oldtexan wrote:RottenApple wrote:One side (the left) demonizes and dehumanizes the other (the right); ....
If you think we don't demonize and dehumanize them as well, just take a look at personal insults hurled at Feinstein, Reid, Sheila Jackson Lee, etc on this board. I just read a post here from a member of this board referring to Senator Reid as rotting kimchee. Yesterday I read a post here saying Jackson Lee is bigoted and arrogant. They do it to us; we do it to them. There's no difference in that respect. I much prefer our policy positions, but our tactics stink as bad as theirs do.
It has been that way
since our country was founded. One example will suffice.
Thomas Jefferson's enthusiasm for all things French, including the recent French Revolution, drove his political opponents into a frenzy of hysterical rhetoric. When Jefferson ran for president against John Adams in 1800, Adamsites called him an apostle of anarchy, a demagogue, a trickster and-worst of all-a Franco-maniac. One newspaper editor, envisioning an American Reign of Terror, asked readers, "Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames, ... female chastity violated, or children writhing on the pike?" Another warned that if Jefferson were to be elected, "the soil will be soaked with blood and the nation black with crimes."