Madness

Stirling Newberry:

America is indeed involved in a war, in more than one war. And if we needed any lessons as to what a civil war looks like, the scenes from Iraq are a reminder. In the recent days Republicans, and their fellow travellers such as Joe Lieberman, have backed violent extremism in an effort to foment the illusion of a civil war here in America. Cal Thomas attacked the Democrats as the "Taliban Party". Joe Lieberman accuses anyone who disagrees with him of being "worse that Hilter".

[...]

Cal Thomas is telling other Americans that it is right to kill Democrats. America's Constitution was designed to prevent political pressures from building to the point where incitement to violence, or violence itself, would be the resort of political actors. We are not talking about people who are disenfranchised and at the margins, but people backed by millions of dollars and broadcast to millions of viewers.

It is not enough that we had to witness a dirty tricks campaign from Joe Lieberman, who spewed false felony allegations, and quite likely committed felonies in doing so himself - now we must watch as Lieberman, Cal Thomas, and indeed the entire Republican Party urge Americans to kill other Americans.

I've been saying for a long time that the violent, eliminationist rhetoric is increasing. And indeed it is. Continually. At some point all of this is going to come to a boil and we're going to see violence. As Newberry notes, in the 1990's we saw events like the killing of doctors who perform abortions, self-styled "militias," and, of course, Oklahoma City. These only died down with the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the GOP's complete takeover of the government in 2001.

Some event, some trigger - perhaps an aggressive Democratic Congress in January - could send the nutters over the top. And then we won't have to worry just about Jihadists trying to kill us. Some of our fellow citizens might be trying to kill us as well.


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