Lets jump back in time 10 years, to 2011. A man opened fire in an Arizona parking lot and killed 6 people, and shot Gabriel (Gabby) Giffords. By all rights, she should have died that day as well, but by some miracle, survived being shot in the head. When the Sherriff said that it was possible overheated political rhetoric contributed to the violence, the Democrats picked up that soundbite and ran with it. "Civility was their new talking point"...well really it was their new cudgel. They attacked republicans about not being civil, they slandered Sarah Palin and claimed that a campaign map was responsible. In the end, it was false, and it was a man with paranoid schizophrania that went on a rampage unrelated to politics that did this. The media and democrats kept the story in the paper for a long time.
Jump forward to 2017. During a baseball practice where 24 republican congressmen had gathered to practice for an annual charity baseball game, a man approached two congressmen and asked whether the Republicans or Democrats were practicing on the field. Those two congressmen believe it was the perpetrator of what happened next. 30 minutes after the practice started, a gunman opened fire with a rifle. Steve Scalisce, on second base, was shot in the hip. The shot shattered his hip, ricocheted into his body and damaged several internal organs. Miraculously he also survived. two others were shot as well. Thankfully, nobody was killed. The perpetrator was identified as a man from illinois who was by all accounts a mainstream democrat, acting for political purposes. The shooter even had a list of names in his pocket.
The reaction between the two was...different. While in both cases, Colleagues, rallied around the shooter, the democrats talk about rhetoric was muted, if it existed at all. Even though the rhetoric surrounding Trump's election was higher than it had ever been, the democrats barely mentioned it, if they did at all. The media covereed the initial news story, but then it quickly faded away.
But that's not just subjective opinion, when you look at the news coverage you'll see stark differences.
At first, stuff seems on par within the first three days, the coverage seems similar.
first3giffordsvscalise.jpg
But, take a look at how quickly the story died out. When you look at the entire week after each shooting:
firstweekversus.jpg
Suddenly, the coverage dropped by half or more, depending on the paper.
It wasn't just the coverage amount, but also the placement of the stories. A week later and the NYT had five front page stories related to the attack on Giffords. Scalisce....nothing
When one of their own was shot, the democrats were concerned about rhetoric. They were concerned about how all of the anger could lead someone to be violent. In the case of Gabby Giffords it turns out that they were tilting at windmills. However, the general point they had was right. Lots of heated emotional rhetoric can lead to deaths.
When heated political rhetoric suddenly became a contributing factor to political violence, it was against the other side. This would have been a good time for soul searching, for recognizing that perhaps their ugly rhetoric was getting out of hand. That perhaps the party of Civility had gone to far on being uncivil. But they didn't.
Now, We are in a similar type of situation. We had 4 years of political violence. It's been downplayed, it's been minimized, it's been rationalized, it's been justified, it's been excused, it's been ignored. This summer was the worst. AOC even posted a guide to hide your identity while protesting. When I copied those words to this site, I was given an infraction and the thread was pulled down because it was seen as encouraging people to commit crimes. AOC Now says that if we don't crack down hard on the capitol hill rioters, and crack down hard fast, all we'll do is encourage people to riot more.
oxmixmudd, who considers my concerns about the general silence of democrats over violence (including my concern about the multiple attempted murders of police officers) to be "Petty Annoyances" feels we should focus on republican mis-deeds and ignore what the democrats did until this blows over. The answer to that is no!
Why? Because if we ignore the democrats complicity in the normalization of violence, history shows us they won't soul search, they won't be introspective on their own behavior. Instead They'll use this as a cudgel against republicans, and then memory hole their own behavior. We have to keep reminding them about how they contributed to violence, or they will simply move on from it, and repeat the same behavior.
Jump forward to 2017. During a baseball practice where 24 republican congressmen had gathered to practice for an annual charity baseball game, a man approached two congressmen and asked whether the Republicans or Democrats were practicing on the field. Those two congressmen believe it was the perpetrator of what happened next. 30 minutes after the practice started, a gunman opened fire with a rifle. Steve Scalisce, on second base, was shot in the hip. The shot shattered his hip, ricocheted into his body and damaged several internal organs. Miraculously he also survived. two others were shot as well. Thankfully, nobody was killed. The perpetrator was identified as a man from illinois who was by all accounts a mainstream democrat, acting for political purposes. The shooter even had a list of names in his pocket.
The reaction between the two was...different. While in both cases, Colleagues, rallied around the shooter, the democrats talk about rhetoric was muted, if it existed at all. Even though the rhetoric surrounding Trump's election was higher than it had ever been, the democrats barely mentioned it, if they did at all. The media covereed the initial news story, but then it quickly faded away.
But that's not just subjective opinion, when you look at the news coverage you'll see stark differences.
At first, stuff seems on par within the first three days, the coverage seems similar.
first3giffordsvscalise.jpg
But, take a look at how quickly the story died out. When you look at the entire week after each shooting:
firstweekversus.jpg
Suddenly, the coverage dropped by half or more, depending on the paper.
It wasn't just the coverage amount, but also the placement of the stories. A week later and the NYT had five front page stories related to the attack on Giffords. Scalisce....nothing
When one of their own was shot, the democrats were concerned about rhetoric. They were concerned about how all of the anger could lead someone to be violent. In the case of Gabby Giffords it turns out that they were tilting at windmills. However, the general point they had was right. Lots of heated emotional rhetoric can lead to deaths.
When heated political rhetoric suddenly became a contributing factor to political violence, it was against the other side. This would have been a good time for soul searching, for recognizing that perhaps their ugly rhetoric was getting out of hand. That perhaps the party of Civility had gone to far on being uncivil. But they didn't.
Now, We are in a similar type of situation. We had 4 years of political violence. It's been downplayed, it's been minimized, it's been rationalized, it's been justified, it's been excused, it's been ignored. This summer was the worst. AOC even posted a guide to hide your identity while protesting. When I copied those words to this site, I was given an infraction and the thread was pulled down because it was seen as encouraging people to commit crimes. AOC Now says that if we don't crack down hard on the capitol hill rioters, and crack down hard fast, all we'll do is encourage people to riot more.
oxmixmudd, who considers my concerns about the general silence of democrats over violence (including my concern about the multiple attempted murders of police officers) to be "Petty Annoyances" feels we should focus on republican mis-deeds and ignore what the democrats did until this blows over. The answer to that is no!
Why? Because if we ignore the democrats complicity in the normalization of violence, history shows us they won't soul search, they won't be introspective on their own behavior. Instead They'll use this as a cudgel against republicans, and then memory hole their own behavior. We have to keep reminding them about how they contributed to violence, or they will simply move on from it, and repeat the same behavior.
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