John McWhorter believes politics has grown punchier because of technology:
[The written word] once mediated much more between people in politics. Even speeches were couched in writerly prose. Most were expected to engage them on the page, as technology didn’t allow all Americans to see politicians speaking live at the press of a button. Plus, without amplification, public language had to be more careful and explicit. One could not stand before a crowd and “just talk.” Public language had to be like the public dress of the period: effortful. Even Millard Fillmore’s inaugural address reads like Virgil.
It is no accident that the shrillness of political conversation has increased just as broadband and YouTube have become staples of American life. The internet brings us back to the linguistic culture our species arose in—all about speech: live, emotional, unreflective, and punchy. The slogan trumps the argument. Anger, often of hazy provenance but ever cathartic (“I want my country back”) takes fire. All of this is reinforced by the synergy of on line “communities” stoking up passions on a scale that snail mail never could.
Mac McClelland reports on rape in Haiti, where "a survey taken before the earthquake estimated that there were more than 50 rapes a day just in Port-au-Prince." Now an organization founded by women who were raped "says that displacement camps are hornet's nests of sexual violence":
When Alina happened upon a group of men—too many to count—raping a girl in the squalid Port-au-Prince camp where she and other quake victims lived, she couldn't just stand there. Maybe it was because she has three daughters of her own; maybe it was some altruistic instinct. And the 58-year-old was successful, in a way, in that when she tried to intervene, the men decided to rape her instead, hitting her ribs with a gun, threatening to shoot her, firing shots in the air to keep other people from getting ideas of making trouble as they kept her on the ground and forced themselves inside her until she felt something tear, as they saw that she was bleeding and decided to go on, and on, and on. When it was over, Alina lay on the ground hemorrhaging and aching, alone. The men were gone, but no one dared to help her for fear of being killed.
Julian Sanchez answered yes. He wonders why the difference exists:
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, coexistence of men and women is a permanent feature of every culture, so the norms and beliefs and institutions that bear on gender are going to be tightly bound up with the norms, beliefs, and institutions broader culture, often going back many centuries. That means, to the extent that those norms are sexist, that they’ll be deeply entrenched and difficult to change rapidly. But in contrast to racist norms that are more likely to be relatively peripheral, applying to interfaces between cultures, they’re also likely to be constrained to some extent by the demands of long-term coexistence.
Building off a post by John Sides, Henry Farrell compares violent episodes to the global warming debate. Just as it's wrong to argue that "any given event is 'caused' by climate change", Farrell argues "is probably a bad idea to attribute any particular violent action to an overall climate of violent rhetoric without some strong evidence of a direct causal relationship":
[I]f the assassin had quoted some of the violent rhetoric that has been widely criticized as an inspiration, had listened to Michael Savage's radio shows several hours a day or whatever, one would not be able to prove a causal relationship, but it would not be an unreasonable inference. There does not seem to be evidence of that sort in this case. John points to some evidence that is suggestive of a broader statistical relationship between violent rhetoric and attitudes towards violence. This is obviously much weaker than the kind of evidence that climate scientists have gathered pointing to global warming. But, to the extent that it does point to a possible relationship between violent rhetoric and violent action, it is to a probabilistic relationship. One can say that there is (moderate) evidence supporting the argument that violent rhetoric makes violent action more likely. But this does not and cannot show, in the absence of other evidence, that any particular violent action is the product of a general atmosphere of violent rhetoric.
Not sure if you've seen this video. It's one of the many great Angry Birds parodies floating around. But it does deal specifically with your reader's concern about the fundamentalist leanings of the birds. In this case, at least, one bird is brave enough to question the mission.
Suppose that you lead a comfortable middle-class life. Let's say that you're in your 30s, married, two children, and you make $100,000 per year. I offer you a fair coin flip with the following possible outcomes:
Heads: You will be stripped of most of your assets and will earn $30,000 per year for the rest of your life. That's all you get, and neither friends nor family can top it up for you.
Tails: You will earn $1 million per year for the rest of your life.
Would you take me up on my offer to flip the coin?
Ninety percent of his readers wouldn't take the bet. He explains what he's getting at here.
