Glenn Reynolds is upset that people in the press and liberals and Democrats have blamed the shooting in Arizona on the heated rhetoric of Sarah Palin, the Tea Party movement, hate radio, and the right. I think it is reasonable to wait to see what can be learned about the shooter’s political beliefs and espoused motivations before we assign direct blame on anyone. We’ve already learned a little bit about the shooter, and it doesn’t appear that he was motivated primarily by anything he heard or read from the right-wing media wurlitzer. The man seems to have been emotionally unstable and to have been going through a deteriorating descent into anti-social dysfunctional behavior. We don’t know what kinds of media he consumed yet, and so it is hard to say how media influenced his twisted worldview.
It does matter whether the man was influenced by heated political language or not. But there is another issue. The reason that people on the left are so quick to assume a connection is because we not only feel threatened by the right’s rhetoric, we have been predicting that that rhetoric is going to get someone killed. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords predicted that something bad might happen to her because Sarah Palin was targeting her in cross-hairs. Maybe something bad was going to happen to her anyway. But it’s important that people on the right listen to us and take us seriously when we say that we think their tactics are dangerous and irresponsible, and can easily lead to tragedies like the massacre in Arizona. We’re not saying that after the fact to score some cheap political points. We have been saying it.
Sarah Palin targeted 20 members of Congress for elimination. Eighteen of them were voted out of office (or retired). Now, let’s refresh our memories about what Sharron Angle said:
Angle: I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who’s in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical…
Manders: If we needed it at any time in history, it might be right now.
Angle: Well it’s to defend ourselves. And you know, I’m hoping that we’re not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.
So, in other words, Angle was saying that we can deal with tyranny peacefully by electing her. But if she isn’t elected then the only way to deal with Harry Reid is to shoot and kill him. Well, Gabrielle Giffords beat the odds and was reelected. It makes sense then that someone who was following Angle’s advice would decide that killing her was the only recourse left.
However tenuous the logic may be, the rhetoric of Palin and Angle created that kind of logic. And that’s what we object to. So, yes, it does matter whether the shooter was listening to political rhetoric or not. But our objection stands regardless. Don’t talk about us like vermin that need to be eradicated and we won’t assume you are trying to eradicate us. Simple, really.
This is the best resource that I have seen listing all the violent rhetoric & events over the past few years. It is eye opening. These domestic terrorists scare me more than anyone and yet, the right wing does not even knowledge any affect on these people whatsoever.
http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and-freedom/insurrection-timeline
Thanks. Very good list/chronology.
Foreign Policy is running a special to highlight their roots – and ‘terrorism’ plays a predominant place in the meme that takes its place in the fictions promoted as ‘analysis.’ I happen to remember what ‘anal’ refers to…and won’t argue.
Here’s today’s post reviewing theirs and adding more related content.
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2011/01/9-january-conventional-thinking.html
Kindly note. There is absolutely nothing positive and productive about ‘the war on terrorism’. Nor is it possible to identify ‘terrorists’ before the act…unless you count the pathetic products of counterintel entrapment ops.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I deleted my Facebook for a variety of reasons, but my parents commented once saying that I should “tone down some of my views because you never know who sees it, and they might track you down and seek to harm you.”
I brushed them off at the time, but they may have had a point. After all, when I write a column for the newspaper thousands of people read it, and my FB blog is read by several thousands as well.
I’ve been writing newspaper columns & doing political radio in the same city for 15 years. I try to be as accessible as possible (I have a tic about believing media folk should be accountable to their audience, not just their editors or producers), but I’m very careful to keep my home address private. Even so, I had a wacko show up at my front door once. (He convinced a new receptionist that he was a personal friend.) He turned out to be annoying but harmless, but it was still pretty scary. I don’t mind assuming personal risks, but I can’t and won’t put my family at risk.
Anyone who’s been a media figure recognized the tone of Jared Loughner’s MySpace and YouTube rantings. There’s a lot of really disturbed people out there. Death threats come with the territory and are usually frivolous; the people who are serious generally don’t warn you. Neither do many of the obsessives or the people who can’t track from one day to the next.
Anyone who puts themselves before the public regularly, whether an elected official or a higher-profile media person, has a certain amount of my respect regardless of their political views. There are real risks to trying to visibly serve our “democracy.” Little wonder so many good people shy away from public service, and so many of the people who are attracted to it have egos that make them wholly unsuitable for the task. Giffords’ shooting, and the increased security it will inevitably lead to, can only make both things worse.
Many years ago, when I was under the delusion that right wingers could be reasoned with, I participated in a board in which I engaged in somewhat heated rhetoric. I used a pseudonym, but my email was public.
