Scapegoating and Yom Kippor..McCain's Incitement to Violence..Sins of the Republican Party

[ddeclue]

Scapegoating

"He's an Arab"...."Kill him"..."Off with His Head"..."Terrorist"....These were utterances caught on tape at recent McCain and Palin Republican Presidential rallies.

In response to these threatening statements, Democratic Congressman John Lewis, an icon of the U.S. Civil Rights movement and longtime Atlanta Georgia area Congressman spoke the truth:

The Republican Party has indeed become the party of fear mongering, scapegoating and racism and John McCain the rightful inheritor of the legacy of George Wallace.

John McCain and Sarah Palin are indeed playing with a very dangerous fire that threatens to burn down our political system by scapegoating Barack Obama as "associating with terrorists".

The scapegoat historically is a goat which is driven off into the wilderness as part of the ceremonies of the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur - the day of atonement as described in Leviticus 16:5-10 which just happened on Wednesday. In it one goat is sacrificed and another is allowed to escape into the wilderness, thus the escaped goat becomes "scapegoat".

The escaped goat then is sent into the wilderness to die carrying the sins of the people placed upon it.

Scapegoating then is the idea of transference of guilt to an innocent to relieve the guilty of their guilt to provide a release from fear and pain.

In the modern sense this has taken the form of racial, national, religious stereotyping. The first step is to demonize a person or a group of people through anecdotal stories, fabrications, and distortions. The next step is to blame that person or group for the problems of society at large. The next step is to generate irrational fear and anger against that person or group, to create a lynch mob to direct at your opponents. The final step is to employ that lynch mob as your political "army" to accomplish your goals whether through whatever legal or illegal means are available:

- to vote out an opponent based on that irrational fear and irrational anger not backed by any facts

This is being practiced now against Barack Obama and was used against Harold Ford in Tennessee in 2006. The Republican party pitted black against white in Ford's case and is attempting to paint Obama as a Muslim even though he is not and to paint all Muslims as evil although this has no basis in reality either.

- to vote against a group of people based on irrational fears and anger

This has been practiced against homosexuals and Mexican Americans in the last eight years by the Republican Party which seeks to blame them for destroying "family values" and destroying the economy. This is classic scapegoating, transferring Republican Party sins onto the backs of innocents.

Homosexuals are not responsible for the failure of heterosexual marriage - the financial stress of modern American life is a far more reasonable causal factor. Everybody has to spend far too much time working and far too little time having a family life and everyone has too much stress over their personal finances that they take out on those around them.

Nor are Mexican immigrants responsible for the decline in the American economy. The real culprit is the lack of balance between corporations, labor, citizens, consumers, and the government. Corporations have been allowed to merge and have been deregulated and have grown tremendously powerful disturbing the previous balance. They have driven down real wages and driven up real prices thus shrinking the middle class and causing our standard of living to decline.

- to engage in intimidation, violence, vandalism and other illegal acts.

Though not at the levels practiced in the 1950's and 1960's during the Civil Rights movement, violence, intimidation, and illegal acts are on the rise. In elections, this has most often taken the form of vandalism or theft of Democratic signs, jamming phone banks, push polling, harassing robodial messages and other dirty tricks.

The recent rash of violent exclamations at John McCain and Sarah Palin rallies is however quite disturbing: "off with his head", "kill him", and "terrorist" are amongst some of the things heard on the videos.

Incitement to Violence

In Brandenburg v. Ohio 395 U.S. 444 (1969) the Supreme Court held: (1) speech can be prohibited if it is "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and (2) it is "likely to incite or produce such action."

As Congressman Lewis has stated, John McCain and Sarah Palin have been playing with fire, their speeches in the last week have first flirted with incitement to violence by calling Senator Obama a terrorist and then at least to THIS observer they clearly crossed that line into knowing incitement when McCain and Palin heard such violent utterances as "kill him", "off with his head", and "terrorist" from angry crowds and chose to continue on with further such comments without rebuking the crowds or moderating their statements.

Many states have laws against inciting a riot or inciting to violence. Perhaps an attorney ought to investigate whether Senator McCain or Governor Palin have crossed any specific legal lines in their recent speeches in the states where those speeches were given.

The Sins of the Republican Party

The Seven Deadly (Cardinal) Sins in Christian theology are: lust, gluttony (over consumption), avarice (greed), sloth, envy and pride. There certainly has been a great deal of gluttony, greed, sloth, envy and pride in the agenda of corporatist supremacy pushed by Republican ideology which says each man for himself, government is bad, and greed is good.

To this list of Seven Deadly Sins the Vatican has recently announced (March 9, 2008) in their newspaper the addition to this list of modern sins of "environmental pollution, genetic manipulation, obscene wealth, infliction of poverty, drug trafficking, morally debatable experiments, and violation of the fundamental rights of human nature."

With respect to these "modern" sins, the modern Republican party seeks to prevent regulation of pollution and seems to have no problems with excessive and obscene wealth in the face of abject poverty and has had little problem with torturing or holding people without trials indefinitely.

Then there are the Ten Commandments as described in Exodus 20 which the Republican Party loves to see displayed in government buildings. Apparently they've never read them.

Among the ten commandments are prohibitions against bearing false witness, coveting your neighbor's possession (envy or greed), stealing, and killing.

Again in the Republican political philosophy of ME..ME... ME... where making a fortune is all that matters and where the ends justify the means we have seen the money changers of Wall Street take us for our money time and time again (S&L's, Banking, Enron, and Wall Street scandals come to mind) and a President lie to start a war with a country that posed no real threat that has unnecessarily killed thousands of innocents.

Beyond the traditional religious concept of sin there is also a more secular patriotic concept of "sin" - the knowing transgression against the best interests of one's country - in this category are ignoring, perverting or violating the precepts of the Constitution, torturing people, wiretaps without warrants, illegal wars, locking people up without trial, sending jobs and industry overseas, cheating the taxpayers on no bid contracts, stealing from stockholders and consumers, and lying to the American people time and time again.

The Republican Party indeed NEEDS a whole herd of scapegoats to drive off into the wilderness for it has a host of sins to carry off.


Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[stillcool]

1. I'm not surprised when the cable news...

does it, although I think they bear the responsibility of poisoning the minds of the Americans The various Congresspeople who have had to send out apologies, or have been admonished for their words are just as bad, but the leader of the Republican party, accusing a Senator of being a terrorist? What is most appalling is that although I have felt my share of rage, for the most part this is now just the way politics is in this country. It's perfectly acceptable. There are no lines that cannot be crossed.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. clearly the GOP has decided they don't need the Muslim-American, Arab-American vote.

Using an ethnicity or religion as a slur... really!