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

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.


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.

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.

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.


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!

Kathy Griffin's Bloody Trump Head - And The Incredible "Free Speech" Hypocrisy Of The Right

How real is American freedom? More to the point, how does it compare with the freedom that other nations cherish, nations such as Norway, Barbados or Germany? Answering these questions can shed no small amount of light on the freedom we believe we have.

According to David M. Potter, in Freedom and its Limitations in American Life, (Stanford University Press, 1976), people of most other nations understand freedom to be wide ranging and to include freedom to express opinions contrary to the majority, or the societal "norms" and even engage in active dissent. Also, freedom to live as one chooses, e.g. in Barbados 'squatting' is quite legal, so long as it's not near water reservoirs, wells.

To the typical American (p. 7) "freedom" is not so inclusive or expansive but is limited to two concepts: "free and independent" and "free and equal". The first implies "freedom to avoid dependence" , e.g on any higher authority, thereby to attain true independence.This "freedom" is what the Tea Party Brigade incessantly invokes in its rallies to pursue the ultimate goal of "every man for himself" and no "nanny state".

As Potter notes, the other concept, "Free and equal" implies the essence of freedom is:

"Not being different from other people, but rather on a par with other people; not the right to choose between various modes of life, but the right to enjoy a mode as good as anyone else's "

In effect, the first ensures the typical American will pursue no true freedom of thought, but rather freedom from all collective responsibility or accountability (e.g. to a defined commonweal. ) This "freedom to avoid dependence" - which is to say, be "free" of the "Nanny state" has its limits.

Then there is the related issue of freedom of speech.  But especially here, hypocrisy abounds with  the Right often screaming at Leftists for  trying to censor their protected hate speech , e.g. at universities. But then they go ape shit nuts when a lefty evinces her own brand as Kathy Griffin recently did with her fake,  bloody Trump head.

But how shaky the brains of the Right when they get into high dudgeon and posturing outrage! They seem to forget what they did to the image of Obama e.g.



Or:


So please, don't go crying and whining about Kathy Griffin's bloody Trump severed head if you are the least bit ok with the preceding - as much of the victimized Right was in the Obama years. Or, if you accept the preceding images as expressions  of shameful but "free"  speech,   but not Griffin's.

Sadly as William Boardman has noted:

 "This episode speaks volumes about the tortured pathology of American culture in its present mindless form: freedom of thought, freedom of speech are allowed, but only if you exercise them within the walls of your invisible mental freedom prison. Otherwise you risk being an outcast. For Kathy Griffin, that risk is substantial, and it’s all too human of her to abase herself to save her career (if she can). The real sickness lies in the cultural demand for that abasement, which serves as a self-righteous cover for a deeply cowardly refusal to consider what the image means in a country where the majority of people want this presidency decapitated and are told they cannot talk about it except in officially approved and restricted ways. The official culture tries to prohibit depicting the living monster as defeated and slain.

We need to talk about that societal unwillingness to talk about that. The cruel, hideous ruler has long been a universal stereotype and reality."

Regrettably, as Boardman also notes, Griffin apologized at the "grovel" level for her stunt - something the Right's obnoxious cretins would never do. Like Great White sharks they tasted blood in the water, and this opened the door for even more feral attacks on her, just like Ward Churchill endured after his essay "On Roosting Chickens'.  This was an essay written after 9/11 that compared the investment specialists and brokers in the World Trade Center to "little Eichmanns". Every little anti-free speech dunce in Colorado went batshit crazy calling for Churchill's head,  with the university - and the Denver Post - complying in full, demanding his termination. The Post hung Churchill out to dry in a number of editorials and op-ed columns, The guy was convicted (of "plagiarism") and hung, drawn and quartered before he could ask why.  The whole episode showed the "free speech" meme for the hypocritical bollocks it was, because while someone could depict Muslims as "ragheads" in cartoons, he couldn't dare call into the question the U.S. role in inciting blowback - as Churchill did.

And who can forget the spewed hate after Colin Kaepernick took a knee for the national anthem? There we saw it again. The veiled threats that okay, this may nominally be the "land of liberty" but boy, you better had watch out which rights you exercise and look behind your damned back if it's the wrong ones!  Carrying this to outrageous extremes was a  self-proclaimed "World War II and Korean War vet" named Chris Cator who confided to Denver Post sports writer Mark Kiszla that:  "I will buy a one-way ticket for  Brandon Marshall (Broncos anthem kneeling LB)  to any foreign destination he wants."

What's the most galling and aggravating aspect of this whole aftermath, apart from some numskulls blaming it on "Trump Derangement Syndrome? The hysterical screeching of the Right that Griffin be charged with "domestic terrorism" or "making an assassination threat".  Are  you fucking kidding me? It was a tableaux prop explainable as artistic license which anyone who's read the end of 'MacBeth' would recognize - the protagonist bearing the severed head of the tyrant. E.g.  Act 5, Scene 8, lines 53-55:

[Re-enter MACDUFF, with MACBETH's head]
MACDUFF	Hail, king! for so thou art: behold, where stands
	The usurper's cursed head: the time is free:
	I see thee compass'd with thy kingdom's pearl,

In other words, unlike the crude images of Obama lynchings by the Right,  Griffin's invoked an artistic license based on a Shakespearean play.  Of course, most righties wouldn't make any such connection because they've never read any Shakespeare plays.  In the words of William Boardman:

"This is not an actual assassination. It’s not an actual attempted assassination. It’s not even a call for assassination of or even violence against Trump. It’s a far cry from all those right-wing memes lynching Obama. This is an example of artistic license. That’s another trait of free societies. Police states hate artistic license, even when it’s literally licensed."

The fact some Reich wingers might believe Griffin's form of intense speech is a "threat" or "domestic terror"  shows how far the county has descended into a limbo of historical and literary retardation.  Hence, that so many lack ability to do even basic critical thinking whereby one is able to distinguish a stunt using a prop from a genuine threat.  What was Griffin's error, if any? In not explaining the context for her speech.  But should she be crucified for that by the lynch-prone assholes of the Right? No, just as Ward Churchill shouldn't have been crucified for his 9/11 essay by losing his professorship at Univ. of Colorado.

The  pathetic takeaway from all this? Americans talk a good game about "freedom of speech" but have not defined it to a standard that all parties can accept. This means there will always be some who exercise it - such as Kathy Griffin, Ward Churchill, and Colin Kaepernick - who will pay a disproportionate price for so doing if believed to be outside the bounds of an artificially contrived "decency".  This also factors in the inevitable hypocrisy which allows one side (usually the Right) to get away with what in other nations might be hate speech, but if the opposite side tries it, it's met with hysteria and threats.

So much for the "land of the free".

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-boardman/73209/kathy-griffin-with-trumps-severed-head-sets-off-us-denial-storm

And:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/73247/griffin-and-mahers-outrages-are-nothing-compared-to-that-of-trump

Excerpt:

"If we've not lost our collective mind, we have, at a minimum, lost our perspective and sense of proportion. In the wake of unquantifiable outrage over the Kathy Griffin and Bill Maher kerfuffles, such a bundled loss just might be a proper assessment. I doubt it, but it could be true that America, by and large, can no longer distinguish acts deserving of resolute disapproval from acts deserving of genuine outrage. "