Still Baron wrote:That's sorta my point (kath's last post on the last page). Obviously, the gun issue is a major problem. But this shooting is way bigger than that. Someone really tried to assassinate as many Congressmen as he could in one go. We all need to step back. I'm nearly as bitter and guilty as anyone, but the partisan paralysis we're in has to break---from national party politics, all the way down to our little worlds on FB and Twitter. It cannot (be allowed to) get worse.
A thousand times...yes.
The internet has served this strange function of reinforcing extremism wherever it can flourish. That means we'll be seeing "crazy" in all sorts of new places if we don't find ways of dialing it down.
This guy was a Sanders supporter - not a nazi survivalist. I don't blame Sanders or lay this at the feet of his movement. It could have just as easily been a Clinton supporter or a Stein or Johnson supporter. I've seen rabid extremism in all camps - and I've seen it egged on online.
The entire project of American Democracy is about finding a way to get a country of hundreds of millions to consent to live together. By nature that suggests that not many people are likely to ever get exactly what they want. But online political culture insists that we all ought to be revolutionaries bringing on the political final solution in our lifetimes. Compromise and moderation are no longer American values. They are sell-out words. More corrosive...we aren't even trying to find a way to live together anymore. We seek to defeat the enemy.
As long as we see our political opponents as enemies and speak of them in dehumanizing language...we make incidents like yesterday's more inevitable.