Will the racism, vitriol and nastiness escalate and where will we wind up?

[megc]

Will ODENHAL save us all???






 

[odenhal]

Will ODENHAL save us all???






 

ODENHAL  will save most of you  :mrgreen:

[kempsternyc]

I post this as a good sign of some catching their breathes.

The man who berated and tossed dollar bills at a man with Parkinson's disease during a health care protest last week says he is remorseful and scared.

"I snapped. I absolutely snapped and I can't explain it any other way," said Chris Reichert of Victorian Village, in a Dispatch interview.

In his first comments on an incident that went viral across the Internet and was repeatedly played on cable television news shows, Reichert said he is sorry about his confrontation with Robert A. Letcher, 60, of the North Side. Letcher, a former nuclear engineer who suffers from Parkinson's, was verbally attacked as he sat before anti-health care demonstrators in front of Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy's district office last week.

"He's got every right to do what he did and some may say I did too, but what I did was shameful," Reichert said. "I haven't slept since that day."

"I made a donation (to a local Parkinson's disease group) and that starts the healing process."

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/03/24/dollar-bill-throw.html?sid=101

ps.....that catching ones breath thing includes me too.

[NYCMacUser]

I was genuinely moved that Kempster is so fearful, and I wish I could assuage that fear as a compassionate human being.  No one should have to live in that kind of fear under our political system.

I too am terribly fearful. I can recall my parents speaking about the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. I can recall not only where I was, but what I was wearing on November 22, 1963. I can also remember that it was my late sister's birthday, February 21, 1965 that Malcolm X was killed. The whole world remembers the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and that of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Or the 1978 killings of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. And, personally, I can't leave out Philippine Senator Ninoy Aquino, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

And you can ask why people are fearful. We have lived with this racism and vitriol for a long time and once again we have to watch it escalating. I cannot just throw it in the lap of a few nuts. All it takes is one nut who has been encouraged by the type of current political climate we are witnessing from the Tea Party and The Conservative Republican front.

[Billz1981]

And you can ask why people are fearful. We have lived with this racism and vitriol for a long time and once again we have to watch it escalating. I cannot just throw it in the lap of a few nuts. All it takes is one nut who has been encouraged by the type of current political climate we are witnessing from the Tea Party and The Conservative Republican front.

That is an extremely distressing line of thinking as far as I am concerned. Just because there is a party that does not march in lock step with your ideological vision, you do not get to chalk up the actions of extremists to the "political climate" they have "created." And if you think the climate is intense now, wait until November.

[megc]

Bill, can you please tell me who from the leadership (or whatever semblance of a leader there is - I know some feel the TEA Party should be decentralized, dispensing of the need of a leader, but I hope you understand what I mean) of the TEA Party has come out to denounce the racist and homophobic slurs that were uttered during the days coming up to the Health Care vote?

Also, has there been any kind of official statement condemning any suggestions of violence toward our elected representatives?

Thanks!

[Billz1981]

Bill, can you please tell me who from the leadership (or whatever semblance of a leader there is - I know some feel the TEA Party should be decentralized, dispensing of the need of a leader, but I hope you understand what I mean) of the TEA Party has come out to denounce the racist and homophobic slurs that were uttered during the days coming up to the Health Care vote?

Also, has there been any kind of official statement condemning any suggestions of violence toward our elected representatives?

Thanks!

There are lots of examples of Tea Party people denouncing various threats.  Here is an article about Tea Party and religious leaders denouncing a protest at the home of a Cincinnati congressman: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20100326/NEWS0108/303260057/Driehaus+protest+denounced

Here is a USA Today article which notes that John Boehner has denounced the violent actions, as have over a dozen Tea Party and conservative leaders: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/03/pelosi-hoyer-blame-gop-for-inciting-vandalism-threats/1

Here is a conservative site's take on the same: http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/25/tea-partiers-extend-olive-branch-push-back-against-smears/

[Sweeper]

Well Frank Rich adds to this little discussion:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28rich.html?hp
Proving once again that theater critics should try and stay away from deep thought. Maybe somebody can explain to him that the Massachusetts health reform was not a Republican Plan, as he says. Also, many of the examples he uses just didn't happen. Stupak was not call a baby killer and Cleaver was not "spit on". I agree that people are angry, but it has nothing to do with the pigmentation of the President's skin, or the makeup of chromosomes in the Speaker of the House or the sexual fantasies of the one of the most corrupt men to ever get elected to public office.
It has to do with what these (and others) view as the role of the central government.

[Harlan]

Also in the Times this morning, an article noting that anger against political events is pretty common, historically, but violence coming out of those protests is fairly sporadic and uncommon.

Even those who see an underlying racial element in today’s political anger don’t suggest that these extreme conditions apply.

Furthermore, the psychological distance between talk and action — between fantasizing about even so much as brick heaving and actually doing it — is far larger for a typical, peaceable citizen than many assume. In the aftermath of the July 2007 London subway bombings, for instance, polls found that about 5 percent of Muslims living in England said that they believed violence was justified in defense of Islam. “That projects to about 50,000 Muslims in the U.K.,” Dr. McCauley said, “but very, very few of them are acting violently.”

