Ranks of the Insane

"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." — Marcus Aurelius

I thought I had said enough about that tea party thingy two weeks ago, but apparently it's the gift that keeps on giving:

An Oklahoma City man who announced on Twitter that he would turn an April 15 tax protest into a bloodbath was hit with a federal charge of making interstate threats last week, in what appears to be first criminal prosecution to stem from posts on the microblogging site.

Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, was arrested by FBI agents who identified him as the Twitter user CitizenQuasar. In a series of tweets beginning April 11, CitizenQuasar vowed to start a "war" against the government on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol building, the site of that city's version of the national "Tea Party" protests promoted by the conservative-leaning Fox News.

"START THE KILLING NOW! I am willing to be the FIRST DEATH!," read a tweet at 8:01 PM that day. "After I am killed on the Capitol Steps, like a REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!," he added five minutes later. Then: "Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off the heads and throw the[m] on the State Capitol steps."

Hayden's MySpace page is a breathtaking gallery of right wing memes about the "New World Order," gun control as Nazi fascism, and Barack Obama's covert use of television hypnosis, among many others.

I'm wondering if the Republicans will come to regret embracing those tea parties? I dared to view Dan Hayden's MySpace page -- the deluge of videos is enough to crash your web browser -- and I saw an awful lot of crazy there. His blog posts are long winded, paranoid, political rants. He claims Obama has some kind of hypno power and Bush was drunk at G20. Looks like he supported Ron Paul, but I get the impression he really hates all government.

But I give him credit for making that recent DHS report on right-wing extremism seem even more urgent.

I'm honestly trying to understand this new conservatism. AlterNet has a compelling article about the different moral priorities of Republicans and Democrats, and one of the observations is that Republicans have much more respect for authority and order. Well then, why all these threats of violence against the police? "Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off the heads..." Huh? They must have changed their moral priorities when they lost the election.