Comments on: Days of rage on the Internet

What with a financial crisis coinciding with the final days of the race for the presidency, the Internet is turning into a free-fire zone. My advice: don a flak jacket and duck.

[Psalm88]

A few friends who pass along this raging insanity about Obama, now say that they are sick of it and want to hear more about what both candidates will do. That's a healthy sign.

As for the looney-toon video about being a Muslim. What branch of Christianity espouses such nonsense and tells people who profess Christianity that they aren't? Are you sure this video isn't a joke?

[holyhope]

This new era of reply possibility, (the internet), lets those so inclined to state on the larger stage their views. Instead of hiding behind a bush and shooting, they are able to produce a force of communication to the bigger world. I find it cathartic for those low sick individuals who have no voice and know the politicians are out for self agrandiesment rather than for any communal good. Let those smaller voices sing out for a healthier populace, to grow into a better community not clinging to their religion and guns out of sight.

[Solaris_User]

Oh we KNOW what Obama and McCain are going to do.. that is why I can't vote for either of them.

[Moozle]

@ Psalm88:

"What branch of Christianity espouses such nonsense and tells people who profess Christianity that they aren't?"

Sarah Palin's branch, apparently. A local TV station referred to her as Wasilla's "first Christian mayor," even though Stein (the previous mayor) and his predecessors were also Christian. Stein, IIRC, was a Lutheran which, I guess, doesn't count - let alone Catholics.

[Rick_Shaw]

"Jewish control of the banking industry and suggestions that Jews hold complete power over government and the financial services sector," according to the ADL.."

And we all know what a bunch of stand-up guys the ADL are. They've been busted for spying on Americans how many times?

If the ADL is trying to back someone up, you can rest assured they're crooks.

[Psalm88]

This is half Gulliver's travels "off with their heads because they break their eggs on the wrong end", and Dr. Seuss "The North-Going Jax and the South-Going Jax". Unfortunately, it's apparently stimulating our native insurgents like those who blew up the Kansas City Federal Building-- or has that been deleted from our memory? What was their religion, their race, how trust-worthy were they, what was their allegiance to -- what God, which people, what country?
All this questioning is a sham - we know it? Let's just try not to have another civil war in the next 20 days, just be civil and go and cast our votes.
And if there are reports of illegal rejections and intimidation of certain voters from the polls, you'll find me in Washington DC demonstrating for the first time in my long life the very next day with a few hundred thousand from all around the country, making sure that this time voter suppression is treated publically as a crime in our country for the first and very last time.

Our only responsibility out of all this is just to vote, expect to be respected and protected, not intimidated, threatened or rejected, and to go home, turn on the TV and find out who won.

[Penguinisto]

Psst! Oklahoma City, not Kansas City. Also, the folks who were behind it were more anti-government than anything else; certainly no religion or particular ideology was involved.

[Penguinisto]

The funny thing is, such animosity is being fueled by a media who believes that generating such drama leads to profit (which in many cases they turn out to be right...) Then again, Yellow Journalism has been around ever since someone dragged America's first printing press over the Atlantic to the original colonies.

@Charlie: Dude, this is tame. Seriously. Calling Obama a Muslim is nothing compared to the 18th Century tactics of claiming political opponents to be adulterers, drunkards, and blasphemers. As a political people, it's kind of who we are.

/P

[Len Bullard]

And of course citing the Obama examples, Charlie, you feed back information into the rage generator. Was it a peace rally to accuse Sarah Palin of forcing a boy to marry her pregnant daughter or to make claims that the Downs syndrome child was the daughters?

Spy vs Spy, Charlie. You know it and I know it. Anyone with a background from the radical days of the Sixties knows to start a riot you get ten people to toss bricks in a crowd of 1000. If you don't want the riot, everyone is told to sit down and offer no resistance.

It's your karma, Dude.

[meh130]

You forgot to add the hate-filled DailyKos and Huffington Post to your list. Those two sites promote more hatred than any other mainstream political sites on the net. Add my.barackobama.com to the hate mongering sites, where recently someone posted a picture of themselves wearing a shirt which said in large letters "Sarah Palin is a C*nt". tucc.org was another site known to promote hatred and racism in the past.

Meanwhile, elected thugs seek to stop political speech in Missouri. The same politicians who refused to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now claim they were the ones who were trying to regulate it, and claim those who sponsored increased regulation were instead in favor of deregulation. A political video explaining the economic meltdown, and peppered with a few short excerpts of popular music, is removed from YouTube due to specious claims of music copyright violation, while tens of thousands of videos with copyrighted music remain untouched. A bill to strip workers of their right for a secret ballot in a unionizing vote is called the "Employee Free Choice Act". And a political phone worker calls Secret Service on a citizen she called when the citizen dared to speak her political opinion. The only thing missing are jack boots and goose stepping. Eight years ago lawyers for a presidential candidate specifically targeted members of a particular group for intentional disenfranchisement by challenging their ballots based on who employed them.

We are devolving towards Europe, where in The Netherlands someone was criminally charged for suggesting people write "Thou Shalt Not Kill" in chalk on their doors as a memorial to someone who was murdered, because such a message incited hatred.

We have arrived at George Orwell's 1984, albeit 24 years later. Tolerance is intolerance. Compassion is hatred. Freedom is slavery.