We’re here for you, Big Guy! Always ready to help you along in your journey away from the path of political error. And we don’t have twelve steps! Just one.
dammit hit post too soon
Then you weren’t paying much attention. I’m kinda the opposite of you, I believe in a lot of liberal causes. Gay marriage, universal health care coverage, regulating businesses, environmental concerns, etc. But here’s some of the reason I despise extremist liberals and think the left is as full of shit as Glenn Beck:
I remember the Battle for Seattle and other similar violent acts that are not only endorsed by the left, but actively caused by them.
I remember Code Pink.
I remember fights over blanket bans on the military on college campus’s, because freedom of association only applies to liberals or something. And arguments that allowing military on campus somehow violates the schools right to free association, which is a pretty bizarre piece of doublethought.
I remember many prominent liberals demonzing republicans. Michale Moore, Keith Olbermann, Al Frankin, etc. In Frankin’s case, it was decided that calling the opposition a ‘big fat idiot’ was not only worthy of a best selling book, but it deserved to be rewarded by putting him in the Senate.
Occasionally celebrities outright called for murder. Craig Killborn posted Snipers Wanted under Bush’s face.
I remember 8 years of ‘bush is a nazi’ and other similar things, not just by leftist bloggers but by thousands of people rallying. The Bush nazi rallies were just as large as the tea party rallies today, and many were pretty over the top in calling for violence. This image, for example, is from an Obama rally in 2008.
I remember a Nobel Peace Prize winner saying “Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.”
But you don’t see any of that as a problem. You think the jump in crazy happened in 2007 by the right. It’s all completely unprecedented to you. You believe it’s more intense than anything you have ever seen. Which really makes me wonder, if you aren’t blinded by an echo chamber, then what were you blinded by?
Note: I’m not saying the extreme right wing isn’t full of 19 types of crazy or that they’re any better than the lefty wacko’s. Although I’d actually point to the entire Obama = Muslim or birth certificate thing as right wing crazy than Palin’s map. But whatever, there’s plenty of right wing crazy to pick and choose from.
However, it’s rather strange that widespread complaints of the level of rhetoric happened to pop up just after a shooting that was, initially, entirely blamed on the right. Then when called on that, the reaction seems to be along the lines of ‘Oh well, sure, this wasn’t because of the right wing, but they’re still worse than the left is…’. Riiiiight. The general tone of this thread would be a lot more convincing if it wasn’t filled with such obvious blinders to the left doing and saying the exact same sort of shit.
What does “endorsed by the left” mean, and which of these things were endorsed by the left? A couple of these are actions by one person and others were done by fringe groups. Some don’t qualify as baseless hatred or extremism. Nobody has a monopoly on being rude or stupid, but if we are constantly holding everybody responsible for everything said by anyone who loosely agrees with them, we’re never going to get anywhere.
Cite barf: Some recent examples of rightwing-inspired violence:
Jim Adkisson shot up a Tennessee church because he hated its liberal politics
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29104696/
Richard Poplawski - Pittsburgh guy who shot three policemen because he was afraid of the coming “Obama gun ban” and didn’t like the way our rights are being trampled.
Scott Roeder shoots Dr. George Tiller - Tiller was a frequent target of the anti-abortion groups. Bill O’Rielly had featured him as “Tiller the Baby Killer,” Of course, O’Reilly’s in no way responsible. Just another complete coincidence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/us/01tiller.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes
Jame Vonn Bruen - birther, pedophile, white supremecist - shoots up the Halocaust Museum, while carrying a notebook saying, “you want my guns - this is how you’ll get them.” The “Obama is going to take your guns away lie” again.
Joseph Stack, after years of anti-governement and anti-tax problems, flies his plane into an IRS building. As I mentioned previously, Stack was a tax-evader nut, but one particular political party has spent 30 years making the demonization of government and taxes one of their central points.
Then there have been three political attacks last year in which the perpetrator was influenced by Glenn Beck’s words.
http://mediamatters.org/research/201101130002
The article begins with a transcript of David Brock’s Jan 12 appearance on Chris Matthew’s show. Then it provides followup on Brock’s three cases. Here’s the transcript part:
Media Matters then provides links to articles about these three incidents. Williams, who wanted to attack the Tides Foundation, admitted he learned of their iniquity (my word) from listening to Beck’s show’s last June.
Wilson, who threatened democratic senator Patti Murray, claimed that her healthcare vote was evidence of spineless, leftist, socialist, communist, liberals overtaking the country with socialism, from which the real Americans, the independants would have to take it back. William’s cousin claimed that she and he were under the spell of Beck’s powerful personality.
The third episode is Gregory Giusti’s threats to burn Pelosi’s home. Giusti left over thirty messages saying that he’s angry about her “pushing the healthcare bill down people’s throats.” Giusti’s mother, Eleanor, claims that he frequently falls in with radical crowds and this time the radical Fox News must be to blame. (Yeah, she said that.) Ok, Giusti’s mom doesn’t sound too authoritative but we certainly heard a bunch about ramming that healthcare bill down people’s throats this last summer.
