It’s hard to be shocked anymore with it comes to the hyperbolic rhetoric we often hear from the right in Texas. But when elected officials — people in places of responsibility — employ that kind of heated, extremist rhetoric, you really worry about what’s coming.
That happened yesterday when former state Rep. Charles Perry was sworn in as the new state senator from West Texas. Perry’s victory in a special election for that seat last month sent waves of celebration through the ranks of Tea Partyers and religious-righters in Texas. He replaces longtime state Sen. Robert Duncan, who was appointed as chancellor of the Texas Tech University System.
At his swearing in Tuesday in Lubbock, Perry actually equated the American government today with Nazi Germany and its murderous crimes. From the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal:
God has a place in the government, Perry explained in his inaugural speech as he vividly recalled a recent trip to a former concentration camp in Berlin.
“There were 10,000 people that were paraded into a medical office under the guise of a physical. As they stood with their back against the wall, they were executed with a bullet through the throat. Before they left, 10,000 people met their fate that way,” Perry said.
“Is it not the same than when our government continues to perpetuate laws that lead citizens away from God? The only difference is that the fraud of the Germans was more immediate and whereas the fraud of today’s government will not be exposed until the final days and will have eternal-lasting effects.”
Later on in the story:
His biggest challenge will be the “spiritual battle for the spirit of this nation and the soul of its people,” he said.
When he gets to the capital, abortion and same-sex marriage will be at the forefront of discussion, Perry said.
And then this:
A Japanese Imperial commander said he’d awakened a “sleeping giant” after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, according to Perry. Today, the new state senator wonders where that giant is.
“Has the giant died?” Perry asked after being sworn in. “Where is that giant of a nation that was founded on the eternal and never-changing values of a loving God and the desire to share that? I don’t recognize it on so many levels today.”
Elections matter. And it appears that fewer than 23,000 voters out of a population of about 800,000 people in Perry’s district have decided to send to Austin an ideologue who sees himself as on a mission to save America for God. That he also sees his own government as like the bloodthirsty criminals who ruled Nazi Germany and murdered millions of people should be warning enough that Texas is speeding down a very dangerous road.
I am somewhat familiar with the Nazi execution method Perry is talking about, but I have to wonder about his 10,000 number. I have seen a picture of this place. It looks like a normal 1940s doctor’s examining room in a local, small town clinic. Against one wall is board and a very short platform to stand on, about like a weighing scale at your own doctor’s office. Indeed the platform might be a weighing scale. The vertical board nailed to the will has neat little graduations marked on it to measure a person’s height—a very normal thing to do at a doctor’s office. The only thing that is not obvious is a small hole in the board at about head/neck height that extends through the wall into another room next door. The doctor would be examining a guy and say:
“Okay. Heart and lungs sound good. Now, I need you to step over hear and stand on this little platform so we can measure your height and weight.”
The guy would do as told—just normal doctor’s office stuff. When he was properly positioned to get his height measured on the graduated board, a man in the next room would put his pistol up to the small hole in the wall and fire, killing the guy on the other side of the wall (the one getting his height measured). Of course, the patient never knew what hit him or from whence it came.
I can see this being used occasionally to dispose of a particularly troublesome person. However, you have to remember that blood splatter and bleeding would have caused a God-awful mess on the wall, vertical measuring board, floor, and other locations in that otherwise neat and very inviting little medical examination room—and that with just one execution. Doing 10,000 people in that room and making it equally inviting for the next “patient” would have required one of the biggest overall clean up, paint up, fix up jobs in human history.
Comparison of this sort of thing to the current operation of the American government
created by Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Washington, etc. is outlandish and way off the deep end. If he seriously thinks something this outrageous, I would be inclined to send over an ambulance with little men dressed in white uniforms.
An exceptionally bizarre thing about Perry’s first statement above is that the guys “parading” people into that slaughterhous in Berlin were likely wearing belt buckles with “GOTT MIT UNS” on them.
I voted against that dip. I should have also opened my mouth before the election…..
I never took a German course, but my best guess is that it says:
“God is with Us”
How close did I get?
You nailed it, Charles.