Whenever I read shit like this (and I suggest you read it), I become very, very worried about this country. If one reads the accounts of the political discourse prior to the Civil War, its filled with Senators fighting each other, and prior to the War itself, people were literally killing each other in Kansas. And to be honest, I see the country going this way again.
For a variety of reasons, political discourse in this country stopped being about which policy is the best to follow, but rather about which reality to live in. For more than a few right-wingers, reality is that Obama was born in Kenya, that he's a Socialist, that he wants to kill old people and children, that global warming does not exist, and Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11 and had weapons of mass destruction. None of these things are true, but are taken as gospel by too many people.
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are, of course, somewhat responsible. Glenn Beck, in particular, has done a lot to stoke the fires of hatred against Obama. And Limbaugh calling Obama a Nazi is not helping either. But let's face it, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are opportunists - if they didn't chase the lunatic fringe, someone else would. That's capitalism. As a moral matter, if anyone gets hurt, because of the hatred these douche nozzles spew, I hope they burn in hell.
Before someone says something about Move-On, and the Hitler ad, allow me to point out that the ad was submitted to Move-On, and they ultimately scrubbed the ad from their site. Oh, and Bush did invade a country for the purpose of spreading his ideology across the world (and was torturing people, and spied on Americans. . .but that's another post). There is a big, big difference between Rush Limbaugh and some random guy. Don't get me wrong, the left has its loonies (goddamn hippies), but our nutjobs don't have institutional support.
So, how do we walk back from this precipice? From this Democrat's perspective, walking back can't mean giving up the store. No, Democrats need to fight harder for what they believe in. And Republicans shouldn't stop fighting for what they believe in either. But we have to start reading from the same page.
This is the hard thing for me to wrap my arms around...the whole idea that the discourse that is going on now is any different than what has been going on the last 8 years.
ReplyDeleteThe attacks against Bush went way beyond politics...most of them, especially at the end, were personal. Don't get me started on the trainwreck that is Sarah Palin and the venom that was spewed upon her and her family. Disgusting.
Oh, and there are more democrats (37% according to the WSJ) that believe that Bush knew about September 11 before it happened than there are Republicans (28% according to some random website) that think Obama was not born in the US.
Actually, the poll that you cite is different than you think - 37% of Dems believed that Bush had knowledge that Al Qaeda was going to try something, which he did, just not all the evidence.
ReplyDeleteThat said, nobody even thought about bringing a gun to a Bush event. Hell, people were arrested for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts at Bush events. Moreover, any attacks come at the end of Bush's term, NOT AT THE BEGINNING.