It is one thing to be legitimately concerned about criminal violence in this country, but it is a whole new ballgame if you must also be legitimately concerned about the “suggestion” of criminal violence by people who claim to be representing “civilized society.” Take for instance Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona—who just looks naturally mean and mean-spirited—who posted an edited clip on Twitter from the Japanese anime “Attack on Titan,” where the faces of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Biden are superimposed on “subhuman” giants who simply existed to kill white and Asian “humans”; Gosar’s image is inserted as one of the humans who kills the subhumans, who were originally a “race” called the “Eldians” who like Jews in Nazi Germany were once forced to live in ghettos and wore identifying armbands, and faced random killing by Nazi-like government enforcers. The Eldians eventually “evolved” into mindless killers who roamed outside the multi-walled cities, always a threat to break through and destroy civilization.
The original anime in its entirety is allegedly a “cautionary tale” against war and racial prejudice, but you’d never know that by how it’s imagery has been coopted by white supremacist and neo-Nazi types who have used the anime to promote race hate and justify ethnic cleansing, particularly against “mindless” Mexican “hordes.” This certainly begs the question of why they chose Gosar, and what relationship he has with these people.
AOC, “the Squad” and other gender activists have been decrying this as an example of “war on women”—meaning themselves. But to be honest, they’ve invited this by trying to hog the media spotlight they crave, and thus made themselves the “face” of whatever it is that the far-right fears. Immigrants and non-whites generally are the actual target here, and since AOC is the most visible Hispanic Democrat, she is a “natural” for use for the anti-Hispanic immigrant theme that this particular expropriated anime has been used for by white supremacists on the Internet.
In other words, this isn’t about her being a “woman”; this is about her being Hispanic, and in regard to Biden, his supposed opening the border for an invasion of those who look like AOC—especially the “scary” male type—is also the “target.”
In another time, Gosar would no doubt have been censured or forced to resign for even suggesting violence against a president or a lawmaker. After all, Rep. Steve King of Iowa was “condemned” in a House vote and “primaried” for only professing not to know what was wrong with white nationalism. The difference now is that a whole lot of wacked-out Republicans have been elected to Congress who support the kind of white nationalism as represented by people like Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. This is the new “normal” for a dangerously high number of people in this country.
It isn’t just about four members of the “Squad”; this is about an ideology that believes that anything that is “left” of far-right is “too far.” It is becoming increasingly dangerous in this country to be considered left of center. It has been claimed by many that Biden was elected because voters wanted a return to “normalcy.” But the attack on Biden’s policy proposals as somehow being “socialist” in its intention to restore some kind of “balance” to the massive inequality between the haves and have-nots in this country brought on three Republican administrations’ tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and cutting social support programs like housing subsidies that has left many millions of people out on the three street or just a paycheck away from it, is considered by those calling themselve's “centrists” as being “too radical.”
The worst part of it, of course, is that this kind of thing “normalizes” political violence, the kind where people actually die. Tucker Carlson’s “Patriot Purge” series would have its viewers believe that the January 6 insurrection was just a Reichstag Fire event in order to justify “purging” so-called “patriots” who were “misled” into “appearing” to be insurrectionists by “deep state” operatives who “infiltrated” their ranks and led them “astray.” What this kind of story line would suggest in the minds of Trumpist fanatics that they were not responsible for their violent acts that day.
Which is what we are supposed to believe about Kyle Rittenhouse, a "hero" who only wanted to protect a car dealership in Kenosha whose owner denies he asked for "protection" from him. A seemingly open-and-shut case of murder, but hardly that now with a judge overseeing his trial clearly sympathetic with Rittenhouse, and the prosecution clearly using the wrong tactics. On YouTube, a video from the Fox News show “The Five” was posted, and save for the guest voice of reason for the day, Geraldo Rivera (yeah), the other four saw Rittenhouse’s actions as “justified” as “self-defense.” In the comments section, Rivera was subjected to juvenile insults; for me, it was a turkey shoot for adding “replies” to the incredible “wealth” of absolutely horrifying support of Rittenhouse and failure to even understand the basic truth of the case, which I felt compelled to add to the accompaniment of insults and stupidity:
Rittenhouse crossed state lines to Kenosha for one reason, and one reason only: he was looking for “action.” All he needed was an excuse to use his AR-15. He knew that walking around with a loaded AR-15 was asking for trouble, and he was looking for it. Defending himself? That is his only defense, and people are going to buy that. The truth was that his second two victims were reacting to an armed man who had just killed an unarmed man (yeah right, rhetorical "violence" is worse than real violence). The only people who were shot and killed that night were by Rittenhouse. If Rittenhouse goes free, this will put in the mind of other far-right vigilantes that there is “justification” to commit deadly violence.
If the prosecution had stuck to that line, they’d have a better case. But this is the kind of world we live in now after a dangerous clown like Trump was given the power to take a sledgehammer to Pandora’s Box. Trump has no clue of what he has done, and neither do those in Congress who support what he has done, many of them newly elected and themselves a product of the most dangerous elements of civil society we have faced in memory. We are talking the opposite of the “Attack on Titan”: the mindless mob on the outside are Trump and his supporters—except that they have never changed; they are what they always were.
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