These nutballs have themselves convinced that America is on the verge of becoming a martial law imposed police state within the very near future. In fact, they are predicting that the federal government will begin to move against our cherished rights sometime before the end of this calendar year. And what, you may ask is the catalyst for the apocalyptic destruction of American liberties? Is it a Bin Laden led attack on our homeland? Is it the final meltdown of our financial institutions? Is it a pandemic scourge of some horrible virus? Or is it, as we hear so often, the fear of our huge federal deficits? No, no, no, and no. It is instead an attack against America from the liberal left, led by, you guessed it, Barack Obama. And when it begins, Oath Keepers all over the country will refuse to follow any government orders to help enslave us. In fact, they are planning to rise up and begin a violent revolution to "take back" America and restore our country to the values upon which it was founded. Wow!
And if that is not enough to make you want to stand up and whistle Dixie, the Oath Keepers have begun to receive popular media attention from Fox News's Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs. Oh well, at least we now know where all those guns ended up that were purchased right after Obama won the 2008 presidential election. Other than wishing I had purchased stock in Colt Fire Arms last summer, I began to take a closer look at all the ultra-conservative groups that materialized since the election and I think I figured out what is going on. All this paranoia is not about an erosion of our civil liberties, or a government take over of health care, nor is it a populist reaction to a faltering economy, this is about something much more central to the agenda of the far right. All of this citizen uprising nonsense is about race.
If you think not, then take a look at two groups of people, those who started these movements and those who have joined. I defy you to find anyone among the Oath Keepers, Birthers, or Tea Partiers, who are not white. Yes, these movements are indeed about the Constitution, just not the version we have now. What these groups want most is a return to a version of our cherished document before the addition of the 14th Amendment. Again, if you think I am wrong, take a look at the websites for groups like the KKK and the Arian Nations. You will find the same anti-government, pro-liberty rhetoric now employed by contemporary right wing groups. But unlike our current batch of gun toting malcontents, the Klan and neo-Nazi organizations are at least honest and open in their hatred for racial minorities.
All you have to do is listen closely to the rhetoric coming out of the Oath Keepers and Tea Party crowd and you can almost hear them dropping in a racial or ethnic slur. But unlike their historic antecedents, the new patrons of white supremacy would lose all their media support if they were to play their race card. Unfortunately, for them anyway, Obama got elected in 2008, not 1958. Back then there was not much of a price to pay for a bigot to let fly the "N" word. Today, unless one is a rapper or Def Comedian, such overt exposure of one's real agenda would be a public relations disaster. Just ask ex- Republican Senators Trent Lott of Mississippi or Virginia's George Allen Jr. what happened to their political stars after just one racially charged gaff.
Low and behold all this angry and frenetic energy spewing out of the American right now begins to make sense. It isn't that these people are worried about our Constitutional rights, it is that they are pissed off that they now actually apply to people they have long hated. For if saving the Constitution were really their agenda, they would have risen up six years ago when the Bush administration began its warrantless wire taps. Nor is it about the war on terror, as the Obama administration has picked-up right where the Cheneyites left off. We are still aggressively chasing down and killing Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders whenever and wherever we can find them. It certainly can't be deficit or debt phobia driving the far right wing, as nary a peep was heard from them as Bush and his big spending pals pushed the country to the verge of economic collapse. Hell, it isn't even that President Obama is a liberal, which of course he is not. Any self-respecting liberal, like me, would never sign on to a health care bill that did not include a Medicare-for-all centerpiece. All the way back to the primary election season, Obama never endorsed such a system, but instead proposed that we could keep our health care system in the hands of private interests. Hmmm, some liberal.
That only leaves one thing, and that one thing is R-A-C-E. Think about it, first they tried "tagging" Obama by loudly enunciating his middle name, remember? Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Then there was the issue of his suits not being adorned by an American flag pin. Next, they were in a tizzy about the man's citizenship and whether, what, Hawaii counts as a state? When that failed they claimed that he was actually born in Africa or Indonesia, and that he was a Muslim. Then there was the flap over the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. You know, that uppity black preacher from, well. . . Chicago. And when none of that worked, they went after Mrs. Obama for blaspheming America when she said she could finally be proud of her country. How dare she imply that white America ever did anything to make life difficult for racial minorities?
Yup, I think all this is much ado about color. And the Birthers, Tea Partiers, Oath Keepers, and all their fellow travelers are trying their best to create a 21st century version of DW Griffith's, "Birth of a Nation." That said, it may be time the rest of us quit pretending that these people represent a legitimate political and economic agenda. The sooner we can begin to mobilize our forces to really protect our basic liberties and our constitutional traditions from the only real evil force that has ever threatened them, the proponents of extremism and hatred, the better.
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