ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE - IV

As of Tuesday, April 6, the FBI arrested 64 year old Charles Alan Wilson of Selah, Washington for making death threats to Washington Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat. While Wilson denies being either a Tea Party supporter or a Republican, his phone threats, and apparently his conversations with the FBI, sounded like they were taken right off of Fox News and the statements on conservative blogs and at Town Meetings on Health Care reform. His conversations with the FBI representing themselves as calling from the conservative anti-health care reform organization, Patients United Now, part of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, elicited that Wilson held conservative views.

www.justice.gov/usao/waw/press/2010/apr/pdfs/WILSON%20COMPLAINT.pdf

This directly supports my assertion that death threats to members of congress, particularly Democratic or Liberal members of the House and Senate, are coming from the right, and are NOT as some writers and commenters on the right 'blogosphere' have alleged, originating from the left trying to make the right's tactics and rhetoric look bad.

Prior to making the death threats, legally exercising his first amendment rights to free speech, Wilson had routinely left many very ugly, expletive-laden messages with Murray's office, and also with the office of the other Washington senator, Senator Maria Cantwell's office, but none of those messages previously contained the illegal death threats which triggered the FBI Investigation.

Wilson boasted in his death threat messages and in his conversation with the FBI about his gun ownership, which was legal, the .38 he owned was registered, and his conceal carry permit.

Representative Steve Cohen has released expletive-laden email which threatens that "if our tea parties had hoods, we would burn your ass on a cross on the white house lawn".

The capitol police are investigating. The FBI has multiple investigations in hand relating to death threats against members of congress; a recent statement indicated that speech alone was not sufficient to trigger an investigation, and that speech was protected by the First Amendment.

Some individuals from the Tea Parties should be praised for speaking out now, if belatedly, against violence. Some members of the Tea Party have described receiving their own 'hate speech' communications, and being egged. Tea Party buses in Searchlight, Nevada appeared on video to have been egged by angry supporters of Health Care Reform and Senator Harry Reid. The egging and the abusive phone calls, voice mails, email, and 'snail-mail' letters are also reprehensible, but they do appear to be generally far below the bar of the threats emanating, based on their content, from the right.

While Tea Party leaders and others acting as spokespersons for different segments of the right have asserted, they do not advocate violence. However, they have been remiss not only in tolerating extreme and provocative, even threatening language, but in endorsing the worst kinds of misinformation about the issue.

Some on the right are already backpeddaling from their own rhetoric, and they are claiming that they are not responsible for the violence and threats of violence, and that these individuals do not represent their groups, and may not even be members of them. I would point out that groups like the Tea Party entities are very loosely organized, and do not appear to have formal membership criteria or dues. So long as someone professes to share some or all of the opinions expressed by those groups, to support their actions, and to use their rhetoric, and so long as that is all that is necessary to belong, the people making these threats DO belong.

Regardless of membership, so long as these individuals in the course of making their threats are using language and concepts, and most particularly the factual misinformation provided by these groups, by Republican members of Congress, and by the right wing media like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and other talking heads on the radio, there is a direct connection, a direct responsibility. It is egregoiusly irresponsible to claim that when threats on the lives of our elected representatives and their families directly use your words, that you don't share in the responsibility for having used those words. The right incited this behavior; they should own it, and they should correct it.

If we are to conduct ourselves according to our motto "E Pluribus Unum", BOTH sides need to remember that democracy does not guarantee that any party will get their way, or that we will be pleased with every outcome of democracy. It promises us a representative process which offers us as a nation a method of determining our government and our laws. We cannot properly do that if we continue to expand the polarization of the left and right, we will not BE the UNITED States if this polarization progresses too far. We will become the Disunited States of America.

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE III

"Abatement in the hostility of one's enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat."
Quentin Crisp
1908-1999

"All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do."
Leo Tolstoy
1828-1910

“Successful politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.”
Walter Lippmann
1889-1974


In the days preceding the vote on health care reform on March 21, 2010, and the days following, there has been an avalanche of violence and threats directed at Democratic legislators who voted for health care reform. In contrast, there has been exactly one reported instance of anything similarly directed at a Republican legislator, Congresswoman Jean Schmidt was called racist for being Republican. I don't count the factually deficient public whining of 2nd minority whip Eric Cantor that misrepresented events surrounding an accidentally broken window.

