A link that wasn’t already on that page.
Oh, and it actually supports the point I was making. How do I know that? I read it first. Imagine that!
I haven’t read the entire thread so I don’t know if this has been mentioned, but the Wall Street Journal reminds us that the big guy exhorting us all to tone down the violent imagery said the following during the presidential campaign:
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
~Barack Obama, 2008
[bolding mine]
So he was inciting the Chicago Bears to murder the Eagles? Because that was the context of that comment; a football game.
So your point is that JD Hayworth received as many death threats after the the cross hair pictures as Mitchell did? Or is it that they all were just surveyer points? Or are they Christian symbols?
Do you have a shred of evidence that Democrats used violent imagery more than Republicans? Can you show a Democrat who supported Mitchell for using that image? Your point that there is one case of a Democrat using a violent image tends to disprove your original contention. It would have been as surprising to find no exceptions among the Democrats as it would have been not to find all these cases of Republican violent rhetoric.
Didn’t read the cite did you? 
Obama was speaking at a Philadelphia fundraiser and the context was how he intended to deal with Republican attacks. He then joked about how Philadephia fans loved a good brawl. Both bespoke violent imagery, one of which (the brawl) he seemed amused by.
Soooo, the implication you are making is that for some, perhaps JUSTIFIABLE (?), reason, Democrats “in power” results in more “credible threats” of violence against government figures?
Is this the same bullshit meme I hear being stated or insinuated rather frequently on the Right? That people can only be pushed so far before they snap? That the inevitable result of “socialist dictatorship” is violent revolt? That, in other words, “Don’t blame US…blame the Democrats/Socialists/those whose actions CAUSE this sort of backlash?”
Or are you simply insinuating that Democratic administrations make shit up and try to brainwash everyone via the “lamestream, liberal media” into thinking the Right has violent tendencies?
'Cause BOTH are bullshit. :dubious:
If none of the above, then what I make of it is that there is a certain segment of the Right (call them the lunatic fringe, the extreme/far right, whatever…they certainly do NOT represent MOST of those on the Right…MOST of those on the Right are moderates and non-violent, same as MOST of those on the left) who are much more prone to making violent threats and/or acting on them than those on the “far left”, at least in recent history. And that it might have SOMETHING to do with the relative quantity (and quality) of rhetoric being spewed from the far Right as opposed to that spewed by the far Left in recent history.
An interesting thing to explore is the percentage of Right-wing talk radio vs that of Left-wing talk radio nationwide…76%, according to a 2007 report, of ALL such media is Right-wing, and in many areas, large markets included, it is 100%.
This, far from being the result of the will of the people, is largely due to the monopolistic nature of radio and other media ownership…Clear Channel alone dominates many markets, and commonly both requires stations to carry Limbaugh’s show, for example, to get ANY of the other programming they offer AND refuses to allow the airing of left-leaning programming which competes with their right-leaning offerings.
“■Our analysis in the spring of 2007 of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive.
■Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk—10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.
■A separate analysis of all of the news/talk stations in the top 10 radio markets reveals that 76 percent of the programming in these markets is conservative and 24 percent is progressive, although programming is more balanced in markets such as New York and Chicago.
…Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management…”
And the context of the crosshairs map was murdering people? Or was it an election?
Saying that it’s all a matter of context when spoken by a politician one favors but insisting on a literal interpretation when coming from a political adversary is simply confirmation bias.
My contention is threefold: 1) both sides are responsible for over the top rhetoric 2) I see little reason to look at candidates/politicians only. If there is a problem (and I do think there is one) it is that the overall level of discourse has plummeted. Angle has added to it. Rush has, Olberman has, Maddow has, and the rank and file, as chronicled on the Malkin page. But I find those instances where people went beyond speech MUCH more troubling. 3) Heated speech is still protected speech. And I’m loathe to restrict speech for no good reason. I see nothing wrong with the Mitchell ad, or the utterances by Obama on the Malkin page. Similarly with the Angle quotes, except for their ham-handedness.
There is a laughable rush to judgement with the tragedy in Arizona. By you and others. I find it a bit disgusting, actually, you (pl) using this tragedy to try to make a political point and further a certain agenda.
Also, there is an assumption that the utterances of the right caused what happened. I reject that. The guy is a nut. And I don’t think it wise for a society to fashion a society based on the insane. If that were the case all guardrails should be made of thick rubber and we should all be driving bumper cars. We didn’t outlaw dogs after David Berkowicz claimed that one told him to kill people. Some people are nuts. If we had a reality where several politicians/candidates were being shot at for their politics/speech, then I’d be inclined to join your side, until then I’m happy crafting policy based on the rational among us, not what the insane might glean from our goings-on.
Nothing I referenced was earlier than 1999. The Cincinnati riots happened last year. The riots at the Republican convention happened in 2008. That’s ancient history to you? And yes, Che Guevera Chic is still the rage. Remember the Motorcycle Diaries, and its whitewashed retelling of Che’s story? Or about about Benecio Del Toro’s starring role as Che Guevera in Steven Soderberg’s hagiography of the man, from the dark mists of the ancient past of 2008?
By the way, if you’re running low on your Che Guevera gear, you can get it at the Che Store (Store Motto: “For All Your Revolutionary Needs”)
Why didn’t you try being lucid and rational before? I agree with almost everything you’re saying, unless you are accusing me of rushing to judgement and/or making a political point, neither of which is true. I have only stated the simple fact that the Republican party has courted hate groups for political purposes, and the fact that they go further over the top than Democrats. I never said or even implied that any of them were responsible for the recent shooting in Arizona (or if I did, I was mistaken, I don’t feel like rereading all my posts right now).
