Saturday, January 25, 2014

Feel the Love Redux

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion



It’s gratifying to see how, even in the cold, dark depths of winter, the Republican Party continues to bring that warm glow of love and unity into our national discourse. It’s not for nothing that I call them the Party of Love.
Take, for example, washed-up rocker and prospective GOP presidential candidate Ted Nugent, a guy who really knows how to bring the love, and we’re not just talking about bringing it to the underage girls he brags about having sex with (in one case, he talked his 17-year-old girlfriend’s parents into granting him legal guardianship because she was too young to marry. He was 30 at the time).
Recently, in an interview with Guns.com, The Nuge was fairly exploding with love, referring to President Barack Hussein Obama as a “Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel,” and avowing that “America will be America again when Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, Dick Durbin, Michael Bloomberg and all of the liberal Democrats are in jail facing the just due punishment that their treasonous acts are clearly apparent.”
In case you didn’t get that, the “just due punishment” for treason is death, and Nugent was therefore calling for the execution of anyone who disagrees with him, after holding up a “Ted Nugent For President” bumper sticker and declaring that his election would be “the perfect ballot of freedom.”
Because nothing says “freedom” like demanding the killing of political opponents, and nothing says “love” like referring to a president of a different race than you as a “subhuman mongrel.”
Before you write Mr. “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” off as just some fringe nutter, remember that this is a guy whose endorsement Mitt Romney (remember him?) actively sought. He’s a frequent guest on Sean Hannity, who refers to him as “a friend.” He attended last year’s State of the Union address as the guest of Rep. Steve Stockman. A violent racist may not be exactly the Republican mainstream, but the Republican mainstream caters to him. It must be all the love.
Actually, when you really look at it, Nugent does have some advantages in the presidential race. For one thing, he’s been visited by Secret Service agents enough times after his inflammatory screeds that he probably already knows most of the agents by name.
More important, he’s already mastered that most vital of wingnut skills: When you’ve talked yourself into a corner, distract the listener by bringing up some long-discredited right-wing lie about Benghazi.
Noting that his comments might be considered “inflammatory,” Nugent said, “I would call it inflammatory speech when it’s your job to protect Americans and you look into the television camera and say what difference does it make that I failed in my job to provide security and we have four dead Americans.” The guy’s got the Benghazi Dodge down, I tell you.
Also on this week’s Republican Love Parade, we have Florida House candidate Joshua Black, who decided to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. day by calling for the president to be hanged.
“I’m past impeachment,” Black said on his Twitter account. “It’s time to arrest and hang him high.”
Black, a former “street preacher,” also took to his Facebook page with a rather novel take on the Gospels to argue that Jesus would back him up on this: “This would be exactly what the president has done to others, and, as Jesus said, ‘The measure ye mete, it shall be meted to you again.”
When a fellow Republican responded, “You aren’t seriously calling for the killing of Obama, are you?” Black stood his ground like a good Floridian: “Execution is the appropriate punishment for traitors. #BenedictArnold #ReadAmericanHistory #criminalpoliticians.”
I have to confess, that last one made me a little nostalgic. During George Dubbya’s Wacky Iraqi Adventure, another member of the Party of Love took me to task in an email for my audacity in questioning the Dear Leader’s strategic wisdom: “They hanged Benedict Arnold, you know.”
This managed to be both vaguely threatening and historically inaccurate at the same time, since Arnold wasn’t hanged. He died a rich man in London.
But then again, this is the party who had one of its leaders insist that Paul Revere warned the British, and whose spokespeople complain that too many Americans don’t know that “some guy in Boston got his head blown off because he tried to secretly raise the tax on tea.” Who cares about factual accuracy when you have the kind of love in your heart that tells you Jesus wants you to execute the president and everyone who supports him?


The GOP: Can’t you just feel the love? I can. I have. And that’s why I stay as far away as I possibly can.

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