re: #22 iossarian

No, conservatives are evil because they think poor people should be left to die of easily preventable illnesses.

Violent nutters, whatever their political bent, don’t necessarily tell you much about the mainstream of either movement, though it is worth noting that in general, right-wing rhetoric of the past 10 years has been much more violent than left-wing rhetoric.

What is really worth noting is that in the last 10 years, and really, for longer than that, there has been effectively no violence from either wing. Lone nutters, as everybody agrees, don’t count. So, what would count? A conspiracy. A series of political assassinations, aligned to a single end. A series of inexplicable deaths which conveniently advantage one party or the other.

Ballot boxes seized by one party or the other. Voters prevented, by mob threat, from voting.

All these things are almost par for the course in many parts of the world. We just don’t see them here. Our elections are fought out over the airwaves, on cable TV and talk radio and newspaper editorials and word of mouth. If they’re very close, they’re fought out in the courts, and, who knows, maybe a few ballots are tampered with, just enough to put somebody over the top. Or maybe not. That sort of thing is hard to prove, and even if it did happen from time to time, it wouldn’t exactly be violence.

The big picture is that we have free and fair elections, people can safely speak their minds, and about the worst that one can fear, in hotly contested elections, is lawn signs stolen and perhaps some non-accidental flat tires. Not that even that is OK, but as violence goes, it’s small beer.