Consuming Hate

Haters and racists, loud and proud, crazed and relentless, are enabled and empowered by politicians--mostly from the White Supremacist Party (formerly known as Republicans) desperate for money from a dwindling base of now mostly haters and racists--and enabled and empowered by media, willing and even eager to amplify their hatred and racist swill, well beyond the point of the haters and racists advocating violence.

I repeat: it isn't just that these people are out there. It's that no one is restraining them, not even with disapproval or even feigned shock. All the media conglomerates care about is money--advertising money based on ratings. For that they are willing to allow and encourage the Limbaughs and the Becks and (if it's possible) worse to essentially advocate the violent overthrow of the elected government.

If you're not sure what I'm talking about, check out this rundown on recent commentary by TMP. At Daily Kos, Meteor Blades asks the key question: " I wonder just how far they will let Beck go. Or spur him to. Will they give him a pass the day that he, like the Rwandan radio provocateurs of 15 years ago, starts calling Obama and his supporters "cockroaches" to be stamped out?"

He refers to the historical fact that the genocide in Rwanda was fueled by hate talk radio, in real time, as it was going on.

If something like that happened here--or something that seems to me to grow increasingly probable, an assassination attempt on the President--then we'll see the crocodile tears, and the anguished anchor consciences, and the rest of the sincere hypocrisy, and like the piles of guns that get turned in after an assassination, eventually it will be business as usual. Not until we learn that money is not an excuse for anything and everything, that encouraging ignorance is societally self-annihilating, and that society has to have some shared consciousness and conscience to survive.

But this time we can't afford to learn it the hard way. Unfortunately I believe Bruce Sterling is right when he wonders where the source of "hope" is, except Obama. It's true, there is no other hope.

Unfortunately I don't know what to do. Except pray for the Secret Service.

Update: There's an effort to organize a protest and/or boycott of corporate sponsors enabling Glenn Beck.