“Stop Before the President Gets Hurt” – But By Whom?

In yet another bout of quaking liberal fear aimed at scary, scary dissent, Thomas Friedman rediscovers the virtues of moderate rhetoric. The developing meme that right wingers are whipping each other into a frenzy that will ultimately lead to violence (of some sort) is belied only by the utter lack of said violence. For now.

Ah, but there are signs! There are always “signs”…

Friedman points to a a few: pre Yitzhak Rabin assasination 1990′s Israel (because we all know how much the US is like Israel, don’t we?) and a single creepy facebook poll.

Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.” The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin.

Better minds than the Beast’s have already commented on the irony that those who now bemoan the lack of comity in public discourse seemed to have had no problem with it a few years ago. Civility is a situational virtue – it’s all funny until your ox gets gored.The same ethos that released a movie about Bush getting assassinated now freaks out over a lone nutty facebook poll.

But let’s follow his reasoning to its conclusion – is Obama in danger and from whom?

The political thriller fan in the Beast has seen this narrative dozens of times. The left has gone all in on Obama. He’s the first black president. He’s the first liberal president in a generation. Can he be allowed to fail? A Carteresque collapse would be a nightmare for them.

So assume it’s a year from now and Obama’s in full rout. The left has been screaming “Danger! Danger!” all along. And suddenly some right wing wacko patsy puts a round in his shoulder John Hinckley style. When Reagan took his bullet it did wonders for his polls. He (pardon the pun) shot right up. Now the right is in full defense mode while the left shrieks “See we told you so!”. And if something more severe happened, you now have JFK and MLK rolled into one – a hyper martyr.

If the Beast were Obama he might start looking over his shoulder, but It would be the left one, not the right.