November 2, 2022 Editor

Highlighting: Never underestimate how much people hate Nancy Pelosi

If you’re surprised by the attack on Pelosi’s husband, or the right-wing smirking about it, you haven’t been paying attention

Image without a captionMonica Hesse

November 1, 2022

image above: Nancy Pelosi gets a kiss from her husband, Paul Pelosi, at a 2007 event. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

WN: The article is about an increasing bone-chilling reality of politics in the U.S.: especially against “progressive” women office holders.

Please read this carefully, and tell me where is the “Christian” in such partisan, hateful politics?:

I John 4: Love Comes from God

7Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

9This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. 10And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrificed for our sins.

11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us. 13By this we know that we remain in Him, and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.

15If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16And we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him. 17In this way, love has been perfected among us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment; for in this world we are just like Him.

18There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love. 19We love because He first loved us.

20If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21And we have this commandment from Him: Whoever loves God must love his brother as well.

See bDr. Dallek is a historian and a professor of political management at George Washington University’s College of Professional Studies.): The Fading Line Between Rhetorical Extremism and Political Violence. We read:

The assault on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, last week shocked even those who have become inured to rising violence in the United States. The erosion of norms restraining extreme behavior that began well before the election of Donald Trump in 2016 appears to have accelerated. Society looks as if it is coming apart at the seams.

The Reagan-era “government is the problem” language and ideology has been transformed into a philosophy that casts the government as not just a problem but as evil, a threat to the values MAGA supporters hold dear. Under Mr. Trump’s leadership, groups on the right have felt increasingly comfortable incubating, encouraging and carrying out violence.

The consistency of the rhetoric (“enemy of the people,” “Our house is on fire,” “You’re not going to have a country anymore,” “the greatest theft in the history of America,” “Where’s Nancy?”) has ingrained dehumanization of Republican opponents in parts of the political culture; conservatives have often painted their critics as enemies who must be annihilated before they destroy you. As the Department of Homeland Security has reported, domestic violent extremism — such as the white supremacist Charlottesville riots and the Jan. 6 insurrection — is one of the most pressing internal threats facing the United States.

Some on the left, too, have increasingly abandoned norms of civility and respect for rules and institutions. The gunman who in 2017 targeted Republican members of Congress and shot five people playing baseball — the Republican House whip, Steve Scalise, was seriously wounded — drew inspiration from his hatred of Republicans and Donald Trump. In June a California man was arrested outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home and charged with attempted murder after the man posted on the social platform Discord that he was going to “stop Roe v. Wade from being overturned.”

What’s behind all this? While Democratic leaders for the most part are quick to condemn violence, Republican leaders increasingly minimize its severity or turn a blind eye. The tropes that Republican officials use demonstrate contempt for state authority, including law enforcement; a belief that un-American cadres have captured the government, cultural institutions and businesses; a pervasive distrust of the objective news media; an apocalyptic strain of thinking that America is in grave peril; and an animating acceptance of conspiracy theories and white supremacist sentiments. The peaceful transfer of power has conceded ground to a politics of the street.

See too, November 2, 2022: Right-wing political violence, campaign lies, and more. We read:

The Reagan-era “government is the problem” language and ideology has been transformed into a philosophy that casts the government as not just a problem but as evil, a threat to the values MAGA supporters hold dear. Under Mr. Trump’s leadership, groups on the right have felt increasingly comfortable incubating, encouraging and carrying out violence.

The consistency of the rhetoric (“enemy of the people”; “Our house is on fire”; “You’re not going to have a country anymore”; “the greatest theft in the history of America”; “Where’s Nancy?”) has ingrained dehumanization of Republican opponents in parts of the political culture; conservatives have often painted their critics as enemies who must be annihilated before they destroy you. As the Department of Homeland Security has reported, domestic violent extremism — such as the white supremacist Charlottesville riots and the Jan. 6 insurrection — is one of the most pressing internal threats facing the United States.
As Max Boot emphasized at The Washington Post, with rare occurrences on the left, political violence in America is not a “both sides” issue:

It should not be controversial to say that America has a major problem with right-wing political violence. The evidence continues to accumulate — yet the GOP continues to deny responsibility for this horrifying trend. […]

excerpts:

God, they really hate her, don’t they?

I’m not talking about the man who allegedly attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband with hammer, but rather about the people who learned about the assault — a skull fracture requiring hospitalization — and whose reaction was to tweet (or, in the case of Donald Trump Jr., retweet) an image of a hammer and a pair of underwear with the text, “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”

To fully appreciate the joke, you’d have to be up to speed on an insane conspiracy theory that — honestly, I’m not going to get into it here. You’d also have to appreciate that posts like this (and there were many like them) are not just jokes. They’re not rhetorical escalations. They’re not dirty politics, either, though it’s easy in this political climate to wish that they were simply that, and to hope that a fair-and-square election might simmer everything down.

It’s about this: people hate her. Specifically herThey hate this woman who is rich, and coastal, and powerful, and who was thankfully not at home with her husband in California because she was instead in Washington, working on legislation that they also hate. Nancy Pelosi gets devil horns on Etsy mugs, witch hats on posters. In memes, she’s a harpy, she’s a hag, she’s a prostitute for Barack Obama or Joe Biden.

After this traumatic and terrifying thing happened to Pelosi and her husband, the reaction of many on the right was to turn it into a punchline.

Please click on: How Much People Hate Nancy Pelosi

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Editor

Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find more about that on this website: a work in progress.

Always appreciate constructive feedback! Thanks.