Oh, and here’s a fourth case linking Beck to a criminal: Kenneth B. Kimberly was arrested last summer for making grenades and talking about blowing up bridges and Obama. His own defense attorney, who described him as a “nonthreatening man with passionate political views” claims that Kimberly never threatened anyone, he just repeated the claims of his idol, Glenn Beck. Kimberly pled guilty to federal weapons charges last December. Crooks & Liars link, because it contains sublinks to other writing about Beck & Kimberly
http://crooksandliars.com/taxonomy/term/3952,4379,509
I'm going to stop here, because I want to respond to Marley separately.
It's true that we don't have any examples as blatent as Henry shouting "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" What we do have are multiple examples (for instance, [here's a pdf list of 75](http://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/downloads/publication/terror_from_the_right_0.pdf), going back fifteen years, from the SPL,) of people acting out on common themes of rightwing rhetoric.
Subsequently, rightwing rhetoriticians claim that each incident is an isolated, unforseen, occurance, completely divorced from the rightwing rhetoric that fills our airwaves.
Some of them are. Sure. Coincidence? It happens. In the examples above? In *all* of those 75 incidents documented by the SPLC? No. I believe those example are of people acting directly on the rightwing words of our rightwing commentariat.Secondly, jumping back to the discussion of my first post:
My argument is that the themes which Loughner references - concerns about the currency and governement - are part of the anti-government stance of the Republican party for the last twenty years and furthermore, these themes are not fringe ideas - they receive frequent airplay on primetime television.
The fact that Loughner references these themes in bizarre ways doesn’t affect my argument that he’s he’s a nut, but he’s a rightwing nut. Similarly, the fact that Loughner also says things that are less identifiable doesn’t incline me to believe that the phrases in his posts and youtube videos are just random coincidence. Loughner is nuts, sure, but he’s not just a babbling looney.
Also, I think you may be overstating the degree to which those unidentifiable remarks are the ramblings of a diseased mind. For example, regarding Loughner’s references to the government and grammar - the Southren Poverty Law Center points out that Loughner’s remarks are echoing the work of Patriot Movement theorist David Wayne Miller:
Here’s the wiki on Miller
And the SPLC’s report on him:
Miller claims that he never heard of Loughner before last week but agreed with Loughner’s posts about the governement and mind control. Perdictably, Miller is shocked -shocked!- at the suggestion that Loughner’s actions are in anyway related to his own writing. (Actually, I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if Miller believed Loughner was acting under mind control, himself.)
Anyway, the Patriot Movement has been around for years. It was involved with the various militia movements in the 90’s, for example. Lately, it’s been … absorbed I guess I want to say, although I’m not sure who aborbed whom, by the Tea Party. Here’s a Dec 2010 NYT article about it and it’s relationship to, among others, Beck’s 9/12 group.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html?scp=1&sq=patriot%20movement&st=cse
That’s a good piece (for the purposes of this post, I mean) overall since it talks about Tea Party members who start by listening to Beck and end up following his advice on gold and ammo or for moving on to even more extreme ideas, like those Loughner held.)
That SPLC piece I linked to upthread, “Who is Jared Loughner?”, also pointed to this post at Talk to Action by Chip Berlet
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/1/9/16240/71598
Berlet points out that Loughner’s full quote regarding currency includes reference to a “second” constitution:
Berlet states that there is a common notion on white supremecist and nationalist sites that since the Civil War, we are operating under a second constitution, since the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments altered the original so drastically and detrimentally. Repealing the 14th amendment is another rightwing Republican idea that’s been bandied about recently, in order to revoke “birthright” citizenship. and [url=http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/boehner-thinks-repealing-fourteenth-a]Boehner have both discussed how the 14th is a bad idea these days.
I mention all this about the second constitution only to emphasize out that there’s real ideas behind Loughner’s stuff, even some of the stuff that just sounds looney. Stupid ideas - yes. Crazy ideas - absolutely. And - sometimes - rightwing ideas.
I’m going to finish here by quoting something Andrew Sullivan wrote yesterday
That’s how I see it.
:shrug:
It’s called “nativism”, friend. A popular theme these days.
I already mentioned and dismissed that schizo shit in the post you’re responding to. But it’s facile to simply toss up your hands and say “Dude’s crazy”, as if sanity is a binary state, as if he had no external influences.
To be fair, if one can actually make sense of anything Beck says, he does seem to be advocating that non-progressive non-revolutionary liberal Democrats shoot; Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Cass Sunnstein, Van Jones, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, Jodi Evans, Andy Stern, Michael Moore, Bill Maher, and Rosie O’Donnell in the head before they shoot us . . . so I guess that’s totally different from the other claim that he’s called for violence, I guess.