[The State Department] has just asked to hear from organizations that are interested in receiving government funds to “foster freedom of expression and the free flow of information on the Internet and other connection technologies.”The agency has $30 million to spend on such programs and is planning on making grants to the tune of $500,000 to $8 million.
The State Department's online democratizing efforts have fallen prey to the same problems that plagued Bush's Freedom Agenda. By aligning themselves with Internet companies and organizations, Clinton's digital diplomats have convinced their enemies abroad that Internet freedom is another Trojan horse for American imperialism. … The Internet is far too valuable to become an agent of Washington's digital diplomats. The idea that the U.S. government can advance the cause of Internet freedom by loudly affirming its commitment to it — especially when it hypocritically attempts to shut down projects like WikiLeaks — is delusional. The best way to promote the goals behind the Internet Freedom Agenda may be not to have an agenda at all.
Today on the Dish, Andrew unravelled the right’s evasions on the assassination. The market for Palin tanked, Andrew wouldn’t let her dismiss the shooting as non-political, and Frum didn’t think Palin demonstrated any larger humanity with her response. Beck calmed Palin down by presaging an assasination attempt on her, and Conor didn’t want to blame her for thinking politics was all a big joke. Palin’s own adviser evaded responsibility for her actions, while even enraged football players apologize for their violent rhetoric, and Giffords herself predicted Palin’s need to accept the consequences. The 9-year-old father spoke, crosshairs weren’t the culprit, and some chalked it up to a silly poster, instead of the usual Grand Theft Auto excuse. Loughner’s friend admitted his unstable mentality reminded him of the Joker’s, but it wasn’t pot that pushed him over the edge. Andrew disparaged gun violence worship, and Ezra Klein begged for a dialdown in the rhetoric of fear. Some feared we’d become Pakistan, and most were concerned that the shooting would hurt the essence of in-person democracy.
A reader hoped we’d see the gay intern who saved Giffords’ life at the State of the Union, Jonathan Alter hypothesized how Obama will reference it in his speech, and Westboro church amazed us with this pure vitriol. We examined the roll of Giffords’ religion and the possible American Renaissance connection with Loughner’s motives. Jim Burroway didn’t think it could happen so close to home, and Peter Beinart imagined if Jared Lee Loughner were named Abdul Mohammed. Stephen Budiansky wouldn’t let the right off the hook, especially when threats against congressmen have tripled. Reader’s asked how Loughner got a legal gun, and the blogosphere examined his weapon of choice. Jonathan Cohn and Vaughan Bell assessed our mental health system, and Joe Gandelman predicted a temporary calm in rhetoric.
Answering David Link, Andrew unpacked what CPAC’s version of conservatism would look like if it weren’t anti-gay. Andrew Bacevich traced the military-industrial complex from Ike’s day to ours, Gordon Adams questioned Gates on defense cuts, and Serwer argued that those “cuts” are really an increase. Noah Millman reconsidered military intervention, Goldberg praised Obama’s work on Iran, and on the flipside, sanctions forced Iran to use 40-year-old planes which often crash. Scary climate changed commercials don’t work, some Home Ec classes used to practice on real babies, and California outlawed ironic Twitter impersonators. Roger Ebert reprimanded HuffPo for wimping out on Huck Finn, readers attacked Phillip S. Smith’s review of the Cannabis Closet, and the Tea Party really is that insane on the debt.
Politics is high stakes. And even when it isn't, it often feels like it is. There's a natural tendency, then, to wave the bloody shirt — to make the strongest and most maximalist argument possible in service of your case. And those arguments are often empirically accurate. Indeed, they may actually be understating the effects of the policy. But there's also a cost in letting too much pressure and too much fear build up within our politics. And though libertarians like Jack Shafer may lament this sort of self-policing, the reality is that a violent act that could be clearly traced to the rhetoric of certain leaders or groups would lead to much more damaging and coercive restrictions on political speech than anything people are considering now. Having this conversation when no one has blood on their hands is far preferable to having it when someone does. And though political assassinations are rare in American politics, they are by no means unheard-of.
The Dish 