On 12/6/2015 5:09 PM, Joe Cooper wrote:
>>
>>> As most AT readers know
Someone else might think that your false narratives are starting to get
a little thread-bare
1. Create a failed state: Convince people the government doesn’t work,
then defund vital programs and functions so it can’t work. Refuse to
fund anything except for police, the military, “the war on terror,” and
tax cuts for the rich. Get people elected who block critical bills from
getting passed so voters get angry and frustrated and feel government
won’t respond to them. Threaten to shut down the U.S. government so you
can slash spending on programs most of us support. Egg on all those tin
foil hat-wearing survivalists and self-proclaimed “sovereign citizens”
by claiming the Feds are tyrants who have no authority over them. Let
white folks like Cliven Bundy get away with flouting the law and putting
rangers’ and federal agents’ lives in danger. Proclaim laws, court
decisions, and even presidents illegitimate when you don’t agree with
them. Do everything possible to keep us from voting them out…Or from
voting at all.
2. Incite rage and hate: Openly spewing hate towards immigrants, LGBT
individuals, women, people of color, non-Christians, and others used to
be the domain of right-wing nut jobs (RWNJs). Now, we’ve got leading GOP
presidential hopefuls for 2016 airing these views on national TV, and
the party’s leaders do nothing to stop it. Since the 1970s, the GOP has
employed a “Southern Strategy” to exploit racism and to encourage
downwardly mobile white folks to place the blame on people of color for
their economic woes, instead of where it belongs: On our nation’s
political and corporate elites. Most folks in the Republican party used
to at least keep their bigotry under the radar by cloaking it in thinly
veiled terms referred to as “dog whistles.” Now, right-wingers boldly
bring their hate into the open as they vilify entire groups of people as
lazy, sinful, lawless, violent, thuggish, rapey, terroristic, grasping,
and/or un-American.
3. Arm would-be terrorists: Once you get people scared and riled up, all
you need to do is arm your potential terrorist threats to the gills,
without looking like you’re trying to create an army of brown shirts.
Glorify gun culture. Proclaim the sanctity of our God-given Second
Amendment rights. Refuse to enact tougher gun safety laws, or even close
loopholes for the few we’ve got, so unstable people like Aurora, Colo.
shooter James Holmes can buy guns and other weapons online, at gun
shows, or through private sales. Allow open carry “activists” to roam
the streets with rifles slung over their shoulders. Say nothing when one
of those “open carry” gun lovers turns out to be a mass shooter.
4. Lie and deny: When the GOP’s stochastic terrorists are deployed in
the form of yet another angry white man with a gun or a bomb, and the
next tragic round of mass murders takes place, the hateful merchants of
death take refuge in their fortress of plausible deniability. Wring your
hands, pray to the Lord, and lament the tragedy as though these acts of
terrorism on your behalf are acts of God or some kind of natural
disaster. Cry crocodile tears as you express sorrow and offer
condolences. Claim the perpetrator is mentally ill, but propose no
programs to help people who suffer from mental illness. Insist that our
perverse and violent form of gun culture has nothing to do with gun
violence. Blame it all on non-Christian media like TV, fiction, movies,
music and video games — which most of us know are only entertainment —
while having “experts,” lawmakers and other public figures push false
and dangerous narratives on TV news shows, which most of us do see as
authoritative and believable.
5. Cover up: Republicans know we can’t fight the right-wing terrorism
they foment if they de-fund the agencies that can prove it exists. Daryl
Johnson, an expert on counter terrorism, used to work for the Dept. of
Homeland Security, but not any more. Wired reports he published a paper
on domestic terrorism and the rise of right-wing extremism in 2009, and
that was the end of his career with DHS. Republicans in Congress raised
a ruckus and claimed DHS was trying to criminalize “free speech” on the
far right. As of 2012, the department Johnson once ran consisted of only
one person to keep up with all non-Islamic terroristic threats. The GOP
members of Congress have also banned funding for the Centers for Disease
Control’s research on gun violence, as reported by The Hill and only a
handful of other news outlets. A furious Rep. Nita Lowey’s (D-N.Y.) —
whose GOP colleagues in the House Appropriations Committee refused to
add her amendment to restore funding to a health, education and labor
bill — fumed:
“When it comes to gun violence, my friends, this committee won’t
give one dime for the CDC to conduct research on something that is
killing Americans by the thousands,”
How can we even begin to address the threats of right-wing terrorism and
gun safety to our nation’s safety and public threat when the agencies
charged with those tasks are denied any funding or support for doing
their jobs?
http://reverbpress.com/features/stochastic-terrorism-gop-terroristic-threat/