Racist cockroaches lurking in the shadows

The future of the GOP

I wish I could say I was surprised to hear reports that Barack Obama's electoral victory has caused a flare up in the activities of right-wing racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. But I'm not. If one examines the results of the election, it becomes rather obvious that by electing a man of African descent to the White House, Americans have stirred up agitation and fear among the primitive, uneducated rubes that comprise the Republican "base."

The one region of the country in which the GOP showed any strength at all was in the Deep South; the former Confederate States of America; the region that has given us such forward-thinking individuals as Trent Lott, Tom Delay, and Junior Bush himself.

Check out these comments from various (white) denizens of "the land of cotton."

“I think any time you have someone elected president of the United States with a Muslim name, whether they are white or black, there are some very unsettling things,” George W. Newman, a director at a local bank and the former owner of a trucking business, said over lunch at Yellow Creek Fish and Steak.

Don Dollar, the administrative assistant at City Hall, said bitterly that anyone not upset with Mr. Obama’s victory should seek religious forgiveness.

“This is a community that’s supposed to be filled with a bunch of Christian folks,” he said. “If they’re not disappointed, they need to be at the altar.”

Customers of Bill Pennington, a barber whose downtown shop is decorated with hunting and fishing trophies, were “scared because they heard he had a Muslim background,” Mr. Pennington said over the country music on the radio. “Over and over again I heard that.”

Mr. Obama remains an unknown quantity in this corner of the South, and there are deep worries about the changes he will bring.

“I am concerned,” Gail McDaniel, who owns a cosmetics business, said in the parking lot of the Shop and Save. “The abortion thing bothers me. Same-sex marriage.”

“I think there are going to be outbreaks from blacks,” she added. “From where I’m from, this is going to give them the right to be more aggressive.”--as reported in the New York Times, November 10 edition

Real enlightened thinking, eh?

Recently, two incidents have served as examples of what civilized people may expect from the befuddled hillbillies that still imagine that Junior Bush is anything other than a half-assed conman and that Obama poses a threat to their "freedom."

Firstly, federal authorities arrested two self-described "skinheads" who, in a (relatively) stupendous feat of intellectual endeavor, had conspired to go on a killing spree in the days before the election. The two, Daniel Cowart, 20, of Tennessee, and Paul Schlesselman, 18, of Arkansas, planned to murder 88 people by gunfire, and an additional 14 African-Americans by decapitation. (The numbers, 88 and 14, and the act of decapitation apparently have some significance in racist circles.) The spree was to end with the two attempting to assassinate candidate Obama. Read about it here.

In this case, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives caught wind of the plot (the conspirators, apparently, planned the whole thing via Facebook accounts) and arrested the would-be murderers before they could act.

Raymond Foster, proud Son of the South

Another case (read about it here) involved the murder of one racist by another. This incident involved an Oklahoma woman, Cynthia Lynch, who traveled to Louisiana to be inducted into a group linked to the Ku Klux Klan. This group, known as the Dixie Brotherhood, had an elaborate initiation ritual and was led by a man named Raymond Foster. Apparently, there was an argument between Foster and Lynch during the initiation, which took place at a campground, and ended with Foster shooting Lynch through the head. In a truly awesome display of criminal genius, Foster and his cohorts then attempted to hide Lynch's body, burned her clothes, and drove to a nearby drug store, where they asked a clerk what they could use to get the blood stains out of their clothing. Sheriff Jack Strain, one of the arresting officers was quoted as saying "The IQ level of this group is not impressive, to be kind."

Well, as I stated at the beginning of this post, I'm not surprised that an Obama victory has caused the most extreme of the ignorant masses to react in this way. We've all known they are out there, looking for a cause for which they can sacrifice their miserable lives.

The way I see it, this is good news (of a sort). Get the cockroaches out of the shadows and into the light. Those that don't kill each other, we can toss into the clink. God knows, they'll probably be happier living the highly regimented, low-demand prison life than having to worry about feeding and clothing themselves.