Saturday, March 6, 2010

Vast Right Wing Lunacy

I missed the Pentagon shooting story since I was flying at the time.  Another disaffected, unstable, middle aged male failure targets a symbol of the federal government.  Lovely.  The good news is that these guys do not seek to organize anything more significant, and, if they did, would most likely leak badly.  This one may be harder for right wing folks to sympathize with, since the IRS is a traditional target and the military is not.  Indeed, there is usually a line drawn between the military (seen as the good guys) and the FBI, ATF, and the rest.

We cannot directly blame Glen Beck and his ilk, but these are creating an environment where the lunatics think that they have legitimate grievances.  Is there any accountability?  Um, no.

And logical consistency?  Not so much:
Yet even as he railed against the federal government, Mr. Bedell also sought to do business with the military. In a 2004 research proposal that he wrote for submission to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, he proposed a $170,000 nanotechnology project that could be useful in warfare. He described himself in the proposal as having “an intense desire to contribute to the national security of the United States.”

1 comment:

Chris C. said...

Except that he was a registered Democrat, had a history of what was likely bipolarism, and posted rants against Bush and in support of 9/11 trutherism. There appear to be no ties to right-wing militant groups. This guy was a lone nut and shouldn't be taken any more seriously than the disturbed loser that he was.

Trying to connect this incident to Glenn Beck et. al. is a bit of a stretch, esp. considering the long history of anti-govt. populism (on both sides) in the US.