A man with a large, loyal, unquestioning audience declares someone a threat to all that is righteous and holy. Later, that someone is murdered (or attacked with intent to murder) by a follower of this man or his fellow travelers. Are we talking about a radical jihadist mullah issuing a fatwa against a critic of Islam, or are we talking about a Republican radio or cable TV show host who spends all day making up psychotic, Goebbles-scale lies about Democrats and hinting darkly at "Second Amendment solutions"? The answer is another question: What's the difference?
Don't get me wrong, there are differences: One tends to be in Arabic or Farsi and the other in Newspeak (the Republican version of English). One tends to come from a bearded guy in a white robe, and the other from a pudgy WASP in business casual clothes. But basically we're talking about the same thing - a dog trainer pointing at someone and saying "Kill."
In the rare event that either type of cowardly assassin-baiter is brought to answer for it, their excuse will always be that it was the dogs, and not their words, that did the deed - but the intent is clear, sometimes even flaunted proudly and smugly. In the Giffords case, the pattern is disheartening: The farther a right-wing political figure is from direct public accountability, the less perturbed they are (or, more likely, pretend to be) by the shooting. Once you get down to the Tea Party organization - hardly rank-in-file, but much further from accountability than an elected Republican - they're practically saying she deserved it, even though they hasten to insist they oppose violence.
"Congressman Giffords was a liberal, but that does not matter now. No one should be the victim of violence because of their political beliefs."
http://online.wsj.com/...
In other words, they're saying they fully understand why someone would want to murder liberals - or even centrist Democrats who are simply to the left of the GOP's fascist base - but they're so benevolent that they graciously concede other people's right to exist. At least, they concede as much in press releases that cost them nothing, and entail no restraint of their actions. Thank you so much for acknowledging that you don't have a right to murder me and every American who stands in the way of your glorious jihad, you fucking paragons of human generosity you.
But perhaps there is a difference worth exploring: Namely, the fact that the GOP's teabagger league of murderers-in-training are not funded or even motivated by any sort of coherent ideals or cultural traditions, but are rather being cultivated as mentally disordered human weapons who know only two things: They are enraged, and liberals/Democrats are to blame. They can't explain why they are enraged, they can't form coherent thoughts on what America's problems are or how to solve them, and they are not only incapable, but proudly scornful of rational analysis of empirical facts. Confront them with facts and reasoned arguments, and you are automatically disqualified from consideration because reality is a tool of The Enemy.
But they know liberals/Democrats are to blame. They just know it, as an absolute truth - an article of faith as fundamental as the Koran to a Muslim fundamentalist - because they were told by the people that tell them everything else, in the language they understand: The Orwellian mullahs of their religion, the right-wing hate-prop talk show hosts who have proliferated throughout the media spectrum like termites in an old house, steadily eating away at the hard work of generations of Americans to build a free and prosperous republic. And who is behind these mouthpieces that speak gibberish and violent lunacy? Fringe cult leaders? Foreign governments seeking our destruction?
Corporations. Big, multi-billion-dollar, publicly-traded corporations whose names everyone knows. They whip up these frenzies for two reasons: (1) Because millions of people find hate speech entertaining, and thus more attractive to commercial sponsors, and (2) because good government (i.e., the right's "Big Government") is all that stands in their way from absolute domination of American life in every respect. There is no downside for them in eroding the civil and political underpinnings of our society - whatever is shattered in the public sector, they move in and suck up the pieces for themselves. The wealthiest simply become wealthier through one smash-and-grab conservative jihad against government after another: Reagan, Gingrich, Bush, and so on. Rich people protecting their privileges and lusting after more: That's all the "Tea Party" boils down to.
So perhaps there is a difference between Republican maniacs and al Qaeda:
Islamists at least know why they want to kill liberals. Republicans, on the other hand, would shoot someone on behalf of increasing their corporate hive-mind's stock a quarter point and spout "freedom" on their lips doing it. To borrow from Walter in The Big Lebowski, "Say what you want about the tenets of Islamist theocracy, Dude, but at least it's an ethos." I hope if I ever find myself on the business end of a Republican "Second Amendment solution," that they're at least killing me for something real, and not something made up by their nihilistic masters.