A Deathly Silence

Even the right has limits to what it can support

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson

08/16/05

http://zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/silence.htm

Larry Northern managed to silence the far right for a day or two.

If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Larry is the fellow who decided to hook a pipe lengthwise behind his pickup truck so it would drag along behind him like a little steamroller, and went blasting though all the crosses and other grave markers that Cindy Sheehan and the other anti-war vigilists had erected at the protest site. Of the 1,800 markers, 500 were knocked down, and 100 destroyed. Poor old Larry tried to make his escape after this bold action, but one of those pesky crosses flattened one of his tires, with the result that the local police caught him, red-bumpered, so to speak. (Fortunately, he didn’t actually injure anyone while doing this).

The atrocity and cowardice of the act speaks for itself. I feel sorry for every other person named "Larry Northern" in the country, because they’re going to have to spend the rest of their lives telling people, "No, I’m not that asshole from Waco." As for the guy himself, he’ll find that he’s held in roughly the same high regard as the guy who cut the arms off that girl and left her for dead (and it caught up to him: he eventually suicided out).

I looked around the web today, and of course, the story was causing a firestorm on liberal and moderate blogs.

But what was amazing was the utter silence from right wing blogs. I went to Free Republic, which is a place that has the calm and reasoned discourse of Yosemite Sam on crank, and found a total of ONE message that mentioned Larry Northern by name. That was from some creature calling itself "Tex 52" (The fifty-second most original man in Texas, no doubt) who wrote, "Just wanted to let Freepers know that Larry Northern, the man that knocked down the crosses outside the Bush ranch, is a Purple Heart winner from Vietnam. He was wounded by shrapnel that hit his juglar [sic] vein. I think maybe he had enough of Shean [sic]. She brings back the worst of how our soldiers were treated after Vietnam."

That was it for Free Republic. Otherwise, nobody wanted to talk about Larry Northern and what he did. They couldn’t praise him.

But they couldn’t bring themselves to condemn the act, either. Patriotism clearly takes a back seat to political partisanship with that crowd.

Another blogsite called "The Political Teen" wrote, "Liberal bloggers are having a field day over this mini-event. But none of them have realized that ‘Camp Casey’ is on public and PRIVATE property. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone what Larry Northern did, but if I was on the left I wouldn’t complain about it either. The word down in Crawford is the neighbors of Bush are getting upset because "Camp Casey" is making a ruckus and it is becoming a problem."

Ah. So if someone wants to urinate on a grave in Arlington cemetery, that’s ok, because it’s on public property. And heaven forbid that anyone should make a ruckus. Make a fuss in Putsch’s America, and they’ll come and desecrate memorials made to loved ones who died in battle.

It took some doing, but I finally did find a self-described conservative site that unreservedly condemned Northern’s actions. At http://www.gmroper.com/, the fellow wrote, "Now, I think Ms. Sheehan is being used by the media, and she is more than likely complicit in the circus going on outside of President Bush's Crawford ranch.

"But, she is also an American, and American's have the right to freedom of speech, they have the right to be safe in their person and they have the right to redress the government if they believe those rights have been violated.

"AND THEN THIS BASTARD COMES ALONG AND THINKS HE IS HOT STUFF CRUSHING A BUNCH OF CROSSES AND POSSIBLY ENDANGERING PEOPLE WHO ARE EXERCISING THEIR RIGHTS AS AMERICANS.

"What kind of idiot are you Mr. Northern? Did you really think that this is what America is all about? Do you really think that this is what Specialist Sheehan died for? Really?

"You sir are an Idiot!"

The caps are his.

But otherwise, dead silence. This is the crowd that feels free to question the patriotism of liberals who oppose that silly flag-burning amendment to the constitution. (And yes, several flags were crushed into the dust under the tires of Northern’s pickup truck). This is the "support our troops" coalition.

Fox News, which flew American flags on their screens non-stop (literally) for three years after 9/11 ("America at WAR!") covered it as briefly as possible, devoting thirty words to the incident, and another two paragraphs to the fact that Cindy Sheehan’s husband had filed for divorce. (The "pro-family" crowd all seemed to think she deserved the divorce).

GM Roper proves that not all right wingers are vicious, amoral swine who put partisan hackery ahead of everything else. But I had to look pretty hard to find him among all the silence and very occasional half-hearted discussion among the right.

On Usenet, I challenged one lunatic who was enthusiastically bashing Cindy Sheehan to condemn Northern’s actions. He couldn’t do it. Now, he may have sensed that I was maybe poking him a little (I was) but how much courage does it take to come out and admit that desecrating markers to dead loved ones is a bad thing? Does he think admitting it was a bad thing might somehow betray the Republican cause? Does one support this president by keeping silent about atrocities committed in his name?

Anybody still asking themselves if "it could happen here"?

Putsch drew similar silence from the right when he whined the day earlier, "it's also important for me to go on with my life" in explaining why he was hiding from Sheehan. I laughed in startled disbelief when I read that, and promptly fired off a letter to the editor of my local newspaper, which appeared today (see below).

But the cartoonist for the Bee, Rex Babin, summed it up very nicely with a panel showing that quote, over a drawing of the white crosses along the two-lane Texas road out in the middle of nowhere, with "Casey Sheehan" prominent on the nearest cross.

The same crosses, markers and flags that Northern flattened.

The ones the right can’t talk about because partisanship trumps patriotism.

It trumps decency.

It trumps courage.

It trumps humanity.

It is a deathly silence.

**************

Editor, Mt. Shasta Herald:

"It's also important for me to go on with my life."

That’s what George W. Bush said Sunday at Crawford as his reason for not meeting with Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother who is demanding that Bush give and honest and open accounting for why he continues to call on young Americans to die for whatever his cause really is.

Bush's pathetic, cowardly whine that "it's also important for me to go on with my life," makes for an interesting counterpoint to Bob Herbert's column in today's NY Times, "Lives Blown Apart". Bobby Rosendahl would doubtlessly like to have time to go bicycle riding, too.

There are families of at least 15,000 American troops who would like to have pointers on how they might go about "getting on with their lives" from the toy president. Will riding a bicycle help their maimed sons and husbands and wives and daughters? Maybe if they send them to a few fundraising dinners?

There are families to two thousand Americans, and over thirty thousand Iraqis, for whom the phrase, "getting on with my life," has become entirely moot. But there’s good news for the families: Rumsfeld stopped sending letters of condolence signed with an autopen and now scribbles his name at the bottom himself, and Bush assures us that these kids died to prevent Saddam from attacking the US with nuclear weapons, or to impose freedom on the Iraqis, or whatever the lie of the week is.

But we must have pity on poor Bush, hiding among the rattlesnakes and sagebrush of his stage set ranch . After all, he has to live his life, too.

Bryan Zepp Jamieson