The Murderous Opposition

There's a phrase you don't hear much in politics anymore, "The loyal opposition." It looks like things got really bad in the Clinton years, with the right wing attributing every evil to President Clinton. There wasn't much "loyal" about this opposition, instead it was about that time that the phrase "the politics of personal destruction" came into common use.

With George W. Bush's administration -- the Anti-Clinton -- we've had eight years of in-your-face opposition. The Democrats have been painted with every broad brush charge, weak on defense, the favorite of the terrorists, and, just in the last couple weeks, as appeasers. Bush, who was to be a uniter not a divider, never had any ability to reach across the aisle, except maybe for a jab or slap. For him bipartisanship always meant "my way or the highway -- with us or against us." Of course it's not true, what they say about the Democrats, because we're all Americans, and at heart we want good things for our country. We all live here, after all. But the advantage that's to be had by this other nonsense, it's too tempting...

Then of course add to this a compliant media, always eager for every fight in a society raised on cowboy shows and half-hour good vs. evil dramas. Whatever it is, there has to be winners and losers, white hats and black hats. With Bush in power, certainly, the media bought into this narrative. So much so, that now it is more common to hear reporting on the "narrative" the opposition creates for the other side than it is the actual issues, what is promised, and what needs to be done. The horse race and the opposition's defining of the other side are what we get. Is there any way that can have a humane outcome, any kind of common good at the heart of it? In practical terms, the answer seems to be no.

So now we have another election year. And decent people on both sides are coincidentally being transformed into cartoon images of themselves, evil caricatures by those on the other side. What happens when we buy into this is that it takes us lower yet. What is happening with Barack Obama's image? He's tagged as a Muslim, as a terrorist sympathizer, as someone with a suspicious middle name(!), as someone who did whatever it was he supposedly did as an eight-year-old together with American dissidents. Anyone with any sense at all knows all this is a crock, but still it's pushed because of the short-term advantages seen in lying.

And now, on top of that, we have these assassination fears (maybe hopes on the part of some.) It's all coinciding with the anniversary of RFK's death in 1968. Hillary makes some comment about why she can't drop out of the race. Whether she had different motives in saying these things than what has been attributed to her, all that is lost in the hysteria, phony or real. The thing is she shouldn't have said it, because of what actually could happen as a result. Before that, Mike Huckabee made an Obama assassination joke at the NRA convention. It was a spur of the moment (meant to be humorous) aside that would've never happened except for the coincidence of a loud noise backstage. But once said, it's said. And what it revealed was that gun violence and Obama are not far from his mind. Then today, Liz Trotta on Fox News, mixing up the names Osama and Obama, then goes on to 'joke' that it would be a positive thing if both could be 'knocked off.' So what's that do for you? Is that the America we want? Everyone who we disagree with killed off so it leaves us standing there alone?

We're reaping what we've sown. One of my criticisms of George W. Bush over the years is that he either doesn't have the mental capacity for it, or he made a conscious choice, not to be the president of all the people. He divided us up into his supporters and everyone else. We saw this in the way he had private rallies and people had to sign loyalty oaths to get in. And anytime there was a time when he could have helped bridge the divide -- with the possible exception of 9/11, which he quickly moved to exploit for political and every other advantage -- he would not do it. National emergencies, foreign policy, the military, maybe even the White House Easter egg hunt, all of had to be exploited for partisan gain, to diminish the other side.

My opinion is that any talk of assassinations ought to be done in a sensible way, as something that is not positive. (It's a measure of how far we've fallen that that even needs to be said.) Maybe something to talk about would be the historic contexts of assassinations and how to prevent them, like if you know someone who is 'off-the-wall,' deranged, and making threats, get them help. But certainly there should be no joking about assassinations, or expressing a desire for them. And anyone on TV -- Fox News, CNN, any network -- who does joke or encourage this kind of terrible thing on our country, should be out of a job immediately and never invited back.

I would like to see Fox News make a public example of Liz Trotta, and have her out immediately. If they would do something positive like that, maybe they could actually lead the way to putting the political life in this country on a higher plane.

It'd be good, I think, to have a "loyal opposition" back.