Sunday, July 14, 2024

Jonathan Turley: This moment did not occur in a vacuum, it occurred in a time when our leaders long abandoned reason for rage


 

President Biden has stoked this rage rhetoric. In 2022, Biden held his controversial speech before Independence Hall where he denounced Trump supporters as enemies of the people. Biden recently referenced the speech and has embraced the claims that this could be our last democratic election. ...

As soon as Trump was elected, unhinged rage became the norm as with Kathy Griffin featuring herself holding the bloody severed head of Trump. ...

For months, people have heard politicians and press call Trump “Hitler” and the GOP a Nazi movement. Some compared stopping Trump to stopping Hitler in 1933. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) declared Trump “is not only unfit, he is destructive to our democracy and he has to be eliminated.” He later apologized. ...

The media has been quick to denounce reckless rhetoric from the right while largely ignoring the same language on the left. That included threats against conservative Supreme Court justices before the assassination plot against Brett Kavanaugh.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) went to the steps of the Supreme Court and called out Kavanaugh by name: “I want to tell you, (Justice Neil) Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” ...

This moment did not occur in a vacuum; it occurred in a time when our leaders long abandoned reason for rage.

Read the whole thing here.