First of all, I just want to say that Rand Paul is an opportunistic vulture of a politician. We all know how he loves to grand-stand by playing the “independent minded libertarian” whenever there’s nothing real for him at stake, only to pull his opposition to whatever bill he’s voting against the moment that his vote actually has meaning. He’s basically Susan Collins cos-playing as Ayn Rand. This diary is in no way meant to be an excuse for or an endorsement of his politics. There’s no circumstance that he won’t exploit to politically grandstand, so I hope that the citizens of Kentucky wise up and vote him out with force.
That said, I was deeply disturbed by how dismissive people on this website were over the video of Paul, his wife, and their security guard being assaulted by a mob of angry protesters. Not only does that video make the group of protesters assaulting him look horrible, but it’s also concrete, documentary, evidence of everything that’s wrong with how politics are practiced today. I implore you all to put aside your tribal prejudices against Paul and re-watch the video, imagining that it’s a democratic senator being accosted by a mob of MAGA hats, and tell me that you wouldn’t think this was an assault:
Sure, no one punches him or kicks him, but his security guard is attacked (and pushed into him), and it’s clearly a hostile, violent, and volatile situation, where he no doubt felt threatened. I don’t think we can claim that the mob here was entirely peaceful in its intent. Most likely were, some clearly weren’t.
We love to claim that Trump’s followers are a cult, due to the way that they have repeatedly sold out their conservative beliefs and denied what their own two eyes are telling them is happening in front of their faces in order to defend whatever capricious whim that Trump decides he wants to believe today. However, watching this video and claiming that it isn’t a politician being violently assaulted by an angry mob of protesters is evidence of the same corruption of core moral and ethical principles in the interest of serving short-term tribal goals that MAGA cultists are guilty of.
Democrats need to loudly and vocally denounce this behavior. If we want to maintain the moral high ground, and we should want this, then we need to be unequivocal:
- Violence as a coercive tactic is not OK. Ever. Even when it’s used against politicians we dislike.
- Mob action is (almost always) not OK, and in this case, it definitely was not OK. Once a mob forms, moral and ethical checks on behavior tend to be overruled, and brute, tribal, will takes over. Again, good things rarely come from this.
To be clear, this is partly why I’m voting for Joe Biden. Donald Trump doesn’t have an ethical bone in his body. He’s proven time and again that he will endorse any group or dictator who says nice things about him, regardless of their moral status or any unethical things they have done. Moreover, his recent embrace of Q Anon has demonstrated that he’s fully willing to embrace whatever mob is willing to have him, regardless of how insane they may be. In contrast, I think that Biden is a genuinely good man. I don’t think that this is the sort of thing that Joe Biden would endorse, mainly because he’s shown that this isn’t the sort of thing he’d endorse, time and again, throughout his career.
However, while I don’t worry about Joe Biden, I do worry about portions of the left who would watch something like this and see nothing wrong.
I may be wrong in writing this diary. I fully admit that there may be some perspective that I haven’t yet viewed the situation through that might make me see it differently. That’s partly why I like coming to DailyKos. It frequently makes me see things from a perspective I hadn’t considered before. However, in this case, I sincerely doubt it. When I watch this, my moral and ethical Spidey Sense is tingling, telling me, “THIS IS BAD! THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU SHOULD ENDORSE!” So no matter how much I may loathe Rand Paul, his politics, and his party, I’m going to have to go with my moral and ethical Spidey Sense on this one:
This is bad.
This is not what I endorse.
