Apocalyptic Rhetoric

Right Wing Conservatives Going Nuts Over Seeing Themselves in Mirror
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much panic among Right Wing commentators, but it’s not hard to understand what’s driving their fear. Their almost uniform response to any frame connecting Saturday’s shootings with their own conduct and statements has been couched in anger that the media, never mind liberals, would “Libel” them as somehow complicit in the Murders. Except almost no one is making that connection. The broadly accepted view across the media...

John Dingell Runs Through Litany Of Violent Rhetoric On House Floor
© C-SPAN Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) Members of Congress have, by and large, stayed out of the partisan fray over violent Rhetoric in the wake of the Arizona Shooting Spree. But there have been some exceptions. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) took the opportunity to muse that the government may be withholding information about the crime because Jared Loughner is a flag-hating Marxist liberal who might embarrass President Obama. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), by contrast, ran through a litany of now-i...

Tucson Tea Party Founder Blames Giffords For Getting Shot: The Real Case Is That She Had No Security
In March 2010, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) warned that the Rhetoric from the tea parties and Sarah Palin was potentially dangerous. “I can say that in the years that some of my colleagues have served — 20, 30 years — they’ve never seen it like this…when people do that, they’ve gotta realize there’s consequences to that action,” she said on MSNBC. Tuscon Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries called Giffords’ previous concerns about violent...

Mein Kampf, Again
Since a few folks on Twitter and in my email, keep insisting that I think Mein Kampf was a “liberal” book, I figure I’ll respond once here. Beyond what I already said the other day about its incredible tediousness and unreliability as a serious guide to Nazi ideology, there are some other things to add. The first is that I never claimed Mein Kampf to be a “liberal” book, certainly not in the European sense and not  in the American sense either. If in the Americ...

No More Mister Nice Blog
THE Conspiracy TO KEEP YOU PERPETUALLY ENRAGED (AND, INCIDENTALLY, PARANOID) Steve Benen and Atrios have both flagged this Harold Meyerson column in The Washington Post, and I thought I'd add my thoughts about why right-wing Rhetoric inevitab...

Sarah Palin, Blood Libel, and Death Panels
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin claims she is the Victim of "blood Libel," a reference to the anti-Semitic claim that Jews sacrifice Christian Children. A Jewish congresswoman got a bullet through her brain, but Sarah Palin is casting herself as the Victim because some people have criticized her. Talk about chutzpah. “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘Death Panel’ so his bure...

The Tucson memorial service | Michael Tomasky
Barack Obama's Speech was one of his best in some time, I thought. He sounded a little more like Candidate Obama than President Obama, which is to say, he returned to some of the inspirational language and themes of old. It was almost as if he was relieved not to have to be talking about The Economy or Afghanistan. The ideas that were appropriate for tonight, about civility and the need to be better, are ones he's more comfortable with. I gather from the television that some Conservatives are ap...

Rocking the Funeral
President obozo gave one of his most inspirational speeches to kick off this 2012 re-election that had everything except a balloon drop and confetti. The cheers and fainting was back as the mock Catholic service was performed with President Messiah giving the message. It was a great pep rally but a really poor memorial, liberals don't do compassion. The Liberals began the rally with Chief Running Mouth offering some prayer that was heavily draped in all the sins America has done from the Indian ...

Liberalism's Ugly Face
While most normal Americans still reeled in shock in the wake of the Tucson shooting, liberals across the country were out in force blaming Conservatives for it. Given how heart-rending the whole tragedy was, their reaction is truly mind-boggling. One can only wonder what kind of human beings would react in this way. To liberals' eternal shame, it turns out that the shooter was anything but a Tea Partyer and that his "conservative" credentials are rather thin indeed. In fact, the infor...

John Dingell Runs Through Litany Of Violent Rhetoric On House Floor (VIDEO)
Members of Congress have, by and large, stayed out of the partisan fray over violent Rhetoric in the wake of the Arizona Shooting Spree. But there have been some exceptions. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) took the opportunity to muse that the government may be withholding information about the crime because Jared Loughner is a flag-hating Marxist liberal who might embarrass President Obama. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), by contrast, ran through a litany of now-infamous statements by high-profile politi...

The Problem With the Militarization of Rhetoric
Washington—The slaughter in Tucson hasn’t shaken us out of bad political habits. Instead of promoting a sober conversation about the dangers of violent political talk, it has reinforced divisions between left and right. Even responsible Conservatives have dismissed any suggestion that Saturday’s attack is reason enough to condemn the threats of violence that have become standard to the discourse at the extremes of their side of politics. More importantly: We have not focused a...

RFK Jr: You know, my uncle was also shot amid a climate of right-wing hate
Be sure to read the last post about Palin before you read Junior’s reminiscences or else you might not appreciate what a quintessential example this is of the left’s magical thinking about culpability. You want voodoo, you got it: Uncle Jack’s Speech in Dallas was to have been an explosive broadside against the Right Wing. He found Dallas’ streets packed five deep with Kennedy Democrats, but among them were the familiar ornaments of presidential hatred; high-flying conf...

Infants Playing with Flamethrowers
Harold Meyerson nails it: Dangerous outcomes from a culture of paranoia: Last October, Glenn Beck was musing on his Radio Show about the prospect of the government seizing his Children if he didn't give them Flu Vaccines. "You want to take my kids because of that?" he said. "Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson." Last April, Erick Erickson, the managing editor of the right-wing RedState blog and a CNN commentator, was questioning the legality of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey on a radi...

