Tea Party Movement Mirrors a Deeply Divided America-Der Spiegel

[go west young man]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,688782,00.html

And yet, the more assured of success Obama becomes, the angrier are the protests. Obama embodies everything the people in the Tulsa convention center hate: power, superiority, intelligence and worldliness. He doesn't speak the language of ordinary people, and whenever he appears on television, he makes most people feel inferior -- as if they didn't have enough problems already.

"Depending on where you stand," writes Frank Rich in the New York Times, Obama "is the reincarnation of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Reagan, Hitler, Stalin, Adlai Stevenson or Nelson Mandela."

Obama came into office with the goal of uniting the country, but now the divide is even wider than it was during the Bush years. "We are caught in a pendulum swing of hyper-partisanship," writes John Avlon in his book "Wingnuts," his word for the lunatic right-wing fringe. Now that America has fought a war against extremism abroad, the war against extremism at home is just beginning.

'Obama Is Raping America'

Obama is likened to Hitler and called a communist in the same breath. Republican Congressman Paul Broun said: "We can't be lulled into complacency. You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany."

"Obama is raping America. Obama is raping our values. Obama is raping our democracy," says radio host Michael Savage, whose talk show has an audience of about 9 million listeners.

In some Evangelical churches, congregations are even praying for Obama's death. In Tempe, Arizona, Baptist pastor Steven Anderson delivered a sermon called: "Why I Hate Barack Obama." He accused him of violating the Constitution and throwing away a part of the country's 240-year history. "Break his teeth, O God, in his mouth," he prayed, in an altered version of Psalm 58. Obama, Anderson said, calls abortion a woman's right to choose. "He thinks it's so wonderful," he continued. "He ought to be aborted."

When Congress was set to vote on Obama's healthcare reform, thousands of activists from the Tea Party movement came to Washington to demonstrate against the reform, holding up signs that read "Kill the Bill." They spat on members of Congress who intended to vote for the bill, and they berated them using the words "faggot" and "nigger." Several politicians received death threats. Last Wednesday, the FBI arrested a man who allegedly made threatening phone calls to Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives and a key proponent of the reforms.


At least the rest of the world is aware of the BS going on here in the states with the nutjob wingnuts. Unfortunately America is stuck in the stone age when it comes to change.