And the YELLING continues….
After this weekend’s tragedy, I had a sliver of hope that both Conservatives and Progressives could tone things down a bit. I had hoped that, if only for a day, everyone could just be Americans. So much for hope.
I started over on Huffington Post to take a look at the comments. On Saturday, for the most part, people were just expressing their grief and wishing the victims and the victims families their best. We’ll come back to Huffington Post in a minute.
Then, for some strange reason, I was compelled to venture on over to Fox News. Looking back, I probably went over there for the same reason everyone slows down to look at a car accident. And let me tell you, it didn’t disappoint. There were some level heads over there. But HOLY CRAP!! There was lots of complete insanity too. I can’t say I was surprised but I had hoped.
Then on Sunday, after calls from nearly everyone to tone down the rhetoric; Jan Brewer, Keith Olberman, John Boehner, President Obama, everyone, I went back to Huffington Post. Oye!!! What had been mostly well wishes had turned into an all out war on the Tea Party and Conservatives. Angry Progressives talking about how they were going to start fighting fire with fire. Making angry accusations and doing an awful lot of what they were claiming the Tea Party and Conservatives do. I kept posting the question:
Is this any way to help tone down the rhetoric? Can’t we put our anger aside for even 24 hours?
And I was pelted with angry replies. I’m not going to repost comments from either site. I don’t think it’s necessary and I don’t want to add life to their anger. But I was really disheartened. I had hoped that somewhere, cooler heads would prevail. Nope. In fact this just seems to have thrown fuel on the fire and turned a lot of Progressives I regularly communicate with on HP into left-wing zealots, at least for a day. I hope when they have had a chance to step back and put things in perspective they will realize they had become the mirror image of that which they despise and do more to help change the dialog for the better.
Until then I guess I’ll just keep trying to remind them of something they have been arguing:
Many of them have been talking about how there is no moral equivalency between what the right does and what the left does. In other words, they agree that sometimes the left goes too far but they contend that the left doesn’t go nearly as far as the right does and to compare the two as equal isn’t fair. And I agree. Harry Reid saying that people who vote against him are “evil” is nothing like Jan Brewer saying that if the Tea Party doesn’t get its way then they should look into “2nd Amendment remedies”. Do my Progressive friends want to be morally equivalent? They will be if they keep fanning the flames.
Welcome to Obama Is Failing 
I saw one of your comments on HuffPo and totally agree with what you’re saying, thanks for linking to your blog post.
I actually had the same experience when trying to just suggest that we all tone it down. It was in response to a post where a left-leaning person said (and I’m paraphrasing) “It looks like this guy is one of ours. Maybe it’s time for us to look inward.” A conservative person responded that the OP shouldn’t be surprised and that he and his club members needed to tone down the rhetoric. My response was that maybe we ALL needed to do our part to tone down the rhetoric. So, the conservative guy agreed but I then got an angry response from someone who I probably would agree with about most political matters. He basically said that the right was worse and that I needed to cite evidence that the left was just as bad. That’s when I realized that we were going down a rabbit hole.
I myself don’t want to be morally equivalent, I’d like to be part of the solution. That feeling is what leads me to visit sites like HuffPo less because, though I find many wonderful comments, I also find that many people would rather get really heated than try and have an actual discussion.
I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here except to tell you that there are those of us who feel the same way that you do. Somehow we need to make our voices heard.
I’ll be honest, your words bring tears to my eyes! I’ve been reading so much hate from both sides after the events that took place on Saturday. I just don’t understand how so many people who claim the label of Progressive can fling the kind of arrows and hatred they are embracing. Sure, I was angry when I heard about what happened. And if you read my posts here you will see that. But then you will see a MASSIVE liberal who, while wanting to blame the right for this travesty, acknowledges that both sides bare the burden. Both sides, no matter this psycho’s agenda, would do well to just stop feeding the fire. And to debate who does more to hurt the dialog is futile. I thank you for posting a reply and I really hope you will check back every couple of days. We may not always agree but that is why I created this site. Thank you.
Just to correct some info in your post: Jan Brewer is the Republican governor of AZ; she sees dead, headless people in the sands of AZ. It was the Republican candidate for Senator in Nevada, Sharon Angle, who spoke of “2nd Amendment remedies”. And didn’t back down from the statement. And it was a very conservative radio personality in Florida who almost made it as Chief of Staff for a recently elected Tea Party backed Republican who said that if they couldn’t win with ballots, bullets were an option. It was Congresswoman Giffords, she with the horrible brain injury fighting for her life tonight, who asked Mrs. Palin to take the crosshairs off her website as such violent imagery wasn’t helping the national dialogue. It was Mrs. Palin who refused and encouraged her followers “to reload”.
Could you show me a link where Senator Reid said votes who were opposed to him were “evil”? I will send him an email chastising him for such a statement, but I need to know when and where he said it.
Thanks!