The State of Hate in Arizona

by Pa Rock
Social Observer

Remember William Kostric, the moron who showed up at President Obama’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire this week packing a pistol? He carried a sign with a thinly veiled death threat that read: “It is time to water the tree of liberty.” Kostric wondered aloud to Chris Matthews on Hardball why more good Americans, like him, weren’t showing up armed at these events?

My first thought regarding this evolutionary throwback was that he would fit right into the cultural landscape of Arizona. Imagine my lack of surprise when I learned later that he had recently relocated to New Hampshire from Scottsdale, Arizona!

To say that Arizona has its fair share of dangerous and demented nut jobs would be gross understatement. The state is rife with hate – and damned proud of it!

This week Dr. Heidi Beirich, a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, spoke in Phoenix and gave a public presentation on the increase of hate group activity in Arizona. She listed the three primary reasons for the rise of extremist activity in the state as being the election of a black President, the weak economy, and the nativist uproar over illegal immigration from Mexico. Arizona, due primarily to its long border with Mexico, seems to go especially berserk whenever it appears that anyone with brown skin is being treated fairly or humanely.

Dr. Beirich had particularly pointed remarks concerning Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, and state senator Russell Pearce, both of whom she sees as pandering toward members of these groups and thus empowering them with a sense of legitimacy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center recognizes nineteen distinct hate groups currently operating in Arizona. Three are classified as Racist Skinhead organizations: the Western Hammerskins (statewide), Vinlanders Social Club (Mesa), and Volksfront (Phoenix). The term "Skinheads" refers to young thugs with shaved heads and plenty of tattoos who get off on drugs and violence. The group had its origins in Great Britain fifty years ago. It later split into two distinct factions - the racists and the anti-racists - and both varieties crossed the Atlantic Ocean where they were able to infest America. And lucky Arizona - we got the "racist" version of these vermin!

Ten of the hate groups are Neo-Nazi: the White Knights of America (statewide), White Revolution (statewide), National Socialist Movement – NSM (Apache Junction), American Thule Society (Black Canyon City), National Socialist Movement (Cochise County), Aryan Nations (Goodyear – an All-American City!), American National Socialist Workers Party (Phoenix), Aryan Nations (Phoenix), and National Socialist Movement – NSM (Phoenix). The Neo-Nazis profess a love of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and they are stridently vocal in their hatred of Jews. (Didn't we fight a big war against this type of scum?)

The remaining hate groups with Arizona chapters include: the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (General Hate – Colorado City), Remnant Outreach Ministries (Christian Identity – Cottonwood), Arizona White Pride (White Nationalist – Maricopa County), Nation of Islam (Black Separatist – Phoenix), American Border Patrol (Anti-Immigrant – Sierra Vista), and the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK – Tempe).

Other reported hate groups in Arizona include the National Organization for European American Rights, World Church of the Creator (Florence and Tucson), Hammerskin Nation (Glendale and Mesa), and the National Alliance (Phoenix).

Arizona is truly blessed to have this many organized ways to hate. What could be sadder than a racist, moronic, gun-toting Neanderthal without a support group? New Hampshire must be a deep pit of putrefying prejudice to lure William Kostric away from this scorpion and rattlesnake-riddled, fascist nirvana!

Let us prey.

One final note: The President of the United States and Mrs. Obama - and their little girls - will be in Arizona this Sunday and Monday. So far his town hall meetings on health care have been polite and productive. That ain't gonna happen here. Tread with care, Mr. President. These bastards are seriously scary.

Somebody is Going to Die

by Pa Rock
Political Observer

William Kostric showed up packing heat outside of the Obama town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, yesterday. He was carrying a sign that read, "It's time to water the tree of liberty." That sign was a response to a quote by Thomas Jefferson that the know-nothings like to belch - "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." (Of course Jefferson, a slave owner, was obviously not talking about everyone's liberty.)

So Mr. Kostric shows up at an event featuring the President of the United States, and he is carrying a visible weapon - something that is legal in New Hampshire - and he has a sign calling for watering the tree of liberty, something that is accomplished through a blood offering - and he doesn't go to jail. Chris Matthews asks him later on Hardball, "Why did you bring a god-damned gun to the event?" and his response is that the proper question would be why aren't more people coming to these events armed?

Why, indeed?

Representative Steve Cohen (D, TN) had an armed teabagger baboon walk into a town hall meeting that he was hosting two days ago in Memphis. The man was promptly escorted off of the premises.

Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D, AZ) had an angry individual get so flustered at one of her town halls a couple of days ago at a Safeway in Douglas, Arizona, that the genius forgot and left his gun in the room when he exited.

The health care industry has ginned up these events and bussed in loads of "spontaneous" and "ordinary" citizens with printed instructions on how to disrupt the meetings. They don't come to listen, or learn, or ask intelligent questions - they come to make noise, and disrupt, and keep listening and learning from taking place.

Some unions have belatedly and begrudgingly started to send counter-protesters to drown out the lobbyist rabble, so the circus is growing exponentially. Yesterday a caller phoned the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and left the following message:

"I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens, and stop trying to repress people's First Amendment rights. That, or you all are going to come up against the Second Amendment."

I guess the difference between disturbing the peace and exercising First Amendment rights depends on which side of the room you are standing on. I guess the difference between armed intimidation and the exercise of Second Amendment rights depends on which end of the gun that you are facing.

Somebody is going to die. Maybe several innocent people will be trapped between the righteously incensed shooter and his target, and lots of blood will be spilled. That's what will happen, and it will happen very, very soon. The shooter has been primed with bullshit stories of grandmothers being euthanized, death panels, and forced abortions and sex-change operations. His gun has been cleaned and oiled, and he has plenty of ammo.

But it isn't the death of individuals that we must fear, it is the death of democracy itself. When the lives of citizens are put at risk for participating in the democratic process, that very process is also put at risk. Government by intimidation is nothing more than a rancid dictatorship. We aren't North Korea - we are the United States of America - a place where everyone has the right to speak (not scream incoherently to keep others from speaking) and to listen. I am certain that Mr. Jefferson would agree that we need to calm down and return to civil discourse - before we damage our country beyond repair.