Musician Ted Nugent is known for speaking his mind about the Second Amendment and hunting, but especially on politicians. He once said then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama should “suck my machine gun.”
.. But after Wednesday’s shooting at a congressional baseball practice, Nugent has decided to be “more selective with my rants and in my words.”
“At the tender age of 69, my wife has convinced me I just can’t use those harsh terms,” he said on the 77 WABC radio program Thursday. “I cannot and will not and I encourage even my friends, slash, enemies on the left, in the Democrat and liberal world, that we have got to be civil to each other.”
“I’m not going to engage in that kind of hateful rhetoric anymore.”
.. And Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), who was on the baseball field during the shooting, condemned what he called “political, rhetorical terrorism” practiced by both sides... he apologized for calling President Obama a “subhuman mongrel”.. “I’m not backing down jack squat,” he said, but was taking action “so some idiot doesn’t misinterpret that I’m recommending violence.”
Hannity: ‘Tonight, I Know There’s a Kumbaya Moment for the Country — I’m Not Buying It’
“[E]verything we have shown you — it’s less than one-tenth of one-one-thousandth million percent of the divisive, hateful rhetoric that is no the left in America,” Hannity said. “We can spend an entire week just playing tapes, just showing example after example. The problem we’re now facing is no one on the left has the courage, or very few, or the fortitude to speak out and stop the hatred. And that’s because Democrats use this kind of vile rhetoric every single election.”
.. “Every election, Republicans are what — they are racist, they’re sexist, they’re misogynistic,” he continued. “Let’s see, they want dirty air and water. They want to throw granny off the cliff. And that’s just part of their political playbook — Islamophobic, xenophobic, homophobic — it never ends. The left objectifies Republicans, especially conservatives into something we are not. And they know the truth, but yet they contribute to this atmosphere where Republicans, we’re not even human. If you are conservative like me, God-awful. How do you even speak on television or radio? Now tonight, I know there is a Kumbaya moment for the country. I’m not buying it.
James Comey and Our Own Tin-Pot Despot, Donald Trump
Trump’s behavior is reminiscent of what tin-pot despots do. I know, for I’ve covered the overthrow of more than I can count.
.. What comes through is a persistent effort by Trump to interfere with the legal system. There’s a consistent pattern: Trump’s contempt for the system of laws that, incredibly, he now presides over.
.. The latest revelation is that Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one supplier of American voting software and tried to compromise the computers of more than 100 local voting officials.
.. “Watergate pales really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting now,” said Clapper, a former lieutenant general with a long career in intelligence under Republican and Democratic presidents alike. He added: “I am very concerned about the assault on our institutions coming from both an external source — read Russia — and an internal source — the president himself.”
.. Trump has systematically attacked the institutions of American life that he sees as impediments. He denounced judges and the courts. He has attacked journalists as “the enemy of the people,” .. He has publicly savaged Democrats and Republicans who stand up to him.
.. Skimming money meant for kids with cancer? This is cartoonlike. (The family hasn’t responded in detail, although Eric did say that, to him, the critics are “not even people.” He lamented that “morality’s just gone.”)
.. the fundamental question is not just whether the president broke a particular law regarding obstruction of justice, but also whether he is systematically assaulting the rule of law that makes us free.
The conservative mind has become diseased
But this failure of decency is also politically symbolic. Who is the politician who legitimized conspiracy thinking at the highest level? Who raised the possibility that Ted Cruz’s father might have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Who hinted that Hillary Clinton might have been involved in the deathof Vince Foster, or that unnamed liberals might have killed Justice Antonin Scalia? Who not only questioned President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, but raised the prospect of the murder of a Hawaiian state official in a coverup? “How amazing,” Trump tweeted in 2013, “the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”
We have a president charged with maintaining public health who asserts that the vaccination schedule is a dangerous scam of greedy doctors. We have a president charged with representing all Americans who has falsely accused thousands of Muslims of celebrating in the streets following the 9/11 attacks.
.. In this mental environment, alleging a Rich-related conspiracy was predictable. This is a concrete example of the mainstreaming of destructive craziness.Those conservatives who believe that the confirmation of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch is sufficient justification for the Trump presidency are ignoring Trump’s psychic and moral destruction of the conservative movement and the Republican Party... He is shaping conservatism in his image and ensuring an eventual defeat more complete, and an eventual exile more prolonged, than Democrats could have dreamed... The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased. The movement has been seized by a kind of discrediting madness, in which conspiracy delusions figure prominently... Conspiracy theories often involve a kind of dehumanization. Human tragedy is made secondary — something to be exploited rather than mourned. The narrative of conspiracy takes precedence over the meaning of a life and the suffering of a family. A human being is made into an ideological prop and used on someone else’s stage... A conspiratorial approach to politics is fully consistent with other forms of dehumanization — of migrants, refugees and “the other” more generally. Men and women are reduced to types and presented as threats. They also become props in an ideological drama. They are presented as representatives of a plot involving invasion and infiltration, rather than being viewed as individuals seeking opportunity or fleeing oppression and violence.