CMC fnord!
‘Endorsed by the left’ means that whenever the G8 meet, there are people on the left rioting and intentionally doing violent acts. Not just talking about it, actually doing it. The Battle for Seattle was an early example, but it has happened many times since then. When lefties riot over and over again, it’s pretty fair to think that lefties endorse violence. Otherwise they wouldn’t keep doing it.
So let me make sure I understand this. When thousands of left wing protesters get together and commit acts of violence, not just use violent images in their speech but actually make and throw maltov cocktails, then liberals shouldn’t be held responsible.
However, when thousands of right wing protesters peacefully get together and DO NOT riot or commit acts of violence, we get a half dozen threads on how horrible their language is. Which was all prompted by a shooting which had nothing at all to do with the right wing to begin with. Then when the right wing wackos go ‘Hey, wait a minute…’, it just prompts even more threads about how racist the right wingers are since a rather archaic phrase that was originally about Jews was used.
None of that strikes you as strange, or an indication that Bricker was right, maybe some dopers reactions were the teensiest, tiniest bit off the mark?
Really? “Thousands” of people threw molotov cocktails? That must be why gasoline prices are so high, what with the spike in demand.
And of course, no liberal ever condemned those that committed violence. Nope, you’d never find one. Instead, they just all claimed that they were actually extreme right-wingers or that the right should apologize for Kent State before pointing any fingers.
The scale of the demonstrations—even the lowest estimates put the crowd at over 40,000. . .
You’re right, I shouldn’t have said thousands of liberals took part in violent protest. I should have said tens of thousands.
Ooooh, snap! Wilde?
Left wing violence is grossly exaggerated, while right wing violence is grossly downplayed. And until Democrats in Congress speak out in support of violence and threats of violence, you have no equivalence.
Showing up at rallies with guns, threatening to kill them and their families, shooting at people, bombing them, and murdering them isn’t “peaceful protest”. And that’s the sort of thing the Right has done on a regular basis for many years
From the very Wiki article you quote:
So; you are repeating right wing propaganda as truth, while quoting an article in support of it that actually contradicts you.
Hey look, equivalence. Although I really wonder why you think Beck, Palin, and tea party protests can only be compared to elected Democrat Congressmen to begin with. Is your side really so pathetic that your elected officials are merely equal to an airheaded bimbo on TV ranting about bears?
Show me the 40,000 large Tea Party rally that shot at people, bombed them, and murdered them. Hell, show me the 40,000 large tea party that caused $20,000,000 in damages.
True enough. There were no moltov cocktails, that was just reported in the initial confusion. However, I’m not sure burning dumpsters in middle of the street, black clad anarchist committing vandalism, or 20 million dollars of damages done in a single day disproves that the left has endorsed violence. Although I do give props to the protesters that tried to stop the riot, too bad there weren’t enough of truly peaceful lefties to actually do so.
No; it’s that the calls for violence come from a regular basis on all levels of the Republican party and have for a long time. As opposed to being a fringe element on the left.
There was quite a lot of violence over the health care reform bill, including attacks on the office of the lady who was recently shot. nor did I say anything about the Tea Party, I said “the Right”; the Right in general is violent and threatening. Their nationwide terror campaign against abortion, for example. The endemic problem of gay bashing being another.
Except that there weren’t 20 million in “damages”, there was an estimated 20 million in damages and lost sales. Do you have any proof that the vast majority of the loss wasn’t from the latter?
Nor is property damage the moral equivalent of threatening people and murdering them, the way the Right is fond of.
Whoa, slow down a bit there, hoss. Let me get see if I got this straight. You got this nugget of shit “reported in the initial confusion.” And, apparently, have not corrected that up until this very moment, when Der advised you otherwise?
That’s your story, here?
Yeah, the way the Right set that bomb off at Sterling Hall and killed Robert Fassnacht, for instance. Those bastards.
Help me understand, who is the “left” again? Is that the 150million Americans that aren’t the “right”? Both terms are pretty much inaccurate to the point of almost being unusable.
So that ELECTED DEMOCRAT US CONGRESSMAN WHO CALLED FOR A REPUBLICAN RUNNING FOR OFFICE TO BE SHOT that you ignored is a lefty fringe element. Good lord, perhaps the righties calling for revolution are right. That might be better than letting such wackos that even lefties think they’re fringe elements stay in control of the Senate.
By the way, capitalization and bolding because, apparently, a bright blue underlined link just wasn’t noticeable enough for you to see.
As for the rest, I was clearly talking about a protest involving at least 40,000 people. You’re comparing that to lone individuals actions. I believe the proper phrase here is ‘you have no equivalence’.
Forgive me, there have been so many protests by liberals that ended with riots and violence that it’s hard to keep the details on any specific one straight.