No, Mr. President: I Will Not Stand Down

Once again, President Obama hit the bulls-eye with his remarks at the Arizona memorial Wednesday night.

And once again, he aimed at the wrong target.

Once again, he pretended there is no difference between the hatemongers who want to destroy him and the supporters who try to defend him.

No, I don't agree with the rethuglican liars like Marc Thiessen in WaPo who claims Obama

"delivered a clear rebuke to those on the left who were so quick to politicize this tragedy and assign blame to their political opponents."

That's not what Obama did. What Obama did was come upon a vicious bully beating an innocent bystander to death, pull the two apart, and procede to lecture the innocent bystander about the importance of solving disputes like gentlemen. While the bully ran off laughing.

Obama said:

"The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better. To be better in our private lives, to be better friends and neighbors and coworkers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud."

Apparently Barrry's grandmother never told him it's a waste of time to argue with drunk, crazy and stupid people.

It is this administration's suicidal insistence on "civility" that has handed power to the hatemongers and the nihilists.

The teahadists are not patriots. The rethuglicans are not anyone's definition of a citizen. The conservatards are barely human.

And you, Mr. President, are enabling them. You are strengthening them. You are legitimizing them.

By refusing to call them out and condemn their hatemongering, you implicitly approve of them. The message you send is that only dirty fucking hippies have to behave. The bullies, however, can wreak havoc every day and you'll just pat them on the head and punish the liberals.

Watch the whole thing:

"As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let's use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together....I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us."

If Obama thinks the haters are going to hear that and think: "gee, maybe being nice to liberals is the right thing to do after all," he's delusional.

If he thinks demanding civility from the people who are the targets of the haters is going to accomplish anything except yet more surrender and defeat and destruction, he's criminally incompetent.

John Dingell gets it:

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) took the opportunity to muse that the government may be withholding information about the crime because Jared Loughner is a flag-hating Marxist liberal who might embarrass President Obama.

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), by contrast, ran through a litany of now-infamous statements by high-profile politicians, leaving blank the names of people and issues under threat.

"Let me read some statements that I have seen to be pretty awful," he said on Wednesday.

What's really dangerous is Obama's insistence on painting everyone with the same broad brush. Saying that republicans who lose elections should use bullets and Second Amendment remedies to get their way is NOT the same as criticizing for violent rhetoric the people who say republicans who lose elections should use bullets and Second Amendment remedies.

It's the EXACT OPPOSITE.

One side is calling explicitly for the elimination of its political opponents.

The other side is calling expliitly for the exposure and condemnation of people who call explicitly for the elimination of political opponents.

One of these things is not like the other.

Yet Obama conflates them and implicitly blames liberals for calling attention to conservatives' violent rhetoric.

In the face of a lethal attack on federal officials, President Clinton demanded we stand up to hate.

In the face of a lethal attack on federal officials, President Obama suggests we play nice with the bullies.

My entire adult life, I have fought against the conservative libel that liberals are weak appeasers who always surrender to opponents.

Barack Obama is no liberal, but he absolutely is a weak appeaser who always surrenders to opponents.

You want inspiration that doesn't back down? Here's the last graf of Melissa Harris-Perry's open letter to her students about the danger of public service:

I will keep assigning you to take on final projects that require you to call your senator. I will keep taking you on field trips to legislatures. I will continue assigning extra credit for attending lectures of those officials with whom you disagree politically. I have asked you to consider running for office. We have talked about the reasons, the challenges and the costs. I am still asking you to run. I am asking you to lend your voices, your talents and your time. I am asking you this in the shadow of bloodshed, of sadness, of terror. I am asking you, even now, to be brave enough to believe that we can be a better country.

Last word goes to Thers:

It’s long been obvious that conservatives conceive of “civility” solely in terms of point-scoring, because they are essentially sociopathic fuckwads.

Oh, perhaps this is unfair. But as I was grouching about last night, “once you’ve gone ahead and, say, made excuses for state-sponsored torture, if you want the benefit of the doubt, fuck you.”