This Is Not Political - It's Criminal

The above picture has been all over the internet for the last couple of days. For those of you who may have been living in a cave and not heard about it, this is the family pet of Jake Burris (the campaign manager for Ken Aden, who is the Democratic candidate running for a U.S. House seat in Russellville, Arkansas). Mr Burris and his four children came home the other night to find the family's cat brutally killed and placed on their front porch with the word liberal scrawled on it.

Mr. Aden is running against right-wing Republican Steve Womack for the seat, and both candidates have spoken out against the vile act. Mr. Aden said:

“To kill a child’s pet is just unconscionable. As a former combat soldier, I’ve seen the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. Whoever did this is definitely part of the worst of humanity. It is one thing to engage in civil political discourse, and for Republicans and Democrats to disagree with each other, which is an expected part of the political process. Taking it to this level is beyond unacceptable. . .We suspect this is the action of a rogue individual or group of individuals who are the type of folks that stoop to the lowest common denominator instead of engaging in civil political discourse."


Mr. Womack said:

"The thought of brutalizing any animal to make a political statement, no matter what that statement is, is beyond any standard of decency. The person or people, if there was more than one, who are responsible — they definitely need to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. There should be no tolerance in our political discussion here in this nation for this kind of behavior.”

I am glad that both campaigns have spoken out against this kind of despicable behavior. But I think they make the same mistake that a lot of other people are making by labeling this as political discourse. It is not political discourse. It is a criminal act -- nothing more (and that would be true if "conservative" or anything else had been written on the poor animal). Here in Texas, the culprit(s) would be guilty of at a minimum MAKING A TERRORISTIC THREAT and ABUSE OF AN ANIMAL (and possibly some other crimes).

I live in one of the reddest areas of a red state (Texas Panhandle) that has more than its share of right-wingers and teabaggers. And I can assure you that no jury (even one composed of only teabaggers) is going to consider this depraved act as any sort of political discourse. They will consider it to be a serious crime and punish the offender(s) as harshly as possible. And they would be right to do so.

Political discourse is a treasured right in a democracy. Whether we are on the left or the right, we need to stop dignifying this type of behavior by calling it political discourse. It is not. It is criminal depravity.