Hate Crime - Someone did

Hate Crime - Someone did this to a Norm Coleman billboard in St. Paul yesterday:

Any guesses?

We've been talking about how desperately some - many - Democrats seem to hate Republicans in this space, many times.

I was on a date a few weeks ago, probably two weeks before the election. Now, I knew my date was a DFLer - but I do know they can be reasonable, rational people. Yet the topic of the election came up, and the first coherent thought was "GOD, I hate Norm Coleman", spoken with the kind of face you normally only see from a six-year-old asked to eat Brussel sprouts. Suffice to say, there was no love connection. But I didn't get it - I mean, I don't like Walter Mondale much, but I'd never hiss it like an oath on my mother's grave in the first half-hour of a first date, either.

Why the vitriol?

No, I don't think it's an inherent trait - but there's an atmosphere of revulsion that too many Minnesota Democrats seem to feel. It's reflected in their publications, both official and under-the-table; they just don't like us, don't trust us, don't want to share the sandbox. Keillor's screeds were merely symptoms.

Symptoms of what? Two things:

One: Quite simply; they're used to being in charge - Minnesota used to be their playground, "Berkeley on the Prairie". No more. A neocon apostate has taken "their" senate seat from their newly-canonized martyr. LIke the redneck whites of the Deep South after reconstruction, they don't like all of us uppity conservatives getting off the plantation and gittin' funny ideers. They're angry - and feeling threatened. And they've been striking out for years, in ways both condescending (Keillor) and puerile (Paulapalooza) and corrosively bigoted (the billboard vandalism).

Two: What do the following people have in common: Someone who paints swastikas on a billboard of a Jewish man; someone who straps a bomb to his chest and walks into bus full of children; someone who sets off a bomb at an abortion clinic; one who flies a plane into a building packed with innocent civilans? All of them have adopted a warped, twisted, sick interpretation of their religion.

"But Wait! The Minnesota Democrat Farmer Labor Party isn't a religion!" Enh. For some, it is. You'd have to meet them - some of them are no less dedicated than any monk, and regard their party with no less devotion than any nun. And their prophets! Paul Wellstone couldn't have just been the victim of bad conditions and an inexperienced pilot, they say, he must have been shot down! A victim of a "Bushie" conspiracy! He died for our sins! Of course, one's prophet and martyr mustn't die of mundane causes: Wellstone could no more have been laid low by an inexperienced pilot any more than Jesus could have choked on a a blinz or Joan of Arc could have stepped in front of a moving draftwagon. No, martyrs must die martyr's deaths. And those who oppose the martyrs are the infidels, and nothing is too awful for them.

We'll be seeing much more of this sort of thing in the future. Count on it.

(Photo via Instapundit and Powerline)

MORE: An email correspondent writes:

Someone pointed out that every time a pro-life spokesman opens his mouth, he's basically forced to disavow any connection to folks who murder abortion doctors. That comment came in connection with the suggestion that the same treatment should be given to Islamic apologists. (I happen to be pro-abortion but I think that the pro-life folks have behaved much better. I'm running out of sympathy to lose for the "religion of peace".)

Perhaps the thing to do is to publicize the defaced Norm Coleman billboard with a simple comment along the lines of "brought to you by the DFL".

If the DFL is like every other long-lasting belief system, the current generation will not change, but the next generation might.

True. But it may take longer than that. There seems to be (to me) a sense of bitterness and isolation among the DFL hard-core - that's how I see it, anyway - and I think that if anything things'll get worse. These things feed on themselves.

I think the comparison with the pro-life people is very appropriate - and illustrative. The pro-life groups that get to be that bitter and isolated about their defeats in court tend to be the ones that act the least rationally.

So we know what we have to look forward to!

The big question: Can our society - a free association of equals that disagree, yet do so civilly within a framework where everyone's assumed to be working toward the same end - survive? I think so, but I've never been this worried. Historically, our society has been much more polarized than it is today - the civil war and the conservative/socialist split of the thirties are examples - but things are the worst in the memory of anyone currently thinking about politics.

I've encountered no small amount of the usual "Republican=homophobe, racist, mysogynist, etc.," but at least the discussions end with an agreement to disagree--some of those discussions are with my own mother. I feel for you.

My best friend is a Democrat, but lately he's been bastardizing that old quote, "When I was a child I was a liberal, but as I became a man, I put away childish things..." He still listens to NPR occasionally, but his hearing's been tainted. And I'm smart enough to never, ever get into a discussion about politics with his wife. That's just an invitation to get hurt.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, maybe there's hope? I'll keep reading your posts to find out...

Oh, the stories I could tell - but I'm happy to let you all do it for me. Yes, this is exactly what's going on, both good and bad. Some can agree to disagree. Others are too insecure, in their own beliefs and in what this democracy's about - for that.

Who's in the ascendant? We'll see.

Posted by Mitch at November 29, 2002 11:38 PM