What Makes The Grass Grow?

There have already been two shootings by right-wing lunatics since Obama's election and it will only be a matter of time until another, perhaps more devastating, attack will occur from a racist hillbilly christian nationalist with PTSD and a copy of The Turner Diaries. How could it not? Conservative commentators and members of congress openly promote the idea that Obama is an illegitimate Kenyan turning the country into a socialist state. The climate of paranoia and hostility on the right has reached a fever pitch. Obama still talks of working with them.

Many black men in America can't "open carry" their wallet near police without being shot 50 times. Anti-government extremists, meanwhile, brandish assault rifles outside of a presidential rally--implicitly threatening violence--and it's their sacred right. An armed society is a polite society, they say, so there should be no better way to calm the raucous town halls than for all the attendees to have loaded assault rifles.

I recommend Frank Rich's column on the subject and a great cartoon by Kevin Moore on the "Tree of Liberty" quote.