Tea Party Movement Returns, This Time with Much More Dangerous and Explicit Rhetoric by Frank Schaef

[Shallah Kali]

It's not too hard to guess where talk of 'Judgement Day' can lead to in the context of a right-wing, gun-loving movement.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/143554/tea_party_movement_returns%2C_this_time_with_much_more_dangerous_and_explicit_rhetoric
or http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/2009/10/tea-party-judgment-day.html

According to the "Tea Party" website, Tea Party Express II: Countdown To Judgment Day" is underway. Here's how their website describes it:

All throughout the recent Tea Party Express national bus tour we kept receiving calls from people around the nation who lived far away from the route our buses took across America. We vowed at the time to keep the Tea Party Express effort alive -- and that’s exactly what we are doing.Join us from October 25th to November 11th, 2009 as we tell Congress and the White House: “Enough!” Let’s stand up and stop the bailouts, cap and trade, out-of-control spending, government-run health care, and higher taxes! We’re back and determined to take our country back!

What will happen on their predicted "Judgment Day"?

If you buy the biblical spin of the Religious Right folks -- that make up the bulk of the Tea Party movement -- the implication is clear: Jesus will soon return, send all Democrats, gays, blacks, progressives, liberals, college-educated unbelievers, etc., to Hell, while saving what Sarah Palin calls "us" "Real Americans" -- in other words unreconstructed frightened and resentful white lower middle class Americans.

(As a former right wing evangelical anti-abortion leader who built a good career from these folks -- until I quit in disgust with myself, the anti-American nature of the movement and the takeover the Republican Party by extremists -- I know of what I speak.)

If you put the secular/right's "tree-of-Liberty-must-be-watered-by-the-blood-of-tyrants-Timothy McVeigh spin on the Judgment Day scenario; then there will soon be a hoped for bloody day of reckoning for the occupant of the White House.

If you put the Republican Party/Rupert Murdoch/Fox News spin on Judgment Day; then it's the old game trotted out once again: stir up the malcontent and get them to defeat their own self interest in the name of flag, country, God, babies, free enterprise -- and support the corporate interests that profit from village idiots, say by defeating health care reform.

When the Tea Party folks say they want to "take back our country" who do they want to take it back from? It turns out it's going to be taken back from the democratic process itself. The effort here is to reverse the last election result.

btw Frank Schaeffer is doing some speaking events at bookstores. see his blog for the dates & locations: http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/

[checks-n-balances]

1. I've been worried about this kind of stuff for years

But in all my years, at least in my adult life, I've never seen anything like this. The Religious Right is pretty much completely unhinged and it's just plain scary - much more than any ghost/goblin/creature you might be seeing on Halloween.

[Bitwit1234]

2. Religious nuts are dangerous

We see what happened in Salem with the witch hunts. Look at the Middle East all products of religious fevor...Farwell, Dodson, Robertson and the like have fanned these flames for years. The people whining and spewing crap are the results. And the posters are correct. We don't know what they will do. Look at the guy who killed Tiller. He had been egged on from people who yelled kill kill kill. With Beck and the like constantly yelling the same thing hard to tell what will happen.

I don't this these people should be ignored. I think they should be investigated. If they arrest a kid with a T-Shirt that said he didn't like bush, I know darn well they can get these people once and for all.

[gordianot]

3. The very first time the tea-baggers uses firearms or turns out in mass with firearms they lose.

They are already a minority and are greatly outnumbered. As the sign says "next time we will bring our guns" will end once and for all the tea-baggers and quite possibly Fox News. It is coming one of them will cross the line and get caught up in their own rhetoric and hate.