Boondocksaint27
Active Member
Granted. And I'm not expecting everything to be a compromise. It would just be refreshing if someone could reach across the aisle once in a while.
Congresswoman shot.
- Thread starter Beantown
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Granted. And I'm not expecting everything to be a compromise. It would just be refreshing if someone could reach across the aisle once in a while.
Stickler
Well-Known Member
Hey. Whoa. Slow your roll, my friend. Kanye is not equally as insufferable: have you heard his latest record? Kanye is sufferable. Plus, George Bush, I mean. What can you say? Katrina was not handled well.
maybe it's because horse trading is a lost art
I don't like the rhetoric of vehemence no matter which side is spouting off, but I don't blame it for this incident. But I do think that such overheated dialog and graphic images can create a climate that feeds the ideas of the less rational. I think a group like those who participate in the activities of the Westboro Baptist Church feed off the vehement rhetoric and images of violence and use it as justification for their actions.
I also don't think that "lawlessness" is necessarily measured just in reported acts of violence that make national headlines.
And Pearl, when you mention "overheated anti-war speech" that was lauded as patriotic, you're referring to the current action in Iraq and Afghanistan, not the Viet Nam war, right? My first thought was back to the days of the SDS - and that certainly was not lauded as patriotic by anyone other than those on the fringes.
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
Hey now, I wasn't talking about his music, so you can step down off.
Do tell about his latest record, my friend.
also, what's interesting when you compare the SDS and the Black Panthers and their own rhetoric of violence from the 60's & 70's, and the violent actions they initiated across the country, and you look at those who were involved in those movements and where they ended up, many of them eventually found their way into the mainstream and worked in more "acceptable" ways to reform society (ie, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seal, Bernadette Dohrn, Bill Ayers etc) - - yet somehow I can't see any of the current crop of "radicals" ever becoming willing to "work within the system"
But who knows.
But who knows.
Boondocksaint27
Active Member
I hear you on that. I've been listening to "All of the Lights" a lot recently.
Well Pearl, I think you're being more reasonable than a lot of people.
Well you already conceded the only thing that was designed to show: that it's not some totally random assault. So I don't know what else you expected from me here.
Ok. Here's where you're going to have to separate me out from the arguments other people are making. What I am concerned with this the simple fact that when the assassination attempt occurred that people were not totally stunned. When I spoke with a lot of AZ folk the overwhelming impression is that something like this was inevitable in the area.
Now, to make this perfectly and undeniably clear, this is an entirely separate issue from the exact extent to which Loughner actually fulfilled the exact nature of the expectations of political violence that exists or existed. In the moment of the shooting what you "saw" was the explication of an expectation about what was presently possible or even expected as sort of an asymmetrical political response. That some level of violence is actually and truly expected says more to me about where we are than any particular factor about the actual shooting itself. That expectation creates a legitimate climate of fear and that is corrosive to healthy democracy.
To that extent, part of the reason I'm totally unmoved by arguments relating to individuals saying "kill Bush" on a sign or whatever is because I simply do not recall feeling as if political violence was inevitable in 04-07 when the anti-Bush stuff was at its peak. In that sense I do not think the threats are same thing only because there is a total credibility difference in the sense about what feels both possible and inevitable.
Let's put it this way: if someone shot Obama tomorrow would that really feel unthinkable to you?
I'd be shocked, but less so than when Stockton hit the shot in 97.
So no Pearl, I'm not saying the Republican party doesn't get to speak. That brush simply does not apply. I think the root cause here is that there is a certain branch of this country that believes truly crazy things; for whom any liberal government is illegitimate regardless of the method by which it came to power. What is unfortunate is that I think one party has decided to actively court and, in some instances, pander to that crowd for political gain. At some point in time they've become a virus that infected to the party to the point that Presidential candidates have to actively pander to them. The dangerous part is to the extent that virus threatens to undo one of the social compacts of the way we relate to one another politically: that people who win the election legitimately hold the office they obtain through the electoral process.
Thus, I think all I would say is that the rhetoric we should calm is not "the NAACP can't speak" style stuff it is simply that it's time to recognize that it's irresponsible to behave as if the other party can never hold power legitimately. Frankly, if one person had come out and said that rather than vociferously deny that there were any lessons to be learned I would have been really impressed because that would have been leadership.
I don't think you actually expect answers to all these questions given that you put them all in a string. To get to the general themes, I don't have hard access to rates of threats. What I will say is that the "threats are way up" claim is not new or fabricated in response to this incident specifically.
For example here's a piece from March of 2010: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/us/politics/26threat.html
The story does answer some of your questions, for example indicating that security had been stepped up for some members of Congress and that some specific actions had been taken such as the attempt to cut a Congressperson's gas line at their home.
Another story indicates that Obama was facing so many death threats in 2009 that it was taxing the resources of the Secret Service, certainly implying a comparative increase: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...reats-a-day-stretching-US-Secret-Service.html
And even when Obama was still candidate Obama, the Secret Service specifically linked the volume of threats against him as coinciding with specific statements by Palin regarding his "palling around with terrorists." I don't think it's a coincidence that those are the kind of statements that attack the legitimacy of him as a validly elected leader of the country: a strain of thought that has been omnipresent and most literally expressed through the Birthers.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...e-for-death-threats-against-Barack-Obama.html
We literally live in a world where a Democratic Congresswoman got shot in the head and a sizable segment of the media and the country has decided Sarah Palin and the Tea Party are the victims. Excuse me if I withhold my outrage at the liberal media and the predictable responses of the left.