Kathleen Blee, a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh, said the same was true even for groups that consider violence a central tenet. “In the white power groups I study, people can have all kind of crazy racist ideas, spend their evenings reading Hitler online, all of it,” she said, “but many of them never do anything at all about it.”

[Clueless]

What I can add to all this, is that there is a right way and a wrong way to everything.

The politicians opposing this reform are OBVIOUSLY spreading the fire.
There was just as much hate for Bush and his administration, with existing reasons to hate.
But never was there assassination threats, Bush posters with Hitler features, or even racism.

What's scary is that of course there are always going to be two sides in any situation, but for it to get to this point, is beyond belief.

We opposed Bush, and sadly could not stop him, and it was easy to receive our opposition.
How do you ask us to do the same when you're calling in threats, and holding bricks in your hands?

How do politicians stay firmly to what the believe in, what they're only doing because they honestly believe it's to help the American people, when there families lives are at risk?

The nonsense Team R has done in the last decade hasn't worked. Step aside.
Give Team D a chance, because you obviously don't know what you're talking about Team R, your track record proves it.

[Debbie]

Well Frank Rich adds to this little discussion:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28rich.html?hp
Proving once again that theater critics should try and stay away from deep thought. Maybe somebody can explain to him that the Massachusetts health reform was not a Republican Plan, as he says. Also, many of the examples he uses just didn't happen. Stupak was not call a baby killer and Cleaver was not "spit on". I agree that people are angry, but it has nothing to do with the pigmentation of the President's skin, or the makeup of chromosomes in the Speaker of the House or the sexual fantasies of the one of the most corrupt men to ever get elected to public office.
It has to do with what these (and others) view as the role of the central government.

Sweeper - when you refer to the 'sexual fantasies of one of the most corrupt men to ever get elected to public office, who are you referring to?

[Billz1981]

Ok, first off...

But never was there assassination threats, Bush posters with Hitler features, or even racism.

Never say never.  Please see this link for explicit examples of all of the above, except arguably for direct assassination threats:
http://www.zombietime.com/hall_of_shame/

Here is a blog entry from the same blogger, which does point out assassination threats from anti-Bush protests: http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621

My point here is that it's disingenuous for one side to claim shock when the fringe of the other side does something when the fringe of their side is absolutely just as guilty.

Now I know this link here will be controversial: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abreitbart/2010/03/25/2010-a-race-odyssey-disproving-a-negative-for-cash-prizes-or-how-the-civil-rights-movement-jumped-the-shark/

It's from Andrew Breitbart, a Conservative blogger of rising prominence.  He posits that some of the events of racism may not have happened as claimed, or might not have happened at all.  I am not necessarily putting this forward as my own view, but it's interesting fodder for the conversation.  Perhaps the issue is more complex than it might seem at face?

[Debbie]

Is it so unlikely that many (not some, but many) people who live in this country are indeed rascists?  Isn't it time that we simply understood this to be the case and then perhaps we can move on?  You don't really need to go far to find rascism.  Some of your own neighbors may be rascist, some members of our network may be rascist.  We don't need to go South of the Mississippi. 

Combine the rascism with the fact that we now have an African American President (actually his mother's side is whiter than I could ever be).  Then, stir in the references to Socialism (OMG, Denmark, where Satan resides), then throw in a bit about how Latinos will probably outnumber whites in a few years, then, sprinkle in a bit about how the government may take over people's guns, guess what, it does not take that much more to fuel the fire, does it? 

[Billz1981]

Is it so unlikely that many (not some, but many) people who live in this country are indeed rascists?  Isn't it time that we simply understood this to be the case and then perhaps we can move on?  You don't really need to go far to find rascism.  Some of your own neighbors may be rascist, some members of our network may be rascist.  We don't need to go South of the Mississippi. 

Combine the rascism with the fact that we now have an African American President (actually his mother's side is whiter than I could ever be).  Then, stir in the references to Socialism (OMG, Denmark, where Satan resides), then throw in a bit about how Latinos will probably outnumber whites in a few years, then, sprinkle in a bit about how the government may take over people's guns, guess what, it does not take that much more to fuel the fire, does it? 

I don't think anyone here was arguing that we don't have racists, or examples of racism in this country.  The argument was as to whether a particular movement, in this case, the Tea Party, was more inherently racist than other movements.  Given the evidence I and others have presented above, I'd say not.  From there, the issue became whether comparing leaders to Hitler, racism, etc. (all of which I am against regardless of the cause) was unique to anti-Obama sentiment.  Again, given the evidence I presented, that's apparently not the case.

Is there racism to some degree in this country? Yes.  Is it something we need to grapple with on some level?  Of course.

[odenhal]

(OMG, Denmark, where Satan resides),

ODENHAL  didnt know that.........ODENHAL did know he played for the ISLANDERS