LOD: Stir ‘Em Up, Scare ‘Em Big-Time

The hostility of too many Tea Party fans toward people who don’t look and act like them is alarming – and dangerous. It flows from a sense of beleaguered superiority and it can produce explosive reactions when these true believers are prodded with wild claims that “our culture” (values, family, country, God, etc.) is under attack. Unfortunately, the wild claims keep coming – and they put millions of people and our overall democracy at risk. Today, Republicans in the NC House of Representative followed one blueprint to prod their reactionary supporters into action by invoking what Dr. Tim Tyson calls the threat of the gay boogieman. GOP leaders succeeded in getting enough votes in the House to put an amendment on the 2012 ballot to outlaw gay marriage, which state law already does. Several House Democrats went along, after Republicans agreed to put the measure on the primary ballot instead of holding it for November. The state Senate is likely to agree. Following a similar script, Republicans invoke images of illegal immigrants fraudulently voting in order to gin up passions about the need for a photo ID law. Yikes, here come the $&S^@(!  Going even further, some right-wing pundits are ready to say “our culture” (white wealthy straight property owners) is threatened by poor people voting at all. “Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country,” says Matthew Vadem in the American Thinker. As Facing South points out, Vadem is simply voicing a growing sentiment among the far-rightists whose earlier inflammatory positions are now mainstream conservative thought.