Seriously?
As entertaining as talking about how crazy the right has gotten recently can be, I usually try not to spend too much of my time on that because that’s playing right into their hand: it’s stirring up attention about something that’s not even worthy of a offhand remark at the diner table, let alone of a daily cable news show (not referring to any one undereducated, over-caffeinated, and over-opinionated newscaster who broadcasts on weekdays at 5 P.M. ET in particular).
However, today I saw something that made me especially angry, and I don’t want to rant, but I do think it’s important to take a second to realize how scary some of the dialog is becoming. I logged onto Politico this afternoon to get my daily fill of political gossip and I saw a story about a Facebook poll on whether or not we should kill President Obama. The choices were: a) Yes, b) Maybe, if he cuts my healthcare, and c) No.
Obviously there’s always a radical fringe in any political reality, but now it’s becoming less of a fringe. While it still has a long way to go before qualifying as “mainstream”, the degree to which people were openly expressing their desire for the president to be murdered is far from acceptable. Our president was democratically elected and has yet to even complete one fifth of his term and is only now addressing the first of his top three domestic priorities (Healthcare, Energy, and Education).
If this is where we are now, where will we be when the president wants to take on climate change? Or education? If what’s happening now is any indication, then the answer is not good, as healthcare reform is arguably the least controversial of his top three. Now do I think that there is a big chance that this “faction”, if you will, will eventually derail Obama’s plans for reform? Probably not. Am I overreacting? Maybe. I really hope that six months from now, these worries will just look silly and unfounded, just like the infamous Y2K bug eventually proved to be. But like I said earlier, while I don’t think we should spend too much time on this, indirectly giving it a certain legitimacy, I do think it’s something we should keep in mind as we go forward these next couple months.