Rand Paul is to be congratulated for his principled stand, says Steve Hynd at Not The Singularity. But our insanely polarized politics means that supposedly liberal senators presumed champions of freedom, were conspicuously absent yesterday. Where were Bernie Sanders or Al Franken when this was happening? Why didn’t they speak out too?
Underlying all this is the increasing, palpable tension in the country. Something’s going to blow, and sooner rather than later. The anger and tension in this country now is worse than it was in the late 1960’s when cities were burning and politicians were getting assassinated. Back then it was basically a few segments of society that were pissed. Now it’s everywhere.
I see it all the time in my one little corner of West Texas. People are stressed – economically and emotionally – and it leads them to make hasty, often bad, decisions. The last time I felt this amount of background unrest in a society was in the 80s in Britain under Thatcher, just before the strikes and riots began. Friends who have lived in the US all their lives tell me they feel the atmosphere is similiar to that in L.A. before the King riots, or to the 60s just before society went haywire. Ran Paul’s filibuster was really about one aspect of that overall unrest – the feeling that the elite and their government have stopped even pretending to care about the people they rule over by virtue of their wealth and positions. The elite should ignore it at their peril, for there’s always someone willing to suggest torches and pitchforks, or worse. The last time the SPLC warned about such a rapid rise in militias, it was followed within six months by the McVey bombing in Oklahoma.