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**JuniperLea** · 01-10-2011, 04:24 PM

Here is Harry Mitchell's ad which puts Hayworth in the Crosshairs:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epdJWNA65oY

Here is one from the Democratic Leadership Council, showing bulls eye "Behind Enemy Lines": http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid...&subid=171

Here is Markos' list of "targets" (those who supposedly 'Sold Out The Constitution') , highlighting Gifford: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/25/...511/541568

Here is the DCCC page that *had* the maps of 12 targeted Republican House members, with a nifty map that allowed you to click on them to find out who they are: http://dccc.org/newsroom/entry/dccc_anno..._campaign/

Have a look here: http://www.verumserum.com/?p=13647

I'm just exhausted right now and I can't think... a colleague just got a phone call... that phone call we never want to get. His wife's car was t-boned, their first son in the car... she may have a broken arm, but all are well as can be expected. My heart won't slow down... just too much...

**Andy823** · 01-10-2011, 04:35 PM

(01-10-2011 04:24 PM)JuniperLea Wrote: Here is Harry Mitchell's ad which puts Hayworth in the Crosshairs:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epdJWNA65oY

Here is one from the Democratic Leadership Council, showing bulls eye "Behind Enemy Lines": http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid...&subid=171

Here is Markos' list of "targets" (those who supposedly 'Sold Out The Constitution') , highlighting Gifford: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/25/...511/541568

Here is the DCCC page that *had* the maps of 12 targeted Republican House members, with a nifty map that allowed you to click on them to find out who they are: http://dccc.org/newsroom/entry/dccc_anno..._campaign/

Have a look here: http://www.verumserum.com/?p=13647

I'm just exhausted right now and I can't think... a colleague just got a phone call... that phone call we never want to get. His wife's car was t-boned, their first son in the car... she may have a broken arm, but all are well as can be expected. My heart won't slow down... just too much...

First let me say I am sorry to hear about your friend and his son.

As for the links you posted, well we have to address those things, and we need to denounce them as well as what Palin did. If we only point out the republicans who have done things like this, we lose. I have seen posts on other sites that look to me like right wing trolls coming in to get the democrats all mad and angry, saying terrible things, so they can point to those posts and say, "well look at what the democrats are saying"! We have to realize that if we really want the insanity to stop, we have to be willing to admit any mistakes on our side as well. If both sides can see past the "your side is worse" stuff, maybe we can settle down and have a real talk about the problems, and a solution to the problem.

**JuniperLea** · 01-10-2011, 04:45 PM

You are absolutely correct, and I've said similar things all along.

I think the last two links here are totally bogus... the word "target" and the phrase "target list" have been in our lexicon for many many years and I think it's a stretch to associate their use with this.

Saje3d · 01-10-2011, 04:47 PM

We use words as weapons. They use weapons as words. They think it makes us the same. It does not.

**JuniperLea** · 01-10-2011, 04:53 PM

(01-10-2011 04:47 PM)Saje3d Wrote: We use words as weapons. They use weapons as words. They think it makes us the same. It does not.

Thanks for that... well put.

**Cha** · 01-10-2011, 07:24 PM

(01-10-2011 04:47 PM)Saje3d Wrote: We use words as weapons. They use weapons as words. They think it makes us the same. It does not.

Precisely, Saje..Welcome to DFP~

**Dimwitted Fool** · 01-10-2011, 05:03 PM

(Dare I speak the unspeakable?)

I think this just points out that Palin's gunsights were not in themselves as evil as they are being made out to be. What made them evil, if indeed they actually are, is the context they are in.

Palin and her ilk crossed the line talking about Second Amendment solutions and all that locking and loading giving her fans wood. Clint Eastwood and Rambo metaphors abound over there.

Our side rarely even joked about head shots (some of us remember a particularly horrific head shot) the cost of bullets, the smell of roasting flesh in an electric chair or other such gruesome remarks that would come regularly from their side, but when we talk about "targeting" we think more like MadMen talking about targeted marketing.

The firebreathers over there should shut up, but I'm looking at some kneejerk reactions to shut them up (like the latest legislation being proposed) and that worries me more than some targets on a map.

Political speech in the US has always been rough, rowdy, and rude and assassinations not unknown, but I'm not sure the wars of words and speechifying in the past led to violence any more than I'm convinced it does today. I am, however, pretty sure that just as we have come under the thumb of Homeland Security over a few possible terrorists we are looking at coming under the thumb of censors over a few more nutcases (who are not, for some inexplicable reason, considered terrorists)

**Drunken Irishman** · 01-10-2011, 05:54 PM

I think when you take something innocent as "that person is in our target" and couple it with hate rhetoric and veiled hints of an armed revolution, you create the problem we're seeing right now.

It's not necessarily that these people were targets for political fundraising and other functions - that is always going to happen. It's that these people were targeted and subjected to the type of vile hatred we've seen from the right.

They've been called terrorists. They've been called socialists and communists and fascists. The right has mentioned aspects of true revolution - bloody revolution! Sharron Angle talks about second amendment remedies.

That is the problem.

The political tone is toxic in this country. We've gone from just disagreeing with people to openly hating them and daring others to remove them from power - if at all costs.

It's why, in 2000, I was so uneasy with the left calling Pres. Bush illegitimate and thus, illegal to serve. I feared someone would use that foundation for a call to, as Angle put it, second amendment remedies. Thankfully, the left doesn't appear to be as violent as the right.

**KonaKane** · 01-10-2011, 06:18 PM

(01-10-2011 05:54 PM)Drunken Irishman Wrote: ....

The political tone is toxic in this country. We've gone from just disagreeing with people to openly hating them and daring others to remove them from power - if at all costs.

Some years ago, I did some graphic work for then Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK) and over the phone one night we were musing about politics in general. The topic moved to the outrageously heated rhetoric going on then (not even as bad as it is now) and he complained "I wonder what happened to the simple ' gentleman's disagreement'?"

I wonder what happened to it, too.

**Dimwitted Fool** · 01-11-2011, 10:34 AM

(01-10-2011 06:18 PM)KonaKane Wrote: Some years ago, I did some graphic work for then Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK) and over the phone one night we were musing about politics in general. The topic moved to the outrageously heated rhetoric going on then (not even as bad as it is now) and he complained "I wonder what happened to the simple ' gentleman's disagreement'?"

I wonder what happened to it, too.

I wonder if it was ever there.

Congress has had its share of duels and fistfights over the years, and a look at the campaign literature and press charges of the early 20th century would shock the tender hearts of Beck and Rove. Republican hatred and accusations during FDR's administration were only slowed down by the war.

Anyone remember the Puerto Rican nationalists who opened fire in the House in 1954? Can't call the internet responsible for that. How about Life magazine running pictures of the fistfights in the streets Over LBJ and Nixon?

Can't really blame the bloviatings of the windbag class for shooting Lincoln, McKinley, or Reagan, either. Or the potshot at Ford or any other half-assed assassination attempts. They were often as not done by lone assholes who, like McVeigh, were pretty much thrown out of the major asshole organizations for being just too crazy.

Now, I don't like all this vile talk, particularly the vicious lies being spread, but my point is that it is nothing new and probably not significant in our tradition of violence.

(Ferchrissakes-- Hinckley was just trying to get a date with Jodie Foster.)

**sandnsea** · 01-12-2011, 03:57 AM

(01-10-2011 06:18 PM)KonaKane Wrote:
(01-10-2011 05:54 PM)Drunken Irishman Wrote: ....

The political tone is toxic in this country. We've gone from just disagreeing with people to openly hating them and daring others to remove them from power - if at all costs.

Some years ago, I did some graphic work for then Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK) and over the phone one night we were musing about politics in general. The topic moved to the outrageously heated rhetoric going on then (not even as bad as it is now) and he complained "I wonder what happened to the simple ' gentleman's disagreement'?"

I wonder what happened to it, too.

