Horrifying Hallowe'en Tales For Left And Right
Normally, I'd do my cheesy Vincent Price imitation here, with lots of spooky talk and Hallowe'en jokes. But this year's stories are a little grim -- or perhaps "a little closer to reality than usual" is a better way to put it.
I almost didn't do a Hallowe'en column this year, because it's pretty obvious what both sides of the aisle would be frightened by. Who controls Congress after the midterms would have (as always) been the easy way to go with today's stories. I could have easily written the basic tales in one tweet: "Republicans win, Democrats horrified... or Democrats win, Republicans horrified."
But the current political situation is grim indeed, even beyond who controls the House and the Senate in January. One of our major political parties either openly encourages or mocks and makes fun of violence directed against politicians of the other party -- all while insisting on their "both-sides-ism" view that both parties are equally responsible.
Which all made me wonder if writing "horror" stories for Hallowe'en was a little... redundant, maybe, this particular year? We've already got enough political horror in the world, what with the man who may be about to become speaker of the House saying in the past he would have to restrain himself when the handover happened between him and Nancy Pelosi: "I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it." To date, since Pelosi's husband was brutally attacked with a hammer, I have not heard a single Republican (much less McCarthy himself) asked about this remark. This is the political reality we live in.
We have Republicans appearing in television ads in full military battle dress carrying military-grade weapons breaking into houses to "hunt" down apostate members of their own party. Plenty of other Republicans are content with just firing guns during their ads, or blowing things up, or just waving their guns around.
Which is all why one of today's stories is a little too realistically grim. Neither one of these is very comedic, in fact, just to warn everyone. These truly are horror stories and while meant to be farcical, they contain enough reality to scare anyone. I decided to forgo the usual "just kidding around" introduction today and just warn everyone that this year's Hallowe'en tales for left and right will be a little different. [Also, I'm out of practice and didn't exactly outdo myself in the pumpkin-carving area this year either, sorry about that.]
I began with a mental challenge, for this year's stories: "How could winning turn into a horror story -- for both sides?" Here is what I came up with....
Democratic Nightmare -- With Friends Like These...
Democrats shock the political world by winning the midterms across the board, as millions of women the pollsters never talked to show up at the polls to cast their vote in disapproval of their loss of basic constitutional rights. The Democrats actually expand their majorities in both houses of Congress, picking up four seats in the House and two in the Senate. All Republican nutjob candidates are soundly defeated. They all immediately denounce the election as "rigged" and file lawsuits -- all of which are thrown out of court for lack of any evidence whatsoever, of course.
The victory leads to celebrations and much excitement among Democrats across the land. With 52 Democratic senators, finally the objections of Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin can be completely ignored and Democrats will be able to get some things done. When Congress returns in January, the House immediately passes two important bills, to reinstate the Voting Rights Act and to enshrine Roe v. Wade into federal law for all the states.
Chuck Schumer introduces a motion to create a new loophole from the filibuster rule which allows for majority-only votes for bills which protect basic constitutional rights (such as voting and privacy). Both the bills from the House are then voted on and sent to Joe Biden for his signature. Biden triumphantly signs them, proclaiming he has done more to secure constitutional rights than any president since Lyndon Baines Johnson.
However, Biden surprises everyone by using the signing ceremony to deliver a speech on the institution of the Senate. He declares that the fever Republicans have been under has now broken, and it is time for the party to begin to fulfill its constitutional duties "as they did before, back when I was in the Senate."
Biden declares that while avoiding the filibuster for constitutional rights was a necessary step, he would like to see the filibuster remain for all other legislation. "We don't want just one-party rule in Washington, we instead extend the hand of bipartisanship to the Republicans and urge them to work with us to move the country forward."
This horrifies most Democrats, of course. What is the point of winning if you're not going to get anything done, after all?
Biden goes on to make a promise -- if the Senate does jettison the legislative filibuster entirely, he will not sign any non-budgetary legislation that hasn't received 60 votes in the Senate.
Republicans are delighted at this turn of events, of course.
