In the immediate wake of the Tuscon shooting, it seemed (for a couple of days, anyway) that there was on this board some fairly wide-spread agreement that bullets as metaphors produced a dangerous climate.
I’m just wondering if anyone who subscribed to that philosophy wishes to review it.
In my view, of course, Congressman Hoyer’s remarks are … well… unremarkable. His use of a metaphor is obvious. He’s not remotely suggesting anyone is using, or should use, actual firearms. He’s saying that House Republicans are risking the safety of the nation’s economy in an effort to injure the President’s political standing and electibility.
I don’t think there was agreement that all firearms based metaphors are dangerous, just the ones that identified particular politicians, and used firearm metaphors to describe defeating them.
This is completely different than using a metaphor to describe your opponents as being irresponsible with firearms.
Also, as Czarcasm mentioned, the metaphor is a mess.
Yup. Agreed with Cheese and Czarcasm. The metaphor is not urging the targeting of politicians but rather describing the actions of the opposition. And it’s rather mixed at that.
No, the cases are entirely different because the American Right has been pretty openly threatening and occasionally using violence against its opponents for years, and the American Left hasn’t. The Right doesn’t mean it as a metaphor, they mean it as a threat and an incitement. If they could get away with it, they’d be forming and sending out death squads right now. Instead, they whip up the fanatics until some get violent, and make a public show of being sorry when some actually go out and kill people.
And it’s within my living memory that the American Left was using actual violence to accomplish political goals, from university bombings to protest war to disrupting political conventions in order to make their views heard,
I can’t even figure out what the metaphor is supposed to mean, let alone whether it’s appropriate. When you’re playing Russian Roulette, you’re not shooting the bullets at someone else, and you’re not shooting multiple bullets. If anything, I’d think “They’re playing Russian Roulette, and all the chambers are loaded on the House side” would mean that the House is committing suicide.
Yes, the metaphor police should arrest Reid and charge him with a felony for that one!
But it’s not the same as the rhetoric we were talking about earlier. This is not using gun/violence imagery against your political opponents and thus, allegedly, inciting your supporters to violence. Unless the OP thinks Reid is inciting the GOP to commit acts of violence against Obama…
On re-reading the quote, it’s even worse than I originally thought. Life without the possibility of parole!!
Oh, please. Tell that to the people killed by anti-abortion fanatics. Or the people who died in the Oklahoma City Bombing. Or gays beaten to death by right wing thugs. And all the other people harmed by the right wing thuggery and terror tactics across the country. Including the people threatened or attacked during the wave of right wing violence that occurred at the same time as Giffords was shot.
And within living memory Russia was head of the Soviet Union and poised to nuke us. Things change.
And the violence of the Left in this country was and always exaggerated and treated more harshly than the violence from the Right.
I haven’t addressed this issue before, but I’m willing to go on record as saying that if the Metaphor Police shot Mr. Hoyer full of disdainful rhetoric, it would be justifiable self-defense.
While the tu quoque fallacy is common enough, the classic Bricker pseudo-debate gotcha is where he announces a decision by a court or other official entity that agrees with an opinion of his and which is intended to stun opponents into admitting that they were wrong, seeing as how a ruling issued by a public official is the Revealed Truth, unless it’s the 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion rights or something else that Bricker does not like.
The objections are valid–the metaphor is mangled, and to the extent that it’s comprehensible, it’s not comparable in form or tone to Palin’s gunsight hit list, for example.
Still, I’ll throw Bricker a small bone: I think references to shooting at the President, as rhetorical device, and even as a characterization of opponents, are indeed unwise and tasteless. Particularly in the political climate we’ve had for the last several years.
More than just a few years. I recall some Republican Congressperson or other making comments about how Clinton would be in danger of getting shot if he came to their home state.
Where do you get this stuff? :dubious: