I have seen some people say some despicable things when a politician comes on the air. These despicable things can be expletive ridden; they can be politically motivated and they can often be full of cynicism and anger. And that鈥檚 cool with me, because that鈥檚 politics. Each to his own, and all. People are allowed to have their opinions.
What isn鈥檛 cool is when the rhetoric turns violent, and people start getting it into their heads that violence is a way to 鈥渟et them straight鈥� and prove a point.
One of the most recent and jarring examples of this misguided fervour and vicious application of political passion was found in Britain, when Labour Party MP Jo Cox was shot in the streets by Tommy Mair, a right-wing extremist who took offence to her belief that the UK should remain in the European Union. That was it. He didn鈥檛 know her personally 鈥� he just disagreed with her.
The same untoward political fervour was present at a rally in Las Vegas for Donald Trump. A guy named Michael Steven Sandford thought himself to be an iconoclast, and tried to steal a gun from a police officer to subject Trump to the same fate as Cox.
We know that was his plan because he admitted to a special agent that it was exactly what he planned to do. He went on to admit he鈥檇 been planning to do so for quite a while, and had gone to a shooting range to train himself to fire a gun properly, so he'd know what to do, when the opportunity arose.
As foul as most of the stuff that Trump says is, that doesn鈥檛 justify any act of physical violence against him. This comes on the tail of countless stories of violent confrontation at other rallies held by the infamous demagogue, between supporters and detractors of Trump.
Even up here, in Canada, the same spectre of that unconscionable puerility is present, with some of violent rhetoric and imagery people invoke, when talking about our own politicians. We don鈥檛 need to look too far. I鈥檒l direct your attention to the manner by which some of the disaffected opponents of the NDP government in Alberta talk about the province's premier, Rachel Notley.
The most recent and egregious example of this was at a golf tournament held by an industry group in Alberta that isn't too pleased with some of the decisions that province's government has been making lately. Members of association decided it would entail some "good-hearted laughter" to set up an effigy of Notley鈥� a cardboard standup鈥攄ownrange, where it could easily be hit by flying golf balls. Because, what's more fun than imitating the process of assaulting an elected official, right? Yeah, that鈥檚 a real knee-slapper鈥�
The golf tournament faux-pas was hardly the most egregious act, but it trivializes a bigger problem. Since her election, and the announcement of a forthcoming carbon tax, and Bill 6, with its occupational health and safety updates to farm safety rules during her term as premier of our neighbours in Alberta, astartling amount of vehemence has been directed at Notley.
There has been a surfeit of threats of violence sent her way on social media, many of them littered with misogyny. It's gotten so bad that some of the crude, sexist slogans have started appearing on the back of trucks and cars in the form of bumper stickers. It鈥檚 gotten to the point where Notley and other female politicians have gotten so many threats of violence, particularly lethal violence, that the Alberta Federation of Labour wants the RCMP to start investigating some of the rhetoric used against them.
Sure, it's okay to disagree with what the NDP's doing over there. That is everyone鈥檚 choice. But at what point does it become necessary to start turning very personal, very violent anger onto the politicians with whom you disagree? There are a lot of people who clearly haven't been sent to their rooms and told to think about the consequences of their actions enough, as children.
Even if they are only talking, or commenting on news sites, about doing horrible violent things towards politicians in jest, that鈥檚 a step in the direction that Mair and Steven took. It normalizes that violence and makes it seem acceptable. There is nothing 鈥済ood-hearted鈥� about harming people for what they believe, and it鈥檚 time to lose the idea that it is.
听
