A BIPARTISAN SAMPLING of the worldā€™s greatest perpetrators and enablers of political violence has rushed to condemn political violence following the shooting attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday.

ā€œThe idea that thereā€™s political violence ā€¦ in America like this, is just unheard of, itā€™s just not appropriate,ā€ said President Joe Biden, the backer of Israelā€™s genocidal war against Palestine, with a death toll that researchers believe could reach 186,000 Palestinians. Bidenā€™s narrower point was correct, though: Deadly attacks on the American ruling class are vanishingly rare these days. Political violence that is not ā€œlike thisā€ ā€” the political violence of organized abandonment, poverty, militarized borders, police brutality, incarceration, and deportation ā€” is commonplace.

And condemn it, most everyone in the Democratic political establishment has: ā€œPolitical violence is absolutely unacceptable,ā€ wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on X. ā€œThere is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,ā€ tweeted former President Barack Obama, who oversaw war efforts and military strikes against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan with massive civilian death tolls; Obama added that we should ā€œuse this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.ā€ ā€œThere is no place for political violence, including the horrific incident we just witnessed in Pennsylvania,ā€ wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

The chorus of condemnation was predictable and not in itself a problem: Thereā€™s nothing wrong with desiring a world without stochastic assassination attempts, even against political opponents. But when you have Israelā€™s minister of foreign affairs, Israel Katz of the fascistic ruling Likud Party, tweeting, ā€œViolence can never ever be part of politics,ā€ the very concept of ā€œpolitical violenceā€ is evacuated of meaning.

  • MudMan@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    So you know itā€™s bad but you donā€™t know what good looks like.

    Please consider the possibility that this is because itā€™s not bad at all to have the state, rather than private citizens, hold the sole ability to use force, and that the problems youā€™ve observed may be unrelated to that principle. Not that they donā€™t exist, just that they are not caused by what youā€™re saying they are.

    I leave you with that, in genuine good faith.