I already wrote elsewhere about the political violence of the GOP's attack dogs, the Tea Baggers, but they're really annoying. I saw that in Cincinnati (among other places with a lot of reactionary wing-dings) they smashed a Democratic Party headquarters' windows. I'm sure that got downplayed by the Enquirer, which has a very real agenda in their coverage, but people around the country (and the world) noticed the ugliness there and elsewhere.
It's curious how that gets downplayed when contrasted with, say, the breaking of windows at the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 -- the handful of windows broken there by rioters was shrilly trotted out by the media as the coming of the apocalypse. But the very tightly targeted political violence against Democrats -- spitting on representatives, ethnic and other slurs, death threats (against at least 20 of them), attacks on their homes and Democratic Party headquarters -- that gets downplayed to the detriment of the rest of us.
You can be sure that if left-wing violence of similar character had been carried out, the trumpets would be sounding and there'd be people trotted off to prisons straightaway (and these days, we actually do have official secret prisons, for fuck's sake, thanks to GW Bush and Dick Cheney). And this is borne out if you actually look at the history of political violence -- some forms of political violence are tolerated (when perpetrated by the Right) when contrasted with others (invariably when carried out by the Left).
So, if you want to get away with, say, terrorism, you're far better off lighting up a cross on somebody's lawn or spraying ethnic slurs on their business (and breaking their windows) than if you lob a brick through a window at an anti-globalization protest or if you spraypaint a radical environmentalist message on an SUV. Just remember that, because that is truly how the law operates in practice around these issues.
Remember the gay guy dragged to death in Wyoming? Contrast the reaction of that with, say, Ashley Todd, the girl who faked the mutilation of herself (claiming falsely that it was done by pro-Obama supporters). One was an actual horrible crime of hate and terrorism done against a gay man, the other was a faked incident that was widely broadcast before it was discovered that she'd made the whole fucking thing up.
Double standard much? It just pisses me off -- if we're not equal before the law, then what are we? We're hosed. It's an issue because the Tea Baggers are going to do a whole helluva lot more in the run-up to the fall elections -- be ready for more ugliness, and watch the media downplay it, watch the authorities wring their hands helplessly as it gets uglier and uglier.
The broken windows in Cincinnati and elsewhere are just the beginning.
