I though Nacy Pelosi made a strong argument yesterday for toning down the outrageous language that gets thrown at Democrats. Today, the ugly respond:
This doesn't look unplanned to me anymore, this is an intentional call for assassination, and now they're priming the pump to put the blame back on us.
Lest we forget: their history on the topic.
Why else would the republicans be racing out to defend people that show up armed at presidential rallies? Why else all the apocalyptic, "its never been this bad ever, we're losing our freedoms" bullshit?
Until today I said to myself, "self, they know that assassinating random democrats won't work out for them, they'll lose the middle for a century." But then I saw those bloviators playing "oh, I'm not calling for assassinations, YOU ARE." (a corollary to Beck's "Obama is a racist" projection-as-argument?) and it made me think. . . JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Regan, Regan, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush Bush -- so, okay, in the past we've rewarded extremists by allowing the white house to change hands after an assassination.
Hell, they capitalized on the death of Paul Wellstone (and thank you Senator Franken for finally getting rid of that turdling that scraped in by assaulting everyone who went to grieve for the loss of a great liberal). Using death by any means necessary is the Republican way of life. Torture a few brown people, lych a black man or two, invade a mideast country? Why not! If it feeds their base the violence candy, and keeps us on our heels, then the Republicans are all over it. They have been since Regan delayed the release of the Iranian hostages till after he was elected. They use us, even if it kills us.
But nah, they wouldn't try to actually get us killed would they?
Well, they're doing a fine job of it so far.
Like idiots, we allow it.
We see a group like Operation Rescue, employing a domestic terrorist who was in contact with a murderer, a man who murdered someone targeted for death by Operation Rescue and Bill O'reilly, also targeted by all the other f-ing psychopaths that stand in for commentators on the right, and we say "oh well, it's a f-ing shame."
We see groups like these Tea Party Patriots showing up with guns, showing up with donkeys hanging from nooses, showing up with signs telling us next time they'll come back armed. We've seen Rick Perry call for secession of a state, bringing up threats of another civil war. We chuckle uncomfortably like it's some kind of bad joke -- but that's not a joke, it's a literal call to arms. They want to scare us from exercising the power of the majority every bit as much as the southerners of 1861 wanted to stop the majority from ending slavery.
The basic motives haven't even changed -- they have a way of making money which is inconvenient, immoral, and dangerous to their fellow citizens (fleecing us through their corporate butt-buddies) now we're getting between them and profit -- result: a call to violence.
We need to stop pretending this is a sorry sad joke. This is our blood and flesh on the line here. They're going to come for us -- some more literally than others.
This is stupid. This is beyond stupid. If we persist in lying down and refusing to go after these butt-heads because it will be politically messy, then it becomes suicide.
And now we've seen how they'll respond when a democratic house member, policy advisor, or local official gets shot -- they're going to blame us. They're going to tell us we earned it. They're going to smirk into their coffee and take all the power they can grab.
We need to be ready to go after these assholes. We need to start seeding the ground among our reps -- whether that means restoring the equal time doctrine, or just putting pressure on Holder to send the U.S. Attorneys after Rush and Co, we better decide we want to do that soon, or we're going to pay a price.
The other side will NOT be reasonable. We need to find a way to fight back.