* More Dog Whistles, and the Alan Grayson Case
On Friday, I saw a bit of “The Ed Show.” He had Representative Alan Grayson (D, FLA) as a guest. Grayson is one Democrat who has been willing to speak strongly against the perfidies of the right. And the occasion for his being invited onto “The Ed Show” was that he had received anonymous messages apparently threatening him with assassination.
The conversation between Grayson and the host, Ed Schultz, seems a fitting companion to that piece I was running at about the same time, William Rivers Pitt’s fine article on “Dog Whistles,” wherein he excavates how a bit of Pat Robertson’s TV messaging looks like a covert call to assassinate President Obama. Robertson has been featuring Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a hero for trying to assassinate Hitler (in 1944), and that apparently distant piece of history connects menacingly with the persistent right-wing media effort to instill in their audience an equation between Obama and Hitler.
So here’s the threat against Grayson, and it turns out that this is not an isolated matter: it was said more than once that THREATS AGAINST MEMBERS OF CONGRESS ARE UP 300 PERCENT THIS YEAR.
(They did not break it down, indicating how many of these threats are directed against Democrats/progressives and how many against Republicans/the-right. But I would feel safe betting heavily that this threat of violence is quite imbalanced, with the overwhelming majority coming from right-wingers and directed against liberals.)
The discussion came to a focus on the responsibility of the Republicans to denounce violence. Which they have been very far from doing: Grayson cited how Sarah Palin called upon people to “take him out.”
This thuggishness is really the face of fascism. It is the same spirit. And it is fundamentally anti-democratic.
As Ed Schultz said, the idea of an assassination is that one person would be able to counter the will of 170,000 people who chose Grayson to be their representative in Congress.
Our Constitution creates an arena in which these battles are to be fought out– non-violently– and this arena is the election process.
The people who acted as if it were somehow illegitimate for a president elected with a decisive majority of the votes, and who campaigned with a pledge to pass such legislation, to get health care reform through Congress.
The same spirit that foments these threats of violence shows in such other ways its fundamental rejection of the democratic process.
As one who has lately studied the way politics was conducted in Germany in the aftermath of World War I –assassinations, the de-legitimization of the liberal democracy, and eventually the rise of brutal fascism– I say we ought to take all this very seriously.
July 25th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Counter-terrorists provoking terrorism — another example of chickens coming home to roost.
Puffed up psychopaths can’t back down because they might lose their standing.
Palin and Clinton are so disappointing because they are destroying the illusion that women can bring an end to this insanity.
Make love not war. Smoke dope not Iran.
July 25th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Palin and Clinton are so disappointing because they are destroying the illusion that women can bring an end to this insanity.
Women who are actually woman-like probably would at least work on ending war, but women who get that far up in our male chauvinist hierarchy have usually practically made themselves into men to get there.
Wish we had more Graysons. Is he getting much face on the mainstream media?
July 25th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Palin hasn’t made herself into a man. She’s a demagogic, Amurican version of Ilona Staller. Too bad. Maybe we need a Marxist version:
Scrumptious hilarity should ensue!
Palin’s also an illustration of the system promoting monsters, rather than perverting good people. The patriarchy can work the token women in and still maintain it’s overbearing Reichian authoritarianism. I wonder whether enough women in state politics could be a sufficient antidote to psychopathy in national offices.
I also wonder what’s happening with all these would-be assassins. I haven’t noticed their arrests. Isn’t that peculiar? We must have courage against the spectacle of fascism. So much is done under that cover that has certain consequence.
July 26th, 2010 at 12:54 am
You’re right; Palin is a phenomenon unto herself.