Shouting at Speakers

[fiore42]

One of my facebook friends put up a post about how pleased she is that some Occupy folks in South Carolina stood up during a speech of Michelle Bachmann's and started speaking & chanting until she was driven from the podium. I would be perfectly happy if Bachmann left the national stage, never to return, but that sort of thuggish behavior sickens

Comments

[flyonawndshield]

I'm fully in support of anything that causes people to lose their talking points and get engaged in a dialogue. Yeah, they have to shout it now, but someday the other side may allow them to speak at a normal volume. That day may not come for a long time though, so thuggish behavior is really all they have.
Oh, and its good to note that no one was hurt or anything, they just used the human megaphone to make their point about the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity.

[fiore42]

There is nothing "dialogue"-like about coordinating a group to go into a civil event and prevent the speaker from speaking. It's ironic you would say "someday the other side may allow them to speak at a normal volume" when Bachmann was the person disallowed from speaking.

I'm sorry, but that's behavior appropriate to slope-browed thugs who can't tolerate the fact that some people have different opinions than they do.

[flyonawndshield]

Bachmann could've continued her talk after they left, but she freaked out and left herself. Karl Rove just tried to get people to say "NO YOU'RE NOT" in response to the We are the 99% chants, but that didn't work well. There was a group of students that wore bags over their heads at a John Yoo speech in response to waterboarding and he FLIPPED out on them too, even though they were sitting quietly while making their statement.
I think this kind give and take is healthy between the powerful and the populace, because anything that inspires energy and discord is good for a decadent, flaccid, dying empire like our own.

[fiore42]

"Anything that inspires energy and discord in a decadent, flaccid, dying empire" seems a dangerous wish; it certainly could have happily described anti-czarist revolutionaries in 1916.

What I think is healthy is a general acknowledgement that some people disagree with you, and that you're going to have to live alongside them. Going into civil speeches and shouting them down is a wretched and dangerous act, because it shows a contempt for the mechanisms that allow people who deeply disagree to continue existing alongside each other; shouting down Michelle Bachmann is not healthy, it's the first stage of mob violence, licensed only because, hey, it's Michelle Bachmann, no one likes /her/, right?