The Left is NOT like the Right

I want to debunk the right wing, media enabled, rhetoric that it is illegitimate to hold the gop infused, media enabled, Tea Party responsible for the present toxic political culture. The school yard meme claiming the overzealous nature of partisanship on both sides of the aisle is straight up Bullpoo. There is a huge difference between the rhetoric on the right and the rhetoric on the left. For one thing, the right has a wider platform.

The left isn't responsible for the anger and the vitriol that produced the random acts of domestic terrorism. It's those on the right who have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. The Left doesn't use Hate Speech to incite violence.

The Left is not on Talk Radio 24/7 using the public airways to misinform the uniformed to keep the bigots in line.

Where does one start in the wake of the political killing spree that occurred in Arizona on Saturday?

With John Wilkes Booth putting a bullet into the head of Abraham Lincoln?

With the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy?

With the shooting of Martin Luther King?

The right-wing culture of hate and implicit coded call to kill the enemy, as if on a mission from God, is a subset of our larger national culture of violence.

From our policy of maintaining superpower status through wars and coups to going back to the conquest of America by the slaughter of Native Americans, we have had a history of a large segment of our population that views violence as a remedy for personal and political grievances - as well as the fulfillment of ideological goals. For them, "putting down your enemy" is as American as apple pie.

MSNBC is NOT like Fox News

Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

What if the gop infused, media enabled Tea Party were Black?

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protesters — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

IMHO President Obama doesn't need to be leading a moment of silence for the Arizona Victims, he needs to be speaking out. This is another one of those teachable moments where he has the opportunity to reaffirm the belief we are not red states and blue states we are the United States of America. He should take the lead in in quieting the voices of hate and bigotry.

You won't see wall to wall, breathless coverage of the One Nation Working Together rally held in Washington D.C. today because it's not a bunch of Obama hating white folks waving their flags while they waive their rights. Nope, it's red, yellow, black and white Americans from red states and blue states coming together to reclaim The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and demanding the CHANGE we voted for.

It's the media.