The virulent words and symbols used by the Republican/Tea Party members to assail Democratic Party policies and politicians have ranged from skull and cross bones emblazoned across images of President Obama with threatening words connecting his Health Reform legislation with death squads and Nazi symbols, to cross hairs on gun sights targeting specific Democratic politicians. These kinds of words and symbols that filled the air waves, web, and paper publications and that reverberated in the halls of Congress to incite irrational fear and active opposition to all Democratic candidates for political office, and to create ongoing suspicion of President Obama's authenticity as President did have their intended result.
Tea Party/Republican candidates for Congress won overwhelmingly and they continued to inflame the people by labeling their attempt to repeal President Obama's health reform legislation with the following words: ‘‘Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act’’. "Killing" is actually used in the short title of the Republican repeal bill. The virulent words aimed at Democrats and the symbols of killing are now used in a Republican Congressional Bill aimed against Democratic Party and President Obama's legislation. First the legislation was attached to skull and cross bones, and symbolic death squads, and now the repeal attempt with the word "KILLING" as a key word in a repeal bill. The word "repeal" was not enough to satisfy the Republican/Tea Party agenda; the word "killing" had To be used to create and incite fear and insure that real Republican intent was implanted.
Words and symbols are used to influence people and they do. It is one matter, however, to influence ill-informed voters with scare tactics, but it is an entirely different matter to use these hateful symbols and words to incite others to enable or justify their acts of violence. Acts of violence against gays and lesbians, Muslims, black Americans,Hispanics,and Jews, and political activists and politicians have recently increased. Our country has had its share of political assassinations and attempted assassinations that were at least in part caused by vitriolic words and symbols that were deliberate;y used to generate fear and hate. Violence is directly caused by fear and hate, and inspires an individual or group to believes that there is support for their beliefs and actions. The human animal is as vulnerable as a trapped lion who senses danger from a hunter and reacts by attacking the hunter first. Our political environment is akin to a jungle hunt where the hunted are targeted with words and symbols aimed at their elimination from the political arena. Bullets do sometimes follow, and they did again in Tuscon Arizona when six innocent men, women, and children were shot dead and another 13 were wounded at a Democratic political assembly led by Congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords who was critically wounded. This attack must be an awakening and spur realization that words, symbols, and bullets do mix and too often results in senseless mayhem.
Those in the media, and Tea Party/Republican Party, and we in the general populace of all political persuasion, who have resorted to vitriolic use of hateful scare tactics laden with deliberate words and symbols to scare people must stop this insane behavior before assassinations become commonplace and irrational fear permeates our vulnerable society.
2 comments:
The shooter in Arizona was a liberal and sided with the left. This is according to those who actually knew the shooter. This shooting had squat to do with politics and more to do with someone who was mentally unstable.
As soon as people stop dividing themselves into categories of left, right, tea party, progressive then real change will happen. As long as we are divided nothing will be accomplished. As the old cliche states UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL. Pretty sure that is just what the powers that be want. WE THE PEOPLE DIVIDED.
Whatever the political proclivity of the shooter is or is not matters not.Hateful words and symbols tend to create an antagonistic climate in which acts of violence are justified in the minds of some susceptible people. Words and symbols do influence behavior. If the Republican/Tea Party leaders who now claim their words and symbols are meaningless, then why have they been so persistent in using them for over the last two years? Meaningless words must not be continuously used else they lose their purpose. The Republican/Tea Party use of hateful words and symbols to portray political opponents is purposeful. Now that an unanticipated result took place they claim that their diatribe was and is meaningless.
Thanks for your comments and you are so correct that we should be a united country, even if differences in ideology and politics exist as has been the case through much of our country's history. We can and must regain civil discourse.
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