Congressman's Brother's home cut propane gas lines declared as "collateral damage" at Dailyprogress.com.
Bricks thrown through representative Louis Slaughter's (D-NY) office.
Phone threats and obscenities left on congressional voice mails to Stupak.
Death Threats of being a "dead man" to Democratic SW Ohio Congressmen Steve Driehaus from John Boehner - Minority Leader Boehner said of Driehaus: "He's a dead man, he can't go back to Cincinnati's west side"
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Rachel accurately draws a straight line to connect the dots between these current threats, and Timothy McVeigh & militia groups in 1995 who made the same supportive signals to Texas and Idaho Congressional Representatives who advocated violent action prior to the Oklahoma City domestic terrorist bombing. It's not a "wacky extrapolation" or grasping at straws. It's a broader perspective that Republican elected leaders are advocating for their supporters to violently "take back" what they feel they are entitled to have.
The video is worth a watch, link here.
In War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning [fantastic book], Chris Hedges points out that there was 4 years of hate speech on the radio before the balkans finally erupted in waves of ethnic murders. Speech has consequences.
ReplyDeleteI don't think most republicans give a flying fuck about the policy issues at play in the healthcare law (or else they would have gone apeshit at dole for proposing the same thing in the early 90s, or gone apeshit at mitt romney for signing basically the same thing in MA). They just wanted to be anti-democrat and thought they had a nice emotional wedge issue they could rile up the masses on.
There are some people who actually have a consistent, coherent, philosophical objection to the healthcare law. I feel bad for them because they're allied with raving fucktards and disingenuous political pricks.
I hear you Ron but during my career in sales I've learned one thing: most people make a decision based on emotion, then try to rationalize it. Good sales people know this. Better ones know how to balance this with the due diligence required to make sure someone is a long-term customer. The same goes for politics. There's a degree of emotional attachment involved. Very few of us clinically approach political questions without framing it to our worldview first. And in the end, that kind of approach doesn't win you anything.
ReplyDeleteI don't expect an emotionless, clinical approach. What I'm saying is that they didn't even start with a worldview at all. Insurance reform with an individual mandate was, if anything, PART of their worldview up until Obama won the election. Obstructionism, or "what we're for is being against whatever it is they want to do", is not a worldview. Their emotional opposition to this healthcare law was based SOLELY on who was proposing it rather than the content.
ReplyDelete