Thu Sep 06, 2012 at 10:15 PM PDT
THE CHOICE: When 16 Year-Old Alyssa Douglas Calls For The President’s Assassination on Twitter
by therehastobeawayFollow
President Barack Obama tonight spoke, in the most stark, pressing, and persuasive way I’ve ever heard from him, of The Choice we face as a nation in this election: between an America where we all come together and one in which we’re on our own; between an America that believes in keeping our jobs here and one in which we send jobs to other countries; between an America that believes in the fundamental right for people to live free from fear of ill health or of insurmountable college loans and one in which we have to give up our rights just so that a few can be given even bigger tax breaks; between an America that affirms its commitment to truth and science and one in which we shun the facts of our ailing planet and our impact on it; between an America filled with daughters who advance just as far as sons and one in which that reality never gets realized; between an America in which young immigrant children who’ve arrived without a choice can pursue the full extent of choices we as citizens should all be able to and one in which those same young boys and girls spend their lives reigned in by unfulfilled potential vitiated by the threat of deportation; between an America that is filled with hope for a brighter future and one in which we live within the shadows of the past.
But The Choice is also about something far weightier, something far longer-term than our economic prosperity or the American Comeback or of freedoms to love and marry who you want or pursue whatever dreams you have regardless of your background or your fortunes. It’s something far outside the boundaries of this election alone: it’s a choice between the kind of world in which hope is codified into our laws and values as a nation, and one in which the seeds of division, exclusion, and anger triumph over the greater good—wherein the fabric of society is allowed to erode at the vestigial hands of hate.
I believe that this latter, pernicious world view—that cynicism borne out of a lack of compassion, or out of an abundance of xenophobia, or out of an inability to disagree intellectually without being viscerally disagreeable, or, yes, out of racism—is precisely what drives the engines of inequality and persecution and of the many other ugly virtues that get so easily labeled “human nature”.
Because when a 16 year-old white girl takes to Twitter to openly call for the assassination of our President, you have got to wonder where we, as a society, have gone wrong; why we, as a society, have failed; how we, as a society, have allowed hatred to incubate within such a young, malleable mind. It is a choice that, as President Obama paralleled tonight in his invocation of our rights and responsibilities as a nation and as a society, we all shoulder the burden of making, because the consequences of that choice will shape a future of our own making.
I am speechless at the tweet and what it represents. Let it sink in your conscience once again:
Someone needs to assassinate Obama…like ASAP #DieYouPieceOfShit
That tweet has been RT’d over 300 times. Over sixty people have marked it as a Favorite. The kid has actually gained followers since she tweeted that. I can only hope that the Secret Service and FBI are already contacting her and her parents, as we all should be contacting the Cincinnati Secret Service Field Office at CINCINNATI 513-684-3585 or the FBI via its tips website. As is, ordinary citizens have already pastebinned, (basic, openly, and publicly available) information about her, including her school’s contact info, should you feel inclined to leave an overnight message about hope or give an early morning ring to the Principal.
I just called and left a voice message on the principal’s answering machine saying that, as a former schoolteacher, I believe communities and schools, in addition to parents, share the responsibility of talking to kids about the consequences of their actions, and to guide them away from the kind of hatred behind actions such as these. I also wished the Principal well in light of the possible media firestorm that Alyssa’s tweet may portend. (Alyssa Douglas tweets are coming in at about 20-50 per minute)
We may never be able to stamp out bigotry or hatred or injustice completely, as weeds unto the grass can never truly be eradicated, but we can choose a future in which the kind of tolerance, acceptance, and hope that our President believes in and spoke about tonight grabs these sorts of sentiments by the roots and yanks them from the grip of our society’s youth, because, as we can see in this example of Alyssa Douglas, that grip intensifies perhaps irreparably by the time someone reaches adulthood.
It’s about time we made The Choice for what kind of future we want for tomorrow’s sixteen year-olds and for our nation.
