I found the condemnation of a recent sign encouraging people to vote silly. The sign said, ‘Ready, Aim, Vote!’ with gasp! gun sights. Anybody can tell it was not encouraging violence, but encouraging people to take charge of their future by voting.
I know the response to my saying this is “Yes, but what if someone who is mentally unbalanced sees the sign and does act violently?” My rebuttal is that if we want to go into conjecture, then my scenario is what if all military metaphors are removed then when a mentally unbalanced person does hear real incitement to violence, they will be affected much more strongly than if the political discourse is dotted with military metaphors. There are endless “What If” scenarios and I maintain military metaphors does not incite violence. It certainly was not the cause for the Arizona shooting.
While I would prefer political debate to be civil, I maintain using military metaphors is not dangerous or uncivil. Removing all metaphors of a military nature seems like another move towards useless political correctness.
Vanessa Barr
Kent
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