Nancy Pelosi, who has decided to remain speaker for two more years, is absolutely livid. She begins streamlining the legislative process to quickly produce bills to address the entire Democratic agenda: fighting climate change, moving the country towards renewable energy, providing free community college for all students, raising the minimum wage to a living wage and provide for cost-of-living increases in it in the future, creating subsidies for child care and elder care, increasing taxes on corporations and getting rid of egregious loopholes they routinely use, reforming the Supreme Court by instituting term limits, reforming immigration, expanding Medicare to cover all costs for dental, vision, and hearing, and eliminating the concept of the debt ceiling so it can never again be used as a hostage in budget negotiations.
All of these bills and a whole lot more are passed in record time and sent over to the Senate.
Behind the scenes, Chuck Schumer has been desperately begging Biden to reconsider, but Biden holds firm. "Chuck, you've just got to find the reasonable Republicans and work with them," he blithely tells Schumer. Schumer explodes in response: "But there just aren't enough of them to get anything passed!" Biden cheerfully replies: "Well, that's OK, I will still go down in history as the man who saved bipartisanship in Washington."
Democratic voters are outraged. They take to the streets of Washington and hold rallies near the Capitol. None of these get out of control in any way -- all are spirited but peaceful. Acts of civil disobedience (such as blocking traffic) spontaneously sprout all over D.C.
Schumer does the only thing he really can do -- redirect the blame where it belongs. He defies Biden's promise and the Senate votes to permanently abolish the filibuster. It passes 51-50, as Sinema and Manchin vote against it but in a surprise move Vice President Kamala Harris votes for it (in defiance of Biden's order not to). "We have got to get some good things done," Harris says while registering her vote, "and I would call on President Biden to get out of the way and allow us to do so... also, I think I'm going to need to book some trips to Iowa and New Hampshire real soon." The message is unmistakable, but Biden holds firm in his refusal to give up on the fantasy of a bipartisan Senate working for the good of the country.
All the bills from the House pass, with either 51 or 52 votes (Manchin and Sinema pick and choose which bills they will support, after the filibuster has disappeared). All are sent to President Biden's desk.
And then, tragically, all of them are vetoed.
Protests erupt at the White House, and people occupy Lafayette Square and refuse to leave. They camp there for months, occasionally getting arrested for chaining themselves to the White House fence. Prominent Democratic presidential hopefuls visit them and give speeches, but over time most people just ignore the fact that the protest continues.
For two long years, not much of anything gets done. Republicans refuse to vote on any of the Democrats' bills, so most of the Democratic agenda grinds to an absolute halt.
The voters, in absolute disgust, just completely give up on the Democratic Party. As the 2024 election gets closer, many Democrats challenge Biden from the left, right, and center. The primaries are mixed, with the only common thread through all the states of how disastrously low the turnout is. No candidate goes to the convention with a majority of delegates, and after a bitter four days the delegates, exhausted, finally settle on a compromise candidate... President Joe Biden.
Democrats get wiped out in 2024, and the Republicans lock down control of Congress and the White House. And a very dark period in America begins.
Republican Nightmare -- The Hammer Falls
Next Tuesday, Republicans romp to victory and take control of both houses of Congress. Right-wingers everywhere celebrate and proclaim the dawning of a new era.
The MAGA crowd has already adopted a frightening two-song segment of Pink Floyd's 1980s movie The Wall as their unifying cry, before the election even happens.
[For those who have never seen it, Roger Waters wrote the songs on the album The Wall for multiple reasons and with multiple interwoven themes, but throughout the whole thing there is a backdrop of fascists growing in power and taking over (a thinly-disguised metaphor for the Nazis in World War II). The new movement uses hammers as their logo and crossed hammers form their "swastika." The movie clips of the songs You Better Run and Waiting For The Worms show a group of these thugs acting much like Hitler's brownshirts -- beating minorities up, smashing their businesses, and raping a woman caught in the back seat of a car with a Black man. In the second song a political rally is shown with a man screaming hateful and bigoted threats against minorities through a bullhorn, while animated marching hammers imitate Nazi goose-stepping. So it's a perfect fit, really.]
All of the various factions of the MAGA world unite under this banner... or under this hammer, I should say... which they all consider appropriate since they've been mocking the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband pretty much ever since it happened. Carrying hammers in holsters becomes their uniform, and they brandish them freely during their rallies.
Roger Waters is incensed by all this and desperately tries to stop this misuse and perversion of his music and the film clips, to no avail. "It was a warning!" he indignantly insists to anyone who will listen, "It was not meant as an instruction manual!" The Hammer followers just laugh at him and keep right on using the clip and the songs as their rallying anthems.
