The blame game gets even more crazy

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Well, Bush was actually doing warrantless wiretapping, surveilance, indefinite detention without charge, etc. Obama has done nothing that could sanely be described as "socialist."

.... I don't think you understand my point, voice it back to me.

Your point seems to be that Obama is perceived as a far-left socialist, even though that's not actually the case, and this perception leads some right-wingers to respond violently.

No my point was that the violent reactions to the party policies of the democrats are a result of the hate generated from Obama's fascist policies being mixed up with left wing politics in general, and that left wingers would respond in kind if the situation where reversed.

Fascist is a pretty big stretch to describe Obama's policies (which, substantively, do not differ significantly from Bush's).

So... your point is that the left would react violently if an ostensibly right-wing candidate were implementing socialism but labeled by its detractors as fascist? That seems somewhat implausible. Also, the anger that the Right has had hasn't been over the policies cited as "fascist" such as Obama's continuation of an overly heavy-handed "national security" stance. It has been over completely imagined greivances. And plenty on the left had paranoid delusions about Bush and 9/11, but there were no shootings over it.

Look, empirically you're just wrong. Over the past couple decades, political violence has come from the right whenever it had an identifiable source (there have been plenty of people who were syncretic or just crazy, but not a whole lot of clearly left-wing political killings).

Not really, continuing the patriot act, the assassination, and the health mandate(not national health care itself but the mandate) are all pretty fascist and all are at least arguably against the constitution. The mandate was an a more overt fascist policy and as well as its being ran around the news stations its impact was likely magnified more than it would have been otherwise.(as compared to the patriot act which was put through in a more traditional fashion, after disaster so the initial publicity wasn't really all that negative and when the left started to complain Americans where already relatively comfortable with it.)



What lefties had paranoid delusions about bush? There where no more than the usual as far as I saw. And no thats not what I'm saying at all. I am saying that if a right wing president was implementing fascist policies the left would let the hate from that bleed over into the general right wing political agenda as the right wings have done with Obama. What is this whole slights and grievances business your talking about?



This doesn't really affect my point, the world is currently trending towards liberalism and has been and likely will be for a while not the other way around. Although I am interested in your statement in parentheses, what makes a killing clearly political?

The first two existed under Bush just as much, and I know plenty of right-wingers who would gladly defend them. None of them really qualify as "fascist." Very bad ideas, yes. But fascist means something a lot more specific and comprehensive than that. You're doing effectively the same thing rightie loons are when they scream "socialism!" in response to any government program.


Lots of them. Moore was pretty high-profile.


Um... again, you're just wrong. By your definitions, Bush was implementing fascist policies. The left did not become violent. Ergo, you are wrong.


The "clearly" was in reference to "lefft-wing." For example, Scott Roeder was clearly right-wing. Bill Ayers was clearly left-wing. Ted Kaczynski, Joe Stack, and now Jared Loughner are harder to categorically put in one camp or the other, try as both sides might to pin each loony on the other side.

No I''m not private monitoring, elimination of enemies, and forcing his constituents to contribute to health care are all steps on the road to American fascism. (information to know who to eliminate, the tools to eliminate, and trying to force a sense of responsibility for national wellbeing onto the country.) Assassination of potentially influential people is a necessary tool in fascism otherwise the national identity breaks down before the new ideals can set in.



Bush didn't have the amount of influence Obama had or the right 'personality', bush was quickly made up as a fool wheres Obama was made up as a savior. His grasps of power where seen as overenthusiastic bumbling wheres Obama's continued use of this power is seen as calculating, and his implementation of policies the country doesn't want(at least in the form he supplied) is seen as arrogant, I went over this a few posts back.


The "clearly" was in reference to "lefft-wing." For example, Scott Roeder was clearly right-wing. Bill Ayers was clearly left-wing. Ted Kaczynski, Joe Stack, and now Jared Loughner are harder to categorically put in one camp or the other, try as both sides might to pin each loony on the other side.[/quote]

Wasn't roeder diagnosed with schizophrenia?(wouldn't that fall under the just crazy part?)

When Obama has his "kristallnacht" and Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity are dead, you will have a point. Until then, Obama has not been any worse than Bush was on these issues (and to be clear, I oppose both of them in that regard).


So we come back to this simply being a problem of image, rather than substance. Your point is again moot.


"Crazy" and "right-wing" are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the intersection between those two sets is rather large.

What I meant was that Roeder was clearly identifiable as belonging to one side and not the other, in a way that Kazcynski and Loughner weren't.

To counter the arguments about Bush, you do realize that the Patriot Act and a lot of the other things he did was immediately after 9/11. Which leads one to believe his motives were about protecting the American people not about becoming a dictator. Also there has been rumors that Cheney actually had a lot of input on the decision making particularly immediately after 9/11 because Bush didn't have the experience in National Security matters. As time progressed, Bush relied on Cheney less and less which is why Scooter Libby was not pardoned as Cheney wanted.

However, this blame Bush mentality is beyond old, the man isn't even President anymore.

Changing subjects slightly, it seems President Obama isn't stooping to the level many on the left have been.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01 ... l-service/

I will give credit where credit is due.

...and you'll note that I said leftist claims that Bush was a fascist were, at best, a huge exaggeration, and rejected Ickorack's classification of both Bush and Obama as "fascist," since neither of them are.

Sheesh. You don't even care what I say anymore. You've pegged me as a political enemy, and you will simply assume that whatever you believe, I believe the opposite. It's getting pathetic.

Didn't say that he was.


Image has both substance and direct impact in politics.



ah. so your argument is that a party is still responsible for the actions of its 'party members' even if those members have a mental illness?

OK, but then your argument that the right and the left are the same here is meaningless. The prime reason why the different images exist is because of a higher level of vitriol from certain far-right pundits.


No. Where on Earth did you get that idea? I didn't even bring parties into it. There are crazy people who occupy the left wing. There are crazy people who occupy the right wing. There are crazy people who can't be categorized easily. The right wing crazy people are more violent than the left wing crazy people. This doesn't necessarily make the GOP, or even the Right in general, responsible for the actions of those crazy people. It is an observation borne out by the facts.

Incidentally, it's kind of a cheap cop-out to say "That guy obviously has nothing to do with us, because he's crazy" anytime someone ostensibly connected to you does something violent when you say that such violent people are crazy basically by definition.

Nonsense how are the right-wing commentators guilty of Obama's savior image?



Nonsense you label someone right wing then anyone else with that label is said to have similar traits. You can say that a violent nut job is right wing, but you cannot say that you are placing no responsibility on his actions on being right wing if you do so. Especially when the violence is considered political.

Didn't you claim that neither side were to blame, it looks to me here recently the left has taken the vitriol to a level that the right has not done.



Didn't you claim that you said nothing to blame the right for this incident, and then there is Weather Underground. You are saying it is more okay to try to firebomb someone's house to try to kill them than using a gun to go on a rampage. Then you have the gall to accuse me of lieing about what you said.



Hmmm, didn't you say you weren't blaming the right for the actions of the Arizona shooter, looks to me you're implying that people on the right are responsible.

OT: Palin could have just shut her mouth up. And then this thing would have made some center-ish people think of her as the victim of the charade with all the media supposedly pointing fingers at her.

But no, she had to open her mouth:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ja ... a-shooting

"Blood Libel" ? Seriously? This woman wants to be president of what is probably one of the 20 most important countries in the world? Really?