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EricHiggin on 27 October 2018
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Hiku said:
melbye said:

This has as much to do with Trump as the Bernie-supporter who shot Steve Scalise has to do with Bernie Sanders

Yes, because Bernie encouraged violence among his own people.
In fact I have some Bernie quotes here:


(It's missing some of my favorite quotes though, like "I'll pay your legal fees" and "maybe you second amendment people can do something about it.")

Don't make false equivalences. I saw this inaccurate Bernie comparison from Lindsey Graham and certain right wing media, and I expected people to parrot it in this thread without even considering why people are discussing Trump.
It's not because this person was a Trump fan. That would be ridiculous. It's because of Trump encouraging violence. Both politically motivated violence, and otherwise. This is not normal for a president in a non authoritarian country. And what a president says, when millions of people look up to him (and some event believe he was sent by God), has consequences.

thismeintiel said:

Or the guy who sent white powder to Reps just a few weeks ago. Of course, that doesn't help with the narrative, so those stories are dropped quickly.

No one in Washington (to my knowledge) has encouraged political violence, except for Trump.
That has been the narrative for a few years now. This is not a new subject.
If Bernie had told his supporters to injure protesters, or "Maybe you second amendment people can do something about it", etc, then yes, his influence on the shooter would have been considered and his behavior criticized.

But as it stands, we can't say that Bernie has said anything that promoted violence among his supporters.
The same however can not be said of Trump.

I look at this from a different angle, but I'm also not saying I think Trump hasn't said anything he shouldn't have, like quite a few others in the political realm recently, and over the last few years. It's the people however that either take the words as meant at face value, or try and read between the lines right up to a conspiracy level of insanity.

Based on the various ways this seems to be viewed by the left and the right, the way I see it, is that apparently the Dems didn't even have to entice anybody to incite harm against their opponents to enable someone to use extreme violence against some Reps, where as the Reps have apparently had to constantly scream and shout and push for years to get someone to incite extreme violence against some Dems.

So which is worse? Followers who have to be heavily persuaded to cause harm to your opponents, or followers who will do so without any influence? A question you could ask, is would the Bernie shooter or MAGA bomber still have followed through if they weren't prompted to by political leaders?

The fact is that both the left and right clearly have their extremist crazies and whether you coax them into doing it or not, there is a good chance they are going to do something stupid at some point in time regardless. Trying to stay ahead of it, and/or putting an end to it as quickly and peacefully as possible, is about all that can be expected otherwise.

Last edited by EricHiggin - on 27 October 2018