January, 2011 archive

A compilation of hate-full-ness.

If this were an episode of Criminal Minds, these would be portrayed as the ravings of–oh, never mind. The words speak for their speakers.

Via TPM, where you can find the attributions for the quotations that Congressman Dingell was kind enough not to attribute to those who said them.

The rightwing is quite happy to sow the wind with its rhetoric of violence, hate, and paranoia. But as for reaping the whirlwind?

Not so much.

Facing South* looks at history for indications whether vile and violence-laden rhetoric can lead to political violence. Here’s the excerpt; read the entire post for context and supporting arguments:

As of last year, the FBI was still investigating over 100 unsolved murders that happened during the Southern civil rights struggle. That doesn’t include the dozens of killings that have been successfully prosecuted, including the shooting of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis in 1968, whose life will be memorialized this coming weekend.

Many civil rights activists, scholars and reporters maintain there was a direct line between this blood-stained chapter in U.S. history and the violent rhetoric of politicians like George Wallace, the Alabama governor and presidential hopeful..

Indeed, a veteran of the civil rights years, Congressman James Clyburn, speaks from personal experience (follow the link to hear the full exchange):

When I see and hear things today that are reminiscent of that period of time, I am very, very concerned about it, because I know what it led to back then, and I know what it can lead to again.

Again, the issue is not Sarah Palin’s bellicose graphics (though it appears that she may reap that particular whirlwind), it is the right’s paranoid tactic of painting other patriotic Americans as the enemy, as unpatriotic and traitorous; it is their fantasizing about and making light of murder and death; it is their demonizing those who have different opinions; it is their glorifying bloodshed; all of which are as common among the loudest voices of the right as it is rare** on the left.

Joanna Weiss addresses this well in the Boston Globe:

But if people are going to take this opportunity to soul-search, they might as well talk about the real problem with today’s political discourse: not the language of violence, but the language of insurrection. The notion, perpetrated by certain talk-show hosts, that we’re teetering on the edge of a coup. That our president wasn’t born in America. That an incremental change in the way health care is delivered — the wisdom of which is open to legitimate debate — is a plot to deprive Americans of their freedom.

“To prepare soldiers to go to war, you’ve got to dehumanize the enemy, because that’s the only way to kill people,’’ notes Leonard Steinhorn, a communications professor at American University. “What we’re in the process of is either dehumanizing or de-Americanizing one’s opponents.’’

Rhetoric that cheapens life becomes a rationalization for behavior that cheapens life, even for the irrational.

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*I mentioned the Facing South link in a comment yesterday. I was planning to post about it, but had to let the treatment simmer in my brain pan.

**I said, “rare,” not absent; I don’t want to hear any “I saw something nasty on a car with an Obama bumper sticker” whining.

Some Guy with a Website:

Click To Enlarge

A map, via Hanlon.

In response to the shootings in Tucson, persons (including me, not that anyone other than my three or four regular reader will notice) have called out the rightwing’s habit of demonizing and dehumanizing those with whom they disagree.

The right has responded with the classic which we all remember from our teen-aged years,

But everybody does it.

As your mother pointed out when you tried that, “No, everybody is not doing it” and “Even if they were, that doesn’t make it right.” (I’ll leave out the part about, “If everybody was driving cars off a cliff, . . . .”)

Stephen Budiansky considers the “have cake, eat it too” elements of the rightwing’s rationalizations. A nugget:

For as long as I can remember, I have heard conservatives blaming everything that is wrong in the universe, from violent crime to declining test scores to teen pregnancy to rude children to declining patriotism to probably athlete’s foot . . . upon Dr. Spock, Hollywood liberals, the abolition of prayer in school, Bill Clinton, the “liberal 1960s,” the teaching of evolution — in other words, upon symbols, rhetoric, cultural norms, and the values expressed by political and media leaders. Yet from the moment when someone gets a gun in their hands, apparently, society ceases to have any influence whatsoever on the outcome and individual responsibility takes hold 100%. Something is driving the tripling of death threats against congressmen (and the concomitant rise in threats against Federal judges and other villains of the right, from Forest Service rangers to climate scientists) and it isn’t the sunspot cycle.

Dick Polman considers:

Could these shootings have happened “anywhere,” as the apologists insist? In theory, yeah. But they didn’t occur anywhere. They happened in a swing district, in a turbulent, gun-loving state, to a moderate Democrat who as we speak is resting in a medically-induced coma. Given the kind of place that Giffords represents, and her party affiliation, this incident has its own cruel logic. As Giffords herself said on TV last March, referring to the rhetoric and violence, “When people do that, you’ve got to realize there are consequences.”

So, no, this is not a shock. Rather, it’s the inevitable side effect of our toxic stew, runneth over. Sooner or later, some whacko out there was going to drink too much.

Budiansky link via Andrew Sullivan.