In addition to what Mistermix said about civility, the other (and I think more important) dodge that is going on is the attempt to pretend that everyone is blaming Palin and only Palin for the tragedy. It’s just nonsense. Yes, there was some lashing out at Sarah Palin over the crosshairs surveyor’s symbols, which is to be expected, but no one thinks that Sarah Palin is directly responsible for the murders. What is reasonable to discuss is a climate of hate and paranoid fear, fueled by lies and misinformation, that creates an environment in which lunatics like Loughner might be motivated to act out their revenge fantasies. For that, there is no doubt which party is responsible. Read some of the media effects literature (and, like any discipline, there is a wide range of conflicting opinions- look at the recent Miller discussions on Cultivation theory)- while there are debates as to the extent that these things influence people, there is no doubt that what we see every days does influence our thoughts and behaviors. And, as usual, it is the most unbalanced members of society who are most susceptible to this sort of rhetoric. No one in their right mind thinks Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh are going to pull out a gun and start shooting people. The concern is one of their listeners, detached from reality and fueled by years of hate, might. That is not an unreasonable fear or concern.
Trying to pretend everyone is just blaming poor old Sarah for the murders isn’t just a lie, it is an attempt to avoid any discussion of what is happening in our country. It’s the same old MO for these guys- “Sarah Palin didn’t pull the trigger!” is fundamentally no different than “global warming is a lie because it snowed today.” It’s an attempt to distract from a more complicated, nuanced, and accurate depiction of what is going on in the world. The attempt to say “the left is blaming Sarah Palin” is a way to distract from the multiple things that can lead to and encourage an event like this.
Dave
Remember Poplawski in Pittsburgh? He killed three cops and was heavily influenced by Glenn Beck.
Add: I think that is the point too many people are missing. The rhetoric has already caused violence and death.
Villago Delenda Est
But, John, don’t you understand?
EVERYTHING is about Sarah!
ant
hmmm….
one wonders if introducing the term “blood libel” helps bolster SP’s case; you know, that people are blaming her, and her only…
Southern Beale
Along those lines, check out the losing Tea Party candidate and his supporters verbally attacking winning Democratic candidate Bob Filner on election night. So civil, so gracious in defeat! Terrified Filner’s children, and you can see why. It was practically a riot.
PopeRatzy
I don’t disagree, the issue to me is not so much the lies and distortion but breaking through to those that only listen to the lies and distortion because those feed some inner need of their own. As long as there are significant numbers of people willing to give credence to the lies and distortion then the lies and distortion will continue to be reported by the media as a counter to the facts. The media has some need to describe the story in those generalized “he said, she said” terms so as not to appear partisan. In lieu of reporting facts they now report opinion as fact.
ant
i find it very hard to believe that Sarah and her whole team were *all* ignorant of the term’s history, whilst giving her ‘boom goes the dynamite’ you tube speech…..
stuckinred
Here’s what my congressman thinks:
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) linked this view to the current occupant of the White House.
“Fellow patriots, we have a lot of domestic enemies of the Constitution, and they’re right down the Mall, in the Congress of the United States – and right down Independence Avenue in the White House that belongs to us,” he declared. “It’s not about my ability to hunt, which I love to do. It’s not about the ability for me to protect my family and my property against criminals, which we have the right to do. But it’s all about us protecting ourselves from a tyrannical government of the United States.”
Mudge
Perhaps the way to phrase the question is whether in the absence of Palin’s crosshairs and invective from folks like Beck (and possibly some local Tucson Beck/Limbaugh clone) would Loughner have shot a Congresswoman? Would he have become obsessed about people treading on his rights? I can’t read his mind, but your average lunatic isn’t real creative.
Jeff Spender
During my first couple of years as an undergrad, I spent a lot of time researching media effects, and studied under a professor, Brad Bushman, who is a leading voice in this field of study.
I can say that I am on the side of media effects having a profound infuence to the way people perceive and act in the real world. They don’t even have to be mentally unbalanced (think of the mob mentality).
I won’t go into a long-winded, elitist academic diatribe, but I will say that I do think that Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and all of the other violent rhetoricians are culpable.
The fact that our society denies the effects that rhetorically denouncing fellow citizens as enemies and traitors has with respect to the way people perceive of the world is very disconcerting. We’ve been desensitized to violence, and now it seems that we allow narratives to construct reality and dictate fact.
This is a sad state if affairs.
campionrules
@Mudge:
I’m pretty sure that Loughner was targeted in on Giffords from several years before. I really doubt that he was influenced by Palin and her ilk.
nancydarling
Check out this blog from someone who lives in Giffords’ district.
http://larrygellman.blogspot.com/2011/01/some-thoughts-from-tucson-truth-and.html
Also this from Bob Filner’s appearance on The Last Word:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3096434/#41050066
If I ever decided to armor up it would be to protect myself from these crazies and the gun collectors who think engraving “You Lie” on a gun is a cool idea. Filner is also Jewish like Giffords which makes tossing around Blood Libel accusations even more egregious.
I don’t know where this all ends, but I do know that we all need to stand up to this insanity or they’ll come for us next.
Violet
Theory? Literature? Discipline? What are you, a pointy head elitist sitting in an ivory tower? Real Murkins don’t need that fancy book learnin’ to understand how the world works. /teabagger
As I said to a friend years ago, if media didn’t affect how people behaved then advertising companies wouldn’t be spending money on ads and commercials. End of story.
campionrules
And John… Having wandered across the GOS on the days immediately following the shooting I’m pretty sure that there were plenty people willing to blame Palin directly for causing the shooting. I don’t think any national media has directly blamed her, but I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that nobody did.
shecky
The ferocity which folks like Palin deny responsibility seems to have put the cart before the horse, since assigning blame has been fairly weak. It’s as if Palin and similar knew better than to spew their usual lies, and fully expected to engage damage control when something happened. It looks like the actions of someone who knowingly plays with fire rather than someone who genuinely believes they pose no threat to their political targets.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Oh no, Uncle Freddy didn’t die.
Whenever they do this it reminds of the Jerky Boys call where Kissel puts his son on the phone and somehow he thinks the other guy told him his Uncle Freddy died.
Democrat: “Folks on the right and left need to tone down the rhetoric.”
Republican: “Sarah Palin didn’t kill Uncle Freddy! Oh my god, Uncle Freddy is dead!”
eyepaddle
Wasn’t it an enraged (not deranged) Glenn Beck fan who shot up the Unitarian Universalist Church in East Tennessee? I am over on teh google in another tab, but I’m mainly seeing the “day of” reports and not the aftermath reporting.
