There Will Be Blood

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 9 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

At ZDNet Healthcare I get this kind of crap all the time:

This was in response to a piece of journalism where I looked at the Obama health plan, using a study OMB head Peter Orszag later cited repeatedly on the TV.

Rejectionist, even hateful rhetoric has become the common currency of the right even as their power wanes. The reason I began this piece as I did was to show that it's not a top-down phenomenon. It is coming from the bottom up.

My critics will note how leftist rejectionism was a hallmark of post-1968 rhetoric from the Left. "We're all Nixon's niggers now," said George Carlin. "Nixon's had an asshole transplant. Have you seen the stop-press? The asshole's rejected him," from Monty Python.

And, of course, the Weathermen, along with a host of red terrorists running to the Symbionese Liberation Army. Leftist violence, at least in this country, gradually devolved into self-parody, with those who might have supported it dropping out into the world of drugs, sex, and rock that culminated in disco.

Right wing violence is not like that. Even in the 1990s, when the Clinton AntiThesis was merely leaning against the Nixon Thesis, we had Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Oklahoma City bombing.

What can we expect now, with a President truly dedicated to building a new Thesis, something akin to the Roosevelt Thesis of Unity, what I have named the Obama Thesis of Consensus?

A lot worse.

No one on the right seems willing to self-censor in the name of patriotism. This year's Conservative Political Action Conference was, in many ways, a right-wing Woodstock, with Rush Limbaugh playing Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The difference is that supposedly establishment analysts, like MSNBC's Ron Christie, found it all "groovy."

There will be blood. I can't tell you when, and I can't tell you what form it will take, but black terror is coming to America. My hope is that the violence will discredit the speech behind it, that when people start killing in Limbaugh's name his own constituency will reject him. Much will depend on the willingness of the Obama Administration, post-violence, to make the connection between violent rhetoric and violent acts and put the hammer down on those who preach sedition against the American system.

What can be done about it? First, sound the alarm. This post is an example of doing just that. We need to have more of this, throughout the blogosphere, posts warning that violent words lead to violent actions, condemning the violent words, making the connection. The term for this is "establishing a predicate," creating a record that can be pointed to later. We need to give our conservative friends fair warning, that while their speech is free, freedom comes with responsibility for what follows. It's called incitement.

I have no problems with things like this, demonstrations against the President's policies. This is perfectly fine, perfectly legitimate, and if liberals wish to laugh at it that's their right, too. 

Remember that the height of the anti-Vietnam protests came after Nixon's election. The biggest demonstrations were in 1970, after it was clear that most Americans saw it as Robert McNamara saw it, as a "Cold War activity." Tragic, but not a matter of choice.

Right-wing demonstrations, by contrast, have been small so far. I expect them to grow. But what I fear is that conservatives will turn to violence long before they turn to mass action.

We have ample precedent for this in Latin America. In Columbia, in Central America, and in Mexico, it was black terror that began the cycle of kidnapping and murder. It is black terror that remains on top there still, if you're looking for violence.

For this reason it may turn out that the Patriot Act was the best thing the Bush Administration did for President Obama, and for American liberty.

That act gives this Administration the tools it needs to get inside conspiracies where the actors look just like other Americans. Attorney General Holder can actually moderate his stance in regard to the act's meaning while at the same time using it in the way it must be used, to ferret out black terror root and branch, before it results in the kind of violence that truly threatens our democracy.

Look closely at this face. It's that of the worst mass murderer in American history, Timothy McVeigh.

There will be others. There will be blood. And it will take every tool in the arsenal to put it down.