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From the AP via the Huffington Post:

Georgia Congressman Warns Of Obama Dictatorship

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may _ may not, I hope not _ but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

And

Obama was referring in the speech to a proposal for a civilian reserve corps that could handle postwar reconstruction efforts such as rebuilding infrastructure _ an idea endorsed by the Bush administration.

More here.

And so the new lunatic fringe begins.

Remember the weirdo patriot movement, militia movement, whatever you want to call it, that ran around in the woods with guns and fatigues on weekends worrying about "the new world order" back during the Clinton era? Boy, I sure do. The homegrown terrorists who blew up that federal building in Oklahoma came from these ranks: they were, and probably still are, a much bigger threat to our "homeland security" than Muslim terrorists have ever been.

Black helicopters, indeed.

Looking back on it all, it's really difficult to avoid seeing the militia movement as being an extreme manifestation of conservative anxiety about having a Democrat in the White House after twelve years of Republican rule. I mean, just look at all the bullshit conspiracy theories back in the day about President Clinton himself, the drug dealing, the murders, and on and on and on. We've really got to face it; there are some big time lunatics among the American right wing.

And now they're freaking out again, and Obama hasn't even been sworn in.

That's no surprise, I suppose. Bill Clinton, the "best Republican president we've ever had" as Michael Moore has joked, really did govern to the right of Nixon. Old Bill was always a false liberal, and the 90s was essentially a conservative era. But that didn't matter. To the right wing, he was the devil personified as a leftist, and they were scared shitless of him, willing to belive the most ludicrous stories about him because they had to be true.

A bartender where I work told me about the astonishment of an obviously conservative customer on election night, "Well that's it. It's going to be white slavery now." Yeah that's right, this guy actually believes that the blacks are taking over and that they're going to put all us white folk on the plantations. Seriously. I mean, that's fucked up. And I have a sneaking suspicion that there are quite a few more irrational right-wing freaks out there with similar fears.

I would say that I'm hopeful that the lunatic fringe will calm down once they see how conservative Obama actually is, but Clinton's conservatism did nothing in this area back in the day. That is, I'm not hopeful at all. These people are fucking nuts. And I bet the corporate media, in its continual drive to be "balanced," will treat their views as serious and credible.

The next four years are going to be extraordinarily fun.

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