Does anybody remember this a bit more clearly?
stuckinred
You must read Pat Lang’s analysis.
John Cole
@campionrules: You know what I mean. Of course there are idiots somewhere blaming her, but no one of any consequence.
danimal
Spot on, John Cole.
Distract and deceive. Same as it always was. They’re molding the debate in such a way that, unless Loughner has a Sarah shrine in his basement, all conservatives can say anything without consequence.
superking
I think the other thing to remember is that right-wing rhetoric has actually led people who were not obviously crazy to violent acts. Tom Scocca at Slate gives us four examples from the past two years alone: http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/archive/2011/01/12/who-i-wanted-to-kill-was-every-democrat-in-the-senate-house-where-the-notion-of-right-wing-political-murder-comes-from.aspx
J
John C. & Mistermix both have terrific posts this morning. There is a point that I think is implicit in MM’s contribution that I want to make absolutely explicit. It’s the lies, the vicious slanderous lies, e.g., ‘death panels’, which are poisoning the atmosphere and, quite possibly ,contributing to the violence on the part of the nutters. If that were what was meant by ‘incivility’ a campaign in favor of civility would be a fine thing. But so long as calling a lie what it is is regarded as a breach of civility equal or worse to telling the lie in the first place, we’ll get nowhere. That’s why I think there is something a little misleading about complaining about the ‘tone’ of public discourse. The problem is less that the rhetoric is too heated, if that means Sarah Palin and the tea party types could tone it down and still say what they really want to say, than that there every word, including ‘and’ and ‘the’ is a vicious slanderous lie.
campionrules
@John Cole:
Oh I get that. I just find it a disturbing trend that some on the left – anonymous internet commentators to be sure – can’t comprehend the difference between levels of culpability. Coupled with the fact that there is zero evidence that Loughner was influenced by right wing talk hate or Palin.
As far as I know, there’s no connection at all.
Senyordave
There could be a hundred people doing crazy things with a paper trail a mile long connecting directly to Limbaugh, Beck, et. al., and the media narrative would be “there is no direct connection, and both sides to do it”.
In terms of complete off-the-wall crazy, you have the Beck diatribe about Michael Moore.
BECK: Hang on, let me just tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out — is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus — band — Do, and I’ve lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, “Yeah, I’d kill Michael Moore,” and then I’d see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I’d realize, “Oh, you wouldn’t kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn’t choke him to death.” And you know, well, I’m not sure.
Any consequences to Beck? If Murdoch/Ailes was a member of the human race that would have been Beck’s last show ever on Fox.
I sometimes don’t know what’s worse, cynical trash like Beck or Limbaugh who use the hate to make money, or brain-dead politicians like Jan Brewer or Gohmpert who actually believe the crap.
I believe in karma, so I take some comfort thinking that everything will balance out eventually. We all have to answer at some point for what we say and do with our lives.
Scott
Off-topic: What’s the link for the Balloon Juice guide to contacting a congressman? I need to forward it to some people, and my search-fu is weak…
eyepaddle
Hmm, as it turns out he Adkisson was a fan of O’Reilly, Hannity and Savage.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-kim/right-wing-tn-church-shoo_b_115789.html
nancydarling
@campionrules: It is not directly Palin’s, fault but she contributes mightily to the whole violent, take our country back, armed revolution ideas that are out there. I would guess that none of the “rioters” at Filner’s post election video are certifiably mentally ill. They are certifiably evil and ignorant.
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
Here in Oregon, teabagger favorite DOCTOR Art Robinson lost to incumbent Dem Peter DeFazio, and petulantly refused to make a concession call to DeFazio, and refused to talk to the media about the outcome.
WAH! WAH! WAH!
stuckinred
@Villago Delenda Est: That dude is a piece of work.
Paul Broun is a doctor as well.
Villago Delenda Est
@campionrules:
So, in other words, you’re just missing the entire point.
OK, no problem.
different church-lady
I think you’re right John, but the problem is that of all the creeps of the Right, Palin is the most skilled at baiting the left. The crazy she brings is just too magnificent to ignore, and they just OBSESS over her. And it’s just like internet trolling: attention is the food trolls feed on, their life source.
So that’s how it goes: she lays out the stupid, gets under the left’s skin, nobody talks about anything but Palin for days and she gets to twist that attention into more proof about how assailed she is. Wash, rinse, repeat.
p.a.
Remember when Bill Clinton getting a hummer and lying in a court proceeding was going to destroy American society by bad example? But putting targets on Democratic pols, saying they want to destroy`the nation, and shooting guns at targets with Dem pol initials on them? Nothing to see here, just move along…
David
In terms of responsibility, Palin is more like second-hand-smoke.
Don
My thought about all this was “I wonder how many of these people who are defending right-wing violent rhetoric ever stood up and decried video games or rap music?”
I’d bet quite a few. Talk about IOKIYAR. Can we we rush out a NWA (neocons with attitude) album and capitalize on this new-found love of free expression?
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
@campionrules: You’re missing the point here. If Loughner had an issue with Giffords from years ago, and then is steeped in a cultural debate where one side uses violent rhetoric against Giffords as well, that can have a psychological effect on him and affect his actions.
To say the two are unrelated is just as silly as saying that Palin was directly responsible.
Villago Delenda Est
@shecky:
The thing is, Sheriff Dupnik made a pretty generic call to tamp down the violent rhetoric and was IMMEDIATELY savaged by John Kyl for pointing fingers and being “unprofessional.” Dupnik named no one, made no references to teabaggers or any political movement at all, and Kyl was on defense AT ONCE.
Oh, these motherfuckers KNOW that their rhetoric contributed to this incident, now they’re trying to avoid the consequences of it.
Scott
@Scott: Never mind, I found it. (though it should be glued to the sidebar somewhere, ’cause it’s mad useful…)
Chris
@Dave:
To quote me from a few threads ago… if tomorrow somebody shot up a church in Egypt, people would blame the Salafis, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to do so.
And if later it came out that the shooter was just a regular asshole and not a Salafi, people would still ask, “why a Christian church and not some other target?” And then they’d ask, “isn’t it probable that Salafi rhetoric against Christians, and the examples of Salafi attacks on Christians in recent years, created an atmosphere where Christians are considered acceptable targets by a shit ton of people?”
And the response from millions, with American conservatives leading the charge, would be “DUH.” Something worth thinking about, IMO.
