Politics of Personal Destruction

I think the thing that both Sebastian and I hate the most about politics at the moment is that it seems like everyone is so hateful toward everyone else to the point of wanting to see the individuals themselves destroyed. I get that there’s a certain “us vs. them” quality to building political opposition, but in the past, you could still go to the bar and have a drink with someone with whom you disagreed. Now, that seems like something from the past for many folks.

One of the things that brought on my recent frustration with the issue is the Facebook scandal involving Kendall Jones, a young female hunter. She posted pictures from lawful hunts, and Facebook took them down for violating community standards. However, the “Kill Kendall Jones” page is allowed to remain because Facebook says that doesn’t violate any community standards. Now, a Democratic former Congressional candidate is offering $100,000 to anyone who will publish naked pictures of Kendall Jones simply because he doesn’t like that she hunts and wants to see her personally destroyed.

I don’t even know if the political discourse on display can be improved. When someone considers it a reasonable and good idea to start a page calling for the death of someone who simply disagrees with you, I’m not sure there’s much that can be done to bring people like that back to some form of reasonable discussion, even if it still results in disagreement.

27 thoughts on “Politics of Personal Destruction”

  1. While I agree with the substance of your post wholeheartedly, it is worth noting that the person who is offering a reward for the lewd pictures is a fringe candidate not officially endorsed or associated with the Democratic Party.

    1. So you’re splitting hairs between a fringe asshole and his main party of assholes. Gee, thanks for the enlightenment.

      1. So you object to the “politics of personal destruction” when the victim is a conservative or a Republican, but freely engage in it when the victim is a liberal or Democrat?

        Did you miss the point of this blog posting?

        1. Feel free to say what you want about me, I don’t care. I’m not the one trying to demonstrate a difference between Mike Dickinson and Harry Reid or Alan Grayson or Nancy Pelosi or … and the list goes on. You know the politicians from the “mainstream Democrat party” that you seem to want to protect so much.

          Really now, of all the things you could have said here as your original comment and that was all you could come with.

          Go ahead, defend the “mainstream Democrat party” some more…..

          BTW I never said I object to the “politics of personal destruction”, that was an assumption on your part. I believe in calling a spade a spade and if you don’t like it, tough. Go somewhere and put your big-boy pants on.

          You sound like a democrat to me.

          1. Oh…. your comment “when the victim is a liberal or Democrat?”

            So you now consider Mike Dickinson a “victim”….???

            No one here in their right mind would call this idiot, who appears to be soliciting child pornography ( if she is, indeed, a minor ) a victim.

            You’ve exposed yourself for what and who you are…. a troll.

            1. And given that you favor the politics of personal destruction you’ve exposed yourself for what you are: someone on par with and no better than Mike Dickinson, and someone not worth wasting anymore time on.

              Just calling a spade a spade, right?

              And for the record: I am and Republican and have never voted for a Democratic candidate.

              1. Whatever you say there, Sporto. I’m not the one calling Dickinson a victim.

                Call me what ever you like. I don’t care.

                You’re still a Troll

            2. He isn’t soliciting child pornography, the woman is 19. Still, it’s a perverted thing to try and do to her.

    2. Yes he is a fringeoid. Yet sadly he seems to come from the mainstream of Democratic Party discourse and favored political practices. Right now the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Democrat Harry Reid, is engaged on a deliberate course of personal attack with the specific aim of improving the political chances of the Democratic Party in the 2014 election. I’m talking about the campaign to vilify the Koch Brothers, which is right out of the anti-Goldstein 2-minute-hate stuff from Orwell’s 1984. A campaign Reid is conducting with the enthusiastic approval and participation of fellow Democrats both high and low, public and private, rich and poor.

      This is old hat. The fact that some of the worst actions comes from Democrats in the sex-industry is also old hat. Personal destruction goes back at least as far as ‘Borking’. With the sexual element of attack going back at least as far as the Clinton Sex Scandals, aided by Larry Flynt.

    3. a fringe candidate not officially endorsed or associated with the Democratic Party

      So, basically, one of their rising stars.

