Special Commentary: Violence Has No Place in a Democracy

3 Responses to Special Commentary: Violence Has No Place in a Democracy

1. 

   Rowland Scherman on January 9, 2011 at 10:40 am

   Ban Palin from public life.

2. 

   A Work in Progress on January 9, 2011 at 1:27 pm

   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/#40983021

   This morning I watched the replay of Keith Olbermann’s special coverage of yesterday’s shooting at the above link. They dance around the issue, but they don’t get to the meat of this subject. When the hell is MSM going to tie the right-wing hate speech and violent rhetoric into the breakdown of our “democracy”; the devastation of our imploding economy; and the ongoing, incremental hopelessness that permeates a vast portion of our country??? I want to shake Eugene Robinson until his teeth fall out! He acts as though it’s just a matter of the violent speech coming together with a mentally unbalanced individual and then oops, that guy goes off the deep end and an incident takes place. As though the petri dish we’re living in isn’t a medium of suffering and lost self-esteem engendering what happened yesterday, and which creates the potential for thousands more individuals to act out against people WHO DID THEM NO HARM!!! Because to Sarah Palin and John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who spew out glib remarks and violent hyperbole, to them human suffering and despair mean nothing. They have their fancy houses and health insurance and money-making schemes, so to hell with the rest of our society…and to hell with the countless people around the world we’ve invaded and ravaged.

   They make me sick, and these so-called liberal broadcasters make me sick. This is not a game…this is life and death. The underlying cruelty and sociopathy of the capitalistic, self-indulgent demagogues has come home to roost.

   And Chuck Todd should turn in his AFTRA card and go get a job filling potholes. To listen to last year’s interview with Gabrielle Giffords where he was so dismissive of the potential that Republican hate speech has for inciting violence…that just reinforces my perception of him as a corporate tool with a solid, right-wing agenda. How could any sensible, sentient being not have seen something like this coming? We don’t need people like him out there on the “news” with their “stay-the-course” agenda.

   There are places where truth and compassion and reason prevail, but the mainstream media is failing to go where it should. And don’t get me started about the President who once again yesterday threw away a golden opportunity to speak to the public with passion and meaning about the social ills that are pushing this country down the tubes. If he can’t reach people at a moral, thoughtful level over something like this Arizona massacre, what value does he have at all as a Democratic leader?

3. 

   Glynn Wilson on January 9, 2011 at 5:51 pm

   You are onto something, for sure…