Nylund
If someone gets poisoned from the public well, everyone who put poison in the well is partially responsible. Screaming, “I put 3 gallons of cyanide in there, and he died of arsenic so its not my fault” doesn’t cut it.
chopper
obviously, talk of ‘toning it down’ isn’t to mitigate the behaviour of delusional schizophrenic people. crazy people are going to do crazy stuff no matter how civil we all are to each other, and we can’t have our society’s speech constructed around them.
but there’s still a big contingent in this country that aren’t crazy but still pretty close to delusional and paranoid. the shit you hear out of some of these 28%ers is just bat shit crazy. i worry more about these guys than i do schizophrenics, and the former are the people who are more of a threat to our safety than a lone nut. they’re the reason i feel the tone needs to change cause another decade of this same nutty talk and some of these guys are going to go full mcveigh and shit.
different church-lady
Reading through the comments, I think everyone’s missing something: the problem with Palin’s worldview and rhetoric is not just that a madman might take it literally. The problem is what it says about her own character, and the kind of example she sets for political discourse.
She’s the national equivalent of “locker room cancer” — the guy on the team who’s ‘tude is so corrosive that it drags everyone else down. Any sane person who listens to her should be having a big “WTF?” reaction long before they arrive at imagining someone taking her literally.
Chris
@shecky:
I agree. The “DON’T YOU DARE BLAME SARAH PALIN!” outbursts came before anyone actually blamed her, not after. Guilty fleeing were no man pursueth, etc.
Violet
@Scott:
I’m not sure this is the final iteration, but I found it first: https://balloon-juice.com/2010/01/22/reminder-2/
chopper
@Don:
which is really funny, because songs and video games and movies are entertainment. people play video games knowing full well that it isn’t reality.
the stuff you hear on the radio may be ‘classified as entertainment’, but the guy is talking about reality, about real people. playing a video game where i cut up zombies with an axe or listening to some song about pimpin aint like listening to some radio guy telling me that nancy pelosi is the devil and wants to round you and your family up and put them in death camps.
terraformer
@PopeRatzy:
It’s not that the media has a need to report this way; rather, I think it’s a directive to them to do so if they want to keep their jobs. A directive issued by the very people and entities who profit from the confusion and turmoil of today’s discourse.
And those people and entities own the airwaves by long ago recognizing the power inherent in media to inculcate preferred worldviews that keep people fighting each other instead of fighting them. As long as people point at each other instead of at the banksters and their associates, we’ll continue down the road of repeating our past (i.e., rich get richity-rich, people rise up, blood flows, semblance of balance restored…rich get richity-rich, people rise up?).
Jeff Spender
@p.a.:
I wonder to what extent the rhetoric on the right has made this a rhetorical and political norm? I’ve noticed in my discussions with right-wingers that they don’t see any problem with violent, revolutionary, or accusatory rhetoric.
It’s interesting that making death a rhetorical possibility is seen as normal, when asking that people take responsibility for their words an actions is unconscionable.
“Palin is under attack.” Where does a thought pattern like that come from? I also find it funny that people who claim not to trust the government or politicians will put a lot of trust in a person like Palin.
piratedan
@stuckinred: guess Pat didn’t get the memo or listen to the President’s speech when it was stated clearly that the young girl was BORN on 9/11 and was featured in a book about children born on that fateful day an perhaps get a glimmer that that could be a link of some kind.
El Tiburon
Look, there will not nor never be the possibility of civil discourse with the current incarnation of ‘conservatives’ or Teabaggers. They are incapable of civility or compromise. Period.
These Authoratarians only care about imposing their will and domination over the liberals and the Muslims and the blacks.
The only avenue back to civility is for them to be purged from their party. But they own the party, the MSM ain’t gonna help, and sans Alan Grayson, Bernie Sanders and the occasional Anthony Weiner,no major politician is going to call these buffoons out in any major way.
JCT
Yup– nothing like the very effective “shiny-object” approach to changing the subject.
And I agree with you, different church-lady. She does coarsen our political discourse. I have no idea in the world why we are paying any attention to this useless human being.
Really — I defy anyone to look at the front page of the NYT today and not choke up. I found my gruff husband red-eyed over the picture from Christina’s funeral (the one with her little brother). Now that’s the fucking POINT, not the endless preening of that attention-whore from Wasilla. Doesn’t she have a kid not much older? Why can’t she just STFU for once?
This is why Obama nailed it and Palin failed (for the 1,000th time). Until we ignore the noisemakers who care only for themselves and their own pockets we will never make progress.
@stuckinred Right– glad to see that his reading comprehension is so advanced given she was born on 9/11 . WTF
agrippa
Palin is not alone.
There are other fire eaters and hot heads putting out rhetoric. I do not know if they believe it, or if they are out for what they can get.
I do see a disconnect between reality and the rhetoric. This is not the 1850’s nor is it the 1960’s. I do not see any ‘burning issues’ as in those two decades.
Perhaps it may be unfinished business from the 1960’s.
Villago Delenda Est
@piratedan:
Pat’s overreacting, and I understand where it’s coming from.
The entire cult of the wallow that has developed over those attacks sickens me. It’s going to be, if possible, even worse this year, as it’s the 10th anniversary of the attacks.
I asked my parents who were fairly young people (Dad 21, Mom 16) at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, if the country commemorated that attack anything like what I call “The Wallow” today. Both shook their heads, rather sadly, no.
Part of that is, I’m sure, is that an actual war, not a make a deserting sack of shit feel good about himself war, was being fought. The other is that the cult of victimhood didn’t exist like it does now, and we’re seeing that in the entire reaction of the teabaggers and various other wingtards to this tragedy. The actual dead and wounded aren’t the victims here, obviously. Those who used rifle ranges to raise money to run against Congresswoman Giffords are!
bcinaz
Sarah Palin is a Public Nuisance.
Sarah Palin made the backlash about Sarah Palin.
jibeaux
@piratedan:
Good grief. You’d think someone could at least make the connection that a child born on 9/11/01 and killed in the Tucson rampage wasn’t as well served by this world as she deserved to be.
Culture of Truth
“Sarah Palin didn’t pull the trigger!”
“He was a liberal because he read Mein Kampf!”
PTirebiter
I could not agree more. Had McConnell or Boenher been responsible leaders during the Death Panel frenzy, the tone would have been far more civil. The friendly fire may have cost them their lives but real patriots step up.
sixers
@John Cole:
Thats no way to speak about your front page poster, ABL. Check out her first post on the matter hours after the shooting. It was a real blamefest based on total assumptions with no knowlege of the shooters motives or backround.
P.S. I hate Sarah Palin but also hate when people on the left do things in a way that makes it seem like the left is as crazy as the right.
matoko_chan
Membah, the conservative elites are still trying to basegank Our Sarah.
they all know she cant win the general, and she has a damn good shot (heh) at taking the nom.
they would love to make her the pharmekos in this.
Paula
Reap what you sow.
Palin and her ilk have been out saying awful things about this president and the democratic party. They speak of him like he is an enemy to the nation. When you call someone a socialist, unpatriotic, dangerous, etc…, you will be blamed if something bad happens whether fair or not that is just the way it us.
Fame is a bitch, it cuts both ways. Sarah should sooth herself eith the millions of dollars she has made.
Lastly, how long until Sarah makes money off of this? I. Sure she is already having her next book written as I type this.
I wonder, what will the title of her new book be? Any thoughts?
Punchy
Missouri gets blamed for this shit once again.
Villago Delenda Est
@Culture of Truth:
These are the people George Orwell was warning us about.
iLarynx
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/41050066#41050066
The statement made at about 3:00 seems to be the key:
“This is not an isolated incident. Everybody who’s trying to put this off on a deranged individual is making a political statement in and of itself because they are absolving themselves of the responsibility of their words and their actions.”
hildebrand
I am convinced that Palin is really no different than Limbaugh and Beck, in that all three of them use their shtick to make money. I simply don’t think that any of them actually buy what they are saying, they say it because they know that it rakes in the cash. The more provocative the better.
Palin released the video, not because she needed to try to salvage her reputation (she doesn’t have one, and she likely realizes that, and doesn’t care), but to make sure that the dead-enders would continue to shovel money in her direction.
These people are guilty of many things – hatred, bigotry, incitement to violence – but they are all ancillary bits serving the larger purpose of hauling in cash. At the heart of it all is cynicism – they will say whatever needs to be said to fleece the rubes.
This cynicism also provides them with an impervious defense system, as they simply say whatever needs to be said to keep the cash flowing. They are carnival barkers, unashamed in selling tickets to the geek show, because the end goal is already achieved once the ticket is sold, once the cash is in the pocket – it simply doesn’t matter what happens after that moment.
Of course, what they don’t realize, or simply don’t care about, is the fact that their actions have serious consequences. It matters not a whit. There are other rubes to fleece, and others to offend so that they never fade from view because the rubes will only part with their hard earned cash if they trot out a new geek to gawk at on a regular basis.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@campionrules:
You’re starting to sound like a global warming denier. Unless the guy just becomes magically sane and yet remembers everything he watched and felt, there is no scientific way to prove causation. If that’s our standard, then we might as well throw the entire judicial system away.
What we have, though, is a man – and not the first – who shoots someone who has been both directly, by name, and indirectly, by party affiliation and being in the government, targeted by violent sounding rhetoric. And his writings and statements have suggested that he has listened to this same rhetoric.
While, no, there is no smoking gun (even the best idioms are violent), there is some circumstantial evidence. But more importantly, the rhetoric they spew is designed to do nothing but intimidate. They’re not saying this to save democracy, they’re doing it to keep their power.
jwb
@different church-lady: I tend to concur: Palin won’t really disappear from the scene until we meet her actions with a collective shrug. A good chunk of her support comes from those who like anything that and anyone who pisses off liberals. What’s a little odd is that the left’s attitude toward Palin has significantly shifted over the past two years from actual fear to something more like hope that the Republicans will be forced by the crazifaction to run her as their presidential candidate, which might in turn allow the ultimate staking of the crazy. (Even a devastating defeat won’t in fact stake the crazy, but that’s another issue.)
jwb
@p.a.: of course, the problem with this particular formulation of the problem is that you can reverse it and hold the left as equally hypocritical.
Villago Delenda Est
@iLarynx:
Geeze. The Sheriff of Pima County, who is in a unique position to correlate incidents and detect patterns, indeed, that’s his FRACKKING JOB, makes a very measured, calm statement that perhaps a lot of people engaging in violent rhetoric might just tip a mentally disturbed person over the edge from ranting on the Intertubes to sending round downrange at a congresswoman is the guy causing the problem!
So, we’ve established the pattern: rhetoric from a Democrat is hurtful, rhetoric from a Republican is not.
Well. I’m glad we cleared THAT up!
ChrisS
Insurrection Timeline
I’m sure this has been posted around and read by everyone, but going through this timeline from the coalition to stop gun violence is fucking scary.
The GOP strategy is too convince a not-insignificant number of people that all government is after them and only by electing GOP nominees can we, together, prevent the end times.
And the scariest fucking thing to me, is what gun laws has the Obama Administration enacted? I can’t think of any. People who want to listen are being inflamed by political rhetoric that has little foundation in reality. Joe Engineer who listens to Beck probably won’t do shit, but his buddy Dave, who just lost his job and has a violent personality might.
jwb
@different church-lady: Agreed, except I don’t think Palin is even close to being the most corrosive voice of the right.
ChrisS
@hildebrand:
That’s she’s referred to as a snowbilly grifter.
I don’t believe for one second that she’ll run against Obama or even primary for the GOP nod. She’s a bombthrower looking for a quick buck.
lllphd
there is, i think, a helpful perspective that might (i think) resonate with some of the more adult members of the echo chamber.
that perspective is based on the fact that these fragile minds, like loughner’s, are truly operating like children’s minds, but in grown-up bodies with grown up knowledge structures they can no longer navigate logically. like young children, they are fully ego-centric, hence the delusions of grandiosity (i am the center of the universe, i can control your mind and even events) and its flip side, paranoia (those who control the universe are after me, they are destroying my mind and the world – in their minds, somewhat equivalent). like young children, they are unable to think in any way but concretely; the complexities of abstract logic and drawing rational conclusions, or even considering abstract future consequences that might arise from their actions, these are all lost to them.
add to these factors the raging hormonal shifts (that may sometimes even trigger the slide toward psychosis) and peer demands and expectations, and we’re talking the most fragile and vulnerable minds on the planet. with the singular exception of children.
which leads to the second premise of this perspective has to do with how adults take responsibility for these vulnerable children, how impressionable they are, and how our actions – which are modeled by of course even the most stellar children – impact the vulnerable.
most parents are exceedingly careful to watch their speech around young children. they are careful not to expose them to violence or violent media. they protect their eyes and ears so they will not model these behaviors.
we must do the same in public, because there are these “least among us” who are so impressionable to our speech and actions and especially our sentiments. i once watched a little girl whose mother was a friend of mine who had openly expressed (not so much in words, but in her obvious freezing up and withdrawal) her dislike of another child’s mother. this little girl, when that other mother came to pick up her child, walked over, looked up at this woman, and promptly shoved her, then ran quick as a bunny back to her mom’s side and buried her head.
the subtleties get across. we must all take responsibility for every single thing we do, every action, every word, even every thought, because all speech and actions begin there. those who demand (as boortz does) their right to be angry and express that anger with loud epithets and visible guns are treading on my right to feel safe and unthreatened.
we need to be articulating these things at every opportunity.
John Cole
@sixers: ABL was angry, and did not blame the whole thing on Sarah Palin. I can understand anger. You warn about this shit happening, worry about it happening, and lo and behold, it happens.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@sixers:
Did Palin, Beck, and Limbaugh pull the trigger, pay him, or whisper in his ear that he should go shoot Giffords in the head? No, and therefore there is no way to convict them in a court.
Did Palin, Beck, and Limbaugh lay out the rationale for the shootings that have occurred over the last few years? You betcha. And if there was one thing that would make me believe in a Christian God, it is so that they will have to stand in judgment for this.
kindness
You are right John. What has really gotten in my craw isn’t so much that the National media and MSM have continued to frame this along republican/Fox/Palin lines (Palin & Fox types are the true victims here) but that many ‘liberal’ bloggers have accepted that framing and run stories along those lines (Kevin Drum, WaPo’s Ezra Klein & Greg Sargent). They run posts and say liberals/progressives aren’t blaming these folks personally, and then use the rest of the post to parrot the Phaux Pnews meme that liberals are blaming these folks personally.
It’s driving me crazy. It’s perpetuating the false notion of what the progressive blogs are saying. I’ve written off PBS’s & the MSM’s response to stuff like this as they are can for Republican rule. But these folks are supposed to offer a counterpoint, a better understanding of where our side lies and they aren’t.
Sadly, it’s folks like Andrew Sullivan who are doing a much better job of laying out the big picture (with his typical bs thrown in of course).
hildebrand
@ChrisS: Which is what makes her so difficult to truly defeat. She cannot be shamed. She cannot be encouraged to be in any sense reflective about her role in all of this. She simply will not go away without everyone making the concerted effort to ignore what she says or does.
Of course, since outrage is what keeps the money coming in, she realizes she has to ratchet up the outrage so that we cannot simply ignore her (Limbaugh works the same way).
It is all damn frustrating
Stillwater
@David: Disgusting enough to make you gag, but seriously dangerous only after repeated exposures.
eemom
@shecky:
Very much this, and I’m surprised this doesn’t get more attention — most particularly the fact of Palin.com pulling the map down within hours of the shooting, and the laughable lame-assery about “surveyor’s signs.”
In tort law there is a concept called “subsequent remedial measures.” If you trip on some broken stairs at the entrance to a building and sue the building owner, you are not allowed to introduce into evidence at trial the fact that the owner finally fixed the stairs the day after the accident, precisely because it is such a glaring obvious implicit admission of liability that nobody who was sued would ever fix their stairs.
campionrules
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Really?
There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that AGW is ongoing and will continue to occur. Vast reams of scientific data support this.
In Loughner case, it’s likely that he’s mentally ill with a previous pre-palin grudge against Giffords. You’re falling into the same trap that you’re accusing me of by saying that we can’t prove he wasn’t influenced somehow by the rhetoric.
Even though there isn’t any evidence to that point.
Saying that someone who’s mentally ill -or not – is influenced by their environment is correct. Everybody influenced by their environment. However, there is no proof that Loughner’s immediate environment had anything to do with the right wing.
You’re starting to sound like someone that blames video games for Columbine………See, I can make a ridiculous assertion too! Snark.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
The circle completes itself. Palin studiously makes herself the center of national attention, partly through the use of gun imagery. A psycho commits a terrible gun crime. Many wonder aloud if gun imagery influences psychos. Palin complains that everybody picks on her.
Gravie
I heard a clip of Joe Scarborough on “Democracy Now” this morning making the very same case against right-wing hate talk. Joe Scarborough. He specifically pointed to Glenn Beck, calling his show (and I paraphrase) “a steady diet of lies that convinces otherwise nice people that the liberals are out to get them and ruin the country.”
Villago Delenda Est
@campionrules:
And you know this, how?
Vulcan mind meld?
OK, I’ll stop shooting at the guy thrashing around in the barrel, now.
batemapa
Glenn Beck announced today that he is going to use MLK day as a day to talk about all of the violent groups in America.
What a fitting tribute
numbskull
@chopper: That is a very good point.
JPL
The talk show hosts are not molding the conversation, they are changing the conversation. They make money using hate speech and unless they paint themselves as victims they will disappear.
Until the conversation changes to say we will talk about the real victims not Sarah, the fringe elements will win.
geg6
@Dave:
THIS.
People have already died and the killers have already proven that the Right’s hate speech had a direct effect on their actions. Poplawski, the Tides Foundation guy, the guy who shot up the Unitarian Church, the guy who shot up the Holocaust Museum, Dr. Tiller, and the guy who flew into the IRS building in TX…all point to books and tv and radio from the Right as the underpinnings of their motivations.
People have already died because of violent, dehumanizing rhetoric from the Right. When the hell do we start talking about that?
campionrules
@Villago Delenda Est:
True, I can’t speak to the mental stability of Loughner.
I think that his writings and videos speak for themselves but it always possible he’s one hundred percent sane.
However, he did have have contact with Giffords from 2007. He called her a ‘fake’ – per one of his acquaintances and had the form letter she sent him from that year in his possession which he had written on with words like ‘bitch’ and how he was laying his assassinations plans for her.
Maybe he wrote those later?
Look, I agree with the general thrust of john’s post. I just can’t sit here and apply a different way of interpreting Loughner’s action without understanding his motivations.
Hey, I’m a self professed idiot. I’ll just let the adults decide.
Villago Delenda Est
@campionrules:
The thing is, the right wing hate machine predates Palin.
Limbaugh has been spouting his bile for 20 years now.
Try again.
lllphd
@Villago Delenda Est:
i even know about this grudge.
amy goodman interviewed a classmate monday who described this grudge. when loughner visited her congress on the corner previously, he asked her a weird question about language, an unanswerable question of course, and she replied in spanish. this royally ticked him off, and – according to the interviewed friend and others – he obsessed about this forever.
also the fbi reported that he had written messages on the thank you for attending the giffords event things like “die, bitch.” and so on.
hope this helps.
lllphd
@Villago Delenda Est:
i even know about this grudge.
amy goodman interviewed a classmate monday who described this grudge. when loughner visited her congress on the corner previously, he asked her a weird question about language, an unanswerable question of course, and she replied in spanish. this royally ticked him off, and – according to the interviewed friend and others – he obsessed about this forever.
also the fbi reported that he had written messages on the thank you for attending the giffords event things like “die, bitch.” and so on.
hope this helps.
