The Difference Between a Tea Party “Patriot” and a Real Patriot, Allen Clifton, Forward Progressives, April 19, 2014

Republicans are great at coining a term and using it over and over and over and over and – well you get the point. It’s as if there’s a secret handbook only conservatives are given access to where they’re instructed which words to say and when to say them. Rich people aren’t wealthy, they’re “job creators.” Laws that legalize using religion to discriminate against others are “religious freedom” laws. Even when it comes to patriotism they act as if they’re the only ones who are patriotic. As if flying an American flag, putting a “God Bless America” bumper sticker on their vehicle and finishing sentences with “support our troops” instantly makes them patriotic.

Maddow Asks: ‘Why Do We Overlook Right-Wing Violence and Refuse to Call it Terrorism?’ Answer: Because They’re White, Chauncey DeVega, AlterNet, April 18, 2014

Domestic terrorism is an oxymoron in America when white folks are involved. Whiteness imagines itself as kind, benign, safe, neutral, normal, and good. “Terrorism” is something those “other people” do, i.e. the Muslims, or some other ambiguous cohort of black and brown people who “hate American values”. Whiteness and the white racial frame are possessed by an acute sense of historical amnesia as well. The most dangerous domestic terrorist organization in the history of the United States was the Ku Klux Klan, a group that killed thousands of black Americans during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Open Thread: “Why Be A Neocon?…” Balloon Juice, April 19, 2014, comment by Patrick II

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