David Brock Tells Matthews: Glenn Beck Has Been Responsible For 3 Thwarted Assassination Attempts
Media Matters founder David Brock appeared on Hardball and revealed to Chris Matthews his allegation that “Glenn Beck himself has been responsible for three thwarted Assassination attempts this year.” Brock listed three occurrences where a crazed assassin targeted a liberal politician or institution, and where evidence later emerged that the assassin may have been a viewer of Beck’s show. Matthews just nodded in astonishment, not questioning whether such tangential evidence tru...

Rhetoric as comfort food: The mac-and-cheese instinct
If only we could go back to Monday. Discussions about Saturday's shootings in Tucson, which killed six and wounded 13, including Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, were so much simpler then: inflamed, righteous and deliciously partisan in a comfort-food kind of way. The fallout from the tragedy took a neat and predictable course: the left blaming the right for its association with incendiary Rhetoric, and the right mounting a tough defense against such accusations, arguing that liberal elites f...

You Want To See Real Extremist Rhetoric?
I give you da Palin-Haterz on teh Twitter. @ipulleddatrigga: “Since ppl r in the mood to try n kill politics nshit how bout they take a shot at Sarah Palin…shot her ass. White bitch.” @jennlowry: “Sarah Palin should be strung up. Her little Take Back the 20 got just people killed. Fucking Bitch.” @denaraz: “Palin is a murdering bitch who deserves a crosshair on HER house so Al-Qaeda can come shoot her family. See how that feels, Republican trash.”&#...

David Brock: "Glenn Beck Himself Has Been Responsible For Three Thwarted Assassination Attempts This Year"
This is unbelievable, but then again it's MSNBC. Chris Matthews with Media Matters David Brock talking about you guessed it, all the hate on the right. I can't wait to hear what Beck has to say about this tomorrow, If he does respond, I'll post it ...

Can "paranoid" political culture trigger violence in the unhinged?
I'm going to second Steve Benen's claim that this column by Harold Meyerson is an important addition to the debate over the shooting: The primary problem with the political discourse of the right in today's America isn't that it incites violence per se. It's that it implants and reinforces paranoid fears about the government and Conservatism's domestic adversaries. Much of the culture and thinking of the American right -- the mainstream as well as the fringe -- has descended into paranoid sup...

Palin, Obama sternly rebuke the Left
Former Governor Sarah Palin broke her silence today to deliver a scathing rebuke to those Leftist media pundits and citizens who have been accusing her of complicity in the Murders and Assassination attempt in Tucson last Saturday.  Governor Palin appropriately named them guilty of “Blood Libel,” a Hebrew term originally used in regard to anti-Semites who falsely claimed Jews murdered Christian Children and used their blood in their food.  The libel and slander done by the ...

The Plum Line: The right-wing narrative about Clinton, the Oklahoma bombing, and Obama
President Obama is heading to Arizona to commemorate the Victims of Saturday's events in Tucson, and Conservatives are already expressing concern about a replay of Bill Clinton's 1995 Speech denouncing "purveyors of hatred and division" on the airwaves in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. In a preemptive strike, Conservatives are already misrepresenting the history of that event, arguing that Clinton politicized the bombing for his own gain. At National Review, John J. Mil...

Partisan Finger-Pointing Is Hypocrisy
The drumbeat continues blaming Conservatives exclusively (or at least disproportionately) for overheated, violent Rhetoric. But it is not that simple.  In fact, some of the exact same people now posturing about a need for “civility” have themselves been guilty of the exact same overheated, violent rhetoric that they now (with no evidence) think is responsible for the Tucson attacks. The fact is that we have a general problem with abusive, dehumanizing political Rhetoric.  It didn

Late Night: Try to Be Nice, And Look What It Gets You
It’s long been obvious that Conservatives conceive of “civility” solely in terms of point-scoring, because they are essentially sociopathic fuckwads. Oh, perhaps this is unfair. But as I was grouching about last night, “once you’ve gone ahead and, say, made excuses for state-sponsored Torture, if you want the benefit of the doubt, fuck you.” Honestly, one of the absolute minimum qualifications for entry into a Civil Discussion ought not to include an enthusi...

L.A. Times: Health Care Repeal Too Divisive What with Our New Need for Civil Rhetoric
The deck headline: “House Republican leaders are eager to fulfill their promise to vote to Repeal the Legislation, but taking up the divisive issue could hurt the party at a time of calls for rejecting partisan Rhetoric.” As lawmakers promise a new era of comity after the Arizona shooting attack that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in critical condition, Republican leaders grappled with how and when to return to an issue that brought political discourse to a boili...

The Left shoots itself in the foot in Tucson
This past Saturday, Janurary 8, 2011 while conducting a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a Safeway Grocery Store in Tucson, AZ Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by a would-be assassin who subsequently opened fire on the crowd in attendance killing six and wounding another fourteen. Congresswoman Giffords was lucky to survive such an horrendous attack and remains in critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson where she continues to make remarkab...

Stephen Stromberg: Palin proves -- again -- that she's a terrible politician
Sarah Palin didn't retreat. She reloaded. And she proved, again, that she is a ruinously incompetent politician. Over the weekend, liberal pundits overeagerly speculated that she may have inspired the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). After learning more about alleged shooter Jared Loughner, many of those same commentators restrained their criticism of the former Alaska Governor, and polls showed that Americans are skeptical of any connection. People recognized Palin had been unf...