Hume's Paradox

I'll see Monsieur IOZ' refutation of Clinton and raise him a McVeigh. On the one hand, the "Tea Partiers", whatever they may be or not be, are so far largely a media-driven phenomenon, albeit one that has found some traction for its aspirations of incoherent political mischief.

On the other hand, Tim McVeigh was a bad guy and an unrepentant asshole, but he could think and speak in complete sentences, and had an actual point (however indefensible) that he was able to argue. You look at the braying gaggles of unemployed morons, presumably collecting unemployment insurance at some point in their imposed vacation, many of them collecting Social Security and/or Medicare, taking a public road to a public park, in order to dress up like Paul Revere and rant about obamacommienaziblarghsoshalizm, and it is difficult to imagine Tim McVeigh hanging around these suckas.

So when Clinton talks about the "serious and delirious" in trying to conflate the suburban-asshole park-rats with McVeigh and his crew, he's missing the point. McVeigh was dead serious. The teabaggers have yet to coherently explain much of anything about what they stand for, what they would do if they had the opportunity, etc. It's just a bunch of sorry-ass "...and then Sarah told Obammy he could keep the change!" heh-indeedy lines repeated ad nauseam, and nothing more. McVeigh, on the other hand, articulated his sick rationales with clarity and purpose, lucid in his own way right up to the very end.

And, coming back to IOZ' theme, McVeigh was protesting the government's actions at Ruby Ridge and Waco -- which were, after all, overreach in efforts to preserve the monopoly of force. The siege at Waco was presented as the usual Protecting The Children guff, but let's face it -- if the government wanted to protect children from being molested by religious fanatics, they'd shut down every diocese from Seattle to Miami. No, David Koresh was also running guns, and possibly planning an armed insurrection, and it was (rightly) presumed that if Koresh was allowed to get away with it, pretty soon you'd have plenty of Koresh imitators out there in the boonies (and in fact, they're out there anyway).

Odds are there's bound to be at least one lone nut at one of these stupid rallies, which are needlessly kept afloat by a flailing corporate media, out of ideas and useful news but always able to sniff out a bullshit conflict to be ginned up. It's just the law of averages.

But that lone nut will probably not be one of the on-camera bozos, dressing up and shouting slogans while hoisting a sign he spent all weekend making because he has neither a life nor a job. The angry loner will be a guy like McVeigh, off-camera, quiet, possessing some relevant skill set, nursing his problems with women and gambling along with his perpetual grievances against Big Gubmint, eventually conflating them into a toxic spew, taking it out on whatever seems handy. In the end terrorists never quite know how to get what they want, they only know what they don't want, and have abandoned the conventional avenues toward achieving that anti-objective.

As for the teabaggers, if you really want to disband them, give the younger ones jobs, and call out the old farts collecting SS/Medicare checks, tell them to pay their own freight or kindly fuck off already. Or you could just stop giving them free publicity.