The SoapBoxers

Civility Lost

March 28, 2010

The Angry Squirrel - See all 34 of my articles

Usually at the end of my post each month I list the three “bad nuts” of the month.  This month’s posting will basically be nothing but the bad nuts of the past few days.

Health Care reform has now become law of the land and despite my own questions on whether it is actually enough done, it is a big effing deal to quote the Vice President, and a step in the right direction for the country that has been a long time coming.  However, it is now abundantly clear if it was not before that conservatives completely lack any sense of dignity, humanity or civility within their course of actions and the words they use. There will be many examples I leave out, as there are far too many to put into the space I really want to take up here.

Tea Party protesters on Capitol Hill last weekend repeatedly shout the n word at members of the Black Caucus as they walked by the protest and shouted other obscenity laced rants as well.  They also threw out homophobic slurs at openly gay congressman Barney Frank. This is the least threatening example of the loss of control the right has made a turn towards in the final days and aftermath of healthcare reform, but is still a shiny example of the ignorance and intolerance on the right.

At a Rochester, NY Democratic Party office a brick with a note with this quote attached, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,”  was thrown through a window. No one was harmed other than the window in this instance, but it is another quite fitting example of what conservatives really are looking for these days as many other offices across the state of New York and around the county have had bricks with such revolution inciting quotes attached to them.

While House Republican leader “Hell No You Can’t” John Boehner passively spoke out that the climate needs to change to a positive to get his party back in power as that will get the real job they want done. It’s is a little too late for his change of heart over the flames he and his party has stoked for well over a year now. In the past few days he has also made countless references to many Representatives in congress who have been getting death threats as being a dead man for how they voted. More than likely he was hopefully meaning politically speaking, but it is the passive aggressive stoking the flames of hate in his masses to get them to seek violent action over civil discourse over issues. So in reality his actions in the recent pass fully outweigh the passive rebuking of threats of violence in the aftermath of the bill passing.

Congressman Bart Stupak hasn’t just had to deal with Congressman Randy Neugebauer shouting “baby killer” as he spoke on the house floor, but has become the poster child for the right wing nuttery’s rage. Here’s a sampling of what he has had to go through. Endless voicemail messages to his office and home many simply stating, “I hope you die.” others with a more prophetic viewpoint. “There are millions of people across the country who wish you ill and all of those thoughts projected on you will materialize into something that’s not very good for you.” 

Also his office received a fax depicting him on a noose with the caption “All Baby Killers come to unseemly ends either by the hand of man or by the hand of God.”  All this for deciding to vote for healthcare because he got his exact wording put through in an executive order instead of holding up the process any further by having it inserted into the text of the bill. Despite the fact that in reality the wording did not need to be there in the first place because well it was already law and nothing done was changing that anyways, but I digress.

Never to be absent from stoking the flames of anger, the queen of the nutjob right, Sarah Palin, continues to be her usual self. The two main instances of note of the past few days have been commenting that Republicans don’t need to regroup after healthcare had passed, but need to reload the gun and take more shots at Democrats. There must be some continual obsession with guns for Sister Sarah as she also depicted the pictures of 20 House Democrats and the states they represent with crosshairs of a gun and mentioned that these seats in states won by her (i guess she forgets that McCain was the head of the ticket) as targets to dispose of in the next election. I get the cute play with guns and everything, but when your supporters obviously aren’t playing with a full deck then you probably do not need to continue to put this kind of imagery.

Even though his network now only allows about two minutes a day of actual coverage of the passing of the healthcare reform bill, Glenn Beck has not been absent from the fanning the flames on the right. He has now referred to the passing of healthcare reform as a mother spanking a child. And now our decision as a is whether we love our mother and want to hug them or to we want to pick up guns against them. Beck was more for the guns approach to getting back at “mother” approach. So if you hear any news of tea party people shooting their mothers in the next week or so you know who to blame on that one.

Like I said before there are too many examples as of late of incivility from conservatives, leaders and followers to list here. It is clear that the Republican Party has reaped what they have sown over the past year in these past few days as the climate has boiled over even more. They may shy away from it in public light passively now, but in reality it is what they have wanted all along. In the end it is clear that one thing for conservatives is, that civility has been lost and I don’t think they’ll find their way back to it any time soon.

The Political Observers
Health Care Reform