The following is from a posting on the Daily Kos. I urge you to use the link and read the whole posting.

We’ve seen a lot of comment about a new twist on the right, a whole campaign (t- shirts, bumper stickers,  e-mails and more) all built on the biblical passage in Psalms 109 which says in part:

May his days be few;
may another seize his position.
May his children be orphans,
and his wife a widow.

Many have pointed out that this campaign seems to imply the urgent need to eliminate President Barack Obama at the earliest opportunity by any means necessary, (you can figure out the rest).

But what is Psalms 109 really about?

Phil Zimbardo’s book, The Lucifer Effect, Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, is fascinating regarding individuals. I may even have to modify my feelings about the existence of evil (I basically reject evil as a concept.)

The book got me thinking about what is going on right now in the United States with conservative talk show hosts and their guests finding nothing but fault with anyone who doesn’t agree with them. Actually it goes farther than that. If they listened to what liberals, those horrible Democrats, were saying or read what was being proposed; they would actually agree on some things but they reject totally anything that comes from the mouths or pens of those on the other side of the aisle.

Fomenting hatred can’t be a good thing. One wonders if a whole nation could be victimized by the Lucifer Effect or at least enough people to damage if not destroy democracy. Consider the disruptive tactic now being employed at town meetings across the country where democratic senators and congressmen and citizens who came to listen and to be heard are being shouted down. This tactic is praised by Fox News yahoos as free speech. Wait a minute good buddy. What about the free speech of the rest of the people in the room?

If you don’t think there may be a serious problem here, consider that 58% of republicans question the president’s birth certificate. There can be no conclusion other than 58% of republicans have shut down a thinking section of their brain.

PS I’m not a liberal but liberals don’t scare me. People who have stopped thinking do.

Conversations with Republican friends have brought me to the generalization that Republicans are more likely to be fundamentalists in their religious beliefs than Democrats. These were conversations on politics, not religion.

A recent conversation began with agreement that we would like to see both parties work together. Why couldn’t they approach the idea or proposal of the other with a positive attitude? Then I mentioned the vote on the stimulus package put forward by President Obama and how I admired the three Republican senators who voted for it.

“Oh, we’re on opposite sides of that!” my Republican friend exclaimed.

“But isn’t that an example of cooperation?”

“Obama was the one who wasn’t cooperating. He rammed that through too fast without giving Republicans a chance to have their input.”

“Hey, wait a minute. Wasn’t there an urgency to get something done? All the experts on both sides said this was ‘uncharted waters’. Nobody came forward to say ‘this is the way out of this. This is what we must do to revive the economy.’ Nobody! No one claimed to have the answer. Wouldn’t it be better to say, ‘OK Mr. President, we’ll go with your plan’ especially since the President had listened to Republicans and had put a significant tax relief in it.”

“No. He just pushed it through so quickly no one had time to look at it critically.”

“What about the financial bailout pushed through a couple of months before Obama took office?”

“What bailout?”

“Remember the three page legislation that put $700 billion it Paulson’s hands to pretty much do with as he pleased? Remember how urgent it was to push that one through? Paulson got down on his knees to Congress and Bush signed it a week later. One week! Wasn’t that pushy?”

Republican amnesia on that one.

Fundamentalists take their dogma without question. Republican presidents and legislators are always right even if what they say today is a direct contradiction of what they said a month ago. Similarly The Bible is God’s word no matter that it is filled with contradictions. Could it be that being brought up to believe the Bible without question prepares them to accept whatever Republican leaders say no matter how nonsensical?

One more dialogue:

“I can’t stand Slick Willy.”

“What do you mean?”

“All his slick real estate dealings. He’s a crook.”

“Ken Star spent nearly $40 million investigating his ‘slick’ deals and found nothing.”

“He was impeached.”

“Yeah, for lying about getting a blow job, not for any slick dealings unless you call ejaculating on a red dress slick.”