Using Lies to Whip Mobs into Anti-Democratic Frenzies (update 2)
Earlier today, I wrote (twice, actually) about the vile lie being used to scare the elderly so that they will oppose healthcare reform. Well, another Republican "leader" has now picked up that lie and has begun to use it. Here is what Sarah Palin (I like not having to call her Governor anymore) said on her Facebook page today:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
Yes, such a system is downright evil. That's why it is not being considered by anyone. It is also downright evil to use a lie like this to try to scare people. But that is where today's Republican party lives. (By the way, in the statement from which I've pulled the above-quote, Palin also commends Rep. Michelle Bachmann for her stance against healthcare reform. Yes, that Rep. Bachmann...)
Oh, did you see the video of Glenn Beck saying that he'd like to poison Nancy Pelosi? And laughing about it? Or did you hear about Rush Limbaugh comparing President Obama to Adolph Hitler and, when called on that by Jewish groups and even some Republicans, he affirmed the comparison? Did you see the video of the Republican Congressman joking about constituents wanting to lynch their Democratic representatives and getting a big laugh from his constituents?
I'm afraid that civil discourse is dead.
The real question has become this: Does the right wing want a new civil war?
posted by MSWallack @ 11:06 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
It’s funny we hear Republicans say that they do not want “faceless bureaucrats” making medical decisions but they have no problem with “private sector” “faceless bureaucrats” daily declining medical coverage and financially ruining good hard working people. And who says that the “private sector” is always right, do we forget failures like Long-Term Capital, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, Tyco, AIG and Lehman Brothers. Of course the federal government will destroy heathcare by getting involved, Oh but wait, Medicare and Medicaid and our military men and women and the Senate and Congress get the best heathcare in the world, and oh, that’s right, its run by our federal government. I can understand why some may think that the federal government will fail, if you look at the past eight years as a current history, with failures like the financial meltdown and Katrina but the facts is they can and if we support them they will succeed.
How does shouting down to stop the conversation of the healthcare debate at town hall meetings, endears them to anyone. Especially when the organizations that are telling them where to go and what to do and say are Republicans political operatives, not real grassroots. How does shouting someone down or chasing them out like a lynch mob advanced the debate, it does not. So I think the American people will see through all of this and know, like the teabagger, the birthers, these lynch mobs types are just the same, people who have to resort to these tactics because they have no leadership to articulate what they real want. It’s easy to pickup a bus load of people who hate, and that’s all I been seeing, they hate and can’t debate. Too bad.
I'm afraid that the American public may not see through these tactics, especially if the media portrays these tactics as grassroots (rather than astroturf), if the media portrays these tactics as normal or acceptable, and so long as people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and their ilk continue the kind of incitement-laced rhetoric that they've become prone to and known for. If someone shouts "fire" in the movie house often enough, someone just may take the time to light the match.
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