More prevarication from Crush Liberalism, the blogger who claims to value accountability but remains anonymous and deletes any comment that challenges her efforts to twist the words of others. She (I’m assuming this is a female writer, since she tosses around insults like a 12-year-old girl — “Old Mayo Hair?” Really?) is not alone: the right
wing blogosphere is full of people twisting her words.
The juicy goodness of someone who writes under the name “Crush Liberalism” objecting to charges that people on the right have been less than civil, and her refusal to engage with anyone at her blog who challenges what she posts suggest that whoever writes this crap should be taken less than seriously. Still, it’s important to get straight exactly what Representative Schultz said — and whether she might be right.
In response to a question from the audience at a political event in New Hampshire, Schultz argued that discourse in the US has become divisive, and I doubt very many people on either side of the aisle would dispute this (her remarks begin at the six minute mark; the question comes at 24 minutes). Further, the Tea Party is at least partially to blame — finding examples of their disruption of town hall meetings in 2009 are not difficult to find, and though less frequent they still use the strategy. And it is a strategy — an plan to intentionally disrupt public debate and threaten political opponents, written by corporate interests who worry about the prospect of new limits on their ability to game the capitalist system. Moreover, Tea Party activists have threatened or prayed for harm to their political enemies, and at least once even resorted to violence.
So Debbie Wasserman-Schultz correctly lays at the feet of the Tea Party and its corporate masters the blame for increased “edginess” in our public discourse. Whether or not the increased “edginess” in our policy debates Schultz rightly blames on the Tea Party has anything to do with the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords by an unstable citizen is another matter. Jared Loughner is obviously mentally unstable, and though he bought into conspiracy theories and believed that women should not hold positions of power, there is no evidence that he developed these views through exposure to Tea Party ideas attempted to assassinate Congresswoman Giffords for political reasons. Still, there is no evidence showing that he didn’t, and with Sharon Angle’s Second Amendment Remedies and Sarah Palin’s crosshairs — one on Gabby Giffords — Representative Schultz has a case for making this association. Others have as well.
Ms.
Crush is little more than an anonymous whack job parroting right wing talking points on a blog of little consequence, and does not rate much time spent in response even from a blog with (so far) no more influence than his own. But two points need to be made: that openly discussing violence as a political strategy and characterization of political opponents as evil and treacherous can be expected to create a society where some people — perhaps the unstable ones — will act on the suggestions their associated political leaders give them. And lying hacks like Ms.
Crush are at least partially responsible for this, s ince they do not push back when their leaders hang others
in effigy.