For the first time ever in my life, I had someone threaten to kill me tonight. He was nearly apoplectic with rage, screaming curses, his finger right in my face, his eyes slits of venom. Ex-Navy lifer, I gathered. Probably in his late 50’s. Beer belly. A person so devoid of humanity I was stunned.What did she do to provoke a death threat?
All I did was exercise my duty as a very concerned citizen in what I thought was America. I stood silently out on the sidewalk in my California town with a sign in each hand. One sign showed a tally of the number of Iraqi civilian dead from the Iraq Body Count website … the other the number of coalition soldiers dead to date. This is my regular Thursday night gig, something I’ve done every week for 14 months now.You can imagine the heated exchange between the peace activist and the ex-Navy man. (or if you can't, follow the link.) It concludes with this lovely threat by the sailor:
Bush will win in a LANDSLIDE. And if he doesn’t, WE know where to find you. WE can take care of you. WE can make sure you don’t EVER f**k with this country again.”I used to think that the men who serve in the military were better than this. But a conversation I had today with an acquaintance has me convinced that there are a significant number of soldiers or ex-soldiers out there that will want to take matters in their own hands if 'a lying liberal Jane Fonda like John Kerry' becomes President.
Where I live, I don't think it wise to reveal my political opinions in public; I just shut my mouth and listen. I hate to argue politics anyway. It's especially unpleasant to speak to people who openly fantasize about how they'd like 'traitorous liberals' to be 'taken out.' It is chilling how these people fantasize about the competence of trained killers. A choice quote from today's conversation:
"This is the age of mercenaries."
[as if that's a good thing!]
Prediction: liberals will be accused of "stabbing the troops in the back" [Dolchstoss]and losing the war in Iraq. "It wasn't incompetence. It wasn't a flawed war based on a flimsy premise. It was the damned liberals." Can we go down the road of Hitler's Germany? Does anybody remember the Nazi's campaign of intimidation and assassination that started in the 1920s?
