If you don’t want to read it, DrDeth complains about a liberal who claims a TSA recommendation to use duct tape was based on campaign contributions from a duct tape manufacturer. DrDeth then says this shows that the “left can come up with as crazy stuff as the Birthers on the Right”.
How many lawsuits have the left filed about duct tape? How many forged documents have they created? There’s just no comparison here. The crazies on the right are far crazier. And far more dangerous, as we’ve seen lately by right wing politically motivated shootings.
I do feel for any reasonable person on the right, because you are being more and more identified with these crazy people. But trying to say that the left is just as crazy just makes you look stupid.
I do agree that right wing crazies are more dangerous, since we like guns more than most on the left.
However, there is certainly plenty of craziness to go around. I don’t know how you would quantify the, uh, quantity of craziness.
Do we count Freeper posts vs. posts at Daily Kos?
Is it letters to the editor that matter? Which newspapers do we use?
How far back in history can we go? Can I bring up the idiots in college from my undergrad days in the 80s?
Who gets to discount membership? Can we include ALF nuts burning down labs, cars, and vandalizing houses in the Left Wing list? I have had these conversations where some claim, “They aren’t real Leftists.”
More importantly, how about Malcolm X and the armed black activists? Do they qualify as Left Wing, or would they be excluded from our counting of scary dangerous crazies with guns?
Its not the Right Wing’s Fault that crazy lefties NORMALLY don’t pack heat. If you choose not to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights, don’t blame us!
Yeah, theres a general trend to disregard the nutcases on your own side as just that while looking at the nutcases on the other side as typical of that philosophy.
As the years wear on for my parents they’re becoming more and more liberal and more often they begin conversations with “Did you hear what those crazy conservatives are doing now!?!” I consider myself a moderate, but I’ve pretty much taken up the mantle of full blown conservative when it comes to debates with my parents now just to temper their outright certainty.
Anti-free-trade riots ring a bell? Feature length movies depicting the assasination of GWB? “BusHitler?” Republican campaign offices attacked and workers assaulted? Crosses burned on lawns with Bush-Cheney signs? Mock Palin lynchings?
There are plenty of assholes to go around.
Look, I wasn’t trying to make a strawman argument, I just want people to realize that despite all of the stereotypes about right-wingers and their krazy guns, militias, etc, that one of the greatest presidents in our country’s history was shot to death by a left-wing radical.
What’s more, it’s always been so in America. Throughout the labor struggles of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries . . . Even in the 1960s and '70s there was (even) more crazy RW than LW violence; for some reason, nobody remembers that much.
I think the left has plenty P-L-E-N-T-Y of whackos. My god, those PUMA troglodytes are still out there, claiming that Obama stole the election from Clinton (one nickname I saw on a PUMA site was “Homofauxbama.” Weird) and freaky Clinton-haters are still out there claiming that she’s trying to sabotage Obama so she can run in 2012. Spectacularly stupid truthers are out there who identify with the left. ELF and PETA. I wouldn’t be surprised if the anti-vaccers were mostly left, though that’s just a guess.
An important distinction to make is how much air time the wackjobs get. When was the last 911 truther given the thumbs up by a sitting senator? How about a dozen sitting senators and house members? When was the last time the wacko left was given tons of air time and supportive comments on a major news network?
Recently at least the left has tried to marginalize their crazies. The right has held them up as exemplars. Birthers, Deathers and Disrupters are positively promoted by the right.
I have a hard time considering PETA members as anything but liberal. And they are definitely crazy, if they think their antics are actually helping their cause.
