Chris Bowers at MyDD follows up on the resignations of Marcotte and McEwan from the Edwards campaign.
Terrorism and the threat of violence against American citizens remains a key political tool for the American right-wing. This is true both in the sense of conservatives and Republicans trying to scare people into voting for them / justifying their legislative agenda, and in the sense of actual terrorism and threats of violence against Democrats and progressives who stand in their way. The most important lesson we should learn from the entire "Edwards bloggers" incident is not that Edwards caved (he didn't), not that Amanda and Melissa let us down (they didn't), not that the media is dominated by a Republican Noise Machine that justifies any right-wing smear (it is, but what else is new under the sun?), but that physical violence and the threat of physical violence is still successfully being employed as a political tactic against individual progressives in America. Make no mistake: without threatening violence, Donohue, O'Reilly, Malkin, and everyone else associated with this smear campaign would have lost, and badly, just as we thought they had lost badly at the end of last week. In the end, their campaign was saved via death threats. You won't read about that in any of the AP stories, but it is something we need to address front and center -- even if just on our own at first -- none the less.
Earlier in the post he notes that the most effective weapon against reproductive freedom in the U.S. has been violence or the threat of violence. I guess we should change the name of the neocon marketing campaign to The War on (Some) Terror™.
I was glad to see Bowers set this discussion in the context of the most serious violence yet aimed at American liberals. We've seen a degree of that frenzy in Canada too, the attack on Dr Morgentaler in broad daylight, the fire-bombing of his clinic in Toronto, the three attempts to murder other abortion providers, and then just generally the creepy tactics of bullies who think it's fair to get at their targets through their families, their neighbours, their employers.
Beyond that, we know that our police are hardly apolitical, that some vulnerable groups have always to deal carefully with the law, even in Canada. But it's hard for me to assess terror threats from other citizens beyond those contexts, even when I think back to the bitternesses of the sixties and seventies.
I believe what Bowers is saying about the extreme right in the U.S. Without trying, I hear news of what sounds like incitement to me being broadcast on U.S. television and radio networks -- unchecked, apparently. I fear that happening here -- am I being naive to think that it isn't here already?
I've always wondered if it wasn't "The War *of* Terror" since that is the leading weapon in the arsenal of those who inheriting the tactics of the once Southern Dixiecrats who are now Southern Republicans. Although I was smitten by the fey "War on Terra" variation.
The talk of the right wing yip dogs reverberates with the rhetoric of lynch mentality because it works. The more ignorant and confused a population is kept, the better it works.
On a mundane level, this is the battle of good and evil in humankind. It's never over because someone always has to push to see if fear works to empower them (how much mental kinks figure in there, who knows). Too often, they're right, because people give hostages to fortune when they have dependents and stability they don't want to lose.
It's just tricky to pick out the real over the sham when both sides are claiming the other is ruling by terror.
well, personally, the shit has already left the fan.
The death threats would have continued, but the percentage of genuine ones wouldn't have changed.
and jeezizz krist ... doesn't a former VP candidate get some special attention from the cops when his staff get DEATH THREATS via e-mail???
they could've nailed their asses and then they could have turned it against the attack-dogs!!
whatdooeyeno? i'm drunk n' full o' courage.
HNN Cliopatria blog discusses the issue a bit:
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/35339.html
"...What this means for the role of bloggers in political campaigns will be discussed for quite some time to come. And it makes clear, if there was much doubt, that what we blog on our private blogs can and will indeed impact our employment -- at least for those who are untenured faculty members."
I have for some time had at least half the time the impression that democracy in any meaningful sense is dead in the US. It doesn't know it yet, it's still thrashing around like a snake with its head chopped off, but that will have died down to twitches soon.
The closest thing to good news is that the oligarchies that have seized power, while vicious, are a bunch of incredibly shortsighted serial fuckups (and I'm not just talking about the neocons and the theocrats, I'm talking about the so-called rational corporate elites too) who are mismanaging the whole thing into a swamp. The GDP measure is increasingly divorced from reality in the States; the measure of total activity whether it serves any useful purpose or not puts me in mind of measuring progress by the vigor of one's thrashings in that swamp, ignoring the fact that the muck keeps coming closer to mouth level. That sucks for Americans, but it does mean that at some point something's likely to give--when things really crash, the ensconced elites may find themselves on the run. Who knows what'll replace them, though--as likely to be bad as good.
Canadian democracy meanwhile--not dead IMO. But it in't 'arf sick. And there are certainly some people hanging around with knives out.
I think politicians hiring established bloggers is a mistake to begin with. Bloggers should retain their independence and freedom. It's inevitable that what they say previously will be used against the political campaign that hires them. It's best for both if they remain separate.