The arguement over the violent rhetoric is a smoke screen

[randr]

No one in the MSM is addressing the FACT that the Democrats and progressives have been under violent attacks for a number of years. It is too easy to document. We have seen countless posts here on DU listing the incidents.
Lets get over the unease we feel about the language and start to address the reality of the actual acts of violence that keep increasing in horror and frequency.

[Joanne98]

1. The MSM is devious!

[AngryAmish]

2. No one ever talks about when Randi Rhodes was attacked by Freepers with hammers

Swept neatly under the rug.

[EFerrari]

9. I thought that turned out not to be true and she fell. n/t

[Democrats_win]

3. Tell them what's coming: Rwanda, Sarajevo. Americans will lose everything if the violence continues

Even if the left never defends itself, these types of violent actions tend to destroy everyone. No one on the right has though out the "end-game" of all of this. Where will it end?

[kestrel91316]

4. I have occasionally compared the RW hatemongering to Rwandan hate radio,

and pointed where that led, and people here on DU tried to say I was exaggerating. Well guess what? There ain't much difference at all in what the RW is saying vs what the Rwandan hatemongers said. Their actions just used a different weapon - the machete.

We on the left have been being murdered and assassinated by the RW for YEARS - FOR OUR POLITICAL STANCE.

[JustAnotherGen]

10. I probably have agreed with you

On Some of those threads/posts. ;-) Nazi Germany goes too far back as a comparison - but Rwanda? That's a perfect example of 'cut the tall trees' that could come to America if it is not already here. And we have no one to jam our airwaves if it comes down to that. Though . . . we could have and did not jam theirs.

[backscatter712]

14. Is it any wonder I call the Rush Limbaugh Show "Radio Rush-wanda"? n/t

[EmeraldCityGrl]

5. Even in our personal lives.

During the last two elections I had both Kerry and Obama bumper stickers
on my car. My bumper was slammed with a sledge hammer or some other
heavy piece of equipment on one occasion, backed into with a heavy hitch
on another occasion. I was run off a busy expressway I-405 in WA. state
and screamed at because of my Kerry sticker.

I kept a stone in my yard, about 2 1/2 feet round with the number of soldiers
killed in Iraq. I changed the numbers weekly. There were no words, just the
constantly changing number. Every few days the rock would be thrown into
the ditch.

Try and tell me this is something a liberal or progressive would do. It would never
happen to someone on the right.

[TheKentuckian]

16. All day, every day for years, decades, centuries, and Milena

Every incident is generally looked at as completely isolated problem WHILE we are still catching shit for Jane Fonda's comments from forty or fifty years ago WHILE they have spent decades of consistent effort to weirdly blame the left for fucking Hitler, along with everything from a fart in an elevator to the limits of the fuel for the sun to burn over its life.

Our average best case scenario is "both sides do it" or just taking the heat (guilty, innocent, or what happened was...) because we'll be damned if we place blame no matter how well earned and we deal with those lying motherfuckers that always lie.

If people are actually going to be pragmatic then it is fundamentally pertinent to understand and deal with who you are dealing with.

There is a mode of thought that absolutely is the definition of insanity in how these fuckwits and villains are reacted to and even perceived.
The passive and sharing the blame game plan is bogus. It simply will never work and is wickedly counter-productive.
Doubly bad (or more) is we simultaneously have a rather powerful faction driving us to generally assimilate with the right on economic, civil liberties, and foreign policy and "meeting in the middle" (wherever that supposedly is) on social issues and civil rights.
On the role of government it seems the poles are on one hand government for the security of capital and on the other facilitating capital, with the politicians falling somewhere between.
That's not the only axis but it seems to be one at play in most cases.

But no, the overwhelming weight of the hits land our way. Even when one of "ours" goes batshit who do they hit? One of "ours", which leads to a certain conspiratorial seed of doubt about about any of it.

I think we tend to be sheep among wolves. We are goofy for our refusal to connect the dots so abundant they almost run over themselves on their own.
How is it not clear that these folks must be made accountable as an ideology and have some consequences for their criminality. No abuse or series of high crimes is too far, we stupidly set no boundaries so they grow more out of hand with the passing of the days until we have a Civil War or at least have to bust out the National Guard and the Feds.

Did some of you people grow up on the low to no bully diet? Can you not at the very least, recall events of your own lifetimes? Have you any recollection of our nation's history? The history of the world was something you missed? You ignored the accounts of how many people? Have you paid no attention to the make up of the hate groups and militias?

Guess what???? Its the same motherfuckers as it always is that have the exact same ideology.

[pokerfan]

6. I only wish they were speaking in metaphor

"If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.” – Sharron Angle

"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for."
- Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95

"Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him."
- Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton

"We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs."
- Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."
- Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02

[bdamomma]

7. what sick bastards just fueling these people to commit murder.

[pokerfan]

11. Coulter later amended her statement

"Of course I regret it. I should have added, 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.'"

[HuckleB]

8. It's working, too.

More and more DUers seem to be buying into what the MSM is pushing on this matter.

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. It's interesting that as soon as someone said "Cut the vitriol!" the RW went "it's not just us!"

Even though, in the beginning, no real names or party affiliations were mentioned.

At least as I remember things panning out on Saturday, the early voices were not saying "Hey, rightwingers and teabaggers, tone it down!" it was "OMG, the level of discourse is awful and violent" and the left went "Yep" and the right went "It's not just us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Fuck, they know what they're doing, or they wouldn't have immediately assumed the message was meant for them.

They are a clever and devious lot - the leaders will use that inflammatory language, knowing full goddamned well that a lunatic or two will "get it" and go do the work that the leaders want, but without actual link so that - in typical rightwing fashion - they can toss 'em under the bus and pretend "I knew thee not".

They do it to their employees, they do it to their colleagues, and they do it to the countless masses that they sacrifice to their policies and their hate.

[backscatter712]

13. The rhetoric is part of the mechanism.

The right wing media hate machine spews hateful and violent rhetoric, bringing unstable people over the edge, causing violent attacks.

Force the right-wing to tone that shit down and act like human beings, and we make it harder for them to trigger violence or play intimidation games - it takes away one of their nastiest weapons.

So yeah, we damned well should be demanding that the right wing tone down their hateful and violent rhetoric.

[wiggs]

15. When I first joined DU years ago, I got a DU bumper sticker. I put it on my car. Not long after,

I was driving in Costa Mesa, CA, when this truck pulled up 2' off my bumper. I changed lanes and he followed. I turned off and he followed and flipped me off. I u-turned, and he followed. He was gesturing and was pissed. At first I thought I had done something wrong on the road but didn't think it likely and concluded that it must have been my bumper sticker. I made a show of getting on a cell phone while waiting at a light (didn't really have a phone) and at next corner he turned and disappeared.

This isn't anything like a bullet through my window, or anthrax, or flying a plane into a federal building, but I think we've all seen what kind of anger and hate there is out there on the part of people who thrive on doctrine, black and white thinking, us vs them philosophy, group-thinkers, dittoheads, fundamentalists of all kinds, supremacists of all kinds, etc.

And there's a TON of evidence, if only a major media outlet would put it together.

Agree that this is a deeper more complex issue that whether or not Loughner watched FOX every day.