The Republic of Stupidity
If I’m not mistaken, the 580 shooter out here in the Bay Area, Byron Williams, back in July, was targeting the Tides Foundation… and who had been raggging on the Tides, over and over and over again?
Glen Beck… mentioned this obscure, little-known foundation something like 33 times in one year…
I and a friend managed to work our way thru the backed up traffic and drive by the site of the shoot out, just past the Harrison Street exit in the north bound lanes of 580… we were in the south bound lanes… astonishing… the truck he was driving was still there, w/ the rifle still leaning against the cab… blood everywhere… and two CHP cruisers were still sitting where the officers had parked when they pulled him over… and all three cars were just RIDDLED w/ bullet holes… like dozens and dozens of ’em… looked like something you’d see in Bagdad, but not this country…
Guess again…
And if I’m not mistaken, Byron actually STOLE his mother’s truck and guns – MOMMY’s guns – to do this…
Causation? You gotta be kidding me…
Steven
The reason the right is working hard to defend “a climate of hate and paranoid fear, fueled by lies and misinformation” is that’s the only kind of political rhetoric they have. They lose on issues and policy. They can’t talk about the promises made to Koch, Scaife, Coors, etc. that form the real Republican agenda, so their only tools are name-calling, wild accusations and playing to people’s ignorance and prejudice.
JPL
@geg6: Your comment is
right.
If they talk about this it disproves their theory.
Sarah spoke about personal responsibility but failed to mention that she was responsible for her words and actions.
Svensker
@nancydarling:
And the response to that lovely, thoughtful posting was someone claiming it was full of hate and was proof of liberals being unAmerican. It really is time to secede or something.
eemom
The only reason anybody is talking about anything at all is that a CONGRESSWOMAN was shot.
If the shooting last Saturday had involved only civilians — yes, including a nine year old child — this would have vanished from the emmessemm radar before fucking George Will got his bow tie on for the Sunday morning bullshit fest.
aimai
@campionrules:
I guess my response to the whole “somebody is blaming Sarah Palin” thing is: So what? I really mean that. So what? Palin is a public, political figure. She claims to stand for certain things and she claims that her cultural views, if followed, would create a better America (for some.) By implication she is arguing that not following her cultural and political views creates a worse America. She can’t have it both ways. She can’t want to/ask us to praise her for her ideas and their effects without also, possibly, criticizing her for her views and their effects.
Palin explicitly disavows not just her own violent rhetoric (its surveyors symbols not gun sites, shooting a Moose presumably is just taking a pair of calipers to it) but its impact. She argues that no amount of public statements and no form of public statements can lead to increased violence, death threats, and shootings in our society. So, what’s her beef with being blamed? And, indeed, what is her beef with the supposed uptick in death threats. Her tea party followers are on record insisting that its up to the threatened person to hire police protection. If she doesn’t agree–that is, if she thinks rhetorical violence and anonymous threats are actually dangerous she needs to cop to her own role in the Giffords shooting (and in appearing on Glen Beck’s show which has a known role inspiring violence).
aimai
El Cid
@eemom: Or when an Arab/ Muslim/ ethnically or religiously dangerous type opens fire at a military base.
Your ordinary, everyday American mass shooting at workplaces, or the routine murder of a wife or ex and often current or suspected other boyfriends or new husband and often the children and often other relatives by the deranged men who do this all the time? Not so much.
matoko_chan
@ChrisS: nah. She is a Mean Girl that got shut down for the wh prom.
she is running.
this is her last chance to give the “big middle finger” to everyone that thinks she cant do it.
she isnt afraid of the work of of being president! she wont do it.
and she thinks being being president will immunize her from people saying mean things about her.
Krauthammer, Goldberg, Rove et al, have already discussed with her getting some street cred in policy before running, you betcha.
she blew them off.
she has to run naow, and she knows it.
in 2016 she will be post-menopausal.
her neck is already gettin crepey.
is there neck botox?
lllphd
has anyone noticed anyone in the media – anywhere? – remembering out loud about the inflammatory and incendiary rhetoric palin spewed at her rallies during the 08 campaign, and how the secret service had to tell her to tone it down because there was a spike in death threats against obama every time she did it?
oh yes. i see via google that the only place that’s brought that up now is democratic underground.
this is a gimmee, folks; why has no one mentioned it? msnbc hasn’t even brought it up.
maybe we should be calling them to insist they do.
Elizabelle
re John’s post: we are seeing one of the biggest strawmen — or strawPalins — to date. Evidence that those proposing it do not want to engage politically or look critically at their own complicity.
@lllphd:
Very perceptive.
My mother is not a Foxbot (she’s actually a yellow dog Democrat) but she is a superannuated 8 year old and has been for most of her adult life. Virtually no recollections of “adult” behavior on her behalf. My siblings and I came to this conclusion very sadly, but it explains a lot.
She has many good qualities, but cannot understand that good and bad can reside in the same person.
Thus, the world is black and white and dealing with grey and nuance literally frightens her.
She is the most risk and change averse person I have ever had to deal with. Stasis kills.
Add to that a lot of seniors whose internal road map predates Disney Land.
It would seem the Obama campaign and Organizing for America pretty much wrote off engaging with this demographic, for obvious reasons, but maybe we need to try again.
arclite
While a single event is not a trend, we can see trends in other areas. Of the past couple of years, the average number of threats against both members of congress and the president are way up. Does anyone have further info on this? For example, are Repubs and Dems getting equally as many threats?
Stillwater
@JPL: Sarah spoke about personal responsibility but failed to mention that she was responsible for her words and actions.
Right. But that’s because it’s a central unstated premise of right-wing ideology that personal responsibility doesn’t include actually considering how your own actions affect other people. If someone is adversely affected by what someone else does or says, it’s incumbent onthe affected person to find a (market based) solution which to prevent that harm.
To admit that all of us have the potential to adversely affect other’s lives by our own actions, and take prior responsibility for what we do, is almost – no, that’s wrong, it actually is! – sociaIism.
Chris
@geg6:
This, times a very large number.
That’s why you’ve had such an explosion of fury from so many liberals after this shooting. We’re drowning in “lone wolf” shooters, all of whom seem to target enemies of the GOP, and we’re getting fucking tired of it, and even more tired of hearing them egged on day after day after day.
Unlike the right, we’re not mad because of imaginary statements from fictional elites on the other side of the country. We’re mad because people are dying and it shows no sign of stopping. That really shouldn’t be so hard to understand.
bob h
I don’t think any Republican leader wants actual murderous violence, but they do find low level violence and implied threats useful as a means of intimidation. This is one of the few ways their arguments can gain traction. Given the empirical evidence that the vast majority of serious threats and actual violence are directed against the Democrats and Federal government, and that practically all the inflammatory talk emanates from the right, you have to say that the Republicans actively cultivate political thuggery. Occasionally things get out of hand as in Tucson.
Bender
Just to break with the left’s urgent re-papering of recent history, let me inject a little reality. Twitter is forever, and Markos tweeted, “Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin.”
And your co-blogger ABL, wrote, albeit nonsensically, on this very site, “Y’all know where I stand on the Tucson shooting. Those who have used inflammatory rhetoric bear responsibility. The thing is, they know they bear responsibility.”
If “no one thinks” Palin/Beck/etc. is responsible, after Obama bitch-slapped all the factually-challenged lefty honks the other night… did I miss all the apologies and corrections from Kos, the NYT, WaPo, AP, Reuters, Sheriff/Puppet Dumshit, and ABL?
Really? Well, I suppose, not for Ball-Juicers and media lefties, for whom recorded history began when Obama took office and dissent became “toxic” and “dangerous” instead of “the highest form of patriotism.”
Bush years? What Bush years? Assassination fantasy books and movies? Never happened. “Kill Bush” signs freely carried at rallies organized by leftist organizations? Figments of imaginations and (probably) Photoshops! “We ought to rip put Cheney’s heart and kick it around.” “Special Ed” Schultz ever said that on national TV! Governor-elect Rick Scott of Florida “should be taken out and shot?” No Democrat Congressman ever said such a thing! Michelle Bachmann should “slit her wrist…or do us all a better thing…start right at the collarbone” to please an Air America host? Absurd to imagine!
This has been reality. Feel free to ignore as per usual…
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
Unless you happen to work in the news media. But your observation is spot-on nevertheless.
Joe Beese
[[ As President Barack Obama consoled the nation Wednesday with talk of “rain puddles in heaven,” his agents were murdering four more people in his illegal war in Pakistan. …even a “senior adviser” to the sainted General David Petraeus admits that 98 percent of the people being killed by Obama’s drones are civilians. Two to three thousand innocent people murdered — in cold blood, in an instant, without warning, without any defense, not shriving time allowed, sent down into death and darkness at the order of the man evoking those “rain puddles in heaven” as he exhorts us to “be worthy” of those killed in wanton violence. … In fact, even as Obama was making “one of the greatest speeches ever given by any sitting president” and “calling all of us to realize a larger purpose,” his vice president, Joe Biden, was touring the imperial frontier, warning the Pakistanis that <a href="http://www.dawn.com/2011/01/13/us-vice-president-arrives-in-pakistan-for-talks.html">America's patience is growing thin over their continuing failure to instigate a civil war, and hinting darkly the Empire “would not wait indefinitely” for this act of national suicide, but may be ‘forced’ to start carving up the country itself. ]]
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2076-speech-pathology-rain-puddles-in-heaven-hellfire-on-earth.html
Mako
Political discourse in the US need more heat, not less. All these people suggesting calm and quiet are idiot tools of the insurance companies.
This is a health care issue.
Svensker
@lllphd:
Excellent point.
Buck
Palin to keynote gun convention
You cannot make this shit up.
lllphd
@Elizabelle:
so sad to hear these things about your mother. your descriptions of her behavior don’t necessarily sound schizophrenic; many – perhaps most – mental illnesses present with regressive behaviors that are immature if not downright childish. i hope recognizing her limitations allows your compassion to be available to her, though it is so hard, i know.
wrt addressing these people, it truly is impossible to address folks who have built up a wall of ignorance, especially when it’s fed hourly by a machine that refurbishes all the chinks; it’s a no win.
to my mind, the only way to stop this insanity is to find ways to take murdoch and limbaugh down legally, thru tax evasion or fraud (or assange; he seems to have something on murdoch), and do some really serious reframing of the rhetoric.
i don’t really blame the dems; it’s just astonishing just how low these creepos have stooped, and they change the rules all the time. without the media on our side, or on the side of truth, i should say, we may be doomed.
we have to take it back.
WHO HERE IS FAMILIAR WITH PUBLIC ACCESS TV???
do you know about your local station? do you know you can volunteer and contribute? do you know you can produce your own shows? they have to be nonpolitical, but it’s easy enough to build devastating stories that are just true.
look into it. i’ll try to round up more info soon. gotta work now.
good luck with your mom.
brantl
If Sarah were held solely responsible for this, she would deny it while secretly being pleased that she was being talked about. If she’s reduced to being only one shouting voice in the mob that is a nuisance, and keeping us awake at night, she’s going to be extremely vexed. (“I won’t be ignored!”)
brantl
This is a win-win for Republicans, they’re trolling for terrorists, and they have plausible deniability.
There should be a poster of Loughner made up (the half-Loughner, half-Glenn Beck photo) with “Happenstantial Terrorist” under it.
batemapa
@Bender:
1) You quote ABL but she says nothing about blaming Sarah Palin only or specifically in that quote or her post… Although most of us think she is to be included in “those who have used inflammatory rhetoric”
2) You contradict yourself in your own post. You are obviously angry and think Cole/we have blamed specific people, i.e. Sarah!, Rush, Beck, etc. But then you use language and examples that include more than individuals like “those” and “etc”. you prove our point for us. the point is that we have always included the “etc.” and “those” to mean wingnuts. We list the individuals as well because they are the leaders of a section of the population we are criticizing, and have the extra responsibility of being leaders and all that comes with that.
3) Yes there have been those that say that specifically this person or that person are responsible. Palin, Rush, and Beck are among them. But i think you will find that the vast majority of people have included them as leaders of the Right, not as people solely responsible. Contrary to Right belief, Markos does not speak for all of us.
John Cole
@Bender: Bender, I left the GOP, prior to Obama even being Senator, in part because of the toxic rhetoric and poisonous hate of the GOP and the wingnuts like you that I one day looked around and said to myself “WTF IS WRONG WITH ME? WHY AM I ASSOCIATING MYSELF WITH THESE MONSTERS?”
That, and the fact that conservative governance and philosophy were obviously a failure.
brantl
@stuckinred: No, she was born on 9/11, and her picture is in a book about 9/11, along with a number of other kids who were born on 9/11.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
That’s part of what’s so freaky — talking about shooting liberals and Democrats has become so normalized that you literally can’t tell the difference between a paranoid schizophrenic who needs treatment and a normal person who watches a lot of Glenn Beck.
