“They”, “Them”, and “The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” are pretty much synonymous with the “enlightened elite’”, of which Ms. Lessing is obviously a leading light.

And it must be said that there are certainly more than a few nut-jobs on the “right” of the political spectrum- James Earl Ray comes to mind in that context. (And no, I don’t believe he was part of a “conspiracy” to kill Dr. King anymore than I believe Oswald was part of a “conspiracy” to kill President Kennedy.) But once you get past Ray, it’s pretty barren ground for assassins on that end of the whackadoo spectrum.

Now, at the other end;

Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola- Puerto Rican separatists who tried to murder President Truman at Blair House on 1 Nov 1950. Succeeded in murdering one Capitol Police office and one Secret Service agent. Both were hardcore Marxists who wanted Puerto Rico to be an independent “People’s Republic”, and weren’t too happy about Truman’s responses to the 1948 Berlin Blockade and the North Korean invasion of South Korea, either.(Both retroactively pardoned by Bill Clinton, BTW.)

Lee Harvey Oswald- Do I need to mention his date and offense? He wanted to kill President Kennedy for humiliating his “heroes”, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, in the Cuban Missile Crisis a year earlier.

Sirhan B. Sirhan- shot Senator Robert F. Kennedy to death shortly after midnight, 5 June 1968 in a hotel kitchen in L.A. Reason- Bobby was pro-Israel, Sirhan was fanatically anti-Israel, and wanted “payback” for what he saw as the U.S. and Israel’s humiliation of the Arab states a year earlier, in the Six Day War. (He’d have been better advised to reserve his ire for the Arab leaders, as they managed to lose with a ten-to-one advantage in nearly everything due to a combination of Israeli tactical brilliance and their own sheer dunderheadedness.)

Arthur Bremer- Shot Alabama Gov, George Wallace at a campaign rally in Laurel, Maryland on 15 May 1972, leaving Wallace a paraplegic for the rest of his life. Reason- Bremer considered Wallace a dangerous, racist, right-wing fanatic.

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, 5 Sept 1975, Sacramento, CA, and Sara Jane Moore, 22 Sept 1975, San Francisco, CA- Both attempted to murder President Gerald R. Ford, Fromme at the behest of her “guru”, Charles Manson, and Moore due to her obsession with the Symbionese Liberation Army and Patty Hearst. (Moore actually worked for Hearst’s father at a charitable organization he started in response to one of the SLA’s demands in return for his daughter’s release.)

John Warnock Hinkley, 30 March 1981- Attempted to murder President Ronald Reagan both to impress Jodie Foster (well, that’s what he said), and because he considered Reagan “dangerous” due to his views on the Soviet Union.

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point. As a general rule, it is those who brandish the “bloody shirt of revolution” who have no compunction about trying to kill anybody they define as “reactionary”, “capitalist”, “anti-socialist”, or simply “bourgeois”. And in their minds, they have every right to do so. After all, they’re doing it For The People. (Never mind if The People disagreed with them enough to elect their target to the highest office in the land.)

If Senator Obama were to be elected President, I would have serious disagreements with him, as I consider him too entranced by semi-socialistic economics at home and utterly clueless about foreign policy abroad- much like Jimmy Carter, or for that matter Neville Chamberlain, once were (and Carter still is- you might notice, no one’s ever tried to “do away” with him). But I assure you he would be in no danger from me. Well, except maybe the “danger” of my giving him an online raspberry every time he put his foot in it, which I expect he would do frequently.

However, he could very well be in danger from the more extreme elements of his own “base” who might decide that he wasn’t far enough “left” to suit them.

And that particular “they” might conclude that he’d look good as a martyr to their “Cause”.

Not that I expect that Ms. Lessing would ever believe that her fellow “enlightened ones” would do anything like that.

Would they?

cheers

eon

eon on February 9, 2008 at 5:58 PM

allrsn on February 9, 2008 at 6:01 PM

Sorry to tell you this, but I type with the middle finger of my left hand, operate the Shift key with the middle finger of my right, and have to look at the keyboard while I’m banging away on it. (I flunked Typing in high school.)

cheers

eon

eon on February 9, 2008 at 6:07 PM

P.S., as for Stephen King, he wrote a novel titled “The Langoliers“, about extradimensional creatures that “eat time”.

If you’re looking for a modern-day writer who is obsessed with “they”, or “them”, or whoever, if “they” are X-Files type human baddies, you need to look up Dean Koontz. If you’re more interested in non-terrestrial “them(s)”, I’d suggest Whitley Streiber. (Warning; he sometimes has difficulty telling where fiction ends and reality begins, as in The Coming Global Superstorm, co-written with Art Bell.)

Have to dash. Good-night, all.

cheers

eon

eon on February 9, 2008 at 6:17 PM

Average time for me typing a post of that length is about 10 min, not including time spent looking up references. (Now that really eats into the clock!)

We gone, bu-bye! :-)

cheers

eon

eon on February 9, 2008 at 6:21 PM