There is a huge difference between the two. For one thing, most people know the left is kidding, humor being one of their biggest weapons, for another they tend to be very bad at it. The reason that right wing domestic terrorists are feared is because often they are very good.
A quick look at domestic terrorists in the US has a long list on one side, often highly effective, and a short list on the other, which tends to be populated by failure. When the Weathermen or SLA tried to do terrorism they largely succeeded in killing themselves for the most part. When the right does domestic terrorism we get: Night Riders, the KKK, White Citizens Councils, the Branch Davidians, The Montana Freemen, Ruby Ridge, The American Nazi Party, Aryan Nation, the Christian Identity Movement, more militias then you can shake a stick at, Charles Manson (don't let the hippie outfit fool you, old Chuck was an old fashioned Southern Racist whose goal was a race war that would wipe out the blacks) and Oklahoma City.
When it seems like you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a right-wing militia terrorist cell in some places (Georgia, Florida, Montana, Idaho, Michigan) people wonder where the left wing militias terrorist cells are, and the answer is easy. There has not been an armed left wing militia terrorist cell in the USA since the Black Panthers, and before that, never.
And we just saw another right wing Christian group go down in Michigan, their plan was to kill some cops, then bomb the funeral, then the US would rise up and go all Helter Skelter and overthrow the government - and I guess instill them into power because they were such patriots. The reality however is that given their mugshots all I can think of is that somewhere in Michigan right now a carnival is running itself and combined I bet they don't make a triple digit IQ. Oh yeah, when arrested for plotting to violently overthrow the government what did they want? Yeah, a public defender - a government sponsored lawyer. I can't help but to imagine that they didn't think their clever plan all the way through. Oh yeah, who defended this morons on national TV, the guy filling in for Glenn Beck of course.
So you have a huge difference when people on one side show up to protest rallies with guns, or signs threatening to go home and get them (and we damn sure know they have them to get) and the other side which tends to circus theatrics like painting tiger stripes on naked women and putting them in cages for some PETA protest of Ringling Brothers.
Basically do you have any "Normal" people over there, because from here it looks like American society has totally lost the plot on this question.
Yes, in fact most of the people here are 'normal' by American standards. But...there are several things to consider here. First is there is a huge difference (un-noted, because it's largely unknown to the right) between the largely unseen governance aspects and the highly televised political stuff. The first is the day to day business of running a government for 300 million people in a highly advanced, technological, industrial nation state. These people are the best students, who went to the best schools and did the best at the hardest programs. Most of them have several degrees. They work 12 hour days, six days a week, and they don't notice the news because they have real jobs and just don't have the time to watch it. They are too busy doing research, holding hearings, meeting with committees, and writing the white papers, the gray papers, the reports, and the recommendations, that become actual policy.
What you get to see, because it's the part that TV covers, is the electoral system and it's far more about entertainment then information, and, at best is only infotainment. As Frank Zappa once said: Politics is the entertainment branch of American Industry. It's the 'smoke and mirrors' and the 'bread and circuses' that keep the marching morons marching while the other people go off and make policy. From the beginning, and it's enshrined in the Constitution from the get-go, the owning/business class has always been institutionalized as the state and the custodians of the entire American social and political process. 'Twas ever thus. The real business of America is business, and its run by the business class. (Who also tend to have real jobs and are not watching TV either).
While the infotainment sector is strictly focused on some right/left split I can assure you that such distinctions are never talked about in the process of governance because they are totally irrelevant. They don't enter into the discussion because the discussion is about business, and commerce and done in the language of law, not politics.
But, that does beg the question of why is the right so wacked out most of the time. I think its because they suffer from a bi-polar deal that has repeatedly lead them straight into the arms of paranoia. The bi-polar deal is two-fold. First, the documents they worship (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth) are in fact some of the most liberal documents ever written. That alone causes them no end of grief. At the same time they also worship the corporate structure, the scientific and technological base, capitalism, and industrialism, which are the chief engines of the very progress they so hate. That leads them to a point where they are arriving at the party long after it's over.
When Pat Buchanan called for a "Culture War" it was almost laughable because anyone who studies such things knew that by the point old Pat was calling for that, the war had done come and gone, and they had already lost. At best, they got to fight some rear-guard action while in full retreat. And those two notions, one the progress keeps beating them to the punch, and two, that the very core of the nation they want to save by conservatism is in fact opposed to them has made them very parinoid. And that is a long standing American tradition at this point.*
Which leads us to the present day. Why are they all seemingly going nuts? Well they lost. Twice. Huge losses that in many ways they will not recover from and are in the process of becoming a rump party that is geographically isolated to the South and parts of the InterMountian West.
I think that when they woke up, they freaked out. As Chris Rock observed: "George Bush farked up so badly that not only were we able to elect a black man president, but a Black man with a name like "Barack HUSSIEN Obama" the dude couldn't be anymore more in-your -face black unless he was named As-salaam A'lakim Farrakhan!"
I think when that finally dawned on them, they just lost it and are in the process of spinning out of control. The GOP of late is part Kristallnacht and very much Nacht der langen Messer, or as we'd say in the States, a circular firing squad.
They think they have found their savior in Sara Palin. She is their Ronald Reagan with a Rack, but I'm betting it ain't gonna pan out. She probably appeals to teabaggers because she is a moderately-attractive woman who does cutesy-folksy things and obviously puts-out. The Palin in a flag bikini brandishing a shotgun like Bonnie Parker just fuels that fantasy, and after 15-20 years of sexually repressed marriage, it's good spank-bank material for most of them. But that's all it is, because in the end she values herself more than the movement, and it's going to show, and it's going to hurt. She's not going to run for President, she's just going to raise money like she is, and skip out with it, like the attention whore grifter she really is. If the GOP didn't pretend to be the party of superior values, then this wouldn't be an issue. But this very situation is exactly what the GOP is about, and has always been about: a party of hypocritical behavior and wimpy posers and before all is said and done Sara is going to be the poster girl for that.
All the tea-baggers did was pretty much guarantee a Dem majority for the next election (and beyond) because....
I had to stop reading here because I can't really debate against self-delusion.
But you know Laura, it's not self-delusion, it's based on a solid knowlage of who really swings elections these days, and what appeals to them. Do you know who they are? They get called 'soccer moms' in shorthand, but they are in reality middle/upper middle class women, which college degrees and professional careers. They swing elections because they vote and have little to no sense of party identity, so they vote on issues. And none of this is going to appeal to them, no more than the antics of the Left 50 years ago brought anyone over to their side. They are not going to side with someone who is standing in public in some colonial Williamsburg outfit with teabags dangling from a hat and a misspelled sign that puts cross hairs on their political propaganda while threatening to bring a gun next time.
And, if you want proof - Republican fundraising (this in the Party of Money) is at an all time low.
* - Richard Hofstadter penned an essay in the early 60s for Harper's called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Check it out, brilliant stuff.
