Right vs. Left – Being Civil

In this post, I’ll use the Kiss method – Keep it simple stupid.

*Quick note I should put in before you read this.  When I say “Right” I mean Republicans.  I really don’t care if your opinions are Right or Left, both can be good depending on the circumstances.   But on the Right, I like Libertarians and absolutely hate what the Republican party has been hijacked by (Rush, Palin, Beck).  The Grand Old Party is no longer Grand and will not be so until it gets rid of the aforementioned idiots.

By now you all know of the story of Rep Gabrielle Giffords and if you’ve even glanced at the media that the American Left and Right are very angry at each other right now.  The Left blames the hate speech of the Right for the shooting and the Right pulling no punches says there is no correlation between the crazy kid who pulled the trigger and their angry speech.

I thought about not writing on this as there is enough news but seeing as we are trapped in the continual Left vs. Right vortex and that neither side is absolutely right I thought it might be good to weigh in on this from a “Global Citizen” perspective.  We always see things differently from most, like an outsider looking in and have no problems with pointing out the faults of both sides which is enlightened at best, bipolar at worst.  🙂

Again, I’ll try to keep it short and extremely to the point.

1.  Sarah Palin’s target signs and “Reload” slogans are not to blame.

–  America is an aggressive culture.  As you know by reading my older posts I like language and it’s usage.  In America, there is always “The fight against” something or other.  We don’t want to just beat the other sports teams, we HATE them and want to destroy them.

Our opponents in sports, politics or even at work are worse than scum and we wish them the worst.  We stay these things but we honestly do not want them to actually die, we just want to say we do.  So just like Palin, we can put targets on something but with the meaning that we just hope they lose although the literal interpretation is that they are actually killed.

So, I give Palin and the Right a pass for the target signs and “reload” statements.  These are harmless to an extent.

2. Hate speech – This is getting to be a bit much

Like many things in American culture Politics has become a race to the bottom in how low you can go.  I cannot remember the environment ever being so nasty and now, instead of a “I do not agree with your ideas,” it has become more of a “You are a traitor to the country and want it’s complete destruction,” sort of speech.

The problem lies in the hate speech by Limbaugh and Fox news.  Their continual barrage of using emotion to not only win the election but actually HATE the opposition has caused a problem.  It is constant, repeated over and over and they honestly want you to actually hate the Left.

The Left tried to copy their methods but frankly are not very good at it.  MSNBC is boring and I have found myself tuning into Rush (very infrequently) just to get my blood going.  So, even though the Right is trying to say the Left is incendiary as well this is not exactly true as I cannot name any on the Left who evokes the sort of blood boiling speech that many on the Right can.

If you continually stir up the population and convince them that politicians on the Left are trying to ruin your country then eventually there will be consequences.  Someday a few listeners are going to take action and those target signs literally.

The Right operates under the believe that they can continually incite hatred amongst their listeners but no action will be taken.  This is just stupid.

It almost reminds me of a grade school class where one student is picked on over and over which leads to a bully or showoff actually going and pushing that student into the mud.  They do this because it has been drilled into their heads that this person is worthless and deserves it.

The simple truth is that you cannot dish out complete hatred every single day and expect nothing to happen.  This is irresponsible and COMPLETELY DEVOID OF COMMON SENSE!

But I guess those hate-spewers on the right are sticking by their secret (or not so secret) motto:

“Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.”

3. Obama and Palin speeches

Yesterday we had two speeches by both Obama and Palin.  Obama took the high road and spoke of civility, working together and moving forward.  Palin on the other hand was accusatory and defensive.

If we take a step back and examine what is going on, it is not that complicated.

1.  George W is a terrible president, ruins things for the Republicans
2. Obama is elected and passes a good part of his agenda which the Right loathes.  They do the only thing available to them and like a wild wounded animal lash out on anything and everything Obama does and do so using pure raw emotion to get their followers extremely angry!  
3. Obama is hit with the economic crisis and people fault the government so switch the house over to the Republicans who have spent the last two years calling him a traitor and that he wants to ruin America.

Then we have this shooting and the blame game.  Whether this kid was motivated by the political hate speech or not it would be a good time to examine all the hate going on in politics and Obama/John Stewart are right to talk of civility and bettering the situation.

But the Right cannot stop the monster they have created and will admit nothing, deny everything and make counter accusations.

Back to our poor ostracized student who was pushed in the mud, if the teacher was Obama then the class would take a moment to talk about why everyone was behaving so badly and try to correct the situation.  If the teacher was Palin then the teacher would say there is no correlation between picking on our poor student day in and day out and was pushed in the mud by a random occurrence.

The moral of this story is that you do not want your teacher to be Republican or if so it would be wise to be the mean, hateful bully of the classroom who hits people when he doesn’t get his way.  LOL

Republicans have gone off the rails and are simply a party of mean permanently angry people.  Civility is impossible now and perhaps it is just not in the nature of American politics.  Perhaps “civility” was never in American politics?

But to end this post, it is now impossible to say if the shooting should be blamed on the Right’s hate speech.  BUT, it would be a good opportunity to try to tone down all the hate that has been coming almost completely from the Right.  That does not serve the nation at all.

It would be better to have calm, rational debates from both sides and dispense with all the emotional garbage and trying to make people as angry as possible.  But I guess the Right feels that convincing people to hate is the way to win elections and that winning at all costs is more important than the general welfare of the USA.

And that is the simple truth of it.

Important Note:  I’m not saying you have to agree with the Democrats, you could always vote Libertarian!!  The Republicans will return to business as usual and yes, your taxes will still go up.  For those that are fed up with government Libertarian is the way to go, not the Republicans.  The Republicans have lost their way.