A lunatic on that board copied my email address, and send copies of several of my posts to colleagues that he/she found out about by using my email address, which included specification of my work email.
To the best of my knowledge, no one ever associated the person in the email with me. But, ever since then, I have been more careful about “outing myself” on the intertubes. I use pseudonyms. If an email could be made public, I try to use secondary addresses.
You can’t be too careful. There are lunatics out there.
Where I used to live, in S IL, I would write LTTE in the local paper, which included my home address. A lunatic in that area determined that I was a dangerous liberal socialist, and needed to be gotten back at. So, over the years 2003-2008, I was subscribed to about 50 publications, 2-3 sets of commemorative dog sculptures, various pornographic publications, and so forth. I was fairly certain that I knew who did it, since he also sent me letters to my house, and called occasionally. I did try to get the postal inspectors involved once, but the evidence was too tangential.
There are lunatics out there.
“Don’t talk about us like vermin that need to be eradicated and we won’t assume you are trying to eradicate us. Simple, really.”
Well said, Booman.
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History has shown what is meant by use of fascist terminology.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The people at the San Francisco ACLU and the Tides Foundation were just lucky the wingnut Beck follower Byron Williams who plotted to massacre them was apprehended before he could reach their offices or we might have had a tragedy like the one in AZ months ago. Not to mention “successes” Jim Adkisson and the guy who killed George Tiller.
I completely agree with your points, Booman. It’s possible, however, the only direct intersection of this incident with political issues is gun availability. The young man appears severely disturbed and he and his family all loners. (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/what_we_know_about_attempted_gabby_giffords_assass
in_jared_lee_loughner.php?ref=tn) This incident reminds me of an incident where I was teaching college some years back. Fortunately, due to close communication among students and faculty we were able to prevent a like outcome, but the student, began to lose control and harass and threaten a young woman who made friendly comments to him. Note that this AZ kid attended Congress on your corner in 2007 and received a letter thanking him from congresswoman Giffords, an outreach. In our incident an almost insignificant outreach of a kind young woman was followed by a breakdown of the young man’s defenses against his inner torment, which, believe me, was terrifying, both in its agony and its potential to harm others. I completely agree that the political rhetoric is dangerous and feeds this kind of thing and maybe the issues I’m raising are also involved – necessity for more vehicles of communication to flag this kind of thing before it escalates and a more limited role of guns in civilian life. How to get there? I really don’t know. I’m hoping, however, that this incident generates constructive discussion.
Politico
The issues around this incident are extremely complex and Palin’s allies are being reductive about it. Hopefully the gravity of the situation will prevent Palin allies from shutting down constructive discussion. But do we have the resources for a discussion of something this complex? certainly on this site we do, and perhaps as a nation as a whole we can develop those resources. As I said in comment above, imo Gifford may well have been the target for opposite reasons, that his previous contact with her set up, in his very disturbed mind, a “relationship” between them. Also agree with Tarheeldem’s comment about dragons below.
Tell me how coy denials of responsibility are going to reduce the possibility of another attack. As has been remarked on another site, if it had been an Arab-American muslim who had put crosshairs by the names of 20 moderate Democratic members of Congress, the public would not wait for some deranged muslim kid to shoot one of those members of Congress.
If this is not a coy strategy of assassination with plausible denial, it would be very easy for the Republicans to stop it. Notice that it is not the progressive members of Congress who are on Palin’s list. It is moderates. And in states in which Republicans have the power to appoint replacements, such a tactic could change the composition of Congress dramatically. Even if the Republican governor is honestly appalled at the idea that some in their political movement would adopt such a strategy.
It is not wrong at all to hold Republicans responsible for creating a political culture in which “oh, it was crosshairs, not a target” is an acceptable defense, where a sheriff is attacked by major politicians and a major “news” network for saying that the political climate contributes to the possibility of such acts.
If you lived in the South in the 1960s, you know that the “better sorts” never sully themselves with murder or conspiracy. They just designate the targets and have plausible denial in court. Guess the political climate that created today’s movement conservatism. Haley Barbour had to backpedal because he was caught in the act and called out. Sarah Palin is backpedaling furiously.
It is not the time to be gracious. It is the time to call for a return to civil discourse. And party that will stack a Supreme Court and then use it to throw an election is fully capable of pulling off political murders. When winning becomes the overriding goal because “our civilization and system of government are at risk”, all tactics seem reasonable, even the ones that destroy both our civilization and our system of government.
Let’s this also be a warning for those on the left who want to become a dragon to beat a dragon. You just increase the number of dragons in the world.
