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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
The situation here in the US has gotten so unhinged, Speaker of the Hash John Boehner is urging everyone to chill out, fire up a blunt, kick back and watch the Fredo Show on CNN.
I hate the public confrontations that are exploding all over the place, and wish everyone would just back off, go about their business, and let others do the same.
Frank Miele's observation sums up the frightening situation our politics has devolved to.
Here's the money quote:
If politicians are willing to use the most extreme labels against their opponents, such as calling President Trump a racist or a white supremacist, then we have reached the point where majority rule is in danger of becoming serial civil war. You cannot negotiate with a racist, you can only crush him.
Nor can those who are falsely so labeled simply put the insult behind them and work happily toward compromise. Instead, power will be obtained for the sole purpose of settling scores, and if you are out of power, you will say or do anything to get it back — literally anything.
What say you?
(I)n both the Ohio and Nebraska primaries, back to back, McGovern was confronted for the first time with the politics of the rabbit-punch and the groin shot, and in both states he found himself dangerously vulnerable to this kind of thing. Dirty politics confused him. He was not ready for it….
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.
“Christ, we can’t get a way calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”
“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.” - Hunter S Thompson, "Fear And Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72"
Now we have a President who won his party's nomination on the merits of calling his last two opponents standing a "child molester" and the son of a JFK assassination conspirator.
It's too late to unshit that bed.
+ 1
DeleteAsshatting batshittery is not monopolized by the Left.
Probably a coincidence that Ben Carson and Ted Cruz are reliably conservative. I mean minorities.
DeleteThe nasty scab of what the "deep state"was all about was removed with the election of Trump . Previously the idea that there was a class of elites that knew no bounds for their behavior, was removed from any judicial proceedings was relegated to a rag tag group of tin foil hat wearers.
ReplyDeleteNo more....What is and has gone down with Jeffrey Epstein was a case in point. We knew the game, now more know.
As the awareness grows, the elites are stuck. It is do or die for them. I suggest that it is they who are ginning up for the ultimate battle for control.
Sadly, many do not know they are being played and follow their new found friends who promise them the moon in return for over throwing the government.
How will it end? I am not optimistic.
Didn't Donald Trump kick off his presidential campaign in 2015 by referring to [some] Mexicans as rapists and drug dealers? Didn't he mock John McCain for being a POW? Didn't we see clips of Trump's campaign rallies where he talked about punching people in the face and then offering to pay for lawyers for the assaulters? There is video evidence of all of this and more. Now Trump, the POTUS, not some fake news reporter, tweeted out with no evidence to back it up, that the Clintons were behind the death of Epstein?
ReplyDeleteSo who exactly stoked rage and frenzy in our public discourse?
You're looking at the wrong thing, the subject of the reportage, and not the source of it. Why was Trump called out for these (and other fake) infractions, but the cloak of silence hangs over those who historically did so previously, but were never reported for doing so by the MSM?
DeleteWhy was the press silent about John and Bobby Kennedy's many affairs? Why did it take Woodward and Bernstein 2 years to get the Watergate break-in story and broing Nixon down? Why did it take Ken Starr 6 years to nail Bill Clinton for perjury, only to have in result in a failed trial for impeachment?
There used to be "unwritten rules" that political failings and dirty-tricks weren't reported by the MSM. The "office" must be kept clean - and not be sullied by the failings of the men who occupied them. Those unwritten rules have deteriorated... and so here we are.
You mistake a correlation for the cause.
Delete@sf - Boehner? Either "former Speaker" or "Pelosi"!
ReplyDelete@ Bunkerville - The Deep State will always have its' "part-isans". But now they will be ever more brazenly "part-isan". Soon, even Law(war)-Fare won't be enough. The opposition party is no longer simply "bad". They are "evil".
Once the over-the-top rhetoric hit the mainstream, all news outlets became "InfoWars".
DeleteWhat's your "criteria of truth"?
Delete"The criterion of truth resides in the feeling of power." Nietzsche, (WP #534)
Great post, sf! +1
DeleteFarmer,
DeleteThank you. It's a shame some got triggered and went for the lazy Tu Quoque.
Regardless of who started the fire or threw on more gasoline, I was hoping people would address Miele's last two paragraphs I quoted here.
SF - your piece raises the pertinent crux of the matter - the search for a solution. Does one have more power to influence this type of behaviour and tactics in the opposition.....or one's own party?
DeleteInteresting that he talks about majority rule being in danger when the Electoral College has that quashed
DeleteI don't think my response was a "lazy tu quoque." Trump and his fellow scumbags are essentially bilge from the same left wing sewage spill. The only prayer Trump has in 2020 is a massive, apocalyptic drop in voter turnout. The next election will be a test of America's character. It's statistically doubtful we'll fail it a 4th time in a row.
DeleteExcellent post, SF.
ReplyDeleteOff topic...I'm in the midst of a Windows 10 update that can take 4-5 hours! So, my laptop and I are being held hostage. I'll be back to participate in this thread after Windows 10 releases me; I hate using this mini iPad for making comments.
Excellent observation. The opposition's response goes something like...
ReplyDelete"Racism is no longer overt. The racists have gone underground and carry out their racism is a sneaky manner."
They also point out that we still have racism embedded in our culture, society and institutions, and people are mired in circumstances created from a racist past.
There is much truth to the last statement. Yahoogle "sandtown, Balitimore." Many black people still live in shabby neighborhoods with crappy schools that they were redlined and herded into during the bad old days of segregation.
This is just one example, the internete is full of them.
ReplyDeleteThe depictions of Obama as ape-like have arguably sparked the most controversy, considering that blacks have been portrayed as monkey-like for centuries to suggest that they’re inferior to other groups. Still, when Marilyn Davenport, an elected official in the Republican Party of Orange County, Calif., circulated an email portraying Obama and his parents as chimps.
Also, leading the charge that the first black president was not born in the USA, therefore so the legitimacy of his presidency was questioned for 5 years by Trump -- the only president to have this thrown at him, was a racial smear. There are some people here who still think Obama was foreign born and not legit.
Obama and his publisher provided the seeds for the Kenyan smear (see my comment above) and no responsible Republican at the time employed that against him in a serious way, but yes, that would be an example if his GOP opponent, Hollywood and 90% of the press had dogpiled him with that smear.
DeleteThe racist depictions you describe are odious, and thankfully no one outside the obscure fever-swamp extreme fringe engages in it.
It's rare that the term "racist" is applied to an Afro-American.
ReplyDeleteIn Obama's case it was necessary to substitute Muslim and Kenyan to indicate his "otherness" and leading the birth certificate charge was none other than ...?
The right called Obama everything but a child of God and you know it or you were asleep for eight years.
Political attacks, including blatantly unfair ones, are as old as the nation.
ReplyDeleteI was never a birther, but the Kenyan thing was started by Obama, who supposedly passed himself off as such during his college days to make himself more exotic, and there was that publicity blurb from his publisher that called him a Kenyan.
Name-calling is one thing, but Miele's focus is on one side labeling an opponent with something so fundamentally odious it puts that person beyond the pale of humanity itself.
Despite his partisan spin, can you comprehend his deeper point?
Good grief! Now comes this:
ReplyDeleteLawns are racist.
Unhinged. Really.
Please see the new blog post to continue the conversation.
ReplyDelete