Expect Violence

A few important points need to be made about the Edwards candidacy. The other shoe dropped on it when Melissa McEwan quit yesterday.

The first point relates to the reason Marcotte and McEwan say they quit, namely, a campaign of violent rhetoric directed at them on behalf of Bill Donahue and his Inquisitors.

Marcotte and McEwan think their resignations end the matter. They don’t.

This is not a TV campaign, and it’s not going to be fought on candidates’ Web sites. Pandagon, Shakespeare’s Sister, and every other blog in the United States with readers is a political weapon. The intent of those using violent, abusive rhetoric is to shut people up, to terrorize them into silence. Leaving a job and continuing to speak won’t satisfy these people. And this campaign, unlike the last one, won’t be fought on candidate home pages, but on the rest of the Internet.

This would be true for me if I had a bigger audience, and it’s true for every single liberal blogger whose voice is heard by more than a handful. You are on the firing line. Bloggers and liberals are the real targets of the War on Terror. Unlike conservatives, we’re not yet terrorized.

My second point may prove even more upsetting to you. Eras end in violence.  The
end comes when those who feel themselves the object of violence stand
up and say no more, and come down on those who threaten them with the
overwhelming force of a new government coalition. This is what
conservatives did after 1968. It’s what the Roosevelt Administration
did in the 1930s, to those who tried to stop the New Deal. It’s what
the Civil War was all about. (To the right is the Haymarket Riot, one of many harbingers of the progressive and populist revolts of the 1890s.)

This era will be no different.

It pains me to say this, but it’s the unmistakable lesson of history.
The past does not go quietly into the good night. It will rage, rage
against the dieing of the light. Violent rhetoric will be mated, among
the most unhinged, to violent action. Bloggers are going to die. And
retreating to your own blog from one that pays does not change that
fact. It simply leaves you unprotected.

The nature of the present Thesis is that enemies both within and
without are non-human, and deserve to be treated as such. You hear it on the House floor right now,
speech after speech by Republicans claiming that "radical Islam" is out
to get us, that it’s more dangerous than Hitler and the Soviet Union
combined, that we must surrender all our treasure, our children and our
rights (but not our tax shelters) in order to kill ’em all. To those Americans
who oppose them there are claims you "hate the troops," that we’re all
"fifth columnists," and thus the eliminationist rhetoric.

People are going to act on this verbal violence, committing actual
violence, while those who moved them to it step back, tut-tut, and
claim they have no responsibility. But history proves, beyond doubt,
that these instigators are responsible for this violence, and that
those advocating violence against their fellow Americans on behalf of
this "War on Terror" are those who will, in time, be eliminated.

But it will take a lot of time. And there will be casualties. I
apologize to Amanda, to Melissa, and to you for having to say this. But
denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.