The Shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords

In the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, make no mistake: we have a mere taste of the deep river of know-nothing sewage that flows just under the American surface that is about to gush into view with the Far Right having having made their takeover of one house of our Congress a reality. This is the "Second Amendment remedy" they've been rooting for. The shooter may be nuts. Who pushed him? Who created the climate where these actions were thinkable?
In the 1970s and 80s I was a Far Right instigator, a leader of the (then new) anti-abortion movement. I describe why I left this movement in my book Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. My late father Francis Schaeffer has been called the father of the Religious Right. I -- following the Evangelical "holy tradition" of North Korea-style nepotism -- was for a time his sidekick. Together we helped set the table for the feast of reactionary hate America is dining on today as the White Far Right/Neoconservative War Machine and the Religious non-reality-based anti-modern Permanent American Lynch Mob hits America in the mouth for daring to elect our first black president and other "liberals."
Who is the Republican Far Right and what do they want? To understand our Republican future -- check out our recent Republican past. These are the "patriots" who gave us:
Two non-stop wars that needlessly killed over 5,000 Americans
Replaced our military with a mercenary killers-for-hire dirty world of "contractors" that now outnumber our men and women in every American military operation
Destroyed our economy by deregulating business and the banks
Launched an anti-gay "gays-choose-to-be-gay" mythology on America leading to the further oppression of gay men and women
Put secretive Far Right religious operatives including the "C-Street" ("Family") in positions of influence through members of congress who are in their pockets
Aided and abetted the death to gays legislation in Uganda
Tried to launch a race and religion war in America by stirring up hate against the Muslim minority
Have tried to turn non-Latino Americans into a Latino-fearing xenophobic anti-immigrant mob
Created the climate wherein abortion providers were first labeled "baby killers" then murdered
Lied about the President, saying he isn't American, is a Muslim, is the Antichrist
Unleashed a plague of guns on America feeding one murder spree after another
Struck down over a century of legal rulings limiting the buying and selling of elections by corporations, giving us a "new" and "improved" system of unlimited secret contributions to eviscerate even the pretense of actual democracy and finally hand America over to the super wealthy -- maybe forever
Run candidates for Congress who are calling for the violent overthrow of the American Government should they fail at the ballot box
Supported anti-science, anti-education biblical mythology
Backed candidates who want to force rape victims to carry their pregnancies to term
Fought people fighting global warming and plunged us into an irrevocable date with global death while reaping short term profits for the coal and oil industry
Put the American future in hock to Far Right Zionists forever by backing the settlers in the State of Isreal and by trying to undermine peace iniatives
Put America in hock to Far Right Evangelicals who are rooting for the "return of Christ" and the Apocalypse...
And with the Tea Party Republicans in Congress now you haven't seen anything yet. To change the way things are we need to understand why at any given moment about a third of our population doesn't care about what is true -- or even fact-based -- but instead live life informed by self-reinforcing beliefs which are proudly non-fact-based and rooted in deep-seated resentment that can't be cured because what is resented never actually happened.
Stop the flood of putrid moral failure that is about to engulf us. Get into the "minds" of the killers, into the heads sort of people who saw Sarah Palin's cross hairs targeting an American congresswoman and decided to pull an actual trigger. "Listen to the killer's "thoughts" of the sort of person who gunned down cops in Pittsburgh because he said that since Obama was elected "the government" would take away his guns...
I hope Obama fails... watch Fox News, put a Psalm 109 bumper sticker on my car calling for the death of the President, carry a loaded weapon to a political rally to show them we will keep our Second Amendment options open, put enemies in the crosshairs of a rifle scope on Facebook, Obama isn't a real American, he's Muslim, He's a communist, like Hitler, like Stalin, Death Panels, watch Fox News, government takeover of health care, watch Fox News, return to the gold standard, watch Fox News, buy gold, the Fed is evil, the United Nations is evil, Jesus will come back soon, the gays chose to be that way, the gays want to take over America, watch Fox News, we're here to take back our country, Obama is a white racist, there will be Second Amendment remedies, government is the problem, there is no global warming, watch Fox News, if Obama is elected he'll take our guns, watch Fox News, Jesus is coming back, watch Fox News, Obama hates America, watch Fox News, Obama doesn't believe in American exceptionalism, buy guns, watch Fox News, buy more guns, Jesus is coming back, one world government is on the way, stand with Israel, Jesus is coming back, global warming is a conspiracy to take our freedoms away, stop those Mexican immigrants now, send them back, watch Fox News, say no to citizenship for immigrant's children, even ones born here, buy guns, buy gold, kill a judge, kill a liberal, kill a congresswoman...
And the Far Right/Fox News reaction?
Ooops! This has nothing to do with us!
Take down the Facebook page that put the victim in the rifle cross hairs!
This is a tragedy!
Call for prayers for the victims!
We were just kidding!... Until the next time that is...
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back