Noted Without Comment:


On the One Hand:

Newsmax columnist John L. Perry encourages his right-wing readers not to "dismiss" the notion of an American military coup as "unrealistic."

America isn't the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn't mean it wont [sic]. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it....

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

And On The Other:

About a dozen retired generals and admirals, trying to add momentum to President Barack Obama’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, are accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz of scaremongering about the dangers of closing it.

“It’s up to all of us to say these arguments advanced by Cheney and his acolytes are nonsense and that really what they’re doing is undermining our national security by delaying the date at which Guantanamo is closed,” retired Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a former chief judge of the Army’s Court of Criminal Appeals, told POLITICO Tuesday.

“Some of the fear issues that are being raised in this are really unfortunate. It gets people excited about things they shouldn’t be excited about and impedes doing what is critical to this country. Get that damn symbol off the table,” said retired Gen. David Maddox, a former Army commander-in-chief for Europe. “We take a setback every time somebody, whether it’s the vice president or his daughter comes out and says the things that they say….We have to get out there again and just keep pounding.”

OK, one comment. It is, in fact, necessary to comment, perhaps it is even necessary to be a little shrill and obvious.

It is absolutely necessary, for the health of the country, to get these two quotes on the same page again and again. As long as the right wing does what it does without some pushback, some rolled up newspapers, some "go to your fucking corner, sir!" we will continue to see the mainstreaming of absolutely John Bircherite lunacy from the fringe to the center. I'm not worried that the Generals will actually execute a coup against Obama, but I am worried that the average authoritarian follower, submissive masochist looking for his once a year sadist holiday fling, will take the unrebutted first proposition as license for the longed for saturnalia of the losers.

Today Obsidian Wings had a great post up about Peter Daou's original description of just how the main stream media became and becomes tolerant of outright lunacy from the right wing fringe. We must push back, and push back hard, against totally unacceptable threats of violence from the right wing. But we have to do that not by dismissing or ignoring this stuff, and not by treating it as merely beyond the pale, but by holding it up to scorn, ridicule, and shame.