Last year, I expressed a desire that the all-too-plausible assassination of Obama be discussed as little as possible, excepting of course within security details like the Secret Service and police forces of the cities he visited, which must discuss the possibility in excruciating detail precisely in order to prevent it. In part, I feared the self-fulfilling prophecy—not so much that discussing assassination would put the idea in some nutjob’s head, as the idea was already likely there, but rather that by repetition the idea should come to seem a familiar and legitimate political expression in some would-be assassin’s mind. This fear was reinforced as I saw increasing numbers of voters explaining to the cameras that they didn’t want to vote for Obama for fear he would be assassinated: ass-backward thinking from start to finish, but thinking which came to seem rational to these people through repetition. Talking about assassinating the ni—ahem, that is, the first major African-American candidate wasn’t didn’t just endanger the hopeful candidate; it cost him votes, and the more discussion the idea received, the more votes he would lose. Outside professional security forces, I couldn’t see the discussion doing any good at all.
Well, no one put a bullet in Obama before the election, though several with suspect political sympathies were caught trying to sneak guns into his speech rallies. And Obama won both nomination and election despite the wishes of the racists and the reactionaries, and despite the fears of the liberals now conditioned to concede to their own fears before they even begin to concede to the right wingers. We’ve got a black president at last, and, mirabile dictu, the darkies still haven’t risen up and murdered in their beds all the good, clean, Christian white folk who feel the entire country belongs by rights to them alone, nor carried off their women for unspeakable purposes.
Yet talk of assassination continues. Mercifully, the left gave the subject up since the election, but the right continues to raise the subject, always with protestations that they don’t personally condone violence, oh no, but always with the tacit understanding that neither would they object to someone killing the president, at least not this particular one. We see it in schoolyards and in bathroom stalls and in sick subcultures like the Free Republic forum. We hear it from right-wing radio and Fox, along with reminders (and damned lies) that Obama isn’t legally president, or even an American citizen. We even hear it delicately raised by US Senators, to their eternal shame, not to mention those who offer no objection to and much sympathy for voters who voice assassination fantasies at public meetings. We see it most recently in the scandalous Facebook “assassination poll” quite properly yanked from the web and under investigation. And all implicitly egging one another on, like schoolboys daring one another to some petty crime. Or like pro-life web sites tracking doctors who perform abortions and scoring those who are killed.
Before the elections, I objected to talk of assassination because I saw no good in it, and some harm. Today, talk of a presidential assassination is no longer a tool for generating fear, nor the bogeyman of Obama sympathizers. Today, talk of a presidential assassination is a deliberate, knowing attempt to make it happen, by cajoling some as yet unidentified psycho teetering on the edge of madness into jumping. And so today, I prefer to see assassination discussed publicly, although I am happy to see it discussed strictly in the format of calling out such speech for what it is: hate speech, sedition, and incitement to murder. We’re past the election; talking about assassination isn’t going to change the result. But halting the conversation to pin every sleazebag who smirkingly suggests what a blow it would be to that anti-American liberal agenda should Obama die to his every last word, spotlighting every last just-shy-of-illegal suggestion and demanding the speaker justify himself and grovel for forgiveness—or, more likely, taint him as a murderer by proxy and traitor to his country—and never, ever let a single instance go unchallenged or allow it to slip from memory, but to throw winking speech of assassination back into the face of every last public figure to offer it, forever and always, until he is sick of it and no other political figure dare repeat it… That can only be to the good.
This is the kind of fight over American speech that cannot be won in the courts, for it isn’t strictly illegal. Nor can it be won by ceding the field to allow the bigots and authoritarians to write see fit, as decent Americans have all to often done since 1980. This is the kind of fight that has to be won by making a big stink, each and every time someone gets out of line. This is a fight to be won precisely with the enemy’s favorite weapons: guilt by association and guilt by suggestion. And, happily, the charges will be true.
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