This comic has attracted more irate email than usual, with a longtime conservative reader referring to it as done "with vitriol." I don't see it as a particularly angry cartoon -- if anything, it seems like my usual absurdist approach, showing how ridiculous militant right-wing rhetoric sounds coming from the mouths of famous progressives. (Aren't we usually accused of being wimps?) I planned to do this strip ever since a blog commenter (not here) hilariously referred to Paul Krugman as an example of incivility on the left equivalent to the insurrectionist language on the right that has come under criticism since the Giffords shooting.
To answer those readers who are upset, let me first say yes, I am aware that Obama once used that quote from The Untouchables. And yes, there have been occasional instances of Democratic politicians saying bad things, like the guy in Florida who said his opponent for governor should be shot for his role as CEO of a health care company that defrauded Medicare. But here's the thing, people: you are forgetting to contextualize.
Only one side of the political spectrum has a broad, organized movement -- once fringe, now growing ever-more mainstream -- based on extreme paranoia of the government and the idea of resistance through armed revolution. This stuff forms the very raison d'etre of the Tea Party and various "patriot movement" subgroups. You have heard of the Oath Keepers, yes? If not, look 'em up. Much of the rhetoric I criticize in my cartoons comes from politicians stirring this particular pot -- they are pandering directly to their gun-nut base. They aren't just trying to use more action verbs.
Now, about Loughner: while the cheese may have fallen off of his cracker, he was clearly paranoid about the government and into currency conspiracy theories. Dude was down with the gold standard! That's classic far-right stuff. To quote my colleague Clay Jones, who drew a controversial Sarah Palin cartoon that cracked me up:
I do know the rhetoric is too much. I know it’s wrong to put crosshairs on human beings. I know it’s wrong to mask threats as political overtones. It seems conservatives would agree with that.
I ask that you ask yourself what I’ve asked myself. Did the right wing contribute to this?
I can’t say it did.
And you can’t say it didn’t.
And one last thing: I don't care about "scoring political points." Giffords feared for her own life, as I'm sure many politicians do today. Something is wrong when running for office -- especially as a liberal -- feels so dangerous. That's what really bothers me.
To use your phrase, the cheese may very well have fallen off the cracker for some of those people involved in the various “Patriot movement” groups. But I’d like to see your evidence that one of the reasons the Tea Party movement came into existence was to promote the idea of armed resistance to the Federal government.
Hey, thanks for the plug. You found the words for some things I’ve wanted to express. I wish I could have done it as well as you did.
RonF: Um. The “We Came Unarmed (This Time)” banners, t-shirts, etc that appears to have been mass produced and turned up in the hands of many different people at many different protests. The Tree of Liberty stuff that looked mass produced. The ballot or bullet stuff that wasn’t mass produced but was freaking everywhere. I wouldn’t call it the reason they exist. It’s debatable whether that was part of its creation instead of being added on later. It’s very difficult to deny that it’s there now and it isn’t a tiny minority. If it isn’t the majority, it isn’t by much.
There is a part of the left that promotes resistance through armed revolution, but they get absolutely no support. They’re fringe to the point that you almost never run into one, even on leftist forums. They’re also, without exception that I’ve seen, very young and tend to obsess over a very specific cause instead of being broad liberals or progressives. I’ve yet to meet one over the age of 25 or that focuses on anything more than their “one true cause”. Their existence even on those boards and forums tend to be full of conflict and very very brief. We try to smack ours down before they can convert others instead of encouraging them. The right used to do that too. Birchers still implies a group of nuts, mainly because conservatives at the time were willing to tell them they were crazy. Between the birthers, tenthers, goldbugs, and everything being a socialist/communist/nazi/fascist plot to enslave white people, the Tea Party have a way higher crazy ratio than the Birchers and very few on the right are willing to tell them to knock off the conspiracy theories.
I’m not saying all Tea Partiers are racist, crazy, or in militias. I don’t even know if the majority are. I’m just saying the ones that aren’t need to start telling the ones that are to calm down. The left have been doing this with our truthers and chemtrails people for a long time now. That’s why they’re not taken seriously. They’re a minority and everyone knows it. It’ll be a cold day in hell when a liberal senator has to say “Well, I don’t know. The FAA says jets aren’t spraying mind control drugs over major cities. I guess that’s good enough for me.” because he’s afraid saying “Of course they aren’t. What are you, stupid?” will cost him dearly. There’s no such thing on the right anymore.
(I apologize for the length of this post, by the way.)
I’m not saying all Tea Partiers are racist, crazy, or in militias. I don’t even know if the majority are.
You don’t know? You mean that you think it’s a reasonable possibility that the majority are? Do you actually know any people who see themselves as Tea Party movement members? Do you ever do what I’m doing here and go on a couple of their blogs and engage them to see what they think? Or do you just listen to MSNBC or CNN and run through the leftist blogs?
Part of what you’re seeing is that the left is big on organization. Also, a number of their groups have been around for a while. Whereas the Tea Party movement has only been around a short while and the vast majority of those who consider themselves adherents don’t even belong to the few organized groups with the name “Tea Party” that are out there and in any case resist any formal organization. The right is big on individualism. So when they see some nutball with a “We Came Unarmed (This Time)” T-shirt – which I’ve not heard of, BTW – they don’t think “Ah, geez, there’s a member of our group who’s off message, we have to get him straightened out or get rid of him”. They think “Look at that fool over there” and turn back to their business. They don’t think of him as part of their group, he’s just some clown who showed up at the rally. Hell, they barely think of themselves as a group at all.
There have been examples at recent rallies that I’ve seen of a group of people walking around and looking for those types and either telling them to knock it off or telling people that this guy is not representative of their group. Some of them are suspected to be plants. But any regular effort on that basis will take more organization than the Tea Party movement currently has.
And I’m still not seeing any evidence that such things were the reason that the Tea Party movement came into existence. That’s evidence that a few people flocked to where the TV cameras were after the movement came into existence.