But let’s not be gracious to those masters of inflammatory rhetoric who have been whipping up emotions for at least two years. Letting them off the hook guarantees that it will get worse.
members of the House can never be appointed but must always be elected.
Your points are well-reasoned and decent, but what usually happens when a man armed with weapons and bad intentions enters into conflict with a man armed with words and good intentions?
This is the opening salvo of Election 2012; govern yourselves accordingly…
many innocent people die
Here is what it has come to. Heath Shuler (D-NC11) has announced that he will be carrying a gun when he is in his district. If you are a constituent of his, what does that say to you?
If you look at Palin’s list, it isn’t wild-eyed progressives that have crosshairs by their names. And as she pointed out after the election (see Juan Cole’s Informed Comment), 18 of the the 20 on the list with “bullseyes” were defeated in the election. Who wasn’t? Gabrielle Giffords and John Salazar.
she probably crosshaired candidates she thought could be defeated. ever the nasty grifter that she is.
Another aspect is the constant refrain of the government is going to take something away from you and also take away your freedom.
To the editor:
After every tragedy such as the Tucson shooting, we hear the question “Why?” That is not the correct question. The correct question is “How?”
For good or ill, the world is full of persons with a tenuous grasp on reality. As a society, we must ensure that such persons cannot translate their ideas into a bad result. The NRA has made it increasingly difficult to put reasonable restrictions on firearms.
In particular, this person fired 30 rounds in a very short time. How? A high-capacity magazine. He was changing the magazine, and would have shot 30 more, but a brave person stopped him. For $30 or so, the shooter might have had a second magazine fully loaded, and 30 more would be dead or wounded.
The VA Tech atrocity involved a person of marginal sanity, with multiple magazines. He changed magazines quickly, and killed more.
Why do we allow persons to carry 30 round quick-change magazines? The 2nd Amendment offers NO protection for such magazines. They should be banned, NOW.
The intensity of last year’s campaign was so high that it pretty much stopped my blogging. Sheriff Dupnik made the comments he did over the weekend because he knows firsthand what was going on during campaign tv ads, radio shows on 104.1 “The Truth” and billboards across the city last year. It was dangerous and, frankly, has had me on pins & needles since Gabby & Raul won their contests.
The human side of things is that Tucson is like a big, small town. I’m one person removed from two of the victims & have heard common tales of “I worked with so-and-so’s mother for 30 years” or “I know the Green family from church” etc. The past couple of days have been a nightmare that doesn’t end.
Sorry, Manny.
Did you stop blogging out of concern for your safety?
Partly. It just got to be too much & depressing. I could barely handle what i was seeing on street corners via campaign signs, let alone scanning headlines. Do you know how hard I prayed that the shooter wasn’t Latino? That I even have to admit that speaks volumes as to how dangerous it’s become in Arizona.
yeah, I felt like you were a) busy with work, and b) depressed by the tone of politics. I didn’t think you were frightened though, although I can see why that would be a legitimate concern.
I wish I would’ve had the foresight to take pictures of Jesse Kelly’s campaign signs & billboards that were everywhere. One that comes to mind showed Gabby as a marionette with Pelosi holding the strings, that said: “Get rid of Gabby, Pelosi’s Puppet” There were others equating HCR to destroying the country and tyranny. The tea party in Southern AZ is tied heavily to the vigilante groups that patrol the border. They also have a prominent mouthpiece on radio: Jon Justice.
Like I said, the Sheriff had many reasons to call out the vitriol. All the focus on Sarah Palin is warranted, but it just fed an even uglier beast that is local.
Seems appropriate today. RFK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Vll-t0H6A
[BLOCKQUOTE][City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio
April 5, 1968
This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.
It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one – no matter where he lives or what he does – can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.
Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
“Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.
I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.] [/BLOCKQUOTE]
” It makes sense then that someone who was following Angle’s advice would decide that killing her was the only recourse left.”
But Booman, nobody but a maniac would ever take Angle’s advice literally.
And as we all know, there are no violent, gun-toting maniacs in this country.
Glenn Reynolds is upset that people in the press and liberals and Democrats have blamed the shooting in Arizona on the heated rhetoric of Sarah Palin, the Tea Party movement, hate radio, and the right. I think it is reasonable to wait to see what can be learned about the shooter’s political beliefs and espoused motivations before we assign direct blame on anyone. We’ve already learned a little bit about the shooter, and it doesn’t appear that he was motivated primarily by anything he heard or read from the right-wing media wurlitzer. The man seems to have been emotionally unstable and to have been going through a deteriorating descent into anti-social dysfunctional behavior. We don’t know what kinds of media he consumed yet, and so it is hard to say how media influenced his twisted worldview.