"But The Lefties are Just as Bad!"
Jan. 13th, 2011 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfs"The lefties did it too!" is a terrible beginning, because there's no market on the left for that kind of rhetoric. Lefty verbal bomb-throwers do not get $400 million contracts (Rush Limbaugh), rent space on the national mall (Glenn Beck), get their own reality TV shows (Sarah Palin), or get elected to Congress (Michelle Bachman).
When you can point to a sustained, supported, widely praised, and idolized lefty who says the kind of nonsense that routinely comes out of Glenn Beck's mouth, then you'll have some equivalency.
But you can't have it both ways: You cannot claim consistently that the left is made up of a bunch of peace-loving nudnicks who want to take away our guns and leave America completely defenseless, that only the right has the strength and will and character and training to embrace America's martial destiny, and then claim that both sides have an equal receptivity to violent rhetoric.
If you believe in the free market, then believe this: since 2000, a right-wing noise machine has created a market in resentment and advertised violence as a potential solution. Karl Rove's formula, "Aim for civil war, then pull it back just a notch," seems to have worked.
The left seems to have no equivalent market at all: in 2006, at the height of Bush-bashing, a movie about the assassination of George Bush made little more than $400,000, but Rush Limbaugh made $50,000,000.
Saying "Left and Right are equally bad" is false equivalence, and deceit, and wrong. Right-wing resentment is a thriving market with a hundred times more economic power than left-wing frustration.
When you can point to a sustained, supported, widely praised, and idolized lefty who says the kind of nonsense that routinely comes out of Glenn Beck's mouth, then you'll have some equivalency.
But you can't have it both ways: You cannot claim consistently that the left is made up of a bunch of peace-loving nudnicks who want to take away our guns and leave America completely defenseless, that only the right has the strength and will and character and training to embrace America's martial destiny, and then claim that both sides have an equal receptivity to violent rhetoric.
If you believe in the free market, then believe this: since 2000, a right-wing noise machine has created a market in resentment and advertised violence as a potential solution. Karl Rove's formula, "Aim for civil war, then pull it back just a notch," seems to have worked.
The left seems to have no equivalent market at all: in 2006, at the height of Bush-bashing, a movie about the assassination of George Bush made little more than $400,000, but Rush Limbaugh made $50,000,000.
Saying "Left and Right are equally bad" is false equivalence, and deceit, and wrong. Right-wing resentment is a thriving market with a hundred times more economic power than left-wing frustration.
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Re: From the opposite end
Date: 2011-01-16 03:47 am (UTC)Now, I have seen quotes of statements from a few Democratic political operatives that are beyond the pale (*cough*cough*RomEmanuel*cough*cough*), but the offenders were all taken behind the proverbial woodshed and held accountable. Who's holding these faux-"Conservative" public figures accountable for the rather blatant and almost daily calls to violence against their political opponents?
But back to my point: as long as inciting violence against "the other guys" is supported, rewarded, and treated as a valid tactic for winning elections, how long before "the other guys" start doing it, too? What happens then?
Real Conservatives wouldn't be saying, "ButButBut … the left does it too!" No, real Conservatives would look at the examples of harsh rhetoric from the Democrats and think, "They're starting to use it too?! Oh $h1t! What've we unleashed?!?!?!"
Because, see, once both sides start calling for attacks against their political opponents, once they do so for long enough, it will happen. And then the U.S. will end up like Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast.