As more information is gathered following the shooting tragedy in Arizona, it didn't take long for people to jump to conclusions before facts have been determined.
It's become a weird, macabre obsession among American bloggers to attach an ideology to a murder. It's bloodsport. For me, mental instability precedes legitimate political excuses for murder. It's equally suspect to blame the "politically charged" environment which then degrades into false accusations based on circumstantial evidence driven by hyperbolic drivel.
Jared Loughner:
Uh. Right.
Interesting Tweet:
As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy
By his own admission, his favorite books and movies are....read here.
None of these guys who act this way are anything.
Just frail, emotionally and mentally disturbed individuals who had their souls blackened.
Put another way, the guy was probably plain nuts. He's no more a speaker for political revolution than Marc Lepine was for male rights.
Actually, it is the "political environment" that encourages this type of thing. On one side, you have people saying everyone should be armed, without anything remotely related to a statement, like, "Not everyone should own a gun." This was clearly one of those people, but you would never hear that from the side which has convinced itself that guns are the answer to everything.
ReplyDeleteThen you have calls for violence coming people blogging all the way up to elected officials. What do you think Rand Paul meant when he was talking about "a second amendment solution" if he loses the election? What do you think all the secession talk is? It's all a call for violent outrage.
It's certainly possible for anyone of any belief to do something like this, but only one side is encouraging it.
Ok.
ReplyDeleteWell, here in Quebec our national politicians who claim to be democratic use what can be interpreted as violent rhetoric all the time when it comes to secession. A lot of what they say can be interpreted as a calls to arms.
They do the same thing with language. They declare a type of covert war against English - just observe the laws they come up with.
Now we have a new militia group advocating violence. So. Who do we blame?
It's a chicken before the egg, catch-22 type thing.
I agree politicians don't help with certain language. The last sentence you make is fair.
BUT, in the case of this guy, MORE of a case can be made he was driven by, if we want to attach an ideological tag, more than just Paul and Angle.
Yes, he seems to have had anti-government issues but I think his profile speaks for itself. A friend described him as "liberal." He read Marx (not exactly Palin-Tea Party reading material) and considered Fah.911 a favorite movie etc. Seems to me he was equally "left-wing."
Last, his railing against a lack of imagination - That's a very left-wing thing.
So at the very minimum, he was a mixed bag of confused nonsense imbued with mental instability.
Unless somewhere he said, "I did this because Rand Paul said that and the GOP and Palin needed me to save the party" type thing. But he didn't. The rest is just circumstantial guessing on our part. Reminds me of the guy who flew his plane into the building in Texas. No sooner had the new came out, the narrative was he was a crazy, right-wing nut - which wasn't the case if I remember correctly. Sounded more like a desperate guy to me. I digress.
Another issue I have with blaming public personalities like Beck and the like is, well, it's insipid and leaves itself open to hypocrisy and counterfactuals (like I said, I used to listen to liberal radio during Bush and lemme tell ya, I heard FAR WORSE rhetoric than I ever heard from Limbaugh).
Think of it, may as well blame all types of art when it meets reality. Do we blame Grand Theft Auto for all car thefts and murders? Judas Priest for suicide? Do we blame Howard Stern for porn addiction or rape?
And what, Obama didn't engage in what could be perceived as inflammatory rhetoric on race and class warfare in pasrticular?
That's why I take the position the shooter was a confused and mentally unstable.