Thursday, July 6, 2017

Right Wing WSJ Letter Writer Tries To Blame Violence And Rage On The "Radical Left"

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It is well known, or ought to be by now, that the resolute faux news Trumpies are not invested in history, facts or objective truth. Look, for example, at all the traction that Alex Jones is getting by featuring a psychotic guest who's claimed there are "child sex slave colonies" on the planet Mars. Then there is the WSJ letter writer, a Mary R. Schneider, from Avon Lake, OH who had her militant letter ('A Double Standard for Violence, Intimidation') published in the June 3rd WSJ.

Schneider's whacked out letter is notable for the gazillion bytes of facts - all well documented- she leaves out to try to make the case the "radical left" are the bad guys in the country, stirring up violence and extremism. This despite the controverting facts that since Trump got in Neo Nazis, Muslim haters, Jew haters and other haters have all been having a heyday - including defiling Jewish cemeteries,  attacking innocents and even good Samaritans on trains -as in Portland, Oregon recently - and scrawling Nazi swastikas all over the damned place, e.g.
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All this has been going on, out in the open for the past year, so one wonders what little isolated, right wing cubbyhole Schneider has inhabited . Well, of course if all she watches is FOX News that would explain it. Still, one would have to be deaf, dumb, blind and stupid to miss as many alarm signs as are out there.

Richard Cohen, writing in the SPLC Report ('Welcome To Donald Trump's America', Summer, 2017), notes that what was called "the Trump effect" manifested from a year ago - documented by a survey of 2,000 educators. The gist of the report was that Trump's campaign rhetoric had inflamed racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom leading to a sharp uptick in bullying of minority children. A 2nd survey of 10,000 educators reinforced the original findings, documenting nearly 900 bias-related incidents in the first 10 days after the election. (Many of the perps referenced Trump or his campaign slogans).

Without a doubt, Trump's ascension has really turned the Reich wing nuts loose and now they feel they have a guy in the WH who has their back, so are emboldened to do anything they want.  The SPLC Report (op. cit.) noted especially that "white nationalists and Nazis were enthused" over Trump's first 100 days. Meanwhile, these denizens cheered like drooling morons at every anti-media tweet the Dumpster posted - always hankering for more.

In her letter, Schneider, in answer to a column by Peggy Noonan ('Rage is all the Rage'),  claimed "that If any other Republican had been elected" in 2016, the Left would still have made the person the "target of violent speech".  Which is nonsense in two ways. First, there has not been "violent speech", but rather angry demonstrations such as immediately following Trump's aberrant election including the Women's March. Second, the reason for anger  - which btw is not the same as violence - was clear from months ago when Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women ("you can just grab 'em by the pussy') and then this infamous brag about shooting someone on 5th avenue and not losing voters, See:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTACH1eVIaA

I am absolutely certain Schneider is one of the voters Trump wouldn't lose if he shot someone dead on Fifth Avenue. Let's also not forget this common thug's own enticement of violent behavior at his rallies, where he actually encouraged Trumpies to punch out protestors, and even go after the media. Then we've seen the latest video, redone from a WWF match, showing Trump beating the daylights out of a suit with a superimposed CNN logo for his head, thereby inciting his more volatile and unstable followers (Schneider?) to take action against the media. Ah yes, following in historical lockstep to Hitler's Sturm Abteilung (S.A.) commissioned to beat the then German reporters to a pulp - especially those that didn't print stories praising the Fuhrer. So, we've seen this act before, also the blindness of followers like Mary Schneider. (See Konrad Heiden's 'The Fuhrer')

Despite all of this, and as the most recent SPLC Intelligence Report notes, "a wave of anti-minority hate crimes washing over the country in the aftermath of Trump's victory" she has the absolute nerve and chutzpah to write:

"The political rage infecting the U.S. is almost exclusively a left-wing phenomenon,"