Not totally bullshit. Once upon a time in this country students got educated and were largely well-behaved; convicts weren’t still walking the streets in their late twenties with fifteen felonies on their rap sheets; drugs weren’t a large enough problem for most people to even think about, much less the criminal activity associated with it; drive-by shootings were unheard of; the airwaves weren’t poluted; adults dressed like it and behaved in a polite, considerate way when out in public and on the roads; most parts of town were largely safe from the criminal element; and we didn’t have a congress determined to thwart the will of the people and take matters into its own hands.
Now, we’ve got a 25% STD rate in the female high school population; school kids who are largely undisciplined and disrespectful to adults; drive-by shootings and gang activity is several orders of magnitude than it was then; popular music is full of violence, misogyny and the glamorization of thug life; we have a revolving-door prison system; criminal activity and the shootings that go with them have infested virtually every area of our cities; and we have a government ever increasingly infringing upon our rights and striving to bring us under a type of government that we don’t want, and most recently being exhorted by its leadership to legislate opposite the will of its votership.
People see all this shit and they know it’s all come about through 40 years of, liberal permissiveness; liberal court rulings and liberal government. And they’re beginning to think there’s no way to get this country back to being a free and civilized place to live without drastic action of some sort, and in some quarters violent revolt is beginning to seem like the answer.
I don’t support this view. I don’t at all. But it’s out there and liberal politics and liberal ideology and what liberalism has wrought are most definitely the cause of it.
Oh, my apologies. As penance, I offer the following:
Democratic Congressman Steve Kanjorski.
Agreed.
By the way, those ‘crosshairs’ on Sarah Palin’s map are actually registration marks used in publishing. My guess is that the artist or web guy who had to mark the map for the states that they were ‘targeting’, and thought it would be cute, and had the symbol at hand. This is a registration mark. You can see another style on this page.
This is a tangent, Sam Stone, but in the U.S., The Motorcycle Diaries and Che made about as much money as Yogi Bear made in its third week. That’s not a figure of speech, either. I don’t know where you’re seeing Che shirts everyplace or getting the impression that’s what is hip on the left. It’s not. There are still a couple of Communists out there, but the kids are not rushing out for Che paraphernalia.
That being said, the idea that either side has a monopoly on violence or on this type of rhetoric is absurd. Is there a predominance of it on the right? Of course there is. “Take our country back” has not been a talking point on the left the last couple of years and leftists aren’t talking about government tyranny. When the left was in a similar position a few years ago you could probably find an isolated comment here and there but I think you saw more whiny threats to leave the U.S. or email forward about how the blue states should make their own country. Some people said Bush and Cheney should be put on trial. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but that’s the form it generally took. Conservative politics don’t have that hippie residue and there’s a little of that remaining on the left. And for that matter, in 2004 you didn’t see the Democratic VP candidate (sleaze that he was) suggesting Bush was associating with terrorists. Go figure.
Amazing. That by far takes the prize for the biggest load of crap dumped in this thread.
Surveyors symbols, publication marks… get your story straight. If these things need an excuse, ‘they’re just symbols’ would do fine. ‘Who are you going to believe - me or your own eyes?’ is not going to do it.
magellan01: Well said.
Want to raise a bad kid,…beat him. beat him frequently and hard. Teach him a lesson or two. Teach violence to kids.
As always the alternate universe STARVIN inhabits is dead wrong yet again.
Back to the point. Many have observed the lowering of public discourse in America. It has also been the method used to rouse the conservative base. It has been going on for more than a decade now. It has shown to be very effective . The tea party has been the group that seems to have no limits. No matter how horribly the politicians and right wingers speak, the tea baggers have followed it and loved it. There does not seem to be a limit for them.
The right wingers on radio are political shock jocks. They are deliberately provocative. Speaking politely is a sign of weakness. Yell over those who dare to question.
However, this nut that shot Giffords and many others may not have been riled up by the political righties. Then again they may have added to it. It was obviously a political act. He plotted and planned it. He called it an assassination and chose a political figure. It was not just a random act of stupidity and violence.
You could say exactly the same thing about John Hinckley, who planned an assassination against President Reagan and shot him. But it wasn’t politically motivated in that Hinckley was trying to suppress or change the direction of politics, foment a revolution, or make a political statement.
Hinckley shot Reagan because he was nuts and had a bizarre belief that shooting Reagan would earn the love of Jodi Foster. Reagan was just a symbol of power to him. He could have been a Democrat and it wouldn’t have mattered. And by the way, if Jodi Foster had said beforehand, “I don’t like Reagan and I’d love the guy who shot him.” she STILL wouldn’t be responsible for the actions of a lunatic. It might be fair to say that people in public should tone their rhetoric down a bit, but to fling actual accusations of malfeasance and to assign blame to your political opponents for the actions of an insane person is really unwarranted and unseemly.
Yeah, right. And once upon a time, constant drunkeness/intoxication with cannabis, opium, etc… was common, as was illiteracy, prostitution, VD, unwed pregnancy, theft, ride-by shootings (on horseback, later drive-by in cars, come prohibition), rape, spousal and child abuse, public hangings or private lynchings were the norm, children were set to hard labor and/or executed for petty crimes, old or sick folk with no kin to take them in died in the gutter, Indians, Blacks, Chinese and Mexicans were shot on sight or exploited as slave labor, pollution was so bad rickets was rampant due to millions in the cities who never SAW the sun due to the coal-smog and our rivers ran dead, and popular music/literature was bawdy and full of sexual, mysogynistic, violent content.
You are glamorizing the past…a past which never existed, FTR. (wow, you REALLY see the world/nation as so much WORSE now than ever? REALLY?
That’s fucking delusional, man).
And you are attempting to justify and excuse a violent response to the illusion of worsening conditions you see around you while at the same time absolving yourself of any support of it.
Same bullshit, different day. :dubious: