Remember Kathleen O’Brien Wilhelm? She’s the Deer Sign Lady. I try to check in on her from time to time to see what she’s ranting about. It is always a real eye-opener. Most of us living in the real world are not aware of much that is going on in Right Wing Nutjob World. But all you have to do is read a Wilhelm column and you’ll learn what is Big News in that alternate reality.

Voter Fraud

On 13 March, Kathleen O’Brien Wilhelm offered us, America’s Vote. She starts by proposing the reasonable, but simple minded idea of making election days national holidays. But she’s against allowing multiple days to vote. Why? “We appear to have no problem with jobs, plans and all that is life when it comes to December 25.” Or rather: she has no reason. She just thinks it is wrong to give people “four to fifty days” to vote. But that’s okay, because she thinks that making elections a national holiday will solve all our problems, because, you know, no one works on national holidays.

But extended voting days (or lack thereof) is not really what her article is about. There have been a few cases of people accidentally voting twice by voting absentee and in person. In general, these were just mistakes made by confused people. But there is one case where a woman may have done it on purpose. Of course, the reason we’re hearing about these things is that this is a form of voter fraud that is always caught. In other words: it isn’t a problem. But this stuff is getting a huge amount of attention on right wing websites and Fox News. And Kathleen O’Brien Wilhelm, who seems to only get her news from Fox, certainly got this story from them.

Grand Statements, No Facts

As usual with her articles, she makes grand statements that are not only undocumented, they are untrue. Consider:

There is absolutely no evidence that voter fraud is getting worse—in fact, it looks like just the opposite. The Constitution did not resolve the injustice of white-male-only voting; the Constitution had to be amended to resolve this injustice—and in the case of African Americans, the Constitutional change did not actually allow them to vote in many places for a century. But note the underlying argument here: if one person votes who shouldn’t, then the entire system has been tarnished. When a rightful voter is denied, that doesn’t tarnish the system at all.

The more I read Wilhelm, the more I think she is just a bigot. Here she is again (1) using right wing sources without quoting them; (2) stating things as fact that are not true; and (3) showing intense fear for “the other”:

Scary black people: check! Scary Latinos: check! College kids: check! Nuns?! Oh, bqhatevwr! (Note: if you search for “nuns voter fraud” you will, of course, find the right wing blogosphere buzzing about a case!)

Gay Rights

On 17 March, Kathleen O’Brien Wilhelm again delighted us with, Government, Get Out of America’s Way! I thought it was going to be more Tea Party pseudo-free market babbling. How wrong I was! I think. It actually isn’t at all clear what she is talking about. But I’ll give you my best guess. If I’m right, it is by far the most stunning piece of writing we have seen from Avon Patch Savant.

How will we ever trust Rob Portman again? He has voted consistently against gay rights and now he says he’s for marriage equality. The government should just stay out of the way of the people “to be as good as he or she works and aspires to be.” Allowing same sex marriage is the government getting in the way by (!) changing the way that the government has traditionally gotten in the way.

To sum up:

Can’t you just feel the Tea Party passion: something is wrong and although Wilhelm doesn’t know what it is, she feels very strongly that something ought to be done about it. This is prima facie evidence of why the Tea Party has been such a useful tool for the rich. Situation: they are angry about the rich being bailed out with TARP. Resolution: they push the government to lower the taxes of the rich.

Gun Rights

On 21 March, Kathleen O’Brien Wilhelm applied her usual white and black moral reasoning to an issue that gets far too much serious and careful discussion, Americas 2nd Amendment Must Never Be Compromised—Ever! (That’s right: a grammar error in the headline.) This was especially fun because gun rights is an issue that I have very complex thoughts about. And those thoughts do not fit into any simple box: I side with conservatives on some things and I’m far more extreme than liberals on other things. Avon Patch Savant, of course, makes everything very simple:

1. Something must be done to stop bad guys from harming good people.
2. Lucky we have police who are always right.
3. Sometimes police are not around to kill the bad guys.
4. We must have guns so we can kill the bad guys.

She again goes back to her deer sign point: “‘No gun’ signage is on most schools, malls, banks. Criminals do not seem to read as guns continue to be part of crime.” Now, I understand that as with the deer sign article, she is trying to be cute. But her entire argument is that “bad guys” have guns; all will be well if “good people” are armed so that they can kill the “bad guys.” This goes right long with what seems to be Kathleen O’Brien Wilhelm’s guiding philosophy of life: everything is simple. She does not allow that maybe people can’t be neatly categorized as good and bad. Or that a “good guy” with a gun might get mad over something small and end up killing another “good guy.”

Kathleen O’Brien Wilhelm Is Typical of the Tea Party

All of her writing reminds me of a 2011 paper from the American Sociological Association that looked at the beliefs of those in the Tea Party movement. The researchers found that Tea Partiers shared four cultural and political dispositions:

Wilhelm demostrates three of these tendencies in the articles here. She doesn’t exhibit libertarianism. But I question just how seriously the Tea Partiers are about libertarianism generally—especially given the way the study defines it. They may well associate these kinds of limits with schools and might answer very differently if a Republican were in the White House. Regardless, Kathleen O’Brien Wilhelm comes off like a frightened child who wants a grown-up to protect her. And what frightens her: just the modern world with all those people coming into it. Of course, the problem is not that Wilhelm is the way she is; it is that there are tens of millions of people just like her. The more I read her, the less I find her amusing. Now she makes me despair for our society.