I've been reading, with increasing alarm, the ever-more pumped up rhetoric on this page about Clinton's RFK remarks. Like any feeding frenzy, this one grows in strength with each remark. Mobs work that way, as Gibbon described the mob seeking the death of Cleander:
The people... demanded with angry clamors the head of the public enemy. Cleander, who commanded the Praetorian Guards, ordered a body of cavalry to sally forth and disperse the seditious multitude. The multitude fled with precipitation towards the city; several were slain, and many more were trampled to death; but when the cavalry entered the streets their pursuit was checked by a shower of stones and darts from the roofs and windows of the houses.
The foot guards, who had long been jealous of the prerogatives and insolence of the Praetorian cavalry, embraced the party of the people. The tumult became a regular engagement and threatened a general massacre. The Praetorians at length gave way, oppressed with numbers; and the tide of popular fury returned with redoubled violence against the gates of the palace, where Commodus lay dissolved in luxury and alone unconscious of the civil war... Commodus started from his dream of pleasure and commanded that the head of Cleander should be thrown out to the people. The desired spectacle instantly appeased the tumult...
In this case, it is the head of Hillary Clinton that is demanded. This emotion has been growing with each day, with each of her speeches and interviews, and with her remarks yesterday have now reached a fever pitch.
However, there is in this feasting for revenge an increasingly troublesome thread. Wading through the rivers of accusation here on the rec list, I have encountered numerous suggestions that Hillary's supporters might be so discouraged or desperate at her loss of the nomination that they might snap. Who knows what they might do? And people write here, with absolute seriousness, that Hillary is suggesting that they remove Obama to open the way for her coronation. This kind of talk would be nonsense, if people didn't take it so seriously. As it is, I find such thoughts dangerous, depressing and outrageous.
Here are just a few examples:
Depression is more and more common in this difficult time in the US. And now a political admirer of HRC may be reaching his/her limits. What the hell! Even HRC mentioned it, right? It has to be done.
She claims to be so fond of children--did she ever think of what it would be like for BO's two lovely little girls to hear that his opponent in a political race wished him dead from an assassins bullet so that she could benefit?
What about her lack of understanding that there are people out there, crazy with hatred people who live beyond the psychotic fringe of reality, who need little if any provocation to use violence?
To make the leap from Clinton's remarks about campaigns, including RFK's continuing into June, to the idea that she is signaling her ignorant, gullible and desperate supporters to commit violence is irresponsible and borders on paranoid. This kind of conspiracy theory does not belong on a site devoted to electing Democrats. It only has a proper place on right wing hate sites.