Monday, January 10, 2011

This time, it's very different

.
This time, the regressive, belligerent right will be held accountable at every turn.
Now, self-righteous, hate-filled conservatives will be refused participation in our national affairs.
And Sarah Palin will never be absolved of the plain fact of her violent, gun-oriented values and mindset.







It Doesn’t Matter Why He Did It
By George Packer, The New Yorker, January 9, 2011

... the tragedy wouldn't change this basic fact: for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of “soft on defense,” one routinely hears the words “treason” and “traitor.” The President isn't a big-government liberal—he's a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. He's also, according to a minority of Republicans, including elected officials, an impostor. Even the reading of the Constitution on the first day of the 112th Congress was conceived as an assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Administration and Congress

This relentlessly hostile rhetoric has become standard issue on the right. (On the left it appears in anonymous comment threads, not congressional speeches and national T.V. programs.) And it has gone almost entirely uncriticized by Republican leaders. Partisan media encourages it, while the mainstream media finds it titillating and airs it, often without comment, so that the gradual effect is to desensitize even people to whom the rhetoric is repellent. We’ve all grown so used to it over the past couple of years that it took the shock of an assassination attempt to show us the ugliness to which our politics has sunk.

... Whatever drove Jared Lee Loughner, America's political frequencies are full of violent static.







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5 comments:

  1. I am depressed (but not surprised) by the attempts of the racko right to exculpate themselves. George Packer's article says it all.

    The rhetoric reminds me -- alas! -- of Weimar Germany before the boil burst and produced Nazism. If you constantly declare that the solution is violence and that your enemies are traitors, you must expect that the less-than-intelligent out there believe you, and act accordingly.

    A very sorry day for America, and for those of us non-Americans who have long admired her.

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  2. I wish I could say things will now be different...but listening to the TPs and GOPs and their ilk scream that the kid who shot Rep. Giffords was really a liberal makes me too sick at heart to believe that will be.

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  3. People are saying all kinds of things about this mess. As typical with human kind we blame this and we blame that. from the beginning of mankind's existence we've always sought to seek blame. Adam said the woman made him do it and the woman blamed the serpent. For whatever it is this happened and it happened in Arizona. It is just too bad that the Govenor and McCain weren't there too. Too late to take back what I just said about McCain and what's her face. It is what it is. Whatever anyone is calling it I am saying that it probably was just desserts. Ever hear of karma? With all the bull that is being tossed in Arizona something terrible had to happen. Karma is a mysterious thing so I wouldn't be surprised if even worse things continue for Arizona. BTW whatever happened about all the beheadings happening in the Arizona deserts because of immigrants crossing over the borders illegally?

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  4. The dumbing down of mainstream America has turned into free fall. When (and why) did our nation's social fabric start tearing asunder? Vietnam?

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