Talking points - The Week Magazine
Jade Helm: The plot to take over Texas
In July, dozens of Black Hawk helicopters will swoop down on southwestern America, depositing special forces troops in Texas and six other states, said Amy Davidson in NewYorker.com. For the U.S. military, the event marks the beginning of Jade Helm 15, a routine training exercise. But for a growing number of paranoid conservatives in the Lone Star State, it signifies something much more terrifying: “a U.S. military takeover of Texas and beyond.” Conspiracy theorists believe President Obama is secretly plotting to seize Texas and other Republican-dominated states. “They’re moving logistics in place for martial law,” Texan Bob Wells told a newspaper reporter. “It’s the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany.”
Unfortunately, this crackpot theorizing isn’t “confined to the furthest corner of the conspiratorial fever swamps,” said Heather Digby Parton in Salon.com. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott upped the hysteria by ordering the State Guard to monitor the U.S. troops—citing his concern for Texans’ “constitutional rights.” It’s official: Anti-Washington derangement has “now made it fully into the mainstream.”
OK, Obama isn’t going to invade Texas, said David French in NationalReview.com. But you can’t blame conservatives for feeling “a little paranoid”—not when they’ve been bullied, slandered, and investigated under this administration. Obama’s Justice Department has repeatedly called conservative activist groups potential domestic terrorists, and his administration turned “one of its most powerful bureaucracies—the IRS—into a weapon,” targeting Tea Party groups with systematic audits. He’s also flouted the Constitution repeatedly by issuing executive orders. “In this atmosphere of earned distrust,” it’s no wonder that conservative citizens feel “targeted and maligned.”
The levels of paranoia in Texas go far beyond rational boundaries, said Leslie Savan in TheNation.com. This week, Walmart felt obliged to deny a widespread rumor that all its Texas stores were closing so federal officials could use them as internment camps. Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Louie Gohmert joined Gov. Abbott in validating the conspiracy theories about Jade Helm, with Gohmert saying, “Patriotic Americans have reason to be concerned.” Sadly, it’s no longer shocking to hear Republicans talk this way, said Leonard Pitts in The Miami Herald. Today, when a Republican governor calls out guardsmen to ensure that the president doesn’t stage a military coup, “we shrug because it’s just another Tuesday in the lunatic asylum of American politics.”
From this site:
http://www.theweek.com/...
This is so disconcerting because it is not new and should be apparent to all. Inciting and encouraging paranoia among the populace by those in power in order to win and gain more power is exactly what Hitler did in Germany. I swear The Tea Party leaders have taken pages right out of Mein Kampf... They believe their conspiracy theories that provoke paranoia about President Barack Obama will propel them into Absolute Might... If only the voters of little knowledge would read history, they would realize the boldfaced DUPE The Tea Party is using, without feeling any remorse whatsoever... seemingly they use a form of ‘THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS’ as a rationalization for their rank ideology.
thinkingblue
Excerpt from this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/...