MSNBC’s Ratigan Goes Way Off the Deep End - Discussing violent revolution as if it’s just another...

MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan not only decided it was a good idea to have on far-left cartoonist Ted Rall to discuss his new book The Anti-American Manifesto, which calls for the left to consider violent revolution if its aims aren’t met, but Ratigan overtly endorsed revolution and implicitly endorsed considering violence.

If this were on Fox News, the media would be blowing a fuse. It better get working on this one. If it’s suspension-worthy for an obiously left-wing host to give campaign donations to politicians, what is it when one quasi-endorses considering overthrowing the government via the gun?

Fox News’s insane Glenn Bleck, while he’s gone way, way overboard with violent imagery and rhetoric, at least hasn’t gotten quite that explicit.

Leaving aside the dubious wisdom of even inviting on your program somebody advocating considering violence, if you’re going to do so, you at least need to go adversarial with them (I’m thinking old-school Phil Donahue show-how-they’re-nuts style). But this is as friendly as interviews get (emphasis mine):

See, there’s a fundamental problem with advocating violent revolution in the United States of America. I can’t believe I have to spell this out to newsmen affiliated with the National Broadcasting Corporation.

Where once Americans were subjugated by their countrymen across the pond and not given the right to freely choose their own government—we have that right now and have had it for more than two centuries. You can talk about the pernicious influence that corporations have on elections and on elected politicians, but ultimately Americans—if they want to—can rise up and throw these people out of office. 50.01 percent wins elections. If you lose, suck it up, hone your arguments, and fight (metaphorically, of course) harder. It is not acceptable to have a journalist on a major network talking to nutjobs talking about violence, even qualifying it as a “last resort,” as if this is a legitimate option.

If Americans think there are wrongful wars, they can elect people to end them. They elected Obama to end Iraq, but he campaigned on winning Afghanistan. That’s what he’s done—or tried to, anyway. The people voted for it, dude, however much you don’t like it. But when you’re rhetoric is as—to borrow a word—corrupted as Ratigan’s is that you can say with a straight face on national television that “six industries… control every politician in this country,” that betrays a basic faith in the people, one that implies that it’s acceptable for a minority to revolt to institute what they think everybody ought to think.

Look, I think the system sucks, but I’m enough a democrat to think that the people can fix it if they want to. They’ve put in transformational figures like Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Ronald Reagan at key moments in history. Obama had his chance and flubbed most of it. When the system goes too far to one side or gets too captured, the people will overturn it at the ballot box.

Ratigan’s and Rall’s warped thinking is the same sort of logical fallacy made by lots of folks in the Tea Party (which by the way, is a prime example of how the people can still turn things upside down when they get ticked off). Taxes or health care, say, are not tyrannical if they’re enacted by democratically elected representatives. If you don’t accept this, you don’t accept the basic concept of democracy.

If I were tyrannical ruler of journalism, some folks would be gone from MSNBC. Good thing I’m not. But the very few of you who watch MSNBC can vote with your clicker and journalists in the NBC family can refuse to go on Ratigan’s show. They ought to unless something drastically changes over there.

The political system in this country is sick. People are pissed off (though the vast majority have enough good sense not to be this pissed off). Good journalism is about finding ways to explain this to people and showing them how to fix things through persuasion. Talking to kooks about resorting to violence, much less at a minimum giving the impression that you agree with them, is way, way out of bounds.

But MSNBC just got a safety, and it ought to be lights out on some folks over there. Else it’s time lock them away in Glenn Beck’s doom bunker.

Where once Americans were subjugated by their countrymen across the pond and not given the right to freely choose their own government—we have that right now and have had it for more than two centuries. You can talk about the pernicious influence that corporations have on elections and on elected politicians, but ultimately Americans—if they want to—can rise up and throw these people out of office. 50.01 percent wins elections. If you lose, suck it up, hone your arguments, and fight (metaphorically, of course) harder. It is not acceptable to have a journalist on a major network talking to nutjobs talking about violence, even qualifying it as a “last resort,” as if this is a legitimate option.

This all sounds good but it misses an important point. Elections are more and more not fair and not legitimate.

Vote fraud dilutes my vote just as the Fed dilutes the value of my dollar = my treasure = my sweat and life force. The Fed and their member banks can also shut down my markets thereby causing the value of my assets to fall perilously.

When the ruling class can maintain a standing force of operatives that steal elections, we can cry out and say "Well! If Americans really want to do something about it, they can!". Not so.

We just had an election where conservatives in the TP were victorious in battle but not in war. The dems and the ruling class RINOs will not stand down, they will not toss in the towel nor fly a white flag. They will continue to develop their army of operatives, many of whom have infiltrated election offices (no conspiracy nut here; look at November 2004 archive of soundpolitics.com), and gain control of political powers through stealth.

Lie, cheat and steal is the mantra of those that look down at the purists and moralists as idealistic school children that refuse to grow up.

But it's my and your vote that they steal, my and your treasure they steal and that means watching and waiting for an opportunity to attack using 'defensive' violence if necessary.

For example, if a conservative were to catch ruling class operatives redhanded in the act of preparing to stuff a ballot box, the act of blocking/tackling those operatives to the ground would be an act of condoned defensive violent resistance.

In years past, conservatives have witnessed operatives at polling booths take stacks of provisional ballots and toss them into a ballot box to be counted and once they are mixed, there is nothing to prevent them from being counted. Such conservatives thought that merely reporting the incident or even videotaping such acts would hold up in court or cause prosecution. They were wrong. But blocking the operative and wresting them to the ground before they stuff the box would have brought prosecution, perhaps on both sides. But what does it matter?

In acts of defensive and protective violence, getting arrested or taking a bullet should be expected.

The investment banks and the Fed just collapsed the US economy and not one protest has been made on the steps of the Federal Reserve, not one attempt to protest and block entry to the offices of Goldman Sachs.

Such acts of protest and violence are rare and show that the passion is not sufficient to risk one's freedom or life.

Years ago a couple of protestors confronted Al Gore at a book signing, they were pushed and shoved by security agents out of the event site. Their protest was never registered in the public mind. Had they fallen to the ground or chained themselves to a fixture forcing the security agents to hit them or kick them, then there may have been a chance to bring the incident into the public eye. If many protestors had surrounded Gore and his security agents, there may have been gunfire. So be it.

As it were it took unknown unseen heros to expose Gore's scam on the internet. And remember Barbara Boxer's remark when the AGW emails and data were revealed? She remarked that the perpetrators were 'hackers' who should be prosecuted. Had they been outed and prosecuted, then protest and defensive or protective violence may have been warranted.

Violence is warranted when the system of justice has in a broad sense broken down and when a representative government has failed.

We are not there yet but we could be there at any moment as the ruling class consolidates its power to manipulate justice and representative bodies.

Note that it only takes a small amount of equity percentage to control some corporations. For example, Warren Buffett controls Moody's by owning only 26% of their voting stock.

The ruling class understands they need only a small percentage of certain political bodies, offices and courts in order force their will.

Lest we think we can by sheer numbers at the ballot box prevent ruling networks from gaining power, think again. Be prepared to be disappointed that the political movement is setback as the ruling class and their media organs regroup and plot new strategy to cause the new TP elects to fall on their swords.

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