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I love Keith Olbermann... when he's not being an idiot.
Which is rare indeed... but last night on a special broadcast, he was the FIRST I've seen to raise the Ghostly Spectre of False Equivalency in discussing the rise of violent and inflammatory rhetoric in America's political discourse. He made a point of apologizing for any such inflammatory speech of his own... he seemed to need to confess and be given absolution for his own role, I guess, in inspiring what the San Diego Union-Tribune has today on its front page dubbed the Arizona Massacre.
And I reject his apology and his reasoning entirely. Just what the hell is he talking about?
The Right in this country have had, at any given time for the last 20 years or so, about nine Dark Riders constantly plaguing the American broadcasting airwaves with a continuous barrage of fear and paranoia, endless releasing new, increasingly lunatic warnings of dire events coming if the left is allowed any voice at all in this really-not-so-Brave New World Order they're engineering.
Everything is distorted to such an extent that health care for small children with inherited diseases becomes "death panels", and two years of at LEAST competent administration at the executive level is labeled "a government takeover", and our highest-ranking leaders in the current White House, who have so far done NOTHING illegal, nothing proved, nothing even charged, are regularly called "gangsters", without ANY real explanation for such charges.
Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly, Glennbeck (so named because he makes a strange coughing noise that sounds like "Glenn Beck"), the lovely and talentless Megan Kelly... and the strange hybrids, half-politico, half-media darlings such as Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Hell-No! Boehner... supposed representatives of the people spreading the death-panel myths and the birther fervor everywhere they go...
And of course, the King of the Nazgul, Rush Limbaugh, who was born to fly that single Mordor dragon, but it turned out he was much too heavy for it... and so he ate it.
On the Left, who do we have?... Well, I guess we've got... George Carlin... and Bill Hicks.
And they're both dead.
Who else? Jon Stewart? Joyce Behar and Whoopi? Ummm... the Dixie Chicks? Me?
I know what you're thinking: Who the hell am I anyway?
Exactly.
See, it really is VERY different.
And as for our best political fire-brands, they simply NEVER drop little hints to incite violence against their opposition. NEVER.
Anthony Weiner, Alan Grayson and Dennis Kucinich are EXCELLENT examples of this. They NEVER use violent rhetoric, preferring always to think before they speak. They have all three at times shown themselves to be fiercely aggressive advocates for Democratic ideals, but in the best sense and meaning of such words. They are always controlled and careful and diplomatic in their public arguments and media appearances; they rarely say anything stupid, and never anything that could be construed as fomenting fear and anger amidst the general populace. They are aware that as our representatives they have a responsibility to speak in ways that quell riots rather than starting them.
The difference here is like night and day.
These, btw, are verifiable facts I'm speaking about here; we have video and audio evidence in abundance showing that this false equivalency is an absolutely insane denial of the actual problem.
I despise Sarah Palin, and I think she should face civil actions from some of those families at the very least... but it's not just Sarah. The problem has been systemic, and ongoing for the last two decades; it's just that now it's finally truly beginning to bear its strange fruit.
Long before the Tea Party magically came into being (after some very rich Republicans planted some magic beans in a tub full of money one dark, fateful, moonless night), Rush and Hannity and Coulter and O'Reilly were spewing their hysterical hatred and thinly-veiled racism and greed-driven bullshit agendas of false reality across the wastelands of sad, sad America... 20 years of horrible howling and weeping and gnashing of teeth, by some of the richest, fattest jerks this country's ever produced.
Sowing the seeds of hatred, irrationality and primitive fear throughout the country they all so unctiously claim to love and cherish so highly.
Lying, endlessly, constantly, and without apparent limit. Endlessly driving wedges of division between their phony representations of left and right, and in so doing turning brother against brother, replacing all the old time-tested ideals of human community with the old, inviolate laws of the jungle. Every man for himself, and only the strongest may survive.
Sorry, Keith. Sorry, news-dummies repeating that same bullshit line today, and in the days to come, but that's not what we "lefties" are into, and you KNOW it.
We're interested in human evolution, not its opposite. We want to move forward, not go back to a mythical good ol' days that most of us were happy to have finally escaped this last half-century, after immense courageous struggle and suffering to achieve basic human rights for more than just white guys.
We're not perfect... but in comparison to the Repubs, we Dems actually ARE. We're freakin' angels in comparison. Not really... just comparatively, you understand.
Comparatively, we're sowing the seeds of love and human inter-connectivity. Seeds of empathy and compassion. We seek not to conquer but to unite. We seek peace and understanding.
But some things are beyond understanding. Like pretending that both sides have somehow been equally complicit in this breakdown in American civility.
When, in point of verifiable fact, NOTHING could be further from the case.
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