Donald Trump jumps in to lead this fascist parade. He celebrates the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, and adds: "Wish Nancy had been home!" Trump also posts a photo of him attempting to strike a "tough guy" pose brandishing a hammer.
Victory parties are held across America after the election, with many of them ending in brutal violence. The Hammer thugs act out the movie's scenes with abandon, specifically targeting Black, Hispanic, Jewish, and L.G.B.T. businesses and people. An outcry ensues from both the media and civilized Americans, after which Republican leaders either deny the violence even happened or downplay it as "things might have gotten a little exuberant. Boys will be boys." Privately, Republicans pat themselves on the back for "owning the libs."
After Congress is seated in January, Kevin McCarthy becomes speaker of the House, while Mitch McConnell takes over in the Senate. People start referring to the "McCongress" as a result, much to the annoyance of both men.
Newly-elected Republican congressmen, after getting sworn in, immediately engage in a contest of: "Who can say the craziest thing?" in a bid to make a name for themselves and get their faces on television regularly. The established Republican politicians look on with amusement, failing to notice that nobody's calling their office for cable news bookings anymore as a direct result.
Kevin McCarthy gives free rein to all his new committee chairmen, who have all been selected for their ability to get clips of their hearings on the news each night with their outrageous words and behavior. "That'll keep the crazies in the base happy," McCarthy tells himself.
Investigations are launched into every insane conspiracy theory that currently exists on the rightward fringe. Hearings are held where no actual evidence of any of these insane delusions is uncovered (how could it be for non-existent conspiracies?), but where all the Republicans have lots of fun trying to top each other in delivering bombast for the cameras.
President Joe Biden is impeached, in the midst of all this frenzy, for the "high crime and misdemeanor" of having allowed Dr. Anthony Fauci to keep his job after becoming president. In fact, several articles of impeachment are been introduced, and this is only the first one out of the gate. Mitch McConnell, knowing this is an entirely futile exercise, holds a hasty trial in the Senate, and the vote is perfectly split on partisan lines, with every Republican voting to remove Biden from office and every Democrat voting to keep him there... except, of course, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who both vote with the Republicans "in the spirit of bipartisanship." This is nowhere near the 67 votes required, and Biden stays in office, just as everyone knew he would.
Republicans aren't satisfied and impeach Biden two more times, just so Trump won't be "the most-impeached president in U.S. history" anymore. Biden's entire defense, in both of these Senate trials, is a very short video clip which his lawyers play for the assembled senators. In it, all Biden says is: "C'mon, man! This is ridiculous... get back to work!" Once again, the vote is exactly the same and Biden stays in office while ridiculing the Republicans for wasting America's time.
Bills are introduced in the House to: make all abortion criminal, make it a federal crime for any teacher in a K-12 school mention racism or even race in any way, make all vaccine requirements for any student anywhere illegal, institute a federal Department of Morality that will decide which books will be allowed in both school libraries and public libraries, outlaw gay marriage once again, outlaw both drugs and surgery for trans people, ban trans people from competing in any sport as either gender, decree Black Lives Matter a terrorist organization, make it illegal for the F.B.I. or the I.R.S. or any other federal agency to even open an investigation into any politician (although they do promise to allow such investigations to continue for Democrats, because "everyone knows they're fake politicians -- they're really just criminals"), make it also illegal to investigate anyone engaged in "legitimate political protest" (as they define it), start a "free guns for kids" program so they can "fight back against school shooters," end all military aid for Ukraine and declare Russia's illegal annexation legal as far as they're concerned, add a federal law specifically aimed at sentencing Dr. Fauci to the death penalty, and (just for good measure) abolish all income taxes for anyone making above one million dollars a year.
All of these bills sail through the House and are sent to the Senate. Mitch obviously can't get any Democrats (except, of course, for Manchin and Sinema) to vote for any of it, so he unilaterally declares the filibuster to be dead. The bills all pass, although even some Republicans express qualms about a few of them. President Biden vetoes them all and none ever become law.
