Oath Keepers: When the Teabaggers Just Aren’t Whacked Enough
Between the Teabaggers and the Birthers, I’d thought I’d pretty much seen the pinnacle of evolution for Rightist nutcakes.
Then, the Oath Keepers showed up, a bunch of current and retired military and cops howling about the new dangers to the Constitution they’ve sworn to uphold with all the bluster they can muster on a Web site which, like all similar right-wing sites, is hopelessly swimming in Revolutionary War-era metaphor and imagery. Oh, and don’t forget to check out their video, in which they declare their intent to disobey their Top Ten Unjust Orders with a lush backdrop of inspiring patriotic and military imagery and overwrought music. Yeah, you might think we Lefties get a bit over the top, but for sheer Drama Queen goodness, you can’t beat the Right Wingnuts.
What’s especially interesting about this bunch is that they were founded just this past March, not even two months after Barack “Timberlake” Obama took office. Now, mind you — during the eight goddamn’ years in which the Bush Regime was instigating illegal wars of aggression, censoring the news, arbitrarily declaring people “enemy combatants” and detaining them without charges or a trial, criminalizing Muslims and the Left, suppressing dissent, allowing torture, and otherwise generally pissing on the Constitution at every opportunity, the people comprising the Oath Keepers were nowhere to be found. In fact, when US service personnel were refusing to comply with illegal or unconstitutional orders under Bush, you could hear the future Oath Keepers howling for courts martial and trials for treason.
Now that there’s a Donkeycratic administration in power, though, the Oath Keepers have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, bellowing at full throat about illegal orders and detention camps and the military occupation of American cities and threats to the Constitution. Never mind that Obama’s pretty much continuing all of Bush’s favorite programs such as imprisonment without charges, rendition, torture, suppression of the news — not to mention that he’s escalating the war in Afghanistan. That sort of pertinent information is totally lost on these doorknobs: all they know is that now the Donkeycrats are in the White House, the President is a N!gg3r, and the Republic is in grave danger. Oh, yeah, and they don’t want to pay taxes, either; they want highways and schools and National Parks, but they don’t want to pay taxes — like the Teabaggers, but with more brass and swagger. Basically, the Oath Keepers are for people who think the Teabaggers are too liberal.
(…and read more about the Oath Keepers’ association with White Nationalists at Lady Liberty’s Lamp.)