Embarrassed by the threats (and they should be), and fearing political fall out that will even further diminish their declining political fortunes that have taken such a solid beating in the last two election cycles, the Right is attempting to deny the existence of these threats and to repudiate the contributing role of their rhetoric. Some individuals are even claiming that the events they are trying not to name as threats are actually stunts by the left against the left to gain sympathy. Some, in the conspiracy theory tradition of the right fringe mouth-frothers, are even claiming that the SEIU is responsible. In fact, masquerading as 2nd Amendment Rights advocacy is an attempt to use weapons at protest events as a very real threat - I draw your attention to the third interview in this video of a Tea Party protest event in Alamogordo New Mexico in January 2010:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqjVWifq4Kc&feature=player_embedded#

This denial of any threats clearly ignores the protest signs, like this one, which appears to make a very overt threat, in both words and images. "Brown" is newly elected Senator Scott Brown, from Massachusetts, previously viewed as the savior for those against the health care reform legislation in the senate who did not derail health care reform legislation as hoped on the right. "Browning" refers to the fire-arms designer and manufacturer; in the instance of the protest sign, it appears to be the very famous semi-automatic 9 mm model Hi-Power, designed by the legendary Mormon US arms designer, John Browning. I recognize this weapon; I learned to shoot with this kind of weapon, I was taught range safety with this weapon, to be proficient not only firing it accurately but to field strip this weapon blindfolded. My reaction is not an anti-gun response, it is anger at such blatant, egregious offense to our 2nd Amendment Rights and Responsibilities advocated by this sign. This is a widely available, widely produced hand gun, with an impressive history behind its use. The border tape "FIRE LINE DO NOT CROSS" admonishes those who see these signs not to venture between those who intend to shoot, from a position designated as the fire line, and the intended target, clearly represented by the image of the Capitol on the sign. The language, the visual imagery, clearly have a meaning beyond metaphor. This is a sign promoting threats of violence against elected officials, our fellow citizens, not merely oppositional words and ideas.

This is not an isolated sign; clearly there were others. The signs were held by tea partiers outside congress. Republicans, like Michele Bachmann, left the floor of the House of Representatives during the Sunday Health Care Reform vote session, to stir up these very sign-carrying protesters, to whip up their emotions.

After the threats began to come to light, these same people, these Tea Party courting Republicans, tried to deny they had any part in this.

They are liars.

They have a long participation in false, inflammatory statements. There was Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who claimed loudly to his base that the Democrats were going to "pull the plug on Grandma" with the health care reform legislation, repeating the Palin popularized premise that won her the 2009 Lie of the Year award. North Carolina Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx claimed that our government was going to kill seniors. Republican Congressman Randy Neugenbauer rudely yelled out "Baby Killer" on the house floor, and despite his tepid apology, is reputed to have used the notoriety for his rudeness to attempt to fund raise on his demonstrably untrue statement.

And we have perenial off-the-deep-ender Michele Bachmann of the 're-education camps' and 'armed and dangerous' citizens claims, boasting she's the new Nostradamus for claiming Obama is un-American, now bragging how prescient she was on "Hardball with Chris Matthews", after she tried in 2008 to deny ever having made the statement. Caught in her rant, she has tried to 'clarify' that she means Obama's policies, a distinction which eludes me. If Obama's policies are Un-American, is not Obama Un-American for embracing and promoting them? And we have Bachmann's appearance on Sunday, March 29th's airing of Face the Nation, proclaiming in her usual refrigerator-magnet and bumper sticker 'slogan-thinking' that Americans are suffering under "Tyranny", that over 50% of the private sector of our economy has been taken over by the government, while 100% of the private sector was private before 2008, and my personal favorite, that doctors would abandon their profession like crazed lemmings according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

Except that, no surprise, her numbers and her conclusions and her claims about doctors and the New England Journal of Medicine are not true. But those lies play well, very well indeed, to her radical right base. A base which does not seem to care if Bachmann is accurate or not, a base which will, as they do with Palin, embrace and praise anything she says, no matter how stupid, now false, how calculated to push her base over the edge of reason.

