We all know how analogies to Nazis have gone over-the-top this political season.
But sometimes Godwin’s law just isn’t good enough. What we need is a Hutu analogy.
The Hutus, you will recall, massacred hundreds of thousands of members of the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda in 1994, often in the most brutal ways, with machetes and other face-to-face brutality.
According to Digby at the popular left-wing Hullabaloo blog, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the right-wing noise machine are setting the stage for another Rwandan-style massacre of American liberals, Being A Tutsi:
Right wing radio is hate radio. And Glenn Beck is fucking lunatic. And they reach many millions of people every day. Will any of those people act? Well, they already have on an individual basis. But this daily ranting about the evil of liberalism and the inhumanity of liberals seems to finally be reaching some sort of critical mass in which those on the right who hear nothing but this sort of raving all day long have come to believe that liberals — not liberalism — must be eliminated. I realize that we won’t have teabaggers running across the countryside lopping off people’s hands with machetes. But the sentiment that drives people like Beck and Limbaugh isn’t all that different, even though the worst we’ve seen are spit spewing screamers at Townhalls and a few cases of head stomping and false arrest. So far. This cannot end well.
Bill Sparkman and all the other victims of right-wing and Tea Party violence must be turning over in their graves.
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Comments
LonewackoDotCom: Teapartiers aren't like that. They lie, smear, jump to conclusions, and show no intellectual curiosity.
Case in point:
Maggie: My casual observance of these violent leftist anarchist vegetarians, is that it is due to their watermelon like behaviour (they are green on the outside and red on the inside) and their odor-sniffing, they have been causing the few brain cells that they do in fact possess to die. All of that letting off an evil-smelling odor has left them in a state of being nothing more than brain-dead vegetables.
LonewackoDotCom: Teapartiers aren't like that. They lie, smear, jump to conclusions, and show no intellectual curiosity.
Zachriel: Case in point:
Maggie: My casual observance …
Case in point #2:
LonewackoDotCom: Teapartiers aren't like that. They lie, smear, jump to conclusions, and show no intellectual curiosity.
Now to my eye, that statement by LonewackoDotCom appears to be (1) a lie, (2) a smear, (3) jumps to conclusions, and (4) shows no intellectual curiosity. Sort of a self-fulfilling death by ricochet.
The great trap of posting to blogs is that impulse we all have to make ad hominem statements, crass generalizations, and give unsupported opinions as if they were verified facts.
Opinions are like assholes; we all have one. And we all approach these issues from our own perspectives, with our own implicit biases and values. That's a given. And it usually causes us to perceive the other side as either unprincipled, hypocritical, or intentionally ignorant. I don't think there is ever going to be a solution to these problems that prevent us from addressing issues in a spirit of cooperation and compromise – short of alien invasion.
Which is why I see the past election as a precursor. The country is being split apart. The incumbents got shellacked not because of any mandate, but rather the independents fractured. Middle of the road Democrats lost because they hadn't gone far enough with the Leftist radical agenda and legislation; those Leftists who see no limit to government powers when it comes to social engineering. The Republicans got shifted to the Right because the Tea Partiers are sick to death of government that impulsively spends money on things that are arguably unconstitutional. My belief is that the majority of the independents shifted right, but a significant chunk also went left. Independent doesn't mean ideologically in the middle.
The nation has a huge ideological faultline, which generates gridlock, frustration, and animosity. IMO, that is the "new normal". And like the political atmosphere of the 1850's, it is a roadsign warning of a more violent resolution of these fundamental disagreements which are politically unsolvable.
The rhetoric will continue to increase in pitch, volume, venom and bile as each side girds itself for the coming conflicts.
I see the Digby quote as a sign that the Left is beginning to awaken to the fact that the country is not going to be led peacfully down the socialsit road. They did a pretty good job for quite a long time of getting it pretty far along without the masses awakening to where we were headed. That somnolent period has ended, thanks in large part to the Tea Party efforts.
Watching them go through elections like NOV-2 is ever so much more entertaining than mere "elimination."
Strange these liberals… putting everything into personal terms. Oh the guilt ridden paranoia of it all. They really should check with the Japanese who were conquered island by island in the Pacific during WWII. Contrary to reported wide-spread beliefs at the time, Americans were not cannibals bent on having them for lunch. We decided a long occupation and reformation process over many decades was the thing they deserved most.
Occupy government and start the decades long reformation of the left.
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