If you’ve been watching the news and heard the threats of violence against Barack Obama during the Republican rallies, you’ve heard the candidates say or people yell things about Obama like:
- Terrorist
- Kill him
- Off with his head
- Arab (in a derogatory way)
- Muslin (in a derogatory way)
- Associates with terrorists
- Obama is not like us
This whole thing is unconscionable and completely disgraceful.
John McCain says he’s learned his history, but he obviously hasn’t learned squat.
I’m currently reading Ian Kershaw’s biography of Adolf Hitler, and this reminds me of a Nazi rally on November 8, 1938. What followed this rally was the “night of broken glass” (Reichskristallnacht) on November 9-10, 1938. It was a night of terror against Jews. Synagogues were burned. Jewish shops were destroyed. Jews were arrested, beaten and murdered. Hitler didn’t raise a stick, a torch, or a gun. But his inflammatory speech whipped the crowd into a hate-filled frenzy and led to extreme violence and thousands of deaths.
Similar things happened in America in the 1960’s during the civil rights movement. Segregationist leaders yelled their hateful speeches from the stump and African Americans and civil rights workers were murdered. Again, the leaders, like George Wallace, didn’t raise a hand, but they tacitly gave permission to their hate-filled followers to carry out horrendous crimes against their fellow American citizens because they had different beliefs or their skin was a different color.
Sarah Palin and other members of the McCain campaign are repeating this very frightening history of the imperfect human race. She and other members of the campaign are giving tacit permission to crowd members to believe untruths and to harbor violent thoughts and intents against a fellow American citizen.
I do not believe for a second that Sarah Palin doesn’t hear these epithets and calls to violence. When she hears them she has chosen to ignore them. I have seen that when John McCain hears these things he stops them, but not strongly enough to put a stop to them.
U.S. Congressman John Lewis of Georgia is 100% right to warn John McCain about the tone of his rallies and draw comparisons between them and the violence of the 1960’s.
McCain claims similar threats are being made against him and Sarah Palin at Obama rallies, but this is completely untrue. Barack Obama won’t even allow crowds at his rallies to boo McCain or Palin, let alone say anything of an inflammatory or violent nature against them. Obama stops his crowd as soon as any of that begins and tells them they shouldn’t be booing the other candidate, they should be getting out the vote on November 4th for him.
Why hasn’t John McCain stopped mid-sentence when one of these threats is yelled and put his foot down that this is America and we do not threaten people period, and that he will not permit anymore of these disgraceful outbursts. Why hasn’t McCain told his audiences that if they make such threats they will be found, arrested, interrogated and possibly tried and imprisoned. Why hasn’t John McCain ordered his Secret Service to find and arrest crowd members who yell violent threats?
Why hasn’t President George W. Bush ordered the entire Secret Service to find and arrest anyone who yells threats of violence against any candidate running for a federal public office?
McCain and Palin both say they can’t control everything everyone in the crowd says and that these threats are from the few nuts in any crowd. This is not true. They can stand up and tell their crowds to stand down and that this behavior won’t be tolerated. They can have the Secret Service find and arrest people who yell these threats. All it takes is one ideological nut with a gun to commit a murder.
If Barack Obama is murdered or there is an attempted on his life or the lives of his family, the blood will be all over John McCain and Sarah Palin.
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