Congresswoman Bachmann on "Face the Nation"
fact checked by CBS, "Bachmann Offers Big Numbers, Little Proof" :
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/28/ftn/main6341007.shtml

The Republicans are talking big, with their futile law suits by the state Attorneys General, and their boasts, like those of Michele Bachmann, that the Republicans are going to repeal the health care reform legislation. It is precisely because those efforts have no reasonable chance whatsoever of success that the Republicans and the Tea bagging militia members and other right wing extremists must continue their threats and their harrassment. The alternative is to accept that they do not have a majority. They do not reflect the prevailing opinion. After the signing of the health care reform legislation, the poll numbers support the legislation. Of the approximately 40% who do not support it, 18% to 20% disapprove because they wanted even stronger reform, not less, and therefore the poll numbers do not argue for the citizenry supporting the efforts of the right. If this assessment is correct, projecting from the trend during the 2008 election and the 2009 debate over health care reform, we will see an increase in threats, not a decrease.

On the face of this, those who do not embrace fact are clearly equally unable to embrace reason, or moderation, or apperntly in at least some instances, decency and self-control. We need to oppose inflammatory rhetoric on the right, and we certainly need to oppose it on the left as well; I think we can safely define the centrists as not extreme in this regard by definition. We need to demand accountability for the factual content of statements by our leaders and elected representatives in both chambers of Congress. We need to express our feelings not only about legislation but also about how we conduct political discourse. We do this with our words, and with our votes. I believe that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to stand by and do nothng. Join with me in condemning intimidation. Whatever your ideology, join with me in opposing false statements and inflammatory rhetoric, everywhere you find it.

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE II

“The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
American 26th U.S. President 1901-09, &
advocate for government universal health insurance
1858-1919

“Do not overestimate the decency of the human race.”
(and)
“The fundamentalist mind, running in a single rut for fifty years, is now quite unable to comprehend dissent from its basic superstitions, or to grant any common honesty, or even any decency, to those who reject them.”
-Henry Louis Mencken
American humorous Journalist and Critic of American life
1880-1956


I have been reading on the right that the newly passed Health Care is terrible.

"Baby Killer", they claim, just like the Representative from Texas red neck Annoying-bugger yelled during the session of Congress on Sunday. Our own dear wacko Representative to Congress from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann (she's crazy, she's not stupid) is now reported to have assured Representative Neugenbauer's adult son that the outburst would get less attention than the equally wrong, inaccurate, and misleading "You Lie"outburst from Joe Wilson during the State of the Union address. "It WILL kill people", "Pelosi is a liar", "Obama is Un-American", "It is a government takeover", "they're going to insure illegals", "we've lost our freedoms", health care reform "comes between patients and their doctors", the legislation is "tyranny", "Armageddon", and on and on and on, the political right continues promulgating factually inaccurate statements about this legislation, about the Democratic members of the House and Senate, about the actions of the cabinet, advisers and White House staff.

Sadly, quite the opposite lack of concern has been evident from the right; while people really have been dying by the tens of thousands due to lack of health care, especially lack of health care relating directly to insurance company greed, there was not a comparable worry about any American citizens dying. We were told we have the best system in the world, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. This, despite the evidence of the numbers of people dying who could have been healthy. This, despite the evidence of the numbers of bankruptcies and other financial devastation directly related to the costs of illness and injury.

Those Republican claims about this legislation? NO. WRONG. NOT TRUE. http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2010/mar/18/top-10-facts-know-about-health-care-reform/

There are absolutely, positively, categorically no language, no sections, no provisions anywhere of any kind to fund abortions, or death panels. There ARE provisions to extend health care to a large portion of our population that does not currently have insurance, and without insurance, does not have health care. There ARE provisions that will, if they function as they are intended, reduce the instances of bankruptcy due to medical bills, and will reduce the number of people who have to choose between paying for their housing, or life and death medical care. We currently have tens of thousands of people who die every year because they don't have insurance. This will change, people will not be let die who were vulnerable when government was dominated by the Right. People dying from a lack of care is not the same as people being killed, like those for example who are wrongly convicted and executed, and calling fewer people dying for lack of care "KILLING people" is adding insult to injury.