Out in the streets, things are getting even uglier. Biden killing the entire Republican agenda enrages them, but even if all had been signed into law the rage would still be present, since as far as the leaders of the Hammers are concerned Republicans haven't gone far enough. The calls from the Hammer rallies are now to somehow reinstate Donald Trump as president immediately, declare the Democratic Party an illegal organization and ban it from future elections, and bring about the promised day of reckoning for all the Democrats who are in the gigantic babies/sex-trafficking/blood-drinking cabal that secretly has been running things behind the scenes. The Hammers all devoutly believe in the QAnon worldview, and become increasingly incensed that the baby/sex/blood ring hasn't been exposed and all its adherents sent to concentration camps or executed.
McCarthy announces another investigation, into all the QAnon claims. This mollifies the mobs for a while, but it soon becomes evident that they are not exposing any conspiracy (again, because there is no conspiracy there to expose).
The Hammer thugs' anger begins to turn inward. Rumors begin to spread that both McCarthy and McConnell are in the cabal and that's why they are continuing to allow the cover-up to continue. Donald Trump eggs all this on from the sidelines -- on Twitter, where he has been reinstated and welcomed by Elon Musk.
Trump calls for a "day of vengeance," to take place on January 6th, 2024. At the U.S. Capitol. Trump promises to appear in person at a giant rally on the Capitol steps.
At first, McConnell and McCarthy don't immediately jump on board with this idea, which further enrages the Hammers, who are now convinced that they are the main problem with why life hasn't been made wonderful under Republican rule of Congress. The Hammers announce that they will appear at the Capitol whether they have an official permit to be there or not. And that there will be no metal detectors or police presence at their rally.
McConnell and McCarthy finally begin to fear the forces they have helped unleash on America. Desperate to placate the mob, McConnell and McCarthy eagerly embrace the rally and publicly announce that they have instructed the U.S. Capitol police to stand down on January 6th, "because these are just patriotic tourists coming to see the Capitol."
Congressional Democrats, quite rightly, decide en masse not to go to work on that particular day. So when January 6th dawns, only Republicans are actually in the building. The mob gathers, some of them armed with guns but virtually all of them carrying two hammers in their holsters. The rally begins with speeches by the lunatic fringe and culminate in a video from Trump, who has backed out of personally appearing (he says) "because there are reports of Antifa snipers all over the place who would have taken me out in a second." Trump gives the most energetic speech of his life, demanding that the mob "march into Congress and demand they make me president before the sun goes down," and also "round up all these people who drink babies' blood and bring them to justice," without specifying what that means.
The mob, already primed for violence, needs no further instructions. They pour into the Capitol without resistance, since all the cops have been taken off duty. They completely scour the building and drag McCarthy, McConnell, and all the other Republican leaders to the floors of the Senate and the House.
This leads to an event later referred to as "The Great Bludgeoning," which marks the beginning in America of a very dark period indeed.
Have a happy Hallowe'en everyone!
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Harris says while registering her vote, "and I would call on President Biden to get out of the way and allow us to do so... also, I think I'm going to need to book some trips to Iowa and New Hampshire real soon."
Oh, I think she'd be wasting her time on that itinerary. Ahem.
Well, that's the only thing I'm sure enough about to comment on. Heh.
good stories!
I agree. I would just take some exception to the fact that in the Democratic nightmare scenario, it's ALL on Biden. But, then again, who else? ;) Perhaps, in the end, he'll have the last laugh.
CW
One of our major political parties either openly encourages or mocks and makes fun of violence directed against politicians of the other party -- all while insisting on their "both-sides-ism" view that both parties are equally responsible.
My response today to (multiple) Trump supporters making jokes about this:
*
There will always be impressionable unstable people -- or people full of hatred, which is not a mental illness -- who will act on the violent rhetoric, and what does absolutely nothing to stop the cycle is the downplaying of the physical violence (January 6) and making jokes about situations like this one. It is disgusting.
As for the "both-sides-ism" and false equivalency, it doesn't take a rocket science to see from which "side" the vast majority of the violence is coming from and why: Donald Trump's ego is so pathetically fragile that he couldn't concede an election he knows he lost and meanwhile a subset of Republican voters believe the most asinine conspiracy theories that include the idiotic beliefs that Donald Trump is still president and working behind the scenes with the FBI to round up Democrats and (any day now) kill them in the public square. Couple that with the Confederate flag-waving white supremacist morons prolific on the Right and the Nazi flag-waving white supremacist fascists, and then turn a blind eye and downplay the crimes perpetrated by Donald Trump. That's the Republican Party... and there is no bottom.
