“This relentlessly hostile rhetoric has become standard issue on the right. (On the left it appears in anonymous comment threads, not congressional speeches and national T.V. programs.) And it has gone almost entirely uncriticized by Republican leaders. Partisan media encourages it, while the mainstream media finds it titillating and airs it, often without comment, so that the gradual effect is to desensitize even people to whom the rhetoric is repellent. We’ve all grown so used to it over the past couple of years that it took the shock of an assassination attempt to show us the ugliness to which our politics has sunk."
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5 comments:
Thanks for these posts, Kal.
I wish people would also consider the fact that mental illness is at the core of the tragedy. The mentally ill are often forced into homelessness and without any real supportive services. Not that this excuses homicide, or any form of violence, but it's part of the greater picture. xo
It's the lack of access to health care by the poor that creates the type of person that would do something like this. They are easily manipulated to believe what the right is telling them. They hear nothing except that Obama is the antichrist all day long. It doesn't take much to incite a person after all that. Be it for approval or to slay the demons he is told are all around him, this guy was the gun and the hateful rhetoric by the right was the trigger.
True. I think too much focus is being put on the Republicans as the cause, though. I like blaming them, and I hate the 2nd amendment, but the tension between the parties is growing. This will only create more madmen. There's no easy solution, but we need an all-out overhaul of priorities. We need to start taking care of our own, like you Canadians do.
xoRobyn
We keep telling you that but for some reason everything we do is Socialist, Gay, Muslim and French. Your congress will never do anything to work against the powerful lobby groups for fear of losing the contributions to their re-election coffers. It's selfish self interest on both sides. No way is anyone looking out for the American people. It makes me sick to hear someone say that the 'American people' want this or that. It's so disingenuous. They don't give a shit what the American people want. If they did then you would have universal health care like we do also.
All true. You're a wise man. xo
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