I hope this isn’t too grisly a topic. Certainly I’m not in favor of killing any president, much less the only one I ever campaigned for. Anyway, this week’s Mad Men, centered around the characters’ reaction to the JFK assassination, brought the topic to mind.
Thoughts, anyone?
The far right would hoot and cheer. The left would realize at once how utterly worthless those people are.
Civil war! But the right has the guns, so it wouldn’t last long. 
Unfunny.:dubious:
And I’ve worried about the OP’s core issue.
For purposes of this discussion, what is “the company”?
Once the government rolled in with the tanks, those idiots with the rifles would quickly find out just how hollow their Rambo fantasies are. And the average intelligence of the nation would go up slightly.
I was waiting for Obama to get shot during the acceptance speech. I was on the edge of my chair afraid that it was going to happen. All I could think of was Sarah Palin rabble rousing with her “Pallin’ around with terrorists” rubbish.
I guarantee you the freepers, the Palin, Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh crowd would cheer about how we were saved from tyrannical Marxism.
The far right breathe hate and stupidity. This would be a sign from God that their prayers were heard. I think the left and moderates would repudiate the right so hard it would only feed their paranoia. I think there would be widespread violence against government if it happened.
A typo caused by working while posting. It should be “the nation,” “the country,” “the American Experiment,” and so forth.
Assuming that Herr Rhymer meant ‘the country’, I’m gonna go with no. If there’s one thing that brings Americans together, it’s other Americans (especially beautiful ones) getting killed. I’m sure there would be some who would cheer, but I think the overall reaction would be overwhelmingly sympathetic.
This is close to what I fear, though I also think their are elements on the left who would seize upon an Obama assassination as prima facie evidence of a vast right-wing conspiracy, one so pervasive it had taken over the Secret Service. I don’t think it’s inevitable, though. If, say, Michelle Obama and Jimmy Carter repudated that view, and enough prominent Republicans rebuked, in strong enough terms, Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter for their inevitable chortling, violence could be averted.
I don’t think this is true in the least. They may be the ones who would like to bring them to the movies…
As for the OP, I think the country is in a decidedly different place now than we were in 1963. Joe Biden would become president -(in an alternate universe, someone just typed, Sarah Palin would become president)- and the economy would bristle.
I think unravel (which we all know means ravel :p) is a good description of what would happen. I don’t think we would collapse, but the economic forecast would be stormy.
As you should:
As to the OP the government is setup to withstand the death of a president. Biden would become president and frankly there would likely even be a sympathy bounce in the polls for Dems over it. It could well start a reaction against the right that would do them no good.
History has shown one of the worst things you can do for yourself is to make a martyr of your enemies.
Almost forgot…
Expect massive rioting in the country’s inner cities over the death of a prominent black leader.
Yeah…but then ‘the company’ (;)) will invade Iran and outlaw abortion, after making it illegal to not say the Pledge. Shortly after that the company will give all the money to the capitalists, make all health care illegal, then get serious about suppressing the people. Oh yeah, and then the company will probably make it mandatory to go to church and illegal to be a minority.
After that I suppose the disappointment will set in on the left wing, when they wake up and Obama has served his 8 years without being assassinated by some right wing nut job, we haven’t invaded Iran (YET!), and the country is pretty much the same as it’s always been (just with a higher deficit)…
-XT
That’s the one. You’d have LA style riots in places like Omaha.
I think rather than hooting and cheering, the Big Three right-wing shouters (Beck, Linbaugh, Hannity) would weep very public crocodile tears while proclaiming over and over that nothing they’ve ever said could possibley be construed by any sensible individual as suggesting that that someone should have taken out the Kenyan-in-Chief. Then after a few days they’d move on to endless stories on how all the poor conservatives were being unfairly vilified over the actions of a lone nut who, they remind us once again, clearly misinterpreted anything they might have said regarding the president but who clearly was distraught over the socialist tyranny he appeared to be dragging us all into.
Also, I agree that widespread rioting would be a likely feature. Beyond that, who the hell knows? I would really rather not find out.
Hijack: The Secret Service has been transferred from the Treasury Department to Homeland Security . . . why does it even investigate counterfeiting any more?
Can we cut this shit out in GD? It just adds nothing of substance to the discussion. You don’t like the far right. We get it. Predicting that would “hoot and cheer” at the assassination of the president is a flatly unprovable assertion.
As for the OP, I certainly hope that we, as a country, could get by if one of us, even the president, were to be killed. It would be awful, maybe even more awful than when JFK was shot. But why would we “unravel” as a country? Biden is every bit as qualified, maybe more so, to be president than Obama is.
Have you seen the far right?
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/index
Go on, read them. I’ll wait. You aren’t the far right. You can think. The far right, the birthers, the deathers, the Acorn fanatics, Nazi exclaimers and so on. These people are the ones who will hoot and cheer. I’ve read prayers for Obama’s death. If you don’t like it, for fuck sake, fix the Republican party.
I’d say there would be some race riots at the least.
Probably. But America survived the '60s. Race riots are no existential threat.