Genius at Work

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This is what the right-wing is encouraging.

The hollow men who hold truth in contempt wake up every morning and say "Let's see how far we can push the lie today.

To them it is all a clever game.

It's all a giggle to manipulate the vast tide of people who are stupid, ignorant, and slow-witted.

This is their man. Look at this cooked out vegetable. He does not know why he attended a health care rally.

He was told to come, so he came.

He was told that "real men" carry guns in order to show they are patriotic defenders of the Constitution, and so he brought a gun because he needed to prove he was not all those names so many people called him in high school.

"Look at these morons," say the right wing talk show hosts.

"The louder and crazier we are, they more the lunatics love us."

"Let's say jump and see how far they will go."

And so they flex their rhetorical muscle, all the time penning prose designed to divide.

They foment hate, fan the flames of fear, and suggest that all of a sudden the country is going to hell in a hand basket.

They suggest the President is an illegal alien and PhotoShop phony documents to bolster that claim.

They wonder out loud whether our guns will soon be taken away and whether FEMA is building secret prisons for U.S. citizens.

They write that animal right lunatics are about to seize our dogs and ban hunting, and that agents dressed in black will soon show up unannounced at our hospitals in order to turn off the life-support for our parents, our friends, and our children.

And what have you done about this?

Yes, YOU, the person reading this post right now. I am talking about you.

Have you been silent in the face of the lies?

Have you winked at the conspiracy theories, or even parroted them or passed them on?

Have you played that Bill O'Reilly and Glen Beck game where you wonder out loud about something you know is total bullshit?

Have you decided to just "throw it out there" for entertainment and perhaps to generate a few more visits to your blog, your web site, your list-serv, or your bulletin board?

"I wonder if Obama will paint the White House black," you might ask?

"Do you think Obama will appoint an animal rights lunatic to run the Fish and Wildlife Service?"

With great glee, perhaps you have noted that gun sales are soaring.

Or perhaps you have suddenly become concerned about budget deficits.

Of course, you had no concerns about national debt when Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush poured two trillion dollars into a pointless war in Iraq. "That was then, and this is now," you will say.

Right.

We can always afford to invade a country that has done nothing to us.

We just cannot afford health care for our very own citizens.

And so let me say it plain: I know.

I see the silence, I hear the questions, and I understand the true motivation behind it all.

You know I know. I have said it.

"But I am NOT a racist," you object.

You resent the implication.

"These are honest public policy questions," you will say.

But you know it is a lie.

If they were honest questions, about things you really cared about, you would have already done the research and produced a solid thought piece.

But you have not done that, and you are not doing that.

Instead, you are cutting and pasting lies and innuendo gleaned from right wing blogs and fringe-lunatic TV.

Or else you are being absolutely silent while others do that.

I know what you are doing. You are trolling. At the very least, you are rowing out and hoping a fish will jump in the boat.

You will deny it later, but I will say it out loud now, and without the slightest bit of hesitation.

You are trolling for that one lone gunman.

You are looking for a crazy person on the edge, who is off his medication, who is brain damaged, who is not well educated, and who is a programmable meat-puppet.

Your are looking for James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan-Sirhan, Squeaky Fromme, Sandra Good, David Berkowitz, Charles Manson, or Timothy McVeigh.

You do not know their name, and later you will say you had nothing to do with it and "isn't it all horrible," and Oh so sad.

You will claim you had nothing to do with it.

All you did was post nonsense you lifted from a list-serv or someone else's blog.

All you did was ask a question for which you were not even looking for an answer.

All you did was stand silent when racists, conspiracy theorists, and hate mongers spun their web of lies and deceit.

You were silent.

How can you be a racist for doing that?

But I know. And so do you.

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