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Are All Equivalences False?

No one could have predicted that despite the fact that a Democrat was targeted for assassination after years of unhinged but extremely profitable vitriol from the Reactionaries, that the lesson taken from the incident would be that both sides need to tone down their rhetoric. The comPost's Dana Milbank reminds us that several years ago people were saying very rude things about the Bush administration -- imagine! just because they were grifters, cowards and war criminals some very lowminded people disrespected the Bushies. And this is basically the equivalent of drawing crosshairs on your political opponents and raving about how their empathy menaces the American Way.





But seriously, it's really, really simple. One side thinks violence is totally righteous -- they're all for any kind of war, weapons system, capital punishment, police brutality, tasers, guns for everyone, torture wherever necessary, troops on the border and keeping the black and brown down generally, death to abortionists etc.; one side passionately espouses violent sport and every other kind of macho mayhem, and one side is a lot more skeptical about all that stuff. Moreover it's the violence-loving side that predominates today in the military, among the cops, the corporations, and the courts. So it seeems to me there is a lot more danger -- to basically everybody in the world -- from the American Right, and inherently a lot more menace in their heated rhetoric. The idea that there are, as always 'abuses on both sides,' is as usual, bullshit, a trivial fact in service to the large and heinous lie.

Mr. Fish "sample" is from Harper's.

posted by Kalkaino @ 9:52 AM