Like you said, those death threats to public health officials have been common all across the country.Fun CH wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 5:50 pmyes that has been common all around the country. However there is no logic in lumping in methownet BB antivaxxers with those commuting those crimes. (that was the point. Not where that threat was posted)
Nor is there any logic as David suggests that the MNBB antivaxxers need to rethink there postion because others who may or may not share a similar political POV have committed thoses death threat crimes. Exactly how are all antivaxxers responsible for the illegal actions of others?
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So have death threats against officials administering elections, including volunteers who are just trying to do a job out of a sense of patriotism and have no ideological dog in the fight. Also it seems there were multiple accounts of people shooting others who asked them to wear a mask.
So there is a pretty consistent pattern on the right of tolerating violence and advocacy for violence. Which is antithetical to our ideals of more or less peaceful political competition.
The fact that officials of one political party seem to wink and nod at these activities and not take them seriously is a clear example of a moral rot in that part of the ideological spectrum. The fact that elected officials saw the need to pass laws making it legal to run over people protesting in the streets is another example.
This pattern continues with describing the 1/6 insurrectionist terrorists as "tourists" and "patriots" and attempting to rewrite history and make that insanity normal.
The point is that if you share that ideology and openly advocate for it you are enabling those violent crazy people by convincing them that they have support and their cause is "legitimate". If you don't loudly and clearly denounce such behavior you are only encouraging it. In the case of Laurie Jones, we got crickets from both the County Sheriff and County Commissioners -- I'd expect at least a "don't make death threats against government employees", and how hard would that be anyway?
Outside of the short term, and probably only if they manage to "win" the civil war they seem so determined to start, it is hard to see how violent threats, advocacy for violence, and acts of violence will manage to do anything but alienate people to their cause and point of view. Bluntly speaking it is a position and choice you'd only make if you think you are losing. So if you do strongly hold those political views you should be even more loudly denouncing those violent kooks, as they are making the changes you advocate far less likely and probably impossible.
I just don't buy the "we're not like the violent terrorists, but we believe the same things." Whether it comes from Republicans in 2021, or from Sinn Fein about the IRA, or from the Islamic Brotherhood about ISIS or Al-Qaeda. And yes, I do think the Republican Party has cast itself into exactly the same moral pit.
In point of contrast, when the BLM protests got out of hand (and they did get out of hand) many leaders in the Democratic Party loudly and openly and unambiguously denounced the violence and destruction of property. And rightly so. So there isn't really a "both sides do it" argument here. As if it would be any morally less foul if there was another side doing it.
David Bonn 
