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Walter Rhett: Free Speech and Those Rubbernecking Toilet Smells
The new Republican marketing plan is a reset; it says it is still okay to restrict the rights of women regarding their own bodies and their incomes, it is okay to stop accusing Hispanics of taking American jobs as long as they are not offered US citizenship any time soon, and it is okay to curse blacks long and loud since they now can’t be lynched or fired. (Remember, this is Republican thinking.)
The media continues to sidestep the GOP’s widening ideology of blame, especially the ideology’s populist use of speech as a hammer to forge negative action and ideas. Although heavily rooted in politics, blame is maintained primarily as a social media form. It’s adapted from hate radio (different from talk radio!), which develops and disperses its inverted ideas of denial and blame.
It develops among those whose priorities see the word as a weapon and put violence before peace. Its world view assumes those with whom its practitioners disagree have a hidden, winner-take-all agenda leading to a society regulated and controlled by occupation and door knocks. This world view equates restraint with control; its practitioners feel suffocated by any social responsibility. Its expressions give voice to the triggered temptations of wanna-be warriors to take down their perceived foes as they themselves fall. Having failed in defining progress and gaining power, or in protecting the status quo, the temptation to defile one and all is strong among them, and even defeats undeniable logic.
Their ideology of blame wears the mask of freedom (the idea of unconstrained freedom, free of responsibilities or constructive engagement) and uses the web, (Twitter, blogs and websites, YouTube) as its negative amplifier, looping and streaming its feedback. It behaves as hundreds of Peeping Toms, prowling digital windows for targets. Words are their stones...
More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/04/03/free-speech-and-those-rubbernecking-toilet-smells/
