Why Nothing Will Change

Because wingnuts debate from a position of untruth. Teabaggers refuse to acknowledge that Barack Obama is not: 1) ineligible to be President, 2) a Muslim, 3) a socialist, 4) a tyrant. There are no "death panels," and no one wants to "take anyone's guns away." Until we can agree on these basic facts, how are we ever to debate more important issues like unemployment, the foreclosure crisis, the economy, immigration reform and racist and religious xenophobia and how to fix our nation's real problems?

Witness this exchange...

ME: I believe you've misread (or misheard) the Left's take on [the Arizona] tragedy. No one is absolving the shooter from responsibility. Obviously he is the one to blame for last Saturday's death and destruction. And no truly thoughtful person is blaming Sarah Palin or any of the other talking heads for the tragedy either.

But, as President Obama said (far more eloquently than I ever could) we would all do well to take a moment to reflect on the tenor of the discussion. Can you not even do that? Can you not even take a moment to consider whether the violent rhetoric and virtiol has perhaps irreparably coarsened the debate?

Let me give you but one example: Regardless of what the Right's megaphone tells you, Barack Obama is not from Kenya. He's not a Muslim (nor even a Mulsim sympathizer). And he's not a socialist, nor a tyrant. He's a centrist-Democratic politician who was born in Hawaii, grew up in Chicago and loves America as much as the next guy -- maybe more, since he actually fulfilled the ultimate American dream, you know, by growing up to be President of the freaking United States.

Now, if we could only all agree on these truths, then we could have a spirited and reasonable debate on issues of actual substance. But so long as the Right continues to traffic in lies, there will always be the potential for extremists to internalize the lies, to rise to the vitriol, and to act out in some insane manner.

Tuscon is not an isolated incident. There was a gunman who shot and killed two people in a church in Tennessee who directly cited Bernard Goldberg's book as his inspiration. There was a gunman in SF, captured before he could do harm, who admitted he was driven to take action by Glenn Beck. The man who murdered Dr. Tiller was inspired by Bill O'Reilly. These are actual cases of conservative talkers driving people around the bend. You can look them up.


Crapkiller: Hornet, All you have to do is read Obama's "Dreams From My Father" to start to understand the man and where he came from. He, like his father, is an anti-colonial socialist. His sense of colonialism is based on the world, not just the US.

As far as the debate is concerned about violence and vitriol, I feel that it is inexcusable. However, it seems to come from the left at first and the response has come from the right. The leftist media perpetrate this discussion. There are lies and ignorance such as yours who feel that Obama is a centrist democrat. I agree with you that he is not Muslim, in fact probably cares nothing about religion.

You sir, have no truths. You have opinion, and it is good to look at it in the raw. People with no truth are easily discovered to be liars or propagandists. The lies of the right may not be lies but the truth. Extremists to internalize lies? How about the communist revolution? How about the defenders of the Koran in their relation to infidels? We are talking about individuals, or are we talking about a culture. There are nut cases everywhere who would be glad to pass off blame on others and eliminate individual responsibility, are you one of these?