Via John Cole at Balloon Juice, the Anti-Defamation League looked more at the suspect killer of Pittsburgh police officers and found, no surprise, that he was a Glenn Beck fan.
An ADL investigation has revealed that Poplawski, the man charged with killing three Pittsburgh police officers on April 4, 2009, was an increasingly troubled young man who exhibited growing rage against racial minorities, Jews, the government, and police.
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Poplawski bought into the SHTF/TEOTWAKI (see below for explanation of acronyms. Carnacki) conspiracy theories hook, line and sinker, even posting a link to Stormfront of a YouTube video featuring talk show host Glenn Beck talking about FEMA camps with Congressman Ron Paul. When the city of Pittsburgh got a Homeland Security grant to add surveillance cameras to protect downtown bridges, Poplawski told Stormfronters that it was "ramping up the police state." He said, too, that he gave warnings to grocery store customers he encountered (but only if they were white) to stock up on canned goods and other long-lasting foods.
We're not jumping to conclusions as one of our commenters claimed. The conclusions are laid out in a nice neat row. The rightwingers are feeding fear to the paranoid.
Unfortunately too many on our side would rather turn a blind eye to it while on the Republican side even Republicans like West Virginia Republican Party executive director Gary Abernathy, who should know better, are spreading falsehoods which only encourages people to hold a similar world view as Poplawski's.
In Abernathy's post today entitled, "Goodbye America," Abernathy writes (all bold my emphasis):
Pay attention, Americans. You are witnessing the most historic change in our fiber since our founding.
The most effective and lasting coups are those that happen without a shot being fired, and instead occur by a people willingly handing over control. That is what we are witnessing today in the United States of America, as a lonely nation turns its eyes to Washington and says, please, solve our problems and protect us from ourselves.
But pay attention to his words. Words have meaning. It wasn't an election. It was a coup.
This coming from the same Gary Abernathy who had no complaints when President George W. Bush authorized warrantless wiretaps, the seizure of American citizens without trial or arrest, and grew the federal government to unprecedented size, all in the name of surrendering our liberties for a false idea of security.
Abernathy continues:
The liberal philosophy that we are a nation of victims in need of government's heavy hand became foundational enough through the years that all that was needed to make the transition complete was a financial crisis on Wall Street and a quick series of government bailouts that began, yes, with a Republican president, a fact that kept conservatives at bay long enough for a True Believer to take the White House and show everyone what government intervention is really all about. George W. Bush may have succumbed in part to Big Brother's siren song, but Barack Obama has trained his whole life to lead the choir in its most perfect melody. There has seldom been such an ideal coming together of a man and his times.
Never heard complaints from Abernathy about Bush until Bush's sinking popularity proved a drag on the entire party. Now it's under the bus with Bush and no acknowledgement that people like Abernathy supported him for 8 years.
Simply put, Barack Obama has always believed that the government should control every aspect of the lives of its countrymen, and he has stepped into the presidency at the exact moment that a majority of Americans, for the first time, essentially agrees with him and is ready to declare that the capitalistic model no longer works. Aided in large part by capitalists whose abuse of the system led to public outrage, Obama's cure is not to reset the structure so it can be self-corrected, but instead to end it completely. With a willing nation at his side, not to mention, just importantly, a compliant and supportive Big Media, Obama is leading the United States into a new era of socialism and totalitarianism, while Americans not only stand by and watch as it happen, but say thank you as well.
Right...because trying to save the banks and Wall Street for capitalism is EXACTLY what a socialist would do. I used to think Abernathy just served the Kool-Aid occasionally because it is required of Republicans. Now it looks like he's drinking it.
But Obama, according to Abernathy, wants to control every aspect of our lives. Forget for a moment that an extraordinary claim like that requires extraordinary evidence, he has nothing to back up such a statement.
But already he's described a "coup" and a president who wants to "control every aspect of our lives." Also Obama's a socialist for wanting to save banks and Wall Street.
There's a lot more rambling from Abernathy before he gets to this:
The only god left to worship is Mother Earth
snip of another long rant against "political correctness"
The final great blow to freedom has been, of course, the governmental manipulation to "go green." Environmentalism has moved swiftly from simple good stewardship - pick up your litter - to global religion, and anyone who is not willingly baptized in the name of the New World Order into the Church of Global Warming is an enemy of our new god, Mother Earth, whom we all must obediently worship. The penalty for falling from grace is not in this case eternal damnation in a fiery hell, but instead everlasting fines, and requirements to purchase "energy credits" to pay for our sins.
When the only god left to worship is Mother Earth, which can do nothing for us beyond our mortal lifetimes, the only moral standard left to us is our own ego, and the self-importance which each individual has now attained is realized through the appropriately named "My Space" ("me, my and mine" becoming the new Holy Trinity) and similar "social networking" sites where each of us can strive toward the fullness of our own significance via, what else, the World Wide Web, where every eye can watch us and every trivial, useless action or thought can be immediately shared with the Whole Wide World, because, well, because our own vanity justifies it.
Get it? Your country has gone goodbye, the people in charge staged a peaceful "coup" instead of an election, and God is under attack by the the pagans who worship Mother Earth. Never mind that the Bible itself provides justification for many environmentalists because it calls upon us to be stewards of the earth instead of destroying it. Nevermind the Bible calls upon us to care for the poor and the widows and those imprisoned. Nevermind that Obama is working to save the capitalist system from collapsing after Abernathy's party managed to wreck it.
Abernathy's party lost the election, so to Abernathy it is the end of America.
The Republicans can't win at the ballot box, their ideology is rebuked by the majority of the country, and so people like Abernathy are going off the deep end. As someone who actually has liked Abernathy, I wish I was exaggerating. Unfortunately I'm not.
Abernathy writes:
The great experiment is gasping its final breath
And so, goodbye, America. The great experiment in freedom, democracy and capitalism is gasping its last painful breath. To be sure, there are pockets of protest - the "tea parties" and such currently being held offer visible evidence that there are protestants afoot - but as a whole, Americans have not just surrendered, they have welcomed the complete capitulation to Big Government's open arms.
This coming from the same Gary Abernathy who justified an illegal and unnecessary war in Iraq at a cost of $2 trillion and countless lives, who justified Bush's destruction of our national reputation by authorizing torture just like totalitarian regimes and who supported the surrender of our Constitution and liberties to Big Government?
We are entering a dark, dark age, the irony being that in this new dark age, those of us who continue to resist will be increasingly labeled as the unenlightened ones -- backward thinking, racist, selfish, unhealthy, insensitive bigots who somehow don't care about our fellow man (and, excuse me, PC police, our fellow woman).
The world is officially upside down, and many of us will no doubt fall off, leaving Mother Earth to those who are willing to make any sacrifice to spread the Gospel of Obama, and be well thought of by like-minded brethren who have been properly indoctrinated.
So after I called for responsible GOP party leaders to tamp down the rhetoric that fueled the cold-blooded murder of 3 police officers, Abernathy responds with falsehoods and fearmongering. A "new world order," a "dark age," a "coup," religion under attack by pagan enivronmentalists.
It is hard to fathom that such incendiary and irresponsible words came from a state leader such as Abernathy. It is not hard to see, however, how such falsehoods could cause a troubled man to take up arms.
Shame on you, Gary Abernathy. I thought better of you. I was wrong.
Update: See also Standing up for what is right and here's a video to help explain further. I also have put some key points in bold for Gary Abernathy's readers. |
