What happens when political opponents decide to ignore legitimate policy debates to try and rip apart their opponent’s good character? Politics and policy do have the same root after all, so shouldn’t both our major party candidates be discussing their proposed solutions instead of having one of them start what most consider just a water balloon fight of ads featuring young blondes and Charlton Heston as Moses?
But what happens when that water balloon fight escalates?
What happens when the one side constantly smears the other as unpatriotic, treacherous and disloyal simply because they disagree with that side’s ideas, no matter how valid they may be…
when they constantly promote six degrees of separation to anyone even remotely considered “bad” (no matter how thin the connection) even though the candidate was never involved in any wrongdoing and has routinely repudiated those others’ despicable acts…
when lie after lie after lie is promulgated to falsely insinuate a candidate either sympathizes with terrorists or is one himself…
when the elitist billionaires of one political side use their money not to do charitable good for society but to tear down any with whom they disagree as if such acidic poison were what our Founding Fathers had always hoped for when fighting a war to launch our independent democracy…
when the most vile of heretical and blasphemous rhetoric is used to lie about a candidate and portray him as not just evil, but perhaps even the Anti-Christ and harbinger of the End Times…
…What happens when one side of the political spectrum, through fetid ranting over the course of a great many years, foments rage and anger and promotes and even glorifies violence in order to ‘pump up their base of voters’?
Idiots try to assassinate a presidential candidate, that’s what happens.
It doesn’t matter if they are alleged white supremacists or hopped up on meth. Something clearly pushed these people over the edge to think murder was somehow acceptable. Rational and sane folks do not simply load up a high-powered rifle and work on an assassination plot; something or someone prods them toward that disastrous destination.
And instead of taking a deep breath to consider whether or not their non-stop flow of bile might be contributing to such a heinous plot conservative partisans end up mocking it as if Cartman-clones dressed in inappropriate Halloween costumes and acting like everyone must respect their authoritayh had taken over some beyond-the-pale episode of South Park … only it was real life … and involved real rifles … and a real candidate who is not just a leader and an elected official but also a father, husband, and friend.
May all our nation’s candidates and their families, no matter the party and no matter the office, be safe throughout this and every other campaign season.
–
Update: Libertarian Mark Draughn misinterprets what I wrote above to incorrectly suggest that I’m somehow equating right-wing pundits and these four white supremacist thugs… My response is posted at his Windypundit blog but the bottom line is no, what I’ve written does not imply that I’m blaming the right-wing for this domestic terrorist cell in Colorado.
Rather, as I conclude at Mr. Draughn’s blog, “Right-wing pundits didn’t make those 4 idiots do what they did. They simply created an atmosphere where it’s not too far a leap for those 4 to think it’s somehow ‘rational’ to do so in order to take care of ‘a problem’.”
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
August 27, 2008 at 9:34 am
mike
Yeah, but you are still assigning some guilt. By creating the atmosphere they “enabled” this to happen. I actually think you’ve got the cart before the horse. I think the fact that there is still so much hatred out there toward blacks. The fact that there is still very real fear over terrorism and islamic jihad. The fact that Obama IS named Barack Hussein Obama. All this creates a narrative that politician can exploit … but then so can evil bastards like the meth-heads plotting to go after Obama.
August 27, 2008 at 9:45 am
Illinois Reason blames “The Right” for assasination plot - A Chicago Blog
[...] don’t mean to gang up on Illinois Reason, but I just can’t swallow this argument: …What happens when one side of the political spectrum, through fetid ranting over the course of [...]
August 27, 2008 at 11:02 am
robnesvacil
Man alive, I must’ve hit a nerve or something… and why don’t folks like to click links? I’ve supplied plenty of evidence for the basis of my claims.
Mike, you’re attempting to play chicken and egg when “which came first” really doesn’t matter. The fact that it is constant and feeds on itself to grow does.
And clearly it’s not just one politician exploiting and even furthering those threads you identify, it’s also a very large contingent of that political ideology’s pundits, it’s self-declared spokespeople.
Yes, obviously these things are exploited (rather than being tamped down) in the hopes of “pumping up the base” and “activating donors, volunteers and voters” … but when you play with flint and fuel you’ve got to expect there may be other consequences.
But whether the atmosphere generated by all the hate-speech and exploitative rhetoric pushes the loathing further (toward action) or simply allows it to grow deeper (again, toward action) by echoing it the result has consistently the same — violence, attempted violence, plotted violence, etc.
And this isn’t the first time I (and others) have pointed this out which is why I wrote the above. It’s just one more in a continuing line of examples of domestic terrorism coming from the conservative side and usually, though not always, against the liberal side (even if in all likelihood they may never have been able to carry out their plot, they were still getting ready for something).
At some point, all these various individual examples become data which become evidence of a clear trend.
Those anecdotes in very recent years include (among many others):
- ex-con G. Gordon Liddy suggesting people shoot ATF Agents in the head
- conservative ne’er-do-wells Tim McVeigh, etc. creating a domestic terror cell and committing the heinous Oklahoma City bombing; and much has been written about where McVeigh’s motivations came from and where his “inspiration” was derived from
- snipers shooting at abortion clinics and other conservatives ransacking clinic offices, etc.
- a conservative activist loading up his car with weaponry and plotting out site lines on a map in advance of an immigrants’ rights march in Washington
- and even, fairly recently, followers of Rev. Jerry Falwell making homemade pipe bombs and bringing them to his funeral to fend off other conservatives who are so virulenty anti-gay that they protest military funerals
and, most recently:
- conservative pundit Jerome Corsi (of Swiftboat fame) writing an anti-Obama book jam-packed with easily debunked lies, innuendo and rumor-mongering which feeds this campaign cycle’s character assassination desires… and then going on a known racist’s national radio program to promote that same book
- and, now this week, the discovered assassination plot (feable and ill-prepared as it was)
You can try to deny there’s a connection between the vehement rhetoric coming from the hard-liners among conservativedom and the violence plotted by conservatives… but 1+1 still equals 2.
(None of this is to say that the “liberal” side doesn’t also dip into that well of hyperbolic, overheated talk. PETA for one has spawned its share of extremists as well.)
August 28, 2008 at 10:29 am
Ellen Beth Gill
I totally support your post and comments and I’ve said similar before when Mark Kirk goes around spreading race hatred in our district to win votes on the cheap. They know exactly what they are doing when they use extreme language to tear down their opponents and are smart enough to understand that, in many cases, they are talking to people who are very unbalanced. We should not be faulted for pointing it out.
The object is to make it sort of a common knowledge thing that a black man should not run for president because it would be too dangerous for him or that a liberal blogger should not research the voting record of her lying congressman and write articles about it because they know where she lives (yes, I’ve received mail making that comment).
This is nothing new. It’s what created and maintained the Jim Crow system preventing newly enfranchised ex-slaves from voting through fear. The only difference is that these guys get to use television to do it and claim innocence wearing nice clothes, coifed hair and shining made up faces to give a hint of normalcy to what they are doing.
August 28, 2008 at 10:59 am
robnesvacil
They know where ya live? Oh heck, I’ve had goofballs call my office.
It’s like it’s a fetish for them.
August 28, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Ellen Beth Gill
“It’s like it’s a fetish for them.”
Exactly, Kirk’s assigned supporters to my blog and they spend more time on it than I do.