Perspective from the planet Neptune

Vincent J. Curtis

3 Sept 22

RE: Violent rhetoric threatening democracy.  Op-ed by Henry A. Giroux.  The Hamilton Spectator. 

The Spectator’s correspondent from the planet Neptune is again ranting in an other-worldly way.  Rhetoric is threatening democracy! Trump!  January 6!  Q-Anon!  Growing authoritarianism!  “The microsphysics of power”!  White supremacy! This new era of violence! Turning politics into a form of civil war!  Rage of the vulnerable!  A larger social order that attacks critical thinking!  Violence is being elevated to an organizing principle!  Blah, blah, blah!

To a person schooled in Aristotelian philosophy, this stuff is laughable.  Faux intellectual.  We used to expect a level of academic rigor in our public intellectuals, but no more, especially not from the Humanities.  Let’s start with “democracy.”  Nowadays, democracy means the people elect representatives of their choosing to run the government.  Violent rhetoric has been de rigueur in political speech since the days of the ancient Greeks.  Socrates was democratically voted to be killed.  America’s founding fathers said ghastly things about each other after the republic was formed.

When people think their vote was thwarted, that’s when trouble begins.  January 6 happened because people thought, rightly or wrongly, that their choice was thwarted by Mr. Xerox.  It’s not violent rhetoric that threatens democracy, electoral chicanery does.  It’s stopping a person from running as a candidate, as the Biden Administration and Democrat prosecutors are trying to do to Trump.  Trump’s first impeachment was because he allegedly tried to discredit Biden by asking the Ukrainian president to investigate Hunter Biden’s role in Barisma.  But that was then, this is now.  And nobody appreciates the irony.

Biden’s speech this week, in which he said MAGA Republicans are a threat to democracy, is the kind of violent rhetoric Giroux ought to be condemning, if he were serious.  But throwing MAGA Republicans into jail is violence that threatens democracy.

Tensions are high in the U.S.  FBI thugs have targeted Trump allies for treatment.  The raid on Mar-a-lago is playing with fire.  If the Biden Administration attempts to arrest Trump, there will be violence.  Even charging him will be very bad.  If the shoe ever ends up on the other foot, and Trump gets re-elected in 2024, there’ll be hell to pay.

None of this is necessary, except that the Democratic Party has turned into a cult with messianic goals, and may try to turn America into a one-party state “to save democracy!”

Minor intellectuals like Giroux understand none of this.  Safe in their little sinecures, their narcissistic pontifications contribute nothing but fuel.

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