Word: oklahomas
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There is of course no straight line between any of this and Oklahoma City--just as there was no straight line between the 1960s antiwar movement and the left-wing terrorists who robbed banks and killed cops in the name of patriotism. But didn't "Hey, hey, L.B.J., how many kids did you kill today?" encourage more extreme expressions of division...
...perpetrators of the Oklahoma City bombing really view government as the people's enemy, the burden of fostering that delusion is borne not just by the nut cases who preach conspiracy but also to some extent by those who erode faith in our governance of America in the pursuit of their own ambitions. Inflamed passions produce unintended consequences. In the effort to get attention, to startle, to motivate, a crucial self-control is lost. The gulf between hyperbolic words and last week's despicable treachery is not all that great...
...grisly mix of fertilizer and hatred that detonated in Oklahoma City last week appears to provide stark evidence of something many Americans have denied: the existence of paranoid, violent thinking within our borders. Just what are the tenets of this thinking? And did they figure in last year's election returns...
...this is common stuff in many parts of the country. It is several giant steps from this movement to the extremist-fringe thinking that seems to have bred the Oklahoma City bombing. That frame of mind appeals to a hard-bitten and alienated segment of society that has found a voice lately in millennial movements like the Christian Patriots and the state "militias," largely in the Middle West and West. The militias may be--as they strongly claim to be-composed largely of yeoman states'--righters energized over the threat to the Second Amendment. But they have also fostered viciously...
...while last week, something in the national mood appeared to be turning darkly against Arab Americans--at least for as long as it was supposed that the Oklahoma blast might be the work of Islamic terrorists. In a replay of the harassment they suffered during the Gulf War, mosques reported receiving telephone threats. On Larry King Live, former Oklahoma Congressman Dave McCurdy pointed to an Islamic conference, full of fire-breathing rhetoric that was held in Oklahoma City in 1992. That was one reason, he said, that he knew terrorism "could happen here...