Can we keep a civil tongue?
Did it begin with the 2011 takeover of the Wisconsin State Capitol over Act 10? Or the Antifa-inspired trashing of Madison’s State Street, the burning of Kenosha and Portland in the Summer 2020? Was the seditious routing of Congress on January 6 the following year an escalation or just more of the same? How much violence can we expect at the national party conventions this summer in Milwaukee and Chicago? Is the National Guard already on high alert for November 5 and the electoral vote processes that follow?
You know we’re in trouble as a nation that such questions aren’t academic.
Former Republican Gov. Scott McCallum and Milwaukee-based journalist David Haynes (who, of course, identifies as a Democrat) are leading an effort to lower the temperature of today’s at-your-throat politics. To which we say, good luck with that! Blaska needs body guards next time he talks school resource police officers at the Madison school board!
The Wisconsin Alliance for Civic Trust describes itself as “a cross-partisan network of Wisconsin citizens to promote fundamental democratic values, including support for fair, safe, and secure elections, and support for civil engagement.” WisACT will formally launch April 30 in Milwaukee.
McCallum and Haynes point to recent evidence of widespread threats and harassment of people in public life showing that “more than half of surveyed officials reported being insulted, over a third reported harassment, and nearly one in six reported threats.”
People serving on town boards, school boards, and at the local clerk’s office are often your friends, neighbors or even family members. And all too often, they are under attack by people who believe that intimidation is an appropriate way to make a political point. Make no mistake: Intimidation and violence is never acceptable. — WI Alliance for Civic Trust
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Blaska’s Bottom Line: Aside from wondering exactly how any particular organization can tame today’s animal political passions, such an effort would not have been thought necessary before the last several Presidents. Here are just three ideas:
- Don’t promise to pardon rioters whom you incited to “Fight Like Hell.”
- Quit looking for teenaged missteps in a Supreme Court nominee’s high school year book.
- Let all speakers be heard on campus, at city hall, and on line.
9 responses to “Are our politics becoming a for-real blood sport?”
Yes, things have jumped so far off the rails that, all too frequently in recent days, I, a pinko card-carrying-conomist, find myself actually agreeing with the lord of his stately manor.
This is brought home reading about the descent among the Israeli-Gaza protests at my college alma mater high above Cayuga’s waters.
The damnable thing is that, to a very significant degree, as a Jew whose Polish relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, I agree that the far right-wing fanatic Netanyahu government should be opposed for its monstrously immoral efforts effectively to force Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank to flee their pulverized homes permanently, like it did in the 1948 Nakba, as if, in the words of Trump about immigrants, and Israeli Likud leader, Ariel Kallner, they were “vermin.”
But instead of documenting and publicizing the evil that the Israeli government represents, and soliciting uncommitted votes to put the fear of god in Biden’s craven foreign policy, too many students at elite colleges are, in place of words and arguments (and chants and rousing songs), acting like an irrational mob, screaming and using threats and violence against anyone who does not drink their righteous Koolaid.
My erstwhile liberal friends urge me to say nothing, because Trump and his followers are worse. And perhaps they are, in degree, but your point is well taken that the similarities at Columbia, Harvard and Stanford are enough to demand universal condemnation across the political spectrum from everyone who hopes to restore sufficient civility for democratic norms to return.
I joined the “WI Alliance for Civic Trust” and I recommend that anyone that’s interested in toning down the rhetoric join now and spread the word.
did you take gotch with you?
rvtl1947hotmailcom wrote, “did you take gotch with you?”
Gotch makes is own choices just like you.
Single Parent Households Are One Of The GREATEST INDICATORS Of An IDIOT’S Future Poverty And Substandard Education.
The Gotch
When did it begin?
It began in the wee hours of November 9th, 2016 when despicable Lefty realized that Hillarity got B!TCHSLAPPED into the CHEAP SEATS; thus began a dangerous, yet voluntary, immersion into a catatonic, apoplectic, pillow-biting, pants $#!tting, bed wetting, wind-sucking, chest palpitating, vital sign ramping, mouth-breathing, fist-pounding, foot stomping, safe-space seeking, triggering, weenie-whiny, simpering-whimpering, complete metaphysical, emotional, existential, psychological, philosophical, full-throated, freaking out, melting down, spittle-flecked, furiously-frothing, totally collapsing free-fall.
Snowflaking Hard, to borrow a phrase…
The Gotch
pfffht
Antifa is Portland.
ANTIFA ARE AN EMBARRASSMENT TO STREET GANGS. Unless they outnumber you by at least 100 to 1, they are completely non-threatening. What do blacks, Whites, Women, Men, Muslims, Atheists, Jews, and Christians all have in common? There are YouTube videos of them BEATING THE DOG$#!T OUT OF ANTIFA.
The average Antifa is a pitiably pathetic, pasty, doughy, low-t college-aged, cowardly beta-male incel who has never done manual labor or been in a fight, yet feels confident they can sucker-punch a girl from behind or hit senior citizens with a bike lock, so long as they’re wearing a mask and in a crowd of at least 50 like-minded dorks.
Yell ‘boo’ and they scatter like the cockroaches they are. They don’t vote and literally do not know what a ‘fascist’ is or from which words ‘NAZI’ is derived.
These gutless morons have officially passed the pu$$ies from Power Rangers to claim the title of Least Threatening Minions in Ninja Outfits.
The Gotch