Eastern Passages
Whipping up hate, Republican-style.
It was my mistake. I watched the Republican convention, saw roaring crowds openly demand Hillary Clinton be jailed without judge, jury or even a trial. I saw Republicans go as far as suggest an immediate execution — some asking for a hanging, at least one, a firing squad. What can you say, after seeing that? Such raw hatred — and far too few people speaking up and saying, “That’s enough. This has gone too far.” What will we have next? Show trials? Lynchings? Stonings? Democratic politics has always been a messy business. Attack ads and smear campaigns have grown in popularity in the U.S., primarily because they work. Let’s have our off-book secretly funded Political Action Committees pay for the ads we don’t want to be connected to, and hammer the airwaves hard. Contaminate the voters’ mind about a candidate, build on the suspicion that everyone’s in politics for their own good or for the good of their political friends — but, when everyone’s being called a thief, there’s no advantage to be had anymore. So up the ante — let’s call them traitors or murderers instead. Let’s call them criminals who should be jailed. Or shot. Or hanged. And if we’re not willing to do it ourselves, if we’re not willing to get our hands dirty, let’s have our acolytes act on our behalf, while we sit on the sidelines, grinning and shrugging, leaving the comments out there and letting them be cemented in place in the electorate’s minds with little or no repudiation. There’s got to be a time when the people, when the voters, say they have had enough of all of this. Because the fervour is going so far that it’s trampling the American constitution underfoot.
The United States, like Canada, has clearly defined rules on how criminal charges are handled. We’ve heard a whole bunch during the current campaign about the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, how important the right to bear arms is, even if hundreds of American men, women and children are dying because of widely available weapons. Change the Second Amendment? Not on your life. So why isn’t anyone pointing out that political attacks suggesting the prosecution-less jailing of opposition politicians — and worse — is a clear violation of the Fifth Amendment of that same constitution?
It’s a simple read, actually: the necessary parts read, “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Due process is so fundamental to the United States that the U.S. Supreme Court described it like this in 1950: “Due process … embodies a system of rights based on moral principles so deeply imbedded in the traditions and feelings of our people as to be deemed fundamental to a civilized society as conceived by our whole history. Due Process is that which comports with the deepest notions of what is fair and right and just.” And yet speakers on the stage at the Republican convention are saying that’s exactly what should happen.
There is no fine point that can be put on this.
There is no place in civilized debate for death threats or the suggestion of jail without charges. And politicians who whip up their followers with suggestions that opponents should be punished, sans trial, run a clear risk of reaping their own whirlwind. Constitutions are not menus, where you select the ones you like and ignore the rest.
Like I said, it was my mistake. I watched the Republican convention. And at times, I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. Our great neighbour has forgotten where it came from and what it stood for.
Democratic politics has always been a messy business. Attack ads and smear campaigns have grown in popularity in the U.S., primarily because they work. Let’s have our off-book secretly funded Political Action Committees pay for the ads we don’t want to be connected to, and hammer the airwaves hard.