So I guess she missed all the hateful scenes and instances from the time of Obama, e.g.
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But maybe this woman is blind,  lives in a parallel universe or simply doesn't wish to see the ubiquitous rage on the Right.  Maybe she also missed the scene of Montana's thug Greg Gianforte who had left Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs being carted off to an ER after being body slammed, e.g.
Ben Jacobs with his broken glasses being carted off in the ambulance.
See any of that, missy? No? I could post a lot more images but what would be the point? Ordinarily I wouldn't even waste my time rebutting BS like Schneider's but someone has to skewer this type of nonsense and I am damned sure the Journal wouldn't publish any rebuttal letter of mine.

She also demonstrates her historical retardation writing:

"Violence has been part of the radical left's arsenal since the French Revolution"

In fact, the French Revolution disclosed a general popular revolt against a rarefied, entrenched upper crust or French aristocracy,  content to let thousands die of  hunger on the streets and in villages, as embodied in Marie Antoinette's famous put down: "Let them eat cake!"  Well, the entire French populace - not just the "left" (there really was no defined "left" until Karl Marx' 'Communist Manifesto' and  'Das Kapital'  decades later) rose up and put these privileged fools so dedicated to inequality to the guillotine.  It remains an object lesson for nations never to let inequality get too far out of control. (Right now, the Gini coefficient for the U.S. stands at 0.394, the highest it's ever been)

She then adds to this a large dollop of additional ignorance:

"It is the direct result of the hard left's rejection of traditional Christian morality and its embrace of moral relativism in pursuing its agenda, which allows leftists to demonize their political opponents and to use any means to defeat or even eliminate them."

Here she doesn't elaborate what she means by "traditional Christian morality" but in a previous post I already examined that what the left embraces is not moral relativism but moral provisionalism, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/05/moral-absolutism-is-trumped-by-moral.html


As for "demonizing" political opponents, this has almost entirely been done by the Right. Obama and Obamacare were a constant victim of this demonization, including depicting him as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose, as well as "Satan's son" , e.g.
Image result for Images of Obama depicted as AntichristImage result for Images of Obama depicted as Antichrist
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If those Reich wing images don't meet the literal definition of "demonization" I don't know what does.

Use any means to defeat them? Here again "Mary, Mary quite contrary"  has her signals crossed. Last I checked it was the Repubs doing all the gerrymandering to ensure they'd never be defeated! As for "eliminating them" it was the Right and its associates in the MIC which eliminated JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X, last I looked. Maybe the lady needs a course in modern American history. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn't do any good given how many modern American history texts have been converted to pabulum and 'feel good' propaganda..

Schneider, to her minor credit, does acquire a degree of graciousness at the very end, writing:

"Certainly, most liberals in the U.S. don't espouse violence ..."

Gee, thanks a heap, lady! But she goes on to babble:

"but a growing, radicalized minority of them do and often with the tacit approval of their less radical brethren..."

Failing to cite any specific incidents or evidence. If she'd mentioned the Kathy Griffin incident with a prop of Trump's head, I'd have referred her to my previous post on it -


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/06/kathy-griffins-bloody-trump-head-and.html


connected to artistic license and free speech. Was it possibly in poor taste? Yeah, maybe,  but not as much as Ku Kluxers putting up posters of branding and whipping Michelle Obama!

At the very end she bids "mainstream liberals" to reject the "demonization of those who don't share their views", but makes no symmetric demand on the extreme Right, which generated the images above. She then ends with:

"Unless they subordinate their ideology to morality, the rage and violence will get worse."

Indeed, but see, that works both ways: If the Right doesn't subordinate its ideology to a morally refined conscience, then things can only get worse : more bullying and terrorizing of minorities, more instances of Reepos beating up reporters, and more thwarting and threats at minorities trying to vote.

Schneider's missive shows it's damned easy to dictate that others "reject their ideology for morality" and abhor rage and violence . It's much more difficult to issue similar dictates for your own side!

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