Deem and Pass, although ultimately not used in passing the legislation, was equally DEEMonized by the right. The best explanation for how the Democrats intended using this parliamentary procedure was clearly explained by politifact.com :
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/mar/17/cliff-stearns/stearns-says-house-democrats-trample-procedures-he/

A friend, a dear friend who is a conservative, on his blog when I wrote something about Deem and Pass joined in deriding it with, commenters from the right. I was told that I was either lying - using the more polite term that I was 'disingenuous', OR that I apparently didn't KNOW what I was talking about in terms of the parliamentary procedures, and its historic use, OR that I was innocently simply parroting the left liberal talking points that I must have read on other lefty blogs - in other words, my friend ostensibly in sticking up for me asserted I was unable to think for myself. I was offended, heartily offended. I was just undecided what offended me the most.

As it happens, I do not routinely read very many other blogs, either of the left or right. The exceptions are the blogs for which I write, which would include the blog of our contributing author Apathy Boy, and routinely the blog of my friend and sometimes mentor on the right, Mitch Berg of Shot in the Dark.info. where I sometimes comment, as does Pen.

I certainly do not need other people to think for me, and I not only do not lie in what I write, I scrupulously try to fact check my information before I make statements. As my dear colleague and erstwhile 'boss' (a fond honorific that he emphatically denies) here on Penigma can attest, as he was the patient listener to my venting, I was unhappiest over assertions that I was uninformed on the parliamentary procedures and the history of their use specifically, but I was really furious that anyone would think I didn't do research. I take pride in reading original documents, be it court documents or legislation, or whole books rather than just trusting wikipedia. Part of this is, I will admit, vanity; I like knowing what there is to know, and where possible knowing more than other people. When I do the prep work, I feel more confident in writing. In researching more than minimally, I feel I have made a good faith effort to look at all the information, including what does not support the position with which I begin, in an attempt to offset bias - recognizing all of us have some bias - instead of cherry picking facts. I promised myself when I asked Pen to allow me to write on this blog that I would make this effort. It can be a dull slog. So I will readily admit - my vanity was sharply pricked, if not fully wounded.

When I was a second grader joining the more junior program of Girl Scouting known as the Brownies, we were introduced to Robert's Rules of Order. Later in Girl Scouting it was part of earning a badge. I have consulted professional Parliamentarians in the course of drafting revised constitutions and by-laws for organizations to which I belonged, and I have researched how these professionals become credentialed, and the two national organizations for the profession. I know individuals who have been past parliamentarians for our state legislature, and I was aware long before the health care reform brought it to public attention that the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives each have their own Parliamentarian. In fact, as an avowed parliamentarian 'geek' (or would that be nerd?) I was utterly delighted to see that those Parliamentarians were getting public recognition for their roll in the legislative process for a change.

Before I made my comment on my friend's conservative blog, I also fact checked it. I don't want to stick my neck out if I'm not confident about my information; I was brought up to believe that making a controversial or contradicting statement is something that should be done with care and consideration. Being accurate is, for me, part of treating the other person with respect, by making the effort to disagree only if you are very sure that you are doing so constructively, and courteously, attempting to minimize the inherent tension of disagreement.

I have believed for some while now that the "Great Divide" of polarized politics, as distinct from consensus and centrism and bi-partisanism, has two inherent parts. One is obviously the ideology of Right and Left - or as it sometimes seems, the Right, and anything not to the Right, encompassing Center moderates and the Left. But the other, which seems to me to offer the greatest potential for finding a way across the great divide is the issue of fact. In my experience, there seems to be far too often, avoidably often, differences in the facts which form the basis from which the sides proceed. Sometimes this is intentional cherry-picking, and sometimes it is less clear if that is the case.

So, given the rancor, the name calling and insults, the incivility and even threats that have characterized our political reality, the importance of fact checking, of researching more thoroughly than we might otherwise, including looking at the facts that are embraced by the other segments of the political spectrum is more important now than it ever has. Although I hear the memory of my old debate coach haunting me as I write this, whispering "when was this imaginary time of yours when research was not important, and absolutely essential?".

His ghost in my memory may not agree with my answer, but that answer is, it is even more important than during calmer times, when people are so angry that they are beginning to behave badly, threatening violence.

In reply, that ghost memory laughs, "or when someone makes you mad." Reminding me that being offended should prompt me to research even harder.