I wonder if "gentleman's disagreement" isn't as possible because the stakes seem so much higher. The Vietnamese weren't flying planes in our buildings. It was pollution, not climate change. We weren't facing a Chinese economy. It's fine to have a gentleman's disagreement when you're talking about putting the Bald Eagle on the brand new Endangered Species List. It's another thing when you're talking about putting 500 people out of work in order to protect a seasonal puddle containing fairy shrimp. Sometimes you don't know what is right, sometimes getting it right seems so obvious that to even entertain disagreement seems immoral. I don't know how we get to solutions on some of these issues.

**JuniperLea** · 01-10-2011, 06:03 PM

That's what I think too, DI, that the phrase "target list" has been in our lexicon for a long time, and it doesn't mean in actual crosshairs! Marketing companies have target lists, there are all sorts of business target lists. Advertising targets certain demographics, so do Saturday morning cartoons.

**KonaKane** · 01-11-2011, 02:31 PM

I think you may be missing a general point, well put by none other than the late great Tip O'Neill, who commented more than once about a disturbing turn to public hostility that was not there for the majority of all his years in public service.

I'm not denying the incidents you posted about, only that it's turning a blind eye to an obvious trend in discourse that really picked up with the election of Ronald Reagan.

**Dimwitted Fool** · 01-12-2011, 01:58 AM

(01-11-2011 02:31 PM)KonaKane Wrote: I think you may be missing a general point, well put by none other than the late great Tip O'Neill, who commented more than once about a disturbing turn to public hostility that was not there for the majority of all his years in public service.

I'm not denying the incidents you posted about, only that it's turning a blind eye to an obvious trend in discourse that really picked up with the election of Ronald Reagan.

Not missing it, just discounting it.

Many of us were spoiled growing up in the Eisenhower years-- even Tailgunner Joe couldn't wipe out the high the country was on after beating Hitler and Tojo. The huge problems the country faced, and the regional, class and racial hatreds were glossed over by the euphoria of Pax Eisenhower and then Kennedy's Camelot.

It hid that the US had been throughout its history at heart a bitter, violent society with a thin veneer of sociability covering up its faults.

Some of us growing up then might think that's the way it's always been, but we would be wrong. We would have forgotten our history of labor riots and Pinkerton massacres, of the Indian wars to steal their land, of the chain gangs and bosses. Of the Jonestown flood. Of slavery, and after a brutal war freeing them, still not allowing them to be treated as fellow citizens.

It didn't come back with Reagan, it came back with Viet Nam and Civil Rights-- riots in the streets, Klan rides, lynchings... It quieted down for a while, then became "civilized" and took some more socially acceptable forms under Reagan, but it was always there waiting to burst out.

This isn't to bash the country, just to put into perspective that our history is one of bitter local and class rivalries and the present political discourse, bad as it is, isn't nearly as bad as it has been in the past. Neither is the violence.

The good news is that even though we have a habit of taking two steps back for every three forward, we have been doing a bangup job of moving those three steps forward-- better than many other countries in many cases. I have little doubt that at some point the dialogue will become a little more civil-- it has, in fact, with few exceptions become ever so slightly more civil most every year for the past 200 years.

**KonaKane** · 01-12-2011, 03:55 PM

On thinking about it, no, I have to come to the conclusion that we definitely are dealing with the New Incivility. I'm no sage, but not born yesterday either - and can remember a time in my life when it really wasn't this bad on a regular basis. I noticed a distinct uptick in the vitriol after the election of Ronald Reagan, coming from the emboldened right. At every opportunity, the right wing noise machine was taunting, threatening those on the left. I started posting on my first BBS back in 1994, and never even considered threatening someone's life over a political opinion. But the second post to respond to mine told me that people like me need to be snuffed out.

I mean come on, who talks like that?

The new right does. The purveyors of the New Incivility. Now its true, I got tired of it and sometimes responded in kind. Out of frustration. Luckily rarely, and now not at all because its fruitless. The point being, "we" didnt start the fire. And this fire is definitely not the one of our grandfathers'.