re: #410 Charles Johnson

Agree - the Tea Party did a lot to bring this kind of crazy right wing shit back into the mainstream. But really, the Tea Party is just a reflection of Fox News, and I think it’s probably Fox, Rush Limbaugh, and right wing radio that’s done more to empower the dumb white bigot segment of the GOP.

I honestly have never seen this level of craziness from the right, even including the Clinton years. And I’m convinced that for many of the crazies the real root cause of their derangement is simple racism. The dumb person’s excuse for failure.

I’m undecided whether it’s actually worse now, or if the internet has simply given it more exposure. Some pre-Internet, Clinton-era stuff I remember includes:

Ruby Ridge conspiracy theories
Waco conspiracy theories
(these two things, along with the concurrent Brady assault weapons ban, drove the NRA berserk. I don’t remember the NRA being terribly crazy before that)
The rise of the militia movement
(Tim McVeigh and pals fits into all of this)
The ever-expanding Clinton Body Count

Noted lunatic Neal Horsley ran a website back in the days before the Internet was a household thing, on which he endlessly praised Paul Hill, and published home addresses of “abortionists” with crosshairs superimposed over their photographs. He also published a bizarre, but apparently sincere, rant in which he called for the secession of Georgia by means of nuclear weapons, which would somehow go like this:

1) God-fearing anti-abortion Georgians would overrun one or more facilities in Georgia where nuclear weapons are kept.
2) Secceed!
3) Threaten to nuke various targets in the non-Georgian parts of the US unless abortion is outlawed immediately.
4) ???
5) Profit! (alternatively: Jesus!)

Somewhat elderly SPLC article on Horsley