The Terror Begins

It's been three days since the House of Representatives passed the health-care reform bill and two days since President Obama signed it into law. If you believe the tea partiers, that's two (and possibly three) days since tyranny came to our shores and killed off the America we all know and love.

It is, of course, nonsense. But the scary part is not that the tea partiers believe it. The scary part is that some of them, goaded on by their leaders, are descending into violence.

The offices of Democratic representatives around the country have been attacked and vandalized, often with rocks or bricks thrown through the windows.

A number of Democrats have received explicit death threats, both at their Washington offices and at their homes. Many have had to request Secret Service protection, not just for themselves but for their spouses and children as well, who in many cases were also directly threatened.

Virginia teabagger leader Nigel Coleman posted what he believed to be Rep. Tom Periello's home address on his Facebook page, telling his equally rabid followers to "drop by" and harass the man at home. But Coleman didn't even bother to get it right - he posted Periello's brother's home address. Shortly afterward, the brother found a threatening letter in his mailbox as well as a slashed and leaking propane gas line on his barbecue grill.

Coleman's response to the vandalism was, if possible, even more reprehensible than his original actions. "Do you mean I posted his brother's address on my Facebook?" he wrote on his blog. "Oh well, collateral damage."

Collateral damage.

This is not political discourse. This is terrorism. It might be conducted by Americans instead of Arabs, but it's terrorism nonetheless.

When Democratic representatives were spat on and taunted with racial and sexual epithets, the Republican leadership grudgingly told their followers to cool it. A bit late in the game, especially since that same leadership had spent months twisting people's minds with lies about "death panels" and "Marxism," endlessly using the language of war and killing, recklessly stoking the fires of hate ever higher until the day when something truly ugly becomes inevitable.

That day has arrived.

The teabagger movement has long turned a blind eye to the racists and crackpots and haters in their midst, but they can hide no longer. The Republicans, from Sarah Palin and John Boehner on down, can't hide anymore either. Like Dr. Morbius' "monsters from the id" in Forbidden Planet, the demon of fear and hatred they created has started to run amok.

So what happens now? Will the Republican and teabagger leaders tell their followers in no uncertain terms that violence is un-American and will not be tolerated? Or will they continue to remain silent, unwilling to surrender their weapon of an angry mob even if someone gets killed?

Even if they speak out from pure self-preservation, they'd better do it, and damn fast too. The first murder will doom the Republican Party for a generation and destroy the tea party movement forever.