Earlier this week, the social networking site Facebook removed a question from a popular polling application that allows users to create their own polls due to an inflammatory question.
The poll asked whether President Barack Obama should be assassinated or not. Facebook took down the polling app, and the Secret Service is currently looking into the matter.
It's a sad state our country currently finds herself in, when a person openly contemplates and asks his/her peers whether we should support the assassination of our nation's leader. Such sentiment may be reasonable under other circumstances -- say, if the president had assumed an authoritative rule over the entire nation. His actions thus far hardly constitute any calls for revolution, much less his death.
Despite what some on the right will tell you (the most extreme elements already assume Obama is a socialist dictator), the president has done little to warrant such outrage, such fear, such distaste and open hatred. Criticism and disagreement are acceptable forms of dissent, and should be encouraged; openly considering his death as a legitimate way to reach your goals is atrocious, treacherous, and obscene.
Fears of "socialism" running the nation are unnecessary -- in bailing out specific corporations earlier this year, the government has "socialized" less than a quarter of a percent of the national economy, and left in charge management that is unaffiliated with the administration or government in general with the goal of eventual restoration to private control.
The president's health care plan would do little to "socialize" the country as well. Rather than force all insurance providers out of business, the president's plan would provide American's without insurance the choice between purchasing a private or public plan. The key word: choice.
But the proposals being put forth in addition to the bailouts already implemented -- mch of them under the Bush administration -- have led people on the extreme right to assume that Obama is a socialist-overlord-in-waiting, biding his time for the perfect opportunity to seize control.
These assumptions come even as the negative aspects of capitalism continue to grow in our country. A new report shows that the income gap between poor and wealthy Americans has grown, with the top ten percent of American wage earners making 11 times as much or more than those who live in poverty.
So no, the president isn't a threat to capitalism. He is not trying to take over the government, to control your lives or mine, to strip us of our rights. And no, it isn't appropriate to consider an assassination as a means to achieve your ends. In fact, it's downright disgusting.
Those who think otherwise ought to be ashamed of themselves. They are the true un-Americans.
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