{"id":2087,"date":"2009-06-11T20:02:19","date_gmt":"2009-06-11T20:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2009-06-11T20:02:19","modified_gmt":"2009-06-11T20:02:19","slug":"another_mucker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2087","title":{"rendered":"Another Mucker"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nSo we’ve got another mucker, this one a right-wing nutjob with a long criminal history.<\/p>\n

And as sure as the sun rises, we’re seeing the political slinging and dodging begin. The lefties are wagging fingers and saying “see!! The DHS report you all slagged was soooo correct!” and the righties are bobbing weaving and covering up.<\/p>\n

This is a boring and stupid game, and it has one point only – to delegitimize one’s political opponents.<\/p>\n

Look, if you can’t tell the difference between Michelle Malkin and some unemployable whackjob who walked into the Fed with a shotgun, may I suggest that whatever you’re using as a discriminator may need some serious work?<\/p>\n

Having said that, there is<\/i> a toxic sludge in our public life – that comes up in a variety of ways – on the right, on the left, around issues like animal rights, the environment, gun rights, etc. – that we all need to see, identify and isolate.<\/p>\n

Jesse Walker actually has a very good post on this over at Reason<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Why did the DHS report come under such fire? It wasn’t because far-right cranks are incapable of committing crimes. It’s because the paper blew the threat of right-wing terror out of proportion, just as the Clinton administration did in the ’90s; because it treated “extremism” itself as a potential threat, while offering a definition of extremist so broad it seemed it include anyone who opposed abortion or immigration or excessive federal power; and because it fretted about the danger of “the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities.” (Note that neither the killing in Kansas last month nor the shooting in Washington yesterday was committed by an Iraq or Afghanistan vet.) The effect isn’t to make right-wing terror attacks less likely. It’s to make it easier to smear nonviolent, noncriminal figures on the right, just as the most substantial effect of a red scare was to make it easier to smear nonviolent, noncriminal figures on the left. The fact that communist spies really existed didn’t justify Joseph McCarthy’s antics, and the fact that armed extremists really exist doesn’t justify the Department of Homeland Security’s report.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s start talking – all of us – about what it is that distinguishes someone who is vocally unhappy with fiscal policy direction from someone who walks into the Fed with a shotgun. When we get that sorted out, let’s see how well that distinction applies across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n

And as a side note, let me pass a virtual beer to the guard who shot the whackjob – making a head shot against an active shooter armed with a rifle is good shooting. One for the good guys.
\n–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mucker at the Holocaust museum didn’t do it because of his political beliefs…he did it because he was crazy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}