Paul Pelosi and the violence we care about
The liberal media’s double standards on political violence are horrifying.
It was the mention of zip ties that got me thinking. Apparently the man who allegedly broke into the San Francisco home of Nancy and Paul Pelosi on Friday was carrying zip ties. A possibly crazed individual approaching the home of a powerful politician with plastic fasteners that can be used to bind a person’s hands – it was both a nightmarish prospect and a familiar one, too. Wasn’t another public figure in the US recently targeted by someone who had zip ties? And a gun, a knife, pepper spray and a crowbar? Yes. It was Brett Kavanaugh. But many don’t remember that. Because thanks to the media, certain acts of political hate get less traction than others.
People are rightly horrified by what happened to Paul Pelosi on Friday. David DePape allegedly broke into the Pelosi home and yelled ‘Where is Nancy?’. She wasn’t there. DePape then allegedly attacked Mr Pelosi, who is 82, with a hammer. Pelosi suffered a skull fracture and is still in hospital, though he is expected to make a full recovery. This was a horrific assault on an elderly person, as well as seeming to have been motivated by a deep political animus. Sadly, it was not a one-off. There was a creepily similar incident at the home of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh in Maryland in June.
It is unquestionable that the assault on the Pelosi home has caused more waves and fury among the media elites than the mercifully thwarted attempted assassination of Kavanaugh did. The Kavanaugh incident swiftly faded from public consciousness. One observer wrote of the media’s ‘eerie silence’ on Kavanaugh. It was pointed out that the ‘attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh’ was being downplayed by the New York Times the very day after it happened. On the NYT’s homepage, the Kavanaugh story was 16th in order of importance, behind stories about the new Jurassic Park movie and Kelly Clarkson’s singing skills. In that day’s paper, it was on page 20. Nate Silver said it was ‘crazy’ that the targeting of Kavanaugh was not ‘treated as a bigger story’. ‘There’s often more bias in which stories are deemed to be salient than how they’re written about it’, he said.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/10/31/paul-pelosi-and-the-violence-we-care-about/
It's undeniable that the Leftist media virtually ignores violence against the Right while hysterically aggrandizing violence against the Left..
This is an undeniable fact..
The Left then turn around and elitist'ly sneers at the "what-aboutism" when in fact, it's a reasonable and logical acceptance of the facts..
The Left ignores the violence committed against the Right..
Nowhere was this more obvious and blatant than they two diametrically opposed reactions between a single Right Wing riot in a single building at a single location over the span of a few hours and twenty two years (collectively) of Left Wing BLM & AntiFa riots and attacks on hundreds of government buildings at hundreds of locations all over the country...
And how did the media describe these 22 years (collectively) of Left Wing BLM & AntiFa riots where DOZENS of cops were killed, TENS OF THOUSANDS were injured and TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars in damages???
"Mostly peaceful protests" :eyeroll:
This same exact juxtaposition of reality is, once again, blatantly obvious with the attempted assassination of a Republican SCOTUS Justice versus an assault on the Democrat husband of the House Speaker...
One is a horrendous CRIME OF THE CENTURY and the other is relegated to a backpage news story blurb in the media..
To deny the blatant hypocrisy is simply to deny the facts.. To deny reality...
Something that Democrats have increasingly excelled at the last couple years.. :^/
And let's look at the perpetrator of the Paul Pelosi assault..
A GREEN PARTY moron and an illegal immigrant who has absolutely NO TIES to any right wing group or organization..
THIS obvious mental case is the Democrat Party's boogey man?? :eyeroll:
1/20
The latest with Paul Pelosi getting hammered follows a familiar pattern..
Attacks against GOP'ers are treated as "one offs" and not attributed to any culture or ideology or group..
No where has this been more apparent than the Justice Kavanaugh attempted assassination or the James Hodgkinson attempted assassinations of several Republicans...
In the eyes of Democrats and leftist media (I know, redundant) those are just lone wolf attacks and no ideology or group was associated with those blatant attacks of political violence..
Compare and contrast that with attacks against Democrats, which are ALWAYS attributed to right wing groups, even when absolutely NO CONNECTION exists...
