Wow, that M&I bank boycott has the GOPers suffering from a severe attack of the vapors. They're talking about having a witch hunt, firing all the cops and firefighters, and bringing in the National Guard. Moe Lane and the boys have taken to the fainting couch over this, and RedState has two diaries this week:

Links 1 and 2.

They want the Wisconsin government to force the police and firefighters to not join the bank boycott, although they are a little hazy on how that would work, but of course their imagination immediately leaps to bayonets and bloodshed whenever strikers are involved. These guys clearly want Madison to be some sort of company town or Soviet work camp, because not only do they want to be able to control union membership they want iron-fisted control of where people shop.

Wisconsin cops & firemen break their oaths.

Posted by Moe Lane

Saturday, March 12th at 8:00PM EST

It would seem that loyalty to their union masters take precedence over loyalty to the people of Wisconsin. From a contemptible letter written to M&I Bank threatening a boycott....

Really Moe, they took anto use that bank? Really?

They howl that the firemen are threatening to let the bank burn down.



This is a barely-veiled threat from the cops and the firemen that organizations subject to the anti-labor reform boycott cannot expect a prompt and effective response from them in case of emergency.

You can't just excuse this stuff as "stupid" or "ignorant," it seems to be crazy, and completely divorced from reality. This is where Charlie Sheen tells you he's worried about you.

But a person actually doesn't have to be crazy to use this tactic - it is calculated and deliberate. This wildly exaggerated accusation is political ritual, and it is a compulsory form of attack.

Accusing firefighters of threatening to let the bank burn down is not the result of madness or drug use, it's how a ringleader whips up a crowd, often for group violence: "She's a witch......that stranger on the tour bus is here to steal children....my horse died because that Jew poisoned my well....the uppity niggra looked at my daughter....that wizard stole my penis (you can look up "penis theft") .... Obama is a Mau-Mau and he just raised the price of gasoline."

And a note to Sarah Palin - when someone makes accusations like that against a group, that is a "blood libel." When Sarah said "death panels" were going to kill baby Trig, that was a "blood libel."

I want to make the point that this is a ritual that seems to be practiced on every continent, the wild accusation that leads to an actual witch hunt. This is where a majority group signals for what we would think of as a "flash mob" where someone is immediately singled out and lynched or beaten senseless and burned alive. Thus everyone else is kept in line by this demonstration of power.

And when the explanations deviate so far from reality, weak minded people need elaborate shared conspiracy theories to stitch together all the conflicting facts and to provide a group that supports their views. This creates solidarity around absurd belief systems, usually about the dangers of some minority group.

So you can quit wondering why the television brings us supposedly respectable pundits who seems absolutely psychotic, and why this sort of stupidity is ritualized and raised to the level of a religious sacrament for the wingnut base. One of the things people like this count on is that outsiders are so put off by their rhetoric that they won't look more closely, or at most ridicule them.

Of course, these accusations are definitely a call for a political "witch hunt," but it would be unfair to call it an actual call for violence wouldn't it?

However, sure enough the comments in that RedState diary reveal a profound disappointment that Gov. Walker has failed to massacre union members. Regular readers of any conservative site will be familiar with the violent masturbatory Fascist fantasies of wingnuts, and you may have read RedStates regular apocalyptic how-we-want-to-kill-our-neighbors circlejerk.

Nobody questions the accusations of disloyalty against the cops and firefighters, and there are demands for the iron fist:

1) The boycott should be prosecuted under the RICO act, because nothing says organized crime like not shopping at some place you don't like.

2) The National Guard should be called in (again)

3) The cops and fire fighters should be fired and put in prison, and their jobs given to temps? Interns? Or Republicans! Because you know, "merit based" means Republicans.

More...............