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photo: longhorndave via Flickr
If “both sides do it”, as the righties and their media defenders like to say, why is it that both sides fear the far-right teabaggers more than anything else?
This morning’s latest example, via DKos (I’m sure there will be more before lunchtime):
In an e-mail sent a few hours after Saturday’s massacre in Tucson that killed six and injured 14, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Miller told state Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen he was quitting: “Today my wife of 20 yrs ask (sic) me do I think that my PCs (Precinct Committee members) will shoot at our home? So with this being said I am stepping down from LD20GOP Chairman…I will make a full statement on Monday.”
[...]
The newly-elected Dist. 20 Republican secretary, Sophia Johnson of Ahwatukee, first vice chairman Roger Dickinson of Tempe and Jeff Kolb, the former district spokesman from Ahwatukee, also quit. “This singular focus on ‘getting’ Anthony (Miller) was one of the main reasons I chose to resign,” Kolb said in an e-mail to another party activist. Kolb confirmed the contents of the e-mail to the Republic.
When was the last time a Democrat (or a Republican) resigned any sort of position because he or she feared being shot at by folks on their left wing? Answer: Never.
Oh, and when Tweeting stuff like this, the hashtag is #BothSidesDONT
6 Comments
“Both sides do it” is a Big Lie built on the plausible truth inherent only in the abstract.
While it is possible to read that statement as possibly true in the abstract, in the real world, ‘both sides’ do not do it.
Famous robber baron Jay Gould famously quipped;
“I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.”
It’s a mistake to read that quote as an accurate abstraction describing the American working class in general.
It is a particular portion of the working class Mr. Gould was talking about.
It is not possible to hire any/either half of the working class to kill the other, in actual experience, it is the stupid and fearful people, easily incited by propaganda that Gould was describing.
There is only one solution to this perennial problem of the rich and powerful inciting the stupid to violently support their interests, and that is solidarity.
After generations of propaganda meant to instill the worship of the rugged individual, we’ve almost completely lost the understanding of the necessity to stick together in common cause.
Humiliation is a great teacher, and there’s nothing more humiliating than being intimidated by stupid and violent people.
We can expect more of the same kind of treatment until we face the fact that only one side in this fight has a cohesive understanding of what is going on, only one side has a plan in place, and it isn’t those of us hoping for a better future, based on progressive values and economic justice.
PW, thanks for bringing this to our attention. Geez! They built this monster and now are running from it. I would never see or read about this in my area.
Most often Bullies sit back and rant while the followers go out and do the deeds.
Good closer there W4B, and thanks PW.
Those saying that we are making too much of this are the ones with the plan in place, and sadly, the rest of us only have a short window when their rhetoric is momentarily silenced by an event like this, to possibly expose a truth or turn a single head or two to an alternate version which is in opposition to their reality.
Agree with all of the above. Some comments lately have called for us to simply *ignore* this situation. I have to disagree. The longer violent rhetoric is ignored – on some kind of notion of “taking the high road” – the more it festers and grows and becomes more dangerous. Not calling things out for the way they are factually is to ignore reality at all of our peril.
The false equivalencies propounded by the corporate-owned rightwing media between rightwing violence (very commonly incited by rightwing media talking heads) and the so-called leftwing “violence” is bull sh*t plain and simple. There is no equivalency, and no one can provide “examples” of leftwingers calling for violence against the right because it doesn’t happen (except possibly on some blogs, but I don’t even know about that).
great comment
common good
communal…too sensible
Never once must one fail to realize this is a plan from people like the koch bros, who’s greed promotes the idiocy. There is a saying ‘kill the head, the body dies’. I’m not advocating anyone’s death, only that we must understand the source of our problems. Don’t believe in the power they have? Consider they have managed to corrupt the word of a huge majority of the world’s scientists in service to their own greed.