Once again, the blatant hypocrisy is obvious to anyone with more than 2 brain cells to rub together..
2/20
[Removed for being off-topic]
Great stories, CW... America's democracy FUBAR.
Now do Brazil.
How about a crazy story that multiple of Donald Trump's Big Liars in America are going ape-shit crazy about Trump-backed candidate Jair Bolsonaro losing Brazil's recent election and the MAGA cult publicly urging him not to concede, pushing unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen, there were issues with voting machines, and that the election was rigged. Oh, wait... that's actually happening.
Tune in next week when Bannon et alia and the grifting MAGA righties make the same baseless accusations here in America for some of the midterm races that don't go their way. Lather, rinse, repeat.
him and Nancy Pelosi: "I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it." To date, since Pelosi's husband was brutally attacked with a hammer, I have not heard a single Republican (much less McCarthy himself) asked about this remark. This is the political reality we live in.
"When they bring a knife to the fight, we'll bring a gun."
-Barack Hussein Odumbo
I'm just sayin' :^/
4/20
And let's also compare the hammered Paul Pelosi to the brutally attacked and assaulted Rand Paul..
“Wasn’t Rand’s neighbor more than a little in the right?”
-Democrat Mike Franken, 21 JAN 2021
I don't recall any of ya'all condemning Franken at the time, eh??
A review of Weigantian Commentaries and comments from 21 Jan thru 29 Jan shows there are NO mentions of Mike Fraken.. Not even a DISHONORABLE MENTION in 2 FTP MDDOTW awards... :^/
Let's face reality, people...
There are MANY acts of political violence committed against Republicans.. And no one here condemns those attacks with ANYWHERE near the passion and intensity that ya'all have condemned the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi..
If these Left On Right political violence attacks are mentioned at all, it's a milquetoast "Now, Now.. That's not nice" one off and then it's forgotten.. Or a generic "yea Democrats do it to and that's not good" and then it's forgotten.. But even such lame non-condemnations condemnations hardly ever materialize..
Why is that??
It's because attacks against Republicans are perfectly acceptable to Democrats..
Democrats don't mind political violence at all, as long as it's against the RIGHT people..
The facts that prove this are as plentiful as they are conclusive...
5/20
[Removed for being off-topic]
ok, finally have some time to comb through these...
-CW
Michale
11
And let's also compare the hammered Paul Pelosi to the brutally attacked and assaulted Rand Paul..
Okay, let's compare.
*
I had to look this up because I had never heard of this tweet. Turns out, Mike Franken is "Admiral Mike Franken" who spent 40 years defending his country in the Navy. His tweet was in response to another tweet that quoted Rand Paul criticizing President Biden's inauguration speech:
The Admiral wasn't the only one taking issue with Rand Paul's take on Biden's speech:
https://www.newsweek.com/rand-paul-joe-biden-liars-racists-fox-news-1563331
So Biden didn't even get past Day 1 of his presidency before the butthurt insurrectionist Righties had already began trashing him on Fox News, and that tweet was the Admiral's response to Rand Paul's total mischaracterization of Biden's speech.
So, as a reminder, Rand Paul was attacked in November 2017, and the Righties knickers are just now suddenly in a twist because no one condemned a tweet made by Admiral Mike Franken in January 2021 -- more than 4 years after Paul was attacked by his neighbor of 17 years -- and in response to Paul's drivel and spew the same day Biden was sworn in.
We commenters here on this blog were perhaps most likely definitely probably still busy condemning the Trump tweet wherein he actually directly endangered the life of his own vice president, you know, "hang Mike Pence." Or maybe we were likely still discussing Trump's tweet wherein he expressed his "love" for a group of people who some of them had earlier in the day attacked the Capitol and injured a shit-ton of police officers while Trump sat on his fat ass gleefully watching and doing nothing about it.
In conclusion: It's pathetic to watch the pearl-clutching Righties have a newly minted hissy fit over such a "tragic attack tweet" (sarcasm) toward Poor Rand Paul. Meanwhile, in January 2021, I didn't see any of them condemning Trump for his tweets in January 2021... oh, wait... yes, I did, but that was only for days before they started licking his ass again because they're a bona fide bunch of pathetic cowards and perpetually grieving snowflakes of the Grand Old Puss Party.
