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Sunday, August 13, 2017

This Is Not Supposed To Be A Political Rally

It has been a bad weekend.  First we had the morons at the White Power rally in Virginia marching by torchlight Friday night.  I assume they hoped to look like one of those torch-lit Nazi rallies in the Germany of the 1930's.  Instead, they managed to achieve the disdain of nearly everyone in America.  Saturday, things got worse.  There was another scheduled rally by the White Power crew and their neo-Nazi friends which brought out the crazies on the other side as well.  There was some violence and the governor ordered the rally cancelled.  Then some bozo decided to use his car to run into a crowd of people.  He killed one and injured many others.  Fortunately, the apparent culprit was caught and is under arrest.  To make things worse, a police helicopter crashed and two were killed.  So, in Charlottesville, we saw the extremists show themselves for what they truly are:  angry, violent haters.

That was bad enough.  But then it got worse.  Now we have the media and the politicians going nuts over condemning all or some of those who did these violent acts (fine) and then condemning each other over the amount of condemnation stated by other politicians.  Really?  Do we have to go there?

Consider this:

1.  When two Islamic terrorists shot and killed all those people in San Bernardino, California, many in the media and the political classes rushed to tell America that this mass murder was not an act by all Muslims, but rather the work of two "lone wolves"; it was the work of individuals.  These same people then condemned others for even calling the mass murder Islamic terrorism.  It's just Islamophobia, they told us.  Now we have a young guy from Ohio who has been arrested for using his car for murder yesterday, and many of the same people are condemning not just him, but also President Trump and even all Republicans for what happened.  Why was yesterday also not the work of individuals?

2.  President Trump condemned the violence and hatred demonstrated in the Virginia attack.  The media and some politicians immediately criticized him for not saying the right thing.  Seriously, my own senator, Richard Blumenthal, condemned the President for not specifically condemning the groups at the rally.  The worst thing about it is that Blumenthal didn't even know who had committed the car attack when he made his statement.

Can't we just, for once, stop the politics.  I think it's safe to say that more than 90% of this nation thinks what happened yesterday was repulsive.  There's no real audience for the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, or antifas.  The violent extremists on both sides are abhorred by essentially everyone.  The only way for these groups to strengthen, however, is for them to sow the seeds of hatred among their fellow Americans.  We need to stop that.  We need to respect each other.  We need to do that now!

And to be clear, this is not a call for the end of political discourse.  We can keep the rough and tumble of our usual politics.  The anger, however, has to go.  That also means that the false accusations that one's opponents are "haters" must go as well. 

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