I have heard that Angle is crazy and have read a couple of her idiotic statements. I’ve been spending almost all my time out of GD and GQ lately…mostly in MPSIMS, Cafe Society and The Game Room. Frankly, I just hate politics so very much that I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to it.
I don’t know. Maybe Cosmic Relief is right…maybe the nutjob portion of the Republican party has been so busy ramping up the anti-liberal rhetoric that they haven’t noticed how many crazies they’ve gathered under their wing. Or they don’t care.
It may have been already noted in this thread, but Sarah Palin, that shitstain on humanity, has taken down her map with the targets on it and issued a pathetic semi-apology in an attempt to insure her income stream for the future. With any luck her fanbase will finally see her for the opportunistic asswipe that she truly is. Perhaps even Fox will see her as a liability now.
Department of Homeland Security is investigating links between Loughner, and a right-wing extremist group, American Renaissance, which espouses anti-government, anti-immigration, anti Zionist and anti-Semitic causes. Their website advertises Tea Party flags, among other conservative paraphernalia.
I respectfully disagree. Maybe it is easier for me to see because I don’t lean to any side in the US (you’re all right wing nutters to me ), but this very thread is full off “he’s left winger, because of THIS” and “but he’s a right winger because of THIS”. Desperation to link him to “the other side”. It is quite pathetic - and scary - to read.
I didn’t realise you were the entire thread. Many people in this very thread seem to have blaming the other side as their prime concern. Maybe you aren’t one of them, but that doesn’t stop many people in this thread being that way.
So if someone assassinated a politician in your country, you wouldn’t be interested in the source of his motivation or his political affiliations?
Right wingers in the US have been escalating the rhetoric to call everyone who opposes them traitors, communists, trying to destroy the country, etc. This sort of violence is the result of that sort of rhetoric. It’s not just “he’s on your side, haha, I scored a political point!”, it’s more like “your crazy fucking appeal to nuts and demonification of the other side leads to this shit”.
You are just trying to appear above it all and admonish us all, but you’re glossing over what’s actually being said and aren’t demonstrating a very good understanding of what the issues are here. An important part to understand is that people aren’t saying “he’s a conservative, clearly, and you’re all crazy!” but rather specifically targetted at the rhetoric of people like Palin/Angle/Bachman/Beck/etc, birthers, people describing a muslim communist takeover, etc.
“Neener, neener, the stupid Americans are trying to make sense of something horrifying and senseless that has happened to one of their politicians. I shall mock them with my superior, non-American superiority by claiming any attempt to decipher the motives or influences of this madman are finger pointing!”
amanset, remember that in the U.S., the RW rhetoric of the past two years is not new, but rather has built on top on prior anti-socialist and racist rhetoric. That is why the word *socialist *has become an epithet, even though it carries no inherent negative connotation for the sane.
In fact, socialist has been so overused that we’re coming across more and more uses of the word “communist” to try to make sure it’s as strong an epithet as it needs to be. You want to raise the top marginal tax rate 3%? COMMUNIST!!!
Eventually, communist will become too weak a word and then we’ll have the stage of “you don’t want to cut taxes 10%? SUPERCOMMUNIST!!!”
Eventually, this will lead to accusations of "you don’t want to give corporations subsidies across the board? YOU’RE A MECHAHITLER!
Also, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders were frequently called communists as a way to make them seem alien and un-American.
Here is a photo of segregationist Lester Maddox. Note the similarity to today’s Tea Party in calling liberals “socialists” and “communists,” and masking racism in the cloak of the right to free enterprise and private property. Jesse Helms played a similar role in translating racist sentiment by working and middle class whites into economic policies that favored capitalism.
Just to explain that race & class and racism & economic policy are historically intertwined in the U.S.
The girl knew him in high school, which would have been early to mid-2000s. I can easily see him ranting about Bush or the government in general, and in an era when any dissent got you branded as an unpatriotic pinko, I can see her mistaking that as left-wing.
Yeah, the American Renaissance wasn’t too keen on Bush either. They supported his social conservatism, but disliked the Zionist stance of his administration.
Well, he’s absolutely right. From an outside perspective, it’s really fucking weird watching partisans on the left and right fobbing this nutcase off onto the other side like some demented game of pass-the-parcel. I can’t imagine this happening to anywhere near this extent in Europe.
Let us assume that much of the rhetoric that comes off as violence inspiring is not intended to actually incite violence, but is just used because using rhetoric like that gets attention, gets listeners and viewers, and sells books. They don’t really want some one to rid them of these meddlesome politicians anymore then Henry II really wanted Beckett murdered.
The issue still remains that such extreme rhetoric and graphics, even if meant only as rhetorical devices, are being sold to crowd that you know contains an overrepresentation of those who are as unstable as this young man is and more.
A variety of commentators have been expressing concern for months that the sort of rhetoric being used by some elements of the Right (not all of the Right, but some), the portrayal of those who are not as Right as they are as “the enemy” that is in our sights, would inspire some crazy to do something like just like this. The response to those concerns has been to continue with the same inflammatory rhetoric.
No, the Becks and Limbaughs and Palins and Angles did not pull the trigger. They did make this man psychiatrically deranged; he was already ill. But their irresponsible inflammatory rhetoric (in pursuit of personal gain more than political ends to my eye) shares culpability in inciting him to act.
The man was/is unstable. Maybe if those passionately using inciting rhetoric were liberal anarchists against globalization he would have aimed at a member of the Right. But there are not too many on the Left getting large soapboxes saying those sort of things; those on the Left who say that are, appropriately, marginal voices. Those on the Right saying that are given nation-sized megaphones and taken seriously as people of power and influence.
A nine year child is dead, as are five others. Those putting targets over those who they disagree with and calling to reload as rhetorical devices, even after the risks of doing so had been pointed out in the publc sphere, share moral responsibility for these deaths.
And I doubt that they will change their approaches even after this.
Except it’s bullshit spin by one side of the debate.
On one hand, you have a party that rallies its base by attempting to portray the other side in apocalyptic terms. They’re STEALING YOUR FREEDOM! THEY ARE TRAITORS! THEY ARE COMMUNISTS! etc etc. They hint that the “true patriots” should “reload” and “take out” the opposing congressmen with targetting reticles next to their districts.
On the other hand, you have… a youtube video that says the guy was interested in the communist manifesto.
The part of this that you two are deliberately ignoring is that this action is exactly the sort of thing that the rhetoric on one side could inspire. Elected democrats and democratic pundits on major networks aren’t talking about how they need to take their country back from the traitors who are destroying our way of life via second amendment solutions.
So essentially there are two sides of this - one side saying “see, this is the result of what happens when you hint to nutbags that they should be killing their political opponents” and the other side saying “uh… we don’t know yet, maybe he’s one of those left wing violent crazies that I heard existed somewhere once!” and you’re viewing them as equivelant sides trying to score points by passing the guy to the other side.
The thread isn’t really about “he’s your guy” “no u”! so much as “What do you expect to happen when you incite violence against political opponents?” with one side dodging and desperately spinning.
Indeed, the Tuscon Tea Party has condemned the shooting, but refused to tone down their rhetoric, saying, “I think anytime you start suppressing freedom of speech, I think it’s wrong. I live here and I didn’t hear anything [in the 2010 campaign] that concerned me in terms of inciting violence.”
In the 2010 election, Giffords’ opponent, Jesse Kelly, said, “Get on target for victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”
), but this very thread is full off “he’s left winger, because of THIS” and “but he’s a right winger because of THIS”. Desperation to link him to “the other side”. It is quite pathetic - and scary - to read.
