Facebook Poll Asks: Kill Obama?

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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The Secret Service is investigating a facebook poll (since taken down) that asked if Obama should be assassinated.

The answer choices: “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe,” and “Yes if he cuts my health care.”

Pretty scary stuff. But what’s scarier is how unsurprising it is.

Really, what’s the difference between this and a gun-toting Obama-hater holding a sign that says “It’s Time to Water the Tree of Liberty“—a nod to a Jefferson quote about neccessary bloodshed? (The health care angle is particularly predictable, considering the feverish odium it’s evoked).

But gimmicks like these tend to serve as an easy access point for greater social ills. And there’s something about a poll like this—its hatred so distilled and its medium so pedestrian—that forces you to confront the question: Just how bad have things become?

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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