I think Andrew Sullivan has helped me realize why I have so much difficulty talking about the recent attacks on Obama by Palin and McCain.
From one of his readers:
Another reader today took the first comment a little farther:
"Your post on "The Danger of Obama" immediately brought to mind what happened here in Israel in the period leading up to Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. Even allowing for the differences in political culture between the two countries, some of the sounds we're hearing in the public debate around the election have a haunting echo. Here no one would have thought it possible that an Israeli Jew would take the life of a high official. There's little doubt that the crescendo of demonization toward Rabin – including accusations of treason, flyers picturing Rabin as an SS officer – and the difficulty, in a society guaranteeing free speech, of 'civilizing' the public debate before it creates a fertile bed for actual violence, all helped create the context in which Rabin's murderer decided to take matters into his own hands."
From one of his readers:
What McCain and Palin are doing now makes the Clinton campaign look tame. It occurs to me that they are "legitimizing" putting Obama's life in danger by pushing this nonsense. The first potential Black President is always going to have that problem, hell Bush had people trying to take him out, I'm sure, but this is really raising the threat level.
Saying your opponent is unfit is one thing, suggesting that he is a evil, a friend of terrorists and a danger to the United States is something else entirely.
Another reader today took the first comment a little farther:
"Your post on "The Danger of Obama" immediately brought to mind what happened here in Israel in the period leading up to Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. Even allowing for the differences in political culture between the two countries, some of the sounds we're hearing in the public debate around the election have a haunting echo. Here no one would have thought it possible that an Israeli Jew would take the life of a high official. There's little doubt that the crescendo of demonization toward Rabin – including accusations of treason, flyers picturing Rabin as an SS officer – and the difficulty, in a society guaranteeing free speech, of 'civilizing' the public debate before it creates a fertile bed for actual violence, all helped create the context in which Rabin's murderer decided to take matters into his own hands."
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