The Impact of Hateful Rhetoric in Political Discourse

In case you missed it. The ex President and current front runner to be the next President of the United States just had his life almost taken by an attempted assassin. This is not the 1st time, and it probably won’t be the last when someone crazy decides to listen to the hateful rhetoric by their party and the legacy media to cast an opponent as evil and worthy of death. Obviously the only person criminally responsible for the attempted assassination was the trigger man himself, but he is not the only one responsible morally.

There was a time in political debate when people argued the issues. When people discussed why taxes should be higher or lower, whether Medicare/Medicaid/ social security was a drain or wasn’t enough, whether we should put more money into schools or infostructure. Now people are arguing about who is more of a dictator and who wants to destroy the whole country, and who is just plain evil.

When you spend all day every day calling your opponent “Hitler” it shouldn’t be a surprise that someone wants to kill him. Everyone wants to kill Hitler. If given the chance I’m sure it would be on almost every bucket list, so calling your opponent Hitler every day for a decade… what could you possibly have expected?

I understand trash talk. I understand inflammatory speech like, “Let’s get out there and kick some a**!” or “We’re going to fight like He77!”. What I don’t understand is how anyone can go around spreading lies about the competition, and brainwashing an entire community because you don’t want to “fight” on the issues.

If they actually believed he was the next Hitler then they would be praising the shooter. A lot of people are. A lot of people do believe the rhetoric and honestly believe that their “enemy” should be eliminated, but those in charge know they are lying. They know he’s just a guy that wants different policies and procedures than they do. But they are sill responsible for their words and actions. We all are.