The late-night political-comedy shows... staked their territory during the heat of the general election: unwavering, bombastic, belittling, humiliating screeds against Donald Trump. Fair enough. Trump is a man who on any casual summer day during the campaign could be found inciting a crowd to violence. This isn’t the slippery slope; this is the ditch at the bottom of the hill. Once a man stands before a mob and exhorts the powerful to beat the outlier, it’s all over except for the cannibalism and the cave painting. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” said Abraham Lincoln. “Knock the crap out of them,” said Donald Trump.Which way is down slope? Lincoln's remarks were made on a battlefield very recently interred with ten thousand men.
Up or Down?
From a mostly-correct piece on the dangers of politics as comedy:
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7 comments:
Yeah, I didn't get that. Either totally disingenuous, or totally unaware of the rest of the text of that address.
And if Trump was really inciting crowds to violence, (well, I guess he was, but not the crowds *supporting* him), I think we'd have seen a lot more blood on the streets.
"Trump is a man who on any casual summer day during the campaign could be found inciting a crowd to violence."
That exact lie is the one that eventually drew me to support Trump. Because my kid decided to go to all of the local candidate rallies, he went to the Trump one, as well. I was concerned, and I watched it in toto online.
I saw DJT's masterful handling of hecklers, and his unmistakeable insistence that his supporters AVOID response to provocation.
And then, I read what the newspaper had to say about the rally I saw.
After that, he was still not my favorite candidate, but I was done with the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all the hangers-on that rely on them.
Much later, I found out that my son had a very similar experience. At Thanksgiving, he told me that he had seen a man outside the rally make a pile of Trump signs and materials, set them on fire, and throw burning objects at passers-by. The police put a swift stop to all of that. Then, he said he later saw the takedown online as "evidence" of police brutality. Those snippets of video left out what the man had been doing to cause his arrest.
My son was a Bernie supporter, but Trump won him over after the candidates had been selected.
Valerie
“Knock the crap out of them,” said Donald Trump.
But it was Trump supporters who got the crap beaten out of them- until recently in Berserkely.
Maybe they aren't much for following orders.
I forget...when was it that Trump said "punch back twice as hard"?
That's not an incitement to violence, it's an advisory to be prepared to conduct sound self-defense. If one is punched, one has every right to punch back. Advocating efficacy in that is no crime.
The militias and right wing survivalists are way too paranoid to follow the orders of some wannabe government official or politician. They will almost always suspect that it is some ATF setup, like Waco 1 or Waco 2 or Ruby Ridge, to get them into a trap where they can be summarily publicly executed.
And most of the time, they are right. So that rules out the amateur and professionally armed and trained militias, only leaving individuals. And individuals have a sufficiently high IQ outside of mobs, that they aren't insane enough to go out in a blaze of glory just yet. Tough luck if you are part of a religion or the Leftist alliance, those cults run deep.
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