Cranking the Crazy Up to 11
September 30, 2009, 10:43 am
Posted by Eduardo Peñalver
A Newsmax columnist advocates describes the possibility of a bloodless military coup to solve the “Obama problem.” (HT TPM) This is not an isolated case. Media Matters surveys the growing trend of violent rhetoric from the right.
Scary talk is not scary action. I saw the anti-Obama crowd at the tea parties and town hall meetings. they are just like the anonymous letter writers and posters that the Church has endured for years. all talk, all hidden, all fearing people and but not recruits for revolution. They could at most inspire a lone nut or two .. but they are not a threat to this republic.. Just as Catholics will never be banned from Eucharist and burials because of hysterical calls from the few, we can ignore hysterical shouts from the extremists. Maybe We should give them thanks for the cheap adrenalin rush they sometimes give us.. (-:
Eduardo -
People made and distributed a feature length film depicting the assassination of President Bush, and we are supposed to be be alarmed over this kind of thing?
Please
Which is more likely – violence from the right (not too likely with the most vociferous opponents averaging about 65 years old who haven’t bitten off any one else’s fingers) – or the president’s supporters suppressing opposition on the vague concern over possible violence? I know where I’d put my money, wanna bet?
Like the Vatican’s response to the UN Human Rights group, I see there’s “look at the other guy” argument – a kind of immature defense for doing somethin gwrong or stupid.
I think the “anger test” at AlterNet should be expanded.
For the Church, there should be one gor Abp Burke. …oops, that’s a different thread.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/opinion/30friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Oh!
Tom Friedman is worried.
Given his long and storied prognoticational accuracy, I withdraw all objections. Start throwing all the right wing radio talk hosts in jail – we need to be safe.
Violent rhetoric on the right and left have been around for a long time. Extremism on both sides is profitable and opportunists find their niche and profit there. Glen Beck found money going extreme. Lou Dobbs got more mail with anti-immigration. Assasination attempts have always been with us. People fantasize fame in killing John Lennon or trying to assasinate a famous person. Security has always been big business. 9/11 gave it a bigger boost.
Some so called serious people got involved with the oral ventures of Monica Lewinsky while a bunch of guys learning to fly without worrying to land got no attention.
Comparison are called odious for a reason. Friedman should know better. We should concentrate on the vast majority who demand a peaceful world while we should shame anyone who hipes the rhetoric on the right or left.
Sean: Relax. You’re flailing. It’s painful to watch.
For those looking for wisdom from the left, here is Gore Vidal, noted novelist and supporter of Timothy McVeigh, sharing his insights on Obama, Republicans and the military:
He’s inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism.
He believes the generals. Even Bush knew the way to win a general was to give him another star. Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred — religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word ‘conservative’ you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They’re not, they’re fascists.
We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6854221.ece
Grant
News falsh. Tom Friedman doesn’t know his posterior from his left elbow.
Fortunately for him, journalism and academia are the two professions where one can be consistently wrong about everything and still get a raise.
I can always count on you, Sean, for a little morning uplift. And by morning uplift I mean predictable recitations of tired Reagan-era right-wing talking points.
What’s amusing is that while you’re sputtering about the left wanting to imprison right-wing talk-show hosts on this post, you’re over on Mollie’s thread arguing against hyperbole. (Speaking of, judging from the cut of Glenn Beck’s radio program in which he promulgated the bogus “they pray to Obama!” meme, is he the only ex-Catholic Mormon who has never heard of vestments?)
No doubt violent rhetoric is harmful and should never be encouraged. Regarding everyday rhetoric, it seems to show its ugly head when people are being intellectually lazy. That being said, why do you think this amendment to Health Care Reform did not pass?
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=4191
no intellectual laziness when responding please
Sean – you forgot weather announcers above.
Grant
I guess I need to preface comments like the above about jailing radio hosts with a big – THE FOLLOWING IS SARCASM.
On Mollie’s post – please point out where – anywhere – that I “argued against hyperbole.” The point I was trying to make – which was not, as other’s claimed jus a “your side does it too” accusation – was that political hyperbole and a willingness to believe crazy claims without and skepticism is endemic, not as Mollie was trying to portray, a symptom a right-wing ideology. Bush national Guard memos anyone? Also, I was pointing out that people’s willingness to believe these things is based, usually, on at least a grain of truth. Whether it’s Clinton’s philandering, Bush’s stupidity, or Obama’s messianic tendencies, people will believe outrageous claims because there is something to it.
Here, I am simply pointing out that the hyperventilation about “violent rhetoric” has never been identified as a problem by people like Friedman when left-wingers were doing it. So, I question the motive. Are he and people like him worried about violence, or do they just want the people that disagree with them to sit down and shut up.
The gratuitous slaps at Friedman are because he’s an idiot, and as I said, almost always wrong.
political hyperbole and a willingness to believe crazy claims without and skepticism is endemic, not as Mollie was trying to portray, a symptom a right-wing ideology.
But, of course, that’s not what I was “trying to portray.” To recap: people who wanted to smear (a) Obama, (b) the “Religious Left,” and (c) “community organizers” disseminated that video and made ridiculous claims about it. Other people who ought to have known better fell for it. All of that is just plain factual, and it’s depressing no matter what party you belong to — especially, as I noted, if you take religion at all seriously. You don’t have to think that all conservatives are nuts, or dishonest — or, on the contrary, that no liberals are nuts or dishonest — to acknowledge all of that. It certainly wasn’t what I wrote. And Sean, when you try to avoid discussion of something specific by throwing out distractions — i.e., how can we talk about this event and draw conclusions about it when Bill Clinton X and George Bush Y and Dan Rather blah blah blah and children singing in schools! — well, “flailing” is the word for that.
To be fair to you, it was not you that made this point – it was your fellow contributer, Mr Gibson, in one of the comments – and as I said there, that was what I was responding to. The claim, I think, that there are “no left-wing crazies” who do this sort of thing made my and other’s comments regarding the many example where they did quite relevant. Frankly, I didn’t even think to make a comment until I read that outrageous claim.
I also think it is very relevant to your post that the readiness of people to believe things like this can’t just be chalked up – “they hate him.” I am sorry if my use of examples seem to you a distraction. The school children thing, in particular, I think is relevant having immediately preceded this story. If you had described the events in those videos to me a few months back I wouldn’t have believed them either I think coming on the heels of that, a lot of people were much more credulous.
I understood David G. as suggesting that one reason people might have been susceptible to the crude “praying to Obama” hoax was the demonstrable tendency to resort to drawing equivalencies instead of focusing on actual issues. And I think he’s right, that was a factor — the idea of having video evidence of Lefties living up to all the worst claims made about them was so seductive that people failed to engage their critical reasoning long enough to see through it.
“The Left brought this on themselves” was a bad argument when Dreher was making it — and that was back when he actually believed the “praying to Obama” nonsense was true. To keep making that argument now is beyond silly, it seems to me.
Yeah, but it’s still misleading to focus so often on “ooh, some idiot on the right said something dumb.” Stupidity and sin are part of the human condition, and the right-wing websites devoted to finding left-wing people doing or saying stupid things never run out of material. But all of this, on both sides, is really just the ESPN effect.