So as you’ve no doubt heard, the Democrats finally pulled their heads out of their collective asses last night and passed the damn bill. However it wasn’t without its own particular hysterics. In particular several protesters yelled racial and homophobic epithets and Democratic members of Congress. I think it’s rather self-evident that bigotry plays a rather large role in the Conservative movement as does a general lack of empathy for human suffering, however it’s been interesting in a rather depressing way to watch those two forces interplay in the health care reform debate. A lot of this sentiment rises from the Tea Party elements of conservativism, which for better or worse has been driving a lot of the grassroots energy to the Republican party over the past six months. So of course Republican politicians have no desire to alienate these people, which leads to some rather repugnant justifications for this language.
First Devin Nunes (R-CA), who represents the 21st district which includes Clovis and Visalia, said this:
Yeah, well I think that when you use totalitarian tactics, people, you know, begin to act crazy. I think, you know, there’s people that have every right to say what they want. If they want to smear someone, they can do it.
Now we have Steve King (R-IA) saying this:
“I just don’t think it’s anything,” King said, emphasizing that the incidents were isolated. “There are a lot of places in this country that I couldn’t walk through. I wouldn’t live to get to the other end of it.”
So apparently totalitarian tactics (by which he actually means majority rule) and the fact that an old white guy is afraid to walk through black neighborhoods makes it okay for protesters to use hate speech. It’s things like this that make prognostications of the coming Great Republican Takeover seem a little… myopic.
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