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Open Government, Open Season
Rep. Joaquin Castro, Congressman from Texas and Chairman of his twin brother’s floundering presidential campaign, tweeted out the names of 44 of his constituents who gave the maximum amount allowable to President Trump. Many are local business owners, many are simply retirees. Now, they could be targets.
Castro defended himself by pointing out that the list was generated from public records. And it’s true. The Federal Elections Commission requires all Federal campaigns report names, addresses and occupations of every donor no matter how large or small and it’s all entered in a searchable database on the FEC website. The idea is to allow the average citizen to know who ostensibly has the candidate in his pocket. With presidential campaigns now approaching $1B (Hillary Clinton spent a whopping $768M for second place in 2016), the maximum amount any individual can give is a pittance in the grand scheme of things.
Still, Castro and the organization that originated the list aren’t interested in transparency. All they are interested in is intimidating those that disagree with them. They are using the FEC database as a registry to pin their equivalent of a yellow Star of David on President Trump’s supporters. And maybe, just maybe, a target on their backs.
National Review’s David French called it “way out of bounds.” But many on the right, French included, have spent the better part of the last four years demonizing the electorate much more than the elected. He has consistently called Trump voters racists and white nationalists and just a few days ago called for a “war” against them. Now, he just might get his wish.
Many on the right have given this crusade against individual voters a sheen of legitimacy. But there is no legitimacy, only a bastard child come for his own pound of flesh. And the government may well be providing all the information he needs.
Published in Politics
We saw this for those who sought to maintain the millennia-old definition of “marriage” in California (opposed proposition 8). After the names of donors opposing proposition 8 were (illegally) released, they were fired from jobs (one rather publicly from the company he founded), business contracts were cancelled, and general intimidation campaigns were carried out.
“Disappointing” is quite an understatement. It’s inciting. It’s traitorous. It’s the sort of thing that would get one executed in an earlier era.
Both the media and Democrat politicians want Conservative Republicans dead. That’s the only conclusion that makes any sense. That’s the only conclusion that explains their support of antifa, violence, and their use of incitement.
They will be made to care and to cave. That is the point.
Unfortunately, I’m skeptical that such a campaign could be carried out, or that it would have the same effect. As @jimchase pointed out, conservatives don’t “mob” well. Conservatives would send them white papers on the wrongness of they positions, but will not surround their families with clenched fists and angry chants, will not throw paint and other materials at their houses, will not hack their house doors with hatchets, and will not threaten to burn down their businesses, all things that have been done to conservatives by people who agree with Castro.
Can’t imagine why I won’t surrender my firearms, what with such good-hearted folks in office.
They will eventually have to learn how.
On the evidence you offer, even without the preceding comments, absolutely true—not hyperbole.
So, David French owns the real harm about to be inflicted on one or more of the 44 Texans who dared defy his deprecation of The Great Big Ugly Man. Make. Him. Own. it.
Eh. I’m not so sure about the “dead” part. But I totally get the sentiment. It probably isn’t that far from the truth. I’m surprised at how open many media elites have been about wanting conservatives out of civil society though. If that is what you mean by “dead”, I agree a lot more in the last three or four months than I have ever before. The Morning Joe crew and Chris Hayes don’t want us to participate in civil society anymore. (There is no way to “peacefully” and “lovingly” “destroy” people the way he is talking about, just because you say it nicely doesn’t mean it is nice.)
I just can’t see how they can be rewarded for that politically. Because the next step, if they are rewarded, is for them to act like they have a license to start isolating people. I expect a lot more randos to have CNN going after them as we get closer to the election.
I actually mean “dead.” They may not understand the end result of the “eliminationist rhetoric” they employ, but it all leads to one thing: mass violence against conservatives in which people will die.
Here is a former CNN host’s vicious and violent behavior
And that’s just one. You could fill a 23-volume encyclopedia with the number of similar comments from current “journalists.” CNN is the worst. There are more.
Count on it. They already happily dox randos who dare create memes and gifs that offend them. That’s putting their lives in danger.
You know, cultists make it a point to isolate their targets from normal friends and family. Maybe leftism and Democrats are a cult . . .
It doesn’t take a campaign, or a mob. As Castro so helpfully pointed out, in doubling down on his dastardly actions, this is a public record, on the internet, accessible by everyone. So, all it takes is a concerned citizen in each deep red precinct to ask the question whether Citizens X, Y, and Z really want to associate themselves with the Castroes’ rhetoric against other Texans.
I find that fascinating. Most liberal Jews have no problem throwing their conservative bretheren under the bus . . .
That makes sense. I think about what you say in the context of the news playing down violence against conservatives, particularly MAGA hat wearers, and it seems like there is something going on. I can’t find anything more about the guy in NJ who was allegedly beaten for wearing the hat, but unlike Smollet, his story made sense and he was beaten up pretty badly. This wasn’t really “covered” except by conservative leaning outlets. After a while, it becomes a pattern. It almost seems like an implicit subsidy.
In this instance it would have contradicted his narrative of racism.
And I wonder if, when their rhetoric finally does result in mass slaughter (some would point to Dayton and say that it already has), will that wake up Dems-and-the-media to tone it down?
I think the answer is “no.”
The left never goes into retreat. The left always advances. Sometimes it maintains a holding pattern until the next advance. But when it moves, it always moves forward.
“Two steps forward, and one step back.” Just as the Chairman taught.
Incredible!!!
One would think that this sort of intimidation would be against the law.
Anyone going to charge him?
He should be impeached.
In a just world, he would be.
But this world is run by Democrats.
His manifesto was classic 1930’s National Socialism.
Progressive domestic policy ( guaranteed basic income, government healthcare, environmentalism) married to classic racism ( racial apartheid, racial cleansing) Add a little veganism and anti smoking and it would be a perfect Hitler speech.
Well, he can’t be impeached, since he’s a Congresscritter. (The Senate concluded way back in 1789 that Senators and Representatives are not “civil officers” as far as impeachment is concerned.) The House should expel him though. (They won’t.)
Twitter, by the way, is in a loving embrace with the Democratic Party, and fully supports this eliminationist rhetoric.
You can be a leftist posting death threats, but you can’t be a conservative posting negatively about those death threats. Even Mitch McConnell’s campaign account was prevented from revealing the truth about Democrats.
Nobody “owns it” except the actual perpetrators. But it should make him stop and think if demonizing great swaths of people that he has never met, or are likely ever to meet, is such a good idea. Heaping scorn on groups of people that share one or more things in common is the text book definition of bigotry, I don’t care if it’s race, ethnicity or voting record.
He fancies himself a shepherd and he can’t get his flock to obey, so he lashes out at them when he should probably make more of an attempt to understand them.
Hollywood Film Depicts Trump Supporters Being Hunted for Sport by Liberals
Here’s what gives me hope: The Left is over the top, not subtle. They do not want to take things slow.
Now I need to look into firearms and training on using them
Charge him? They will celebrate him for being brave. Welcome to banana republic politics.
More progressive projection. However, since they’re the ones trying and failing to ban guns, the movie does provide a helpful reminder of what people on the left would like to do, if they could just kill off that dreadful Second Amendment and disarm the populace.