  2. I’ve been getting a lot of practice being civil lately…
    My girlfriend’s mom (a professor of Social Work at a local university) is friends with Wendy Davis…
    We may not see eye-to-eye, but we always get along.

  3. There’s an Old Saying out there: “One is Known by the Company One Keeps”. Knowing the kind of Trash Zuckerburg allows on Facebook, I chose NOT to be there with him.

  4. Hardcore liberals are the most intolerant people I come across. Just because their righteousness and supposed moral high ground isn’t based on a religious text they think they’re different than (superior to) religious fundamentalists, but they’re not. The groups are two peas in a pod.

  5. Isn’t Ms. Jones, at 17, legally a minor? If so, isn’t that solicitation of child porn and a crime?

    1. Clearly we need to destroy this man. I’ll get the mob ready.
      Wait, that was the lesson of this post, right?

      1. The point of the post is that both sides are more interested in destroying their opposition than finding common ground or solutions.

        As for Mike Dickinson, if he wants to solicit child pornography, that would be him destroying himself. Personally, I believe that he considers her attractive (but can’t publicly admit it) and wants the photos for his … erm … “personal use.” The fact that it’d harm her reputation is just a bonus. In any case, he’s bringing the backlash upon himself.

        1. The point of the post is that both sides are more interested in destroying their opposition than finding common ground or solutions.

          What is the common ground between “I have the right to defend myself” and “hand over your weapons and you won’t get shot”?

          What is the common ground between “I want my labor to go towards the goals I desire” and “I want most of what you produce to go to the government”?

          What is the common ground between “I want to live my life according to my beliefs” and “you will take part in acts you consider sinful or you will go to prison”?

          1. Bingo. I have no intention of compromising my beliefs or my God-given rights to these bozos.

            The Liberal/Democrat/Progressive view of common ground and compromise is that I abandon my principles and surrender.

            I’m happy to destroy them with the ammunition that they provide such as their promotion of violence, deviancy, intolerance, despotism, and so on.

  6. You cannot reason with individuals in a collectivist echo chamber who want us utterly destroyed and would kill us with glee to acheive those ends. They are in every essence, insane. And I suspect if the US government starting killing US citizens to confiscate firearms they would cheer the government on, body count be damned.

  7. The leader of the Democrat party says that when challenged, one should “hit back twice as hard.”

    Both sides now know what rules the Dems follow.

    I also support not playing by those rules.

    I say, if the Dems attack, hit back so hard they can’t attack again.

    The fringe candidate asking for pornographic pictures of a 19 year old girl should be drummed out of the Democrat party – and if not, any Dem saying he can stay should be described, honestly and correctly, as someone just as horrible as that fringer.

  8. [I]n the past, you could still go to the bar and have a drink with someone with whom you disagreed.

    When in our nation’s past was there an extended period where people from different regions, backgrounds, races and national origins routinely put aside their fundamental differences and socialized with one another? Other than in the few decades during and after World War II, the answer is never.

    This nostalgia for personal comity is ahistorical. Or it naïvely (and selectively) recalls the most collectivist period in American history, a period when every able-bodied adult male was conscripted and virtually all economic activity was centrally managed in Washington, DC (every economic activity down to and including individual purchases of everyday staples such as fuel, food and clothing).

    Our history is available to anyone with the inclination to read. And it is simple: the United States of America has never been “one nation, indivisible..” We are a union of many different peoples with radically different ideas. We initially survived as a nation because it was impossible to exert imperial control over a continent. Now that our technological progress has removed this barrier, our continued survival depends entirely upon our respect for our diversity and a newfound reliance on one of the most important structural elements of our founding: federalism.

    The truth is that we can’t get all get along – not if we’re all forced to live in the same house. But we can all live together peacefully if we’re willing to allow each other the time and space to live their lives in the ways each prefers.

  9. ” mike ” is a piece of work,living in the 7th district where he is running or trying too even the dems around here will not have anything todo with him. It went so far as to them canceling the dem nominating convention so he could not get an endorsement from the party. The more publicity he gets as a dem the better. Gee I wonder if he owns any guns?

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