So, to recap: This whining false equivalency bollocks is a prime example of why (almost) no one here takes your perpetual regurgitated right-wing bullshit seriously.
The Left ignores the violence committed against the Right..
Nowhere was this more obvious and blatant than they two diametrically opposed reactions between a single Right Wing riot in a single building at a single location over the span of a few hours and twenty two years (collectively) of Left Wing BLM & AntiFa riots and attacks on hundreds of government buildings at hundreds of locations all over the country...
Which riots were attacks on the Right? Police aren't Republican... ya'll proved that one on Jan. 6! Protesting police shootings isn't a political protest against Republicans! You are always pointing out that Democrat run big city crime rates is the Dem's responsibility. So if that is true, protests against the police in big cities is a protest against the Dem's... not the Republicans!!! You do not get to have it both ways.
And let's be very clear... January 6 was not an attack on Liberals... it was an attack on our nation! It was an attempt to overthrow our government and overturn our democratic elections. Republicans lost. But Trump couldn't handle everyone knowing that he was a loser. Your traitorous cult leader went after both Republicans and Democrats that day! The fact that you are claiming to be on the side of those that attacked the capitol on Jan 6 shows us what a kind of "patriot" you truly are!
And how did the media describe these 22 years (collectively) of Left Wing BLM & AntiFa riots where DOZENS of cops were killed, TENS OF THOUSANDS were injured and TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars in damages???
So how many dozens of police officers were killed during riots? Two dozen? Three? Four? You failed to give us an actual number, so I am just curious to know how many died. And are you saying that tens of thousands of police were injured?
And you keep overlooking the 28 years (collectively) of Republican supported right-wing militia groups violence that gave us the Waco tragedy and the Oklahoma City bombing (combined 244 killed, 44 of them children) and most recently the attempted and failed insurrection on January 6.
Trump and Republican groups paid for the buses that a large number of those that were part of the insurrection used to get them to DC on Jan 6. They were following Trump's instructions when they fought their way into the Capitol. Trump is a traitor and so is anyone who supports him.
No where has this been more apparent than the Justice Kavanaugh attempted assassination or the James Hodgkinson attempted assassinations of several Republicans...
Was it an attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh? The assassin called the police on himself. Not a very good "assassin"...gives real assassins a bad name, actually. He was no assassin, he was just suicidal. He hoped for a suicide by cop ending. Nothing has been produced to suggest that he actually intended to harm Kavanaugh or anyone else. He believed that threatening to kill a Supreme Court Justice was a great way to get the police to respond to him with deadly force. They were able to talk him out of it.
So it was not political violence... it was a sad suicide attempt by a sick individual.
One-offs are considered one-offs because they operate alone. Is anyone saying John Wilkes Booth and Robert E Lee are roughly equivalent because they both tried to defeat Lincoln?
nypoet22
Is anyone saying John Wilkes Booth and Robert E Lee are roughly equivalent because they both tried to defeat Lincoln?
Great point!
nypoet22
18
Is anyone saying John Wilkes Booth and Robert E Lee are roughly equivalent because they both tried to defeat Lincoln?
I know, right!? Excellent point.
So Admiral Mike Franken basically makes a tweet in January 2021 (!) more than four years after Rand Paul gets attacked by his neighbor of 17 years for likely being a perpetual consummate dick of a neighbor, and somehow that's supposed to represent the condoning of violence that occurred in 2017!?
This newly-minted and long-after-the-fact false equivalency coming from those who support Donald Trump, the living embodiment of a tweeter condoning/inciting political violence, is stunning in its sheer ignorance and false equivalency.
Poor Righties and Poor Rand Paul: I pray that none of them injured their tiny little hands from clutching their pearls so tightly.
nypoet22 [18] -
You know, this sparked a thought. You know what historical figure this reminds me of more than either of those?
John Brown.
His trial. Maybe that's what is coming soon, that sort of national mini-explosion of violence, argued over by all the prominent figures of the time...
Sorry, it was just a thought...
-CW
Or maybe that's what we're already in... dunno...
Do you know how a civil war starts in the 21st century?
Well, it's a rhetorical question. Ahem. :-)
Chris Weigant
21
I think you're onto something with that thought.