I've got some time to kill while my company downloads new software onto my computer.
Right Wing Claim: Since the crazy guy who shot up the holocaust museum hated Bush, Republicans, Fox News, and Jews, he must be a left wing radical, since left wing radicals hate all those things too.
The fact is, there are two camps who virulently hate all things Republican: Those far to the left of standard Republican thought, and those far to the right of it.
It's kind of weird behavior, the way that folks on the (regular) right are pretending that Neonazi skinheads and abortion doctor killers aren't members of the fringe far right school of thought. They are doing it because they don't want to be associated with these people. Therefore they are trying to do the impossible: Grab these people way off on their right and lob them over their heads all the way to the far left side of the political spectrum.
Listen guys: Nobody (except for opportunistic idiots who lack the mental facilities to make you look bad any other way) is trying to suggest that the murderous and violent crackpots who dwell on the far right psychotic fringes of thought have anything to do with standard (misguided but innocuous) folks of mainstream Republican thinking and policy. The fact that you're putting all this effort out to get people to believe that the holocaust-denying, anti-semetic, racist, gay-bashing, immigrant-hating, abortionist-murdering people who live in John Birch's nether regions are somehow directly related to a Middlebury Women's Studies major just makes you look silly.
Face it. Please: Skin heads, anti-semites, racists, ultra-nationalists, abortionist killers, and hyperreligious whackos are all people who take the Republican tenets of pro-Jesus, pro-life, pro-guns, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-government... crank them up to 11... and then toss racism or anti-semitism or conspiracy theories or revolutionary thought into the mix... and boil it down to a fine decoction of hatred and potential violence. That says absolutely nothing about the source of their beliefs or the people whom they got those beliefs from. OK?
Paul Krugman wrote an op/ed piece coming to the exact opposite conclusion you did:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/opinion/12krugman.html
Hmmm... I don't think Paul Krugman is an opportunistic idiot. Major liberal, but not an idiot. :)
Love, your sister.
I disagree:
ReplyDelete...but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.
But this doesn’t change the broad picture, which is that supposedly respectable news organizations and political figures are giving aid and comfort to dangerous extremism.
I don't feel this is an accurate reflection of reality: People like Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh are trying to turn regular people on to their own brand of crazy. They aren't specifically trying to turn already crazy people even more crazy and violent. I give the Republican Useful Idiot crowd more credit than to believe that they purposefully tune and target their message (dog whistling or not) specifically at the lunatic fringe like Krugman suggests.
Of course, Krugman is partially right though: the obvious consequence is that people who are already living on crazy street are getting positive feedback to their own warped worldview through Beck and Limbaugh, and it enables them and emboldens them.
Do I think that Limbaugh and Beck should STFU because people who are nuts might do something violent? No: People who are nuts... who might do something violent... are going to do something violent whether Beck and Limbaugh are on the air or not. I think that Limbaugh and Beck should STFU because they are wrong, misleading, dishonest, and make people stupid, but not because crazy people use them as fuel for their own insanity (which is my original position).
Remember, lots of violence in the 60s and early 70s was committed by lunatics whom one could say were "being systematically fed" by angry-but-mainstream groups of people who weren't too shy about voicing their desire to "shake up the system" in order to stop the war in Viet Nam... but those mainstream groups certainly weren't hoping for more SLA or Black Panther or Weathermen attacks.
So yes, it is opportunistic for Krugman to insinuate that Limbaugh and Beck (and company) are going on the air with the intention of riling up Neo Nazis and abortion clinic bombers. It would not have been opportunistic for Krugman to have said that Limbaugh and Beck (and company) are going on the air with the knowledge that that is what is going to happen when they spout their nonsense, because that is true; but that is not what he said.
I suppose you could claim I am engaging in casuistry by agreeing with the premise but discounting the reasoning Krugman used to arrive at it. But the cause-effect of this really is at the core of the debate and that is the part where Krugman and I differ.
Casuistry? is that a typo or a word?
ReplyDeleteMe? Jil? A typo? Heh. Very funny mom.
ReplyDeleteCasuistry.