“MTG” is the exception that proves the rule.
Half of the Republican caucus in the house, today, gave MTG a standing ovation. https://twitter.com/cam_joseph/status/1357116355988910080
More Republican (citizens) have a favorable opinion of MTG than an unfavorable one. https://twitter.com/ArgoJournal/status/1356995117396201474
MTG is the Republican party.
Have fun with that, and especially, have fun defending that.
Oh please. This sort of rhetoric, while distasteful, is such a common sort of exaggeration that there’s a Supreme Court case on it: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/707/watts-v-uni...
> Robert Watts, attended an anti-war rally at the Washington Monument.... Watts allegedly said: “I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.”
> The Court agreed with Watts’s counsel’s characterization of Watts’s speech as “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President” that did not qualify as a true threat.
The phrase “deserves a bullet to the head” or the like is a (juvenile and violent, but common) figure of speech. It’s invariably used figuratively not literally.
1) There is no evidence that MTG does not believe that Nancy Pelosi should be murdered. There is evidence that she does. She has never apologized for it.
2) If you, or anyone else, makes a death threat to a public figure on social media, you will be at minimum receiving a visit from law enforcement, and will be arrested if you don't immediately disavow what you said or are thought of as a threat. "Watts" ruled that "mere political hyperbole" is not illegal, have fun in court trying to convince the judge of that. Death threats are not just "distasteful rhetoric", come on.
3) The fact that you a) gloss over the rest of my post and b) don't even bother to condemn this stuff is really telling.
One more thing: have you ever received a death threat from a stranger?
I have, I was playing poker in a casino late at night. I was not frightened, but it was not a pleasant experience. The guy was 86ed, and a few hours later I was escorted to my car by security. I stayed away for a few days despite it being my only income at the time. That was 15 years ago I still think about it some times. I don't wish that experience on anyone. Being a politician must be terrifying. Really sad to see it minimized here.
I have a hardcore feminist friend who repeatedly gets banned from Facebook for hyperbolic rhetoric like “kill all men.” Is that evidence she wants to kill all men? No it’s hyperbole. (And it’s stupid that Facebook bans it but the rest of the world doesn’t run by Facebook rules).
> If you, or anyone else, makes a death threat to a public figure on social media, you will be at minimum receiving a visit from law enforcement, and will be arrested if you don't immediately disavow what you said or are thought of as a threat.
The comment MTG liked, “a bullet would be quicker,” would not be perceived as a “death threat” in any court of law. It’s archetypal political hyperbole.
> "Watts" ruled that "mere political hyperbole" is not illegal, have fun in court trying to convince the judge of that.
I’d take that case in a heartbeat. It’s a straightforward application of Watts.
> Death threats are not just "distasteful rhetoric", come on. 3) The fact that you a) gloss over the rest of my post and b) don't even bother to condemn this stuff is really telling.
I condemn MTG completely. But this one is a stupid justification.
> One more thing: have you ever received a death threat from a stranger?
The whole point is that a violent comment made on a Twitter board about a public figure isn’t a death threat. If I called you up and said “I’m going to put a bullet in your head,” that’s a death threat. If I say “someone should take Ted Cruz out back and shoot him” that’s obviously not a death threat. You know this because you’ve heard this phraseology a million times.
As far as your other handwaving dismissals, all I can say is actions and words from public figures, especially politicians, have consequences. You might not agree, which is fine, but this is how we get January 6th. I hope you condemn that too.
And I have never, not once, heard "we should should shoot Ted Cruz", or anything even close to that. For, you know, Republican politicians. Democrats, many, many times.
MTG seems like a strange hill to die on. I assume you pretty much share the contempt everyone else has for her.
Reframing controversial political disagreements as uncontroversial issues of personal safety is a cancel culture trope that has worked well elsewhere and now being imported into our political life. Hence the ongoing theater with metal detectors and armed military guards, as well as the baseless accusations that legislators pose some physical risk to their colleagues and must therefore be expelled.
(I don't think Boebert is in quite the same league, but give it time).
The traditional remedy for such extremism was to expose the links to voters, who would be duly horrified and vote her out. But MTG's voters knew exactly who they were electing, and I will wager that she wins again with ease in 2022. She is now a culture hero thanks to the Democratic legislators who voted against her.
Overriding the voters' decision based on our own notions of propriety, in the name of saving democracy, is a sure path to ruin. As long as her conduct is lawful, there is no defensible way to get her out of Congress except the hard way.
But not seating MTG (or maybe Boebert) on committees seems like less of a problem, and it doesn't seem any less legitimate to me when the majority of the House does it to MTG than when the Republicans themselves did it to Steve King; in both cases, it wasn't the will of the voters that elected these people that created the consequences.
Also: it took a long time to get Steve King out, and an superheroic amount of effort from JD Scholten, who had to know his chances were slim and kept fighting anyways; I don't know that you can expect Scholtens to keep appearing to fend these monsters off.
But just looping back to the subject of the thread: there's a "rule of goats" thing about wishcasting the assassination of a political opponent, and, in collaborating with people who are almost certainly not being ironic in discussing the possibility, MTG has gone way beyond being an ironic goatfucker.
I think people do hyperventilate about right-wing conspiracy nutjobs. But lending institutional support to actual insurrectionists isn't just Twitter drama.
Yet when people point out an elected national official of the GOPs words. An official that far from sanction, actually has the backing of the caucus in a named vote, you defer to defending it as figurative language.
You are applying a clear double standard. One that is dangerous. You demand your opposition abide by the Queensbury rules while your team wallops the referee with a chair and sets alight our country in the process. What could she say that you’d sanction as much as you do anything Robin Diangelo does?
When MTG “likes” a juvenile comment saying “a bullet would be quicker,” obviously I don’t treat that with the same weight, because that’s a figurative phrase that doesn’t convey an actual plan to kill anybody.
I think it’s a fair thing for parties to have to defend the concrete policy proposals of their wings. Not so much random inane muttering of individual members.
It’s incredible how rather than indulge in a microsecond of self reflection, people like you just latch onto the most extreme caricature of your opponents that your media vendors can muster, ignoring the substantive reality.
Also, looks like you might have missed this one.
I don’t want to keep spending time on this. My position is that QAnon is a fringe internet phenomenon that is a total unknown to most people. Of the people who do have some knowledge of it, few take it seriously. A few crazies do, sure. But its somber elevation to grave significance by the liberal media is totally ridiculous (and gave it more attention than it ever would have gotten otherwise).
You can minimize this stuff all you want and deflect blame to librul media, but YOUR PARTY (that you have constantly defended in these threads) is and holds these positions.
The Republican party is the party of murdering their political foes, even ones in their own party.
The Republican party is the party of Barack Obama is a Muslim (something MTG has said on video and refuses to retract).
Just own it.
Btw, dismissing things as “whataboutism” isn’t an effective argument, its just an admission of hypocrisy.