple of more extreme examples of the manifestation of that angst.

Here is some breaking news as I write; an ad that aired on a radio station in Kansas; Texans refusing (due to ignorance, apathy and to thumb their noses at the federal government) to answer the 2010 census survey; and this ugly cartoon, stoking the primal fears of every racist, that was recently seen on many right wing blogs and message boards.