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Originally Posted by Slava
I entirely agree it's not exclusive to politicians and its part of being a controversial figure. But I guess I fear that we normalize and justify this behaviour with a sentiment that people are anonymous and as a result can say and do whatever they want.
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Well, "say" and "do" are pretty different things... within the law, people pretty much
can say whatever they want, and while often what they have to say is horrible, there's an obviously good reason we let them do it anyway. I really have no answers to solve the problem of "people being jerks on the internet" where the cure wouldn't be worse than the disease, but if you do, I'm all ears.
That being said...
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I also think that it runs a little deeper than someone calling someone a name when people are saying that people should be shot.
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I do agree with this, in that it could be taken as a threat, and you have to take that sort of thing seriously. Police involvement isn't out of the question in these situations.
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But to legitimize name-calling and threatening a politician because of that is just ridiculous. That is akin to the "she had it coming" argument, or a "well what did you expect?" I don't think that we should stand for that.
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I have no real issue with name-calling. I do have an issue when it crosses the line into misogyny, like "stay in the kitchen where you belong", and my issue extends to basically saying to the author of that comment, "criticize her all you want but stop being a sexist piece of garbage". I have a big issue with threatening violence. There is a pretty significant difference between that and being mean, and the two shouldn't be lumped in together.
The problem is that I don't really think she wants people to "take this seriously", so much as she'd like people to stop going after her for her selfish decision to switch parties and betray the people who elected her. Incidentally, "you traitorous bitch" isn't very nice, but it's a legitimate expression of someone's anger and disappointment at the person they (presumably) elected.