Over the years, in some places I've lived, I've sometimes found myself totally freaked out by a cockroach invasion. As soon after that as I could manage, I'd be holding a can of roach spray in my hand, blasting those buggers mercilessly. Sometimes the environmentalist in me might feel a moment of guilt about the toxins I was unleashing, but mainly it was my inner killer that took over. Rage, revenge, remorselessness: those vermin had it coming.
This weekend, watching police at UC-Davis coolly drench crouching, nonviolent students with pepper spray at close range, I couldn't help likening their ruthless canister blitzkrieg with my own roach attacks. To those cops, there wasn't a shred of humanity in those kids. They were disgusting bugs who deserved what they got.
This same weekend, at an Iowa "Thanksgiving Family Forum," Newt Gingrich sprayed bile at Occupy Wall Street protesters, denouncing them as lazy thieving self-righteous hypocrites, and instructing them to "go get a job right after you take a bath."
In the latest Reuters poll, Gingrich has pulled ahead of Mitt Romney and is now the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination. You can see why: with their raucous applause at Gingrich's onslaught, the Thanksgivers in that room have earned their right to be called the Republican "base."
With Gingrich, of course, the way to understand him is always to assume that he's projecting his own attributes on those he attacks. Hypocrite? Check. Self-righteous? Check. Unemployed? Check, unless you count his pricey escort service for foreclosure johns. Take a bath? A few minutes of Newt is more than enough to make me feel dirty.
What the pepper-spraying cops and the contempt-spewing candidate have in common is how easily they demonize American kids who want only to exercise their right to free assembly in order to swing the spotlight from Ashton and Demi to the unfairness and unaccountability that is ravaging our nation.
It's scary to be consumed by hatred. It's even scarier to watch people dehumanize other people. But what troubles me the most is that apparently 24 percent of the registered voters in one of our two political parties like to feel how it feels when you hold a can of poison in your hand.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
Fernando Espuelas: Newt Gingrich Will Be the GOP Nominee in 2012 - Bet on It
But Ashton and Demi is such a sexy story ;-) Seriously, the right wing today are more extreme than the right wing of the 60s. I was reading something on HuffPost yesterday were someone made reference to Kent State. Hopefully, it doesn't come to that, but, unfortunately, a Kent State-like incident may be what it takes to mobilize Joe Everyman to action. And that is the saddest truth of this whole mess. I just hope no one gets seriously hurt or worse, killed.
Peace.
Groobiecat
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/17/us/colorado-occupy-felonies/index.html
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"Scores were arrested in New York, and several police officers were reported injured, as protesters fanned out across the city moved toward Foley Square in Lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge."
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This (above) is a quote from a CNN article datelined Nov. 17. There had been more pictures with this article earlier in the week, but it looks like a lot of them have been pulled... Like I said, a mixed bag....
It takes one to know one is the only response one can make to Newt Gingrich.
Really? Seriously? Is this the best they can do? May the Goddess help our Republic.
The robber barons of old at least gave us railroads and industry, the current generation dismantles factories and makes the workers train their replacements, sucks all the value out of American enterprise and spits in the face of the middle class.
There should be a maximum annual salary for executives, say 5x what the President makes. Everything over that goes directly into either the US Treasury or to a charity on an approved list. Maximum inherited wealth of 5 million dollars. No one person should be making 60, 70, 100 million a year - it is unnecessary and obscene. It leads to corruption and, in time, revolution.
Veterans march in numbers, shoulder to shoulder with the elderly and people of all ethnic groups. Most of them are young because the young are robust enough to endure the elements. I salute them. Older people are cannot tolerate the harshness of police tactics and the severrity of the weather and we support them in the best way we can. They speak for us and I thank them.
BTW Newt's toxic spewing capped off with his plan to abandon child labor laws. Not long ago he proposed that the children of single mothers be taken and placed in orphanages. I have no idea where he bought his humanoid costume but it is quite realistic but you cannot fashion a heart or soul to go in these things.
Republicans take note. He's the front runner this week. This waste of skin is your front runner.
OWS has sparked the 99% to mobilize.
Is there a third choice?