It’s a great cover, though, isn’t it?
- The crap the demagogues spew is only inciteful to mentally deranged people.
- The shooter is mentally deranged, so you can’t hold the demagogues responsible in any way.
Turns out, those weren’t “crosshairs” like from a sniper rifle, they were surveyor’s marks. No, seriously. I am not making this up!
The shooter was a paranoid, lunatic, who wrote long, right wing rants with no clear point, was obsessed with guns, and thought the government was after him. Sounds pretty much like an average Tea Partier.
I’m gonna go way out on a limb here and predict that come Monday, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, and assoc. will be spending hours of air time railing about how the godless libruls are shamelessly using this event to demonize conservatives. You know, rather than talking about the event itself, that is.
Meh. This is the Pit, a small forum on a small message board, not a nationwide radio audience and these are insults, not putting people in crosshairs.
What I find strange is the way news stories overlap - the Judge who was killed, Judge Roll, “had been assigned to hear the ethnic studies ban case out of Tucson that involves a new law banning certain ethnic studies programs in public schools”. And that case is all about limiting speech that might be heard as promoting “the overthrow of the United States government” or suggesting “that portions of the Southwest that were once part of Mexico should be returned to that country” or advocating “ethnic solidarity instead of individuality”. In Arizona a class discussion about “privilege as being related to the color of a person’s skin, hair and eyes” is illegal, when the students are Latino anyway, because it may make students “angry and resentful”. Judge Roll was to rule on that.
Meanwhile all Giffords could do, when she was put into the crosshairs by Palin, was comment
Words that were unfortunately very prescient.
Yep, that’s pretty much it. At least from the slim list of facts we have about this case so far.
Of course, we should totally believe her. And when Pat Robertson said Foggy Bottom should be nuked, he obviously meant that it needs more microwave ovens. Clearly.
What, you think I was arguing that there aren’t any extremists in Europe? That’s not what I’m saying at all. There are extremists everywhere, but only in America are the hyper-partisan electorate so desperate to shoehorn the actions of extremists into a “left vs right” narrative.
Just look at this case. Anyone with an unbiased view can clearly see that Loughner is just a simple, common-or-garden lunatic, of the sort that has aspired to kill public servants since the dawn of time. Anywhere else, and that would be the end of that. But not in America, nonono. In America you have hyperpartisan dickhead bloggers on both sides scrutinising his YouTube videos and MySpace pages for any hint, no matter how tenuous, that Loughner isn’t “One of theirs”. Oh, he read the Communist Manifesto, he must be a leftist. No, wait, in one of his YouTube videos he seemed to say something good about the Gold Standard, he must be a rightie. How on earth are we going to figure out which side is responsible for breeding this monster?
Well, that’s the wrong fucking question, and it’s a question that would be given far, far, far less concern in Europe, and people who asked it would be looked on with contempt.
There is no evidence that Loughner was “inspired” by anyone other than the voices in his head. As such, this entire digression is a complete red herring. Once we know for certain what Loughner’s motivation was, we’ll be in a better position to think about whether the tone of political debate in America had something to do with his actions. For all we know, he shot Congresswoman Giffords because the ghost of Mickey Mantle told him she was going to destroy the colour blue, or something.
Pretty much. Only a crazy person would shoot someone; the Tea Party is not made up of crazy people; therefore, anyone who is violent cannot possibly be tied to the Tea Party.
Yes, but in Europe there is no mass populist movement that believes the government is illegitimate and must be removed by force if necessary. Therefore, such questions would indeed be less relevant.
Wow: so you actually know this guy, his mental state, and his motivation? Perhaps the FBI could use you as a profiler. Or maybe you could get a gig in the circus, where your propensity for bullshit could be utilized for fun and profit.
No, what is going on here is NOT trying to shoehorn it into a “left vs right narrative”; it is trying to say that while we believe in free speech that people still must recognize that what they say has consequences and that inflammatory speech should not be outlawed except in the most extreme circumstances, but it should still be restrained. Those making that speech with big megaphones happen to be on the Right and so those defending it are also on the Right. But most of us upset over it are not upset as a matter of partisanship and would just as angry if a Leftist liberal media star was implying that violent action was a good idea … as a rhetorical device, of course.
For you to claim that you in the EU are above those kinds of considerations, when you have the kind of “hate speech” laws you have, and the kinds of discussions about how speech incites violence that you have, and the sides blaming each other’s speech for violence that you have, is just a load.
Did this particular psychotic individual get pushed in this direction by the rhetoric? Well he posted that he defined terrorist and had a bunch of distorted Constitutionalist postings. So it appears likely. But even if *this * case wasn’t, the ongoing rhetoric is still irresponsible.
Excellent post overall. And the first paragraph did make me snicker. The last sentence ignores the 8 years of the GWB presidency, though.
I’m not a Republican (or affiliated with any political party), I do believe in some conservative values, I do think that Palin/Beck/Etc are a bunch of lunatics, and I did say that this rhetoric wasn’t helpful nor good somewhere in this thread.
But I also questioned the veracity of whether or not such inflammatory rhetoric was the root cause of this particular incident.
(In case you were referring to me in your previous post)
But enough about Beck…
I do believe the most likely scenario is pure schizophrenia at this point, but that doesn’t let the right wing off the hook for its irresponsible rhetoric.
Juan Williams was doing that on Fox this very morning.
I suspect you are correct. Unless the DHS discovers that a group was purposefully pointing the crazy and using him as a disposable weapon, his politics will probably be utterly meaningless. And nothing that’s been released yet reliably connects him to any particular group. Might there be info that we don’t yet? I’m sure there is. But we have no way of knowing what that information is or what it would prove.
FWIW, it’s not just people on the Internet saying the rhetoric needs to stop. Politicians on both sides are saying the same thing and throwing the spotlight on Palin. As is Tom Fuentes.
It’s always useful to have a doormat.
I can’t believe it is actually necessary for me to tell people on this board the kind of postings that don’t make sense. His postings make none. You cannot glean Constitutionalist underpinnings anymore than Limbaugh will be gleaning communist underpinnings come Monday.
Stop doing it, people.