Low Hanging Fruit: Rhetorical Cowardice, Anti-American Advocacy Journalism & Anti-Civility

PART 1
RHETORICAL COWARDICE

I’ve had as much of this fascist and Nazi rhetorical bull shit as I can take.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/h97kbv4mbsc

Rhetorical Cowardice refusing to engage with those that directly challenge their rhetoric.

Recently, a Madison Wisconsin blogger dekerivers, aka Gregory Humphrey, posted a blog titled “CNN Wrong To Give Dangerous Candidate Town Hall Platform” where he publicly smears the GOP Presidential Primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy with claims that the author will not support even after being directly challenged to do so. I know you’re shocked, shocked, that a 21^st century Democrat would making up things about a Republican, this isn’t supposed to be how civil politics work in the USA! Here is the comment I submitted to the blog post that the blog author hasn’t allowed to be posted…

Briefly, here are some literal definitions I found on Dictionary.com so we’re all very clear as to what these things actually mean…

Fascist: 1. a person who believes in or sympathizes with fascism. 2. a member of a fascist movement or party.

Fascism: a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

Nazi: a member of the far-right National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Back to my challenge; In the comment I submitted I challenged Humphrey, to “stand behind his hateful rhetoric with facts and report to us… how Ramaswamy is a fascist and a Nazi using Ramaswamy’s own words from that CNN townhall meeting.”. Humphrey actually wrote that Ramaswamy is an “openly fascist candidate”; well folks, when I personally read something like that I look specifically for where the candidate actually stated that he’s a fascist because that’s exactly what writing “openly fascist candidate” implies. Humphrey has used that hateful “openly fascist“ rhetoric before. As of the time I posted this blog, there hasn’t been any response from Humphrey including allowing the comment I submitted to be posted. I guess truth and facts are irrelevant to people like this…

…as long as they can get away with spewing their hate filled rhetorical lies without any integrity whatsoever. These kind of people don’t give a damn about how their hateful rhetoric undermines everything that makes for civil debate which in-turn undermines one of the foundational tenets that helped make our culture thrive and made us a beacon of freedom and liberty.

Integrity: adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.

Let me make something very clear, fascist Nazi’s were terrible people, they were one of the 20^th century’s best examples of pure evil, and calling someone a fascist or a Nazi when there is no fact based evidence to support the claim is pure unadulterated HATE SPEECH! We all know what the 21^st century woke totalitarians think of hate speech…

As much as I personally dislike that ad hominem, insult slinging, piece of shit, political activist, Vivek Ramaswamy I still think that Humphrey calling Ramaswamy a fascist and a Nazi to gin up hate is slinging bald-faced lies, it’s bigoted, it’s pure hate filled propaganda, and is showing moral bankruptcy. Ramaswamy is not a fascist or a Nazi and anyone that resorts to that kind of political rhetoric to gin up hate is a damn fool that’s exposing their moral bankruptcy and ignorance of what fascists and Nazi’s truly were. Here’s a couple of photos of who they were and what they did…

I have more personal integrity than the hate filled bigoted fools that choose to openly bastardize terms, like fascist and Nazi, simply so they can immorally use them as political propaganda tools to smear those they oppose as being pure evil.

From this moment on, anyone that claims that someone is a “fascist” or “Nazi” without including with the claims factual evidence to support the claim will be tarred as an anti-American immoral…

PART 2
ANTI-AMERICAN ADVOCACY JOURNALISM

In the Caffeinated Politics blog post referenced above, Humphrey wrote this about journalism…

What I’m understanding from this passage is that Humphrey is in favor of pure advocacy journalism, especially when Humphrey doesn’t like the candidate. He seems to be in favor of “journalists” (I use that term loosely in the 21st century) should talk about and report on a candidate, aka feed them their opinions, but that the candidate shouldn’t be allowed to present themself to the public, in their own way, so the public can make up their own mind based on their own observed opinions of the candidate instead of being fed the opinions of activist journalists. Humphrey doesn’t seem to trust you to make up your own mind, you must be spoon-fed your opinion. This position is anti-American and anti-Democracy.

Anyone that advocates for this kind of journalism doesn’t understand what Democracy is and how a Democracy needs to be supported by a non-partisan non-activist media. It sounds like Humphrey would likely be in favor of a Pravda-USA like media that only supports candidates that share Humphrey’s opinions and blocks out all other candidates opinions.

What’s astonishing to me is that Humphrey, and people like him, are so completely blinded by their partisanship and bigoted hate that they don’t know just how anti-American, anti-Democracy and pro-totalitarian these extreme unsupported opinions are. These people are a cancer that’s infecting our society.

PART 3
CIVILITY

Humphrey starts the blog post discussed above with this graphic…

…and then he proceeds to irresponsibly post unsupported claims that Ramaswamy is “dangerous”, a “fascist” and a “Nazi”. Also making more irresponsible and unsupported claims that Ramaswamy “spewed dangerous lies”, “injected poison into the national discourse”, “vile crap”, “his lunacy”, “racist and crazed” and “clown”. I think I’ve been very clear about what I think of Ramaswamy but how very uncivil of Humphrey. Humphrey seems to want a level of responsibility from journalists to do the responsible thing, which of course is what Humphrey thinks is right, but yet Humphrey engages in what I would call blatantly irresponsible behavior, this sounds a bit hypocritical to me.

Political rhetoric has become so uncivil in the 21st century that it’s rolled over into our daily lives and there are people that openly advocate for persecution and violence. I have discussed civility on multiple occasions, there is an epidemic of toxic political rhetoric underscored by tit-for-tat mud slinging and one-upmanship where, in the end, there usually are no real winners when the mud dries, everyone is simply covered in it and animosity builds to an irrational breaking point. Everyone is loosing integrity one small piece at a time by allowing themself to rationalize their behavior(s) and chip away at their character.

PART 4
CONCLUSION

We all share in the blame for toxic political rhetoric but when it comes to the truly hateful demonization of political opponents as being the epitome of EVIL, Humphrey and those like him that are using words like fascist and Nazi to openly demonize their opposition are at the pinnacle of toxic political rhetoric and outright hate. As our politics delve further and further into toxic political rhetoric, the use of tit-for-tat and ends justifies the means unethical rationalizations to justify rhetorical reactions become much more obvious. It’s my opinion that you cannot effectively communicate with people that exhibit this kind of hate in their rhetoric, their hate is so absolute that it has eaten their morals and they’ve become morally bankrupt. Although there are a few cracks in Humphrey’s progressive shell that let through a little light from a few rational thoughts, the overall wash of shared opinions at Caffeinated Politics is low hanging fruit for someone that is critically thinking about things that negatively change our society and strip away at our liberty.

For more input on our changing society please read Is Our Liberty Already Dead?