Warren "Bones" Bonesteel, "Open Letter: Rise of Extremism"

 "Open Letter: Rise of Extremism"
by Warren "Bones" Bonesteel

“It ain’t “they,” peeps—it’s “us.”

"The true wonder is… the rhetorical and political attacks on right-wing ‘extremists’ by left-wing ‘extremist’ politicians, activists, media outlets and bloggers are creating the environments for the very things they fear. The same is true with the right’s rhetorical and political attacks on the left.

If both sides don’t stop and take a deep breath and think about the consequences of their own words and deeds, open violence and civil war are inevitable. The Tiller murder and the demonization of more than a hundred million Americans because of it? The eco-terrorist’s destruction of the environment and private property in the name of protecting the environment? (FBI ten most wanted list.) The RNC Welcoming Committee? The stalking and ‘mobbing’ of ideological opponents by right-wing and left-wing ‘extremists’? The militarization of civilian police departments, with thousands of SWAT teams, ‘accidentally’ killing more than three hundred innocent Americans in their own homes, each and every year? All of that and more is only the beginning of the violence that we will see and experience for ourselves.

An extreme pov? No. It is historically inevitable. America is not immune from history. The world is not a nice, quiet, middle-class suburb or a gated community. Violence is always the result when opposing ideologies indulge in such rhetorical and political attacks upon one another as are seen in today’s American political and social landscape. Historically, when the government begins to exert control over the private lives of its citizens? When the civilian police forces become militarized? Historically, when opposition parties begin to actively and openly dehumanize and demonize their ideological opponents, as is now occurring in America? Such things are always a prelude to violence and to civil war.

Both of the major political ideologies in America will bear full and complete responsibility for the death and destruction that is now almost inevitable. The poor and inept leadership by members of the political, social and intellectual leadership in America has led us all to this point in history.

You complain about the economy and about big government spending… but you vigorously defend your own debt and credit-driven lifestyles. You quite correctly accuse your ideological opponents of corruption, but violently defend your own. You complain when another ideology legislates a law that restricts your own freedom, but you vigorously pursue the legislation of laws which restrict the freedoms of others. Thus, you now live in a society where anything not approved by the government is a crime - and there is very little that the government approves. Then, you wonder why America has the highest incarceration rate of any nation on earth. Are Americans so evil that we must lock them all up? Or have we imprisoned nearly two million people just because you don’t approve of them? The majority of American ‘criminals’ who are imprisoned have performed no violent crime nor have they committed fraud or interfered in the freedoms of others.

You think you are free… you’ve been told that you are free… but you cannot make a move without some form of government approval; paying a tax or a fee or getting a license or a permit. Every move you make is regulated by the government. The very air you breath is now being taxed.

But, in the midst of your Keynesian-consumerist driven and government-controlled lifestyles, you think that you are free…and you think that you are just…and you think that you are patriotic, freedom-loving fools…and you believe that anyone who disagrees with you is an unpatriotic ‘extremist.’

As Americans have continued to elect and re-elect such inept and corrupt leaders as we now have in Washington and in state legislatures around the nation, we each bear responsibility for the inevitable result of such leadership. If we wish to place the blame for the current state of affairs on anyone, we need only look in the mirror.

The wonder isn’t that America will experience another civil war or possibly break up into individual nation-states. The true wonder, historically, is that America has held together as long as it has.

Disclosure: Although I registered as a Republican for a local election in 2004, I am actually a rare breed these days. I’m a ‘Jeffersonian Democrat.’ A true Classical Liberal. Of course, from the pov of our government, that makes me an enemy of the state. From the pov of the political right, I’m a left-wing liberal. From the pov of the left, I’m a right-wing extremist. The Cassandra Effect does apply, here. You see, your own hubris and ideologies have blinded you. Most of you believe, in complete denial of all of the facts and against all of the evidence of mankind’s recorded history that ‘this sort of thing just can’t happen in America.’

I’ve got news for you. That paradigm is about to crash and burn around your ears."
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- Warren “Bones” Bonesteel,
Author and Researcher, Sgt USMC 1976-1983
wrsteel@blackhawke.net

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