Baraka_Guru

I find it interesting that when we analyze the right-wing rhetoric for its problems of violence, red-baiting, and the demonization of liberalism, the response is often: "what about the left, huh?"

Sure.

First, we're looking at the right. Why not address what the right is doing? Why look left?

Second, the left (or centre-left, I should say) doesn't tend to have this same problem.

In Hannity's interview of Palin last night, the best examples (ostensibly) that they came up with regarding the "violent left-wing rhetoric" were more than two years old and came from a pop star, a stand-up comedian, and an amateur web comic. Nothing screamed more "grasping at straws" than that part of the interview. (And, as you can imagine, it wasn't a very interesting interview. It seemed more of an advertorial than an interview. I'm not sure any new information was obtained, at least not anything that you wouldn't otherwise predicted.)

I know that the Democrats just as much as the Republicans have been known to use maps with targets, "war boards," etc., during campaigns. If that was the limit of Palin's themes, then it would be a different story. It's not.

If you can't see that the limits of Palin's (and Republicans' and Tea Partiers') discourse goes beyond the typical liberal, then I don't know what else to tell you. It's right there.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot