# Which Party Has the Mobs?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-party-has-the-mobs/823828>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [November 1, 2018, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-party-has-the-mobs/823828 "2018-11-01T10:45:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 36

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**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-party-has-the-mobs/823828/36 "2018-11-01T17:02:10Z")

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> [@Scylla](#):
>
> It’s like you are all monkeys howling and beating your fists at the other tribe of monkeys, in order to build up your sense of superiority enough to attack. And, of course the other tribe of monkeys is doing the exact same thing.
> 
> It is obvious to me that Bernie Sanders does not his supporters shooting at Congressman, that Black Lives Matter leaders don’t want policemen shot, that Democratic leaders don’t want people punching or trying to knife their political opponents, and don’t really approve of having their opponents’ headquarters shot up, etc, etc.
> 
> Similarly, I don’t think Trump wants anybody shooting up synagogues, running over protestors, mailing bombs or any of that shit.
> 
> This is one of these that is not a political problem. It is a human problem. There is a certain percentage of nuts who are going to react violently and stupidly in support of whatever it is that they care about or served as their justification.
> 
> Why on earth would you care which is side is currently in the lead for having the biggest nuts?

Because unlike you, we believe there IS a connection between what the leaders and major propagandists on each side are saying, and what their followers do.

I don’t know what Bernie Sanders **wants** , nor do I know what Donald Trump **wants**. I’m not a fucking mind-reader. All I can go by is what they publicly say and do.

When Trump and Fox and numerous GOP politicians say that Dems and the news media aren’t merely wrong, but are the enemy, there’s no equivalent in what Bernie Sanders or any other major Dem leader has said. You can always nutpick and find someone on the Internet who’s said just about anything, but by and large, people on the left don’t demonize those on the right - unless ‘describing things they’ve actually done’ is ‘demonizing.’

But the thing is, people _kill_ enemies.

And when Trump and Fox and numerous GOP politicians spread the message that the refugee convoy (still nearly a thousand miles from our border) is composed of gangs and Middle Eastern terrorists that are preparing to invade our country, and that Democrats and the Jewish financier George Soros are behind the whole thing, that creates a fictitious but dangerous world view, one where it makes sense to send bombs to Soros and Dem politicians (already defined as the enemy) and kill the Jews who are behind this assault on our country.

There’s no even remote equivalent to that on the left.

And that is why

> [@Republicans can just go straight to fucking hell](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-can-just-go-straight-to-fucking-hell/822918/219):
>
> I was totaling up the number of people killed by white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the like in the incidents documented by the SPLC for [2017](https://www.splcenter.org/20180723/terror-right#2017) and [2018](https://www.splcenter.org/20180723/terror-right#2018). The total came to 36 killed and at least 43 injured.

And that was before last week, so now the grisly total is up to 49 of each.

And going the other way, you’ve got one lefty injuring Steve Scalise.

If this is merely a human problem and not a political problem, how the hell did it get so lopsided?

This conversation feels like the one at the beginning of _Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead_, where Guildenstern gets increasingly agitated as the streak of coin flips coming up ‘heads’ extends into the seventies and eighties, and Rosencrantz says, “Getting a bit of a bore, isn’t it?”

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