Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 11:03:06 -0400
From: Gabo3@aol.com

New York Newsday - Thursday, April 27, 1995
WORDS CAN HAVE THE POWER OF BOMBS
by Gabriel Rotello

	New York - "It is grotesque to suggest that anybody in this country who
raises legitimate questions about the size and scope of the Federal
Government has any implication in this." 
	That was Newt Gingrich last week, reacting to suggestions that he and his
whipped up constituency of angry white males have anything in common with the
very angry white males now suspected of the Oklahoma City blast. Newt and
company are frantic to deny an obviously damning connection, but their
protests ring hollow simply because the connection is so damn obvious. For
years now he and folks like Pat Buchanan, Jesse Helms, Rush Limbaugh and many
other "responsible" right wingers have fostered a simmering anger against
government, championed subtle racism and blatant nativism and undisguised
homophobia, encouraged a feeling of wounded victimization among some of the
most privileged members of society, and advanced a snarling defence of an
unlimited right to bear arms. They and their even more extreme hate radio
allies have stirred up a witch's brew of rightist resentment, one that
historically has found its ultimate expression in violence. 
	Yet it's downright irresponsible the way these "responsible" right wingers
indignantly deny any moral responsibility for the explosive results of their
rhetoric. They preach that abortion is murder, then take no responsibility
for the murders of health workers. They preach anti-immigrant nativism, then
deny all responsibility for a rising tide of hate and violence against
immigrants. They preach a politics of racial divisiveness disguised as
opposition to affirmative action and welfare, then take no responsibility for
a poisoned state of race relations. They preach homophobia, then deny any
responsibility for homophobic attacks and murders. They preach the sacred
right to bear arms, then take no responsibility for the world's highest
murder rate.
	They preach that government is always bad and taxes are always worse, and
now take no responsibility for inspiring unbalanced Americans to take up arms
against big, bad, taxing government. After all, the right-wing militias that
are sprouting like mushrooms in the hothouse these responsible folks have
cultivated in middle America are the living, breathing embodiments of two of
the right's most cherished principles: that government is essentially bad,
and that citizens have an unlimited right to arm themselves against bad
government. In that sense, the smoking ruin in Oklahoma City is the physical
embodiment of the right's interpretation of the Second Amendment, neatly
summed up by one gum chewing, gun toting daughter of the heartland who told a
CNN correspondent last week her view of American democracy. "We've got the
ballot box, and if that fails, the cartridge box." And, she might have added,
the boom box. 
	I am disappointed but hardly surprised that tepid liberals have avoided
making too much of the connection between the feminazi-baiting Rush
Limbaughs, the culture-warring Pat Buchanans and the Oklahoma bombers. You
can bet that if the bombers were radical environmentalists or Afrocentrists,
Rush and Pat and Newt and Jesse would outdo themselves in an orgy of
fingerpointing at the "liberal establishment." Remember how quick they were
to blame all gays and lesbians for the interruption of mass at St. Patricks?
They're probably looking for a way to pin Oklahoma on "political correctness"
even now.
	But they can't. Today's climate of explosive hate flows almost completely
from a right-wing in which even "responsible" figures like Newt delight in
calling themselves "revolutionaries." They are not revolutionaries. They are
tilling the soil for revolutionaries, preparing, unwittingly or not, for
those who will combine their rhetoric of paranoiac nativism, antitax
activism, racist and homophobic divisiveness, gun crazy individualism and
angry white guy victimization with three parts fertilizer and one part feul
oil.
	Newt and Rush and Pat and Ross and Jesse have been dropping rhetorical bombs
for years. It's hardly surprising that one of them finally blew. 

(Gabriel Rotello's column appears every Thursday in New York Newsday. His
email address is Gabo3@aol.com)