Federal judges in rural Montana have had their lives threatened. Bureau of Land Management buildings in Nevada have been bombed. Doctors have been shot and killed Do the folks inciting this anger really want to dial up the temperature as they seek to disrupt and disturb?
I don't want to read a headline that goes beyond ugly effigies, shout downs or plain old disrespect. The architects of this canned anger should step back for a moment and assume responsibility for their actions.
so, the idea is that, if you urge dissent, you are responsible for acts of violence that may happen sometime in the future, and which you do not advocate. this is the sense, i guess, in which these are "violent mobs." they could be violent sometime in the future, or someone could be. plus, if you vigorously oppose a particular healthcare program, you are retroactively responsible for...bombing the bureau of land management? this isn't an argument. it's guilt by free association. now tell me that we're not gearing up an argument for the repression of dissent. certainly, at least, we are asserting that if you don't like some particular healthcare program, you are an insane violent extremist being manipulated by monsters. that, of course, is compatible with you're being right. in other words, it's not an argument, just a series of incoherent insults.
the "secure dc environment" is contrasted to the redneck jungle of florida or whatever. this just puzzles me, but maybe it means that tallahassee should be a locked down? dunno.
look, even if you agree with every thing obama ever proposed, you are not obliged to go down this road of bizarre fantastic totalitarian crap, discrediting your opponents by vague innuendo and random connections to whatever.
really, it would nice for people to understand this. you can take a side, though i would personally recommend against being a democrat or a republican, a liberal or a conservative, on the grounds that the positions are internally incoherent. but even if you enlist on a side, there is absolutely nothing preventing you from disagreeing with others of your ilk, even when they're apparently all stampeding in the same direction. now if you weren't the kind of person who loves to live in a stampede, you wouldn't be a democrat in the first place. but still, you can draw the line somewhere. that is not a betrayal of your country etc., or even of your cause, particularly in a case like this, where the whole left seems to be hanging itself en masse, or at any rate, praying together for the brutal repression of their oponents.
nothing is worse for the left than winning. that's when the totalitarian personality emerges, proportioned to one's certainty, which is supplemented by the certainty of everyone else. pretty soon, no one can think at all or behave decently. the screeching elitism and nonstop self-congratulation becomes insufferable, the programs overweening. that's when the bad shit happens: when everyone is slapping each other on the back for their sagaciousness, and can't even hear the objections of their not-of-the-right-sort or not-even-fully-human ignorant opponents. enough unanimity, and the opposition doesn't count, doesn't even exist. since they do exist, they must be destroyed. nothing wrong with that, since we know what's best: for us, and for them.
