This is the video of President Obama's speech at a Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Arizona. He is focusing on trying to repair America rather than the rest of the world. He has no choice.
Obama's rhetoric is quite different to the 'blood libel' rhetoric deployed Palin to suggest that Palin was being victimized and those who disagree are hateful, reprehensible leftists. In contrast, Obama says:
The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better. To be better in our private lives, to be better friends and neighbors and coworkers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.
The American Tea Party, represented by Palin, are not interested in a more civil and honest public discourse. Their eliminationist rhetoric of violence and hatred is designed to be divisive and to set people against each other. The Right believes that anger and polarization is good for the country because it will help deliver them to power.
Underneath this, as Paul Krugman points out, is the deep divide in American political morality The Republican Party no longer accepts the legitimacy of the welfare state whilst the Democrats want to expand it.
| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:59 AM | Permalink
The Southern Strategy, formulated up by Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan, was designed to appeal to southern whites by practicing racially-divisive politics in the post-Civil Rights era. They hoped to attract the votes of many fearful southern Democrats by pandering to the racists among them.
The Republicans have been playing this game ever since, constantly seeking out new ways to split the electorate by stimulating old animosities and churning up new ones. The bogus "threats" have been many and varied, depending on what was convenient at the time: feminists, gays, communists, environmentalists, academics, scientists, Mexicans, liberals, activist judges, Hollywood entertainers and most recently, Muslims.
The American right is not interested in being "civil". There's absolutely nothing in it for them.
The Southern Strategy, formulated up by Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan, was designed to appeal to southern whites by practicing racially-divisive politics in the post-Civil Rights era. They hoped to attract the votes of many fearful southern Democrats by pandering to the racists among them.
The Republicans have been playing this game ever since, constantly seeking out new ways to split the electorate by stimulating old animosities and churning up new ones. The bogus "threats" have been many and varied, depending on what was convenient at the time: feminists, gays, communists, environmentalists, academics, scientists, Mexicans, liberals, activist judges, Hollywood entertainers and most recently, Muslims.
The American right is not interested in being "civil". There's absolutely nothing in it for them.