BTW: The reason my posts on this subject are somewhat long and squishy is because my thoughts on the subject are still evolving and not fully crystalized.
At this point I feel like I'm eating around the edge of what I'm trying to say but I feel like the present discussion of "civility" is something of a red herring. It's much more nuanced than that. Just like the reality of Loughner's inputs/response is a lot more complicated than the false binary of totally crazy or completely politically motivated.
In any event, please be aware that this is not a knee jerk response. What I'm writing is sincerely meant and expressed as best I can given the limitations of my capacity for the use of written language and where I presently am in the thought process on the event.
At this point I feel like I'm eating around the edge of what I'm trying to say but I feel like the present discussion of "civility" is something of a red herring. It's much more nuanced than that. Just like the reality of Loughner's inputs/response is a lot more complicated than the false binary of totally crazy or completely politically motivated.
In any event, please be aware that this is not a knee jerk response. What I'm writing is sincerely meant and expressed as best I can given the limitations of my capacity for the use of written language and where I presently am in the thought process on the event.
i haven't made an effort to pick through loughner's videos or writing or anything else but is there anyone who doesn't feel helpless or frustrated over the legal avenues we have to effect change in this country? i don't see any reasonable path to true universal health care, for instance, no matter who i vote for or what i buy. and remember obama extending the bush tax cuts and + some? i do think there is something fundamentally broken with our political system, given that nobody seems to feel they are being represented, or that they even have avenues to be represented by. i fully detest people like glenn beck and sarah palin who dishonestly exploit this helplessness for personal gain by shaping a narrative that possibly leads to an outcome like this. but in an abstract way that ends with me landing far away from any tea party member, i understand the rage. that someone feels this is an appropriate or helpful expression of that rage, though, should ally us all against whatever system of manipulation or ignorance that created his disordered thinking.
the obstacles are too high, though, and the thinking is too taxing. even this morning on the radio, i heard orrin hatch pleading for americans to be more reasonable, before spewing a bunch of ******** about how obama's health care reform is poison for the economy, and how the conservatives in congress desperately wanted to compromise but those mean liberals wouldn't listen and well, here we are, look at the result. there was literally a single breath between the two thoughts. he did his political duty by speaking out against the shooting, then went right back to selling the ignorance that led to it in the first place. as long as there's no convenient way for americans to defend themselves against this type of rhetoric, i don't hold much hope that things will get better. nobody's learned a ****ing thing from this.
also lol @ "the left going orbital". in terms of politicians, the american left is comprised of bernie sanders and maybe dennis kucinich. richard nixon's proposed health care reform was infinitely more "progressive" or "liberal" than the wet noodle bandaid passed by obama and a congress full of democrats. i don't think people realize how our far our country has drifted to the right outside of maybe a few social issues. in fact double lol at the left going orbital because what are americans who hold true progressive values going to do? furiously type out comments of indignation on their favorite feminist blog? our society has done a pretty good job of marginalizing us, thanks.
the obstacles are too high, though, and the thinking is too taxing. even this morning on the radio, i heard orrin hatch pleading for americans to be more reasonable, before spewing a bunch of ******** about how obama's health care reform is poison for the economy, and how the conservatives in congress desperately wanted to compromise but those mean liberals wouldn't listen and well, here we are, look at the result. there was literally a single breath between the two thoughts. he did his political duty by speaking out against the shooting, then went right back to selling the ignorance that led to it in the first place. as long as there's no convenient way for americans to defend themselves against this type of rhetoric, i don't hold much hope that things will get better. nobody's learned a ****ing thing from this.
also lol @ "the left going orbital". in terms of politicians, the american left is comprised of bernie sanders and maybe dennis kucinich. richard nixon's proposed health care reform was infinitely more "progressive" or "liberal" than the wet noodle bandaid passed by obama and a congress full of democrats. i don't think people realize how our far our country has drifted to the right outside of maybe a few social issues. in fact double lol at the left going orbital because what are americans who hold true progressive values going to do? furiously type out comments of indignation on their favorite feminist blog? our society has done a pretty good job of marginalizing us, thanks.
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also here's a fun and uplifting read that's probably already been posted in this thread: https://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and-freedom/insurrection-timeline
My knee jerk reaction was to call you a flip flopper but upon more reasoned thought I can appreciate your position. I don't envy those that are directly affected by this. It's easy to throw out an opinion when you are not directly involved but once sucked into the mess on a personal level, positions change drastically regardless of your political philosophy. Sadly, the only people that will gain a better understanding are those that are directly involved with such tragedies. One can only wonder how Olberman, Limbaugh, Madow and Hannity would react if they were involved personally in such a tragedy. If any of the above "stayed the course" they would be miserable examples of the human race as far as I'm concerned.
That said, I can understand Dupnik's position but he should shut up and do his job. He's not paid for his opinion. He's paid to sort out the facts and uphold the law. You take on certain jobs and you limit your personal input. Sadly, he's failed in this regard.
I was interested in your professional perspective and may have further inquired into your answer but I was not planning on challenging it or trashing you. I hope this clears this up. Thanks.