I’m going to guess that most of the people who interacted with Loughner over the past year are going to say he was only saying the same kinds of things that Limbaugh and Savage and Hannity say every day, so they can’t understand why he would suddenly go on a murderous rampage at a Democratic political rally.
Mnemosyne
@Bender:
How many Republican politicians were murdered or assaulted by crazy liberals from 2000 to 2008?
How many conservative churches were shot up by crazy liberals from 2000 to 2008?
How many guns were purchased between 2000 and 2008 as compared just to the past two years?
You can keep scrubbing your hands all you want, but those bloodstains are never going to come off.
Mako
@John Cole:
Another thing that annoys me, the cheapening of the word “rhetoric”. Used to be all about Plato and Quintilian and shit and now it appears to mean “Fox News”.
Elizabelle
@lllphd:
My mom is clinically depressed and it would appear never matured psychologically, plus a narcissist, but is not and never has been schizophrenic.
I feel for people who are so afraid, very literally afraid, of change.
Positive synonyms for change: evolution, growth, development.
All of which can be scary, too, but it’s the only way a society or individual advances.
Guess we’re dealing with risk aversion on the part of our seniors and others.
Maybe we all need to address — directly — the actual risks of proceeding with change vs. doing nothing.
The status quo can be the biggest danger of all, in a rapidly changing world.
brantl
@jwb:
Tools can only cut based on as sharp as they are.
Scooter Macgruder
We should remember our history: this is an old story, and it mostly comes from the warped perspectives of the confederate/christianist/crypto-fascist/tea parties which have been plaguing us for a couple of centuries.
Check out the great Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter.
lllphd
@John Cole:
wow. bravo, john. had not known that about you. truly, that makes what you say all the more admirable somehow.
appreciate your candor and your spirited determination to reverse the trend.
gracias.
lllphd
@Elizabelle:
the problem is, not changing is actually not really an option.
everything changes – anicca, as the buddha says – everything changes.
that leaves only one question: how are you going to face the changes?
interpreting change as a threat is an infantile response; we need the protection of our parents to assure us that this is not so. of course, there are studies showing the conservative mind is more prone to see threats and fear in the environment. so their reactions stem from fear.
again, this is how we learn to have compassion for them. they’re scared to death.
as in, notice how all this aggressive talk and the guns seem to expose feelings of (especially male) inadequacy. so, when we hit them with exclamations of how stupid they are (i’m as guilty as the next), it only pours salt in their wounds.
we have to approach these exchanges in ways that provide our adversaries to retain their dignity. this is what obama does best. he knows we have the truth on our side, but he’s not willing to rub anyone’s face in it. the truth will out, we just have to have patience.
with your mom, these fears overwhelm her. she’s just scared. we all are, to varying degrees. all the more reason in my book to extend a hand.
best wishes for her.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@PopeRatzy: I’m more worried by the moderates on the right. In that, everyone who’s debated me IRL about the violent rhetoric and has been on the “you’re just politicizing it” side have all been straight white Christian males. Not every swCm has been on that side, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that everyone in my life that is on that side is.
Which inspired this post.
sixers
@John Cole:
I get the anger. I’m angry about what happened too. I get responsibility as well though. That post was irresponsible and angers not an excuse. We hate when conservatives jump on a story in a way that’s not true and spin it to fit their beliefs but we tolerate it when our side does it? There was no difference between how sarah palin used selective information and the assumption that Obama’s a socialist to come up with death panels and how ABL used little information and assumptions to implicate people on the right as an accessory to murder. Maybe that’s not a big deal to you but to me its disgusting even if I find the people accused to be terrible people.
I’ve noticed a walk back recently from the day the shooting happened to now where people who were so damn sure this guy was a beck\limbaugh devotee or a Palin fan and those three were directly responsible for the shooting via their heated rhetoric. Now its ” I don’t care if he listened to them, the right is spouting hate and it has to stop” like we didnt already know that or that absolves them of accusing someone of murder. Its a ruse to cover up their jumping to conclusions and reminds me of all those right wingers who were so damn sure that Iraq had WMD’s and when it turned out they didn’t the rationale for going to war changed from “WMD’s” to “Saddam Hussien was evil and we need to promote democracy in the middle east”.
Krystal
Sarah’s only part of the problem.
However, she has to understand that if she creates a map full of targets with a list of Congresspersons targeted, and one of those very same Congresspersons gets shot, she’s going to get some heat. Someone’s going to at least bring it up and say, “Perhaps that wasn’t the best idea, yes? Maybe let’s not do that in the future just in case this had any bearing on what happened.”
As several other people have said, her response should have been: “I apologize for the map. I never intended for it to be taken literally, and was merely using a metaphor. I will think more carefully about my techniques in the future. This is a time when we should all come together to try to stop violence against anyone of any party. I send best wishes to the victims and their families, yadda, yadda, yadda…” Or, she could have just kept her big, attention whoring mouth shut.
Unfortunately, instead, she said something like: “I can say whatever the hell I want, and have no responsibility for any of my actions. Sure, someone whose name I put a target symbol on got shot, but so what? I will continue to use whatever horrible, violent imagery and rhetoric I want! Not my problem! Also, too, you betcha, if anyone says anything critical about me whatsoever, I am likely to be targeted, and you will be responsible! Only my opponents are respsonsible for their rehtoric, you got that? And, oh yeah, sorry to those people who got shot or whatever.”
I’m way angrier at her after her little video than I was before. Funny how that works.
asiangrrlMN
Agreed. The whole situation is complex, and the people on the right want to make it simple. They also know, at the very least, that the optics don’t look good–which is why they have to deflect, deflect, deflect.
@Barb (formerly Gex): Good post, Barb. This is mine after reading what Tuscon Lipton Tea Bag Party Co-Founder had to say about the shooting. Over at ABL’s place, of course.
Jeanne ringland
I kept looking at the term “surveyor’s symbol” and finally I asked the resident licensed surveyor, my husband. He says he’s never seen that used by any surveyor, but he’s most familiar with symbols used in California and said it’s possible that it’s used in other places.
Esquire has an article saying that there is no single standard set of marks in use in every state, but if it is a surveyor’s mark it is an extremely rare one.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/sarah-palin-crosshairs-011011
Jeanne ringland
@Svensker:
I saw that guy’s comments and wondered what he had been reading, because there was nothing hateful about the article.
foobar
Great post John. Concise and spot on. But isnt someone pointing out another person’s love afair with shrill, guns-based wackadoodle political rheteroic equally shrill and incendiary? Oh well, i guess both sides do it.
Bender
@John Cole:
I think you mistakenly conflate “I disagree with you” with “I hate you,” but many on the left fringe and right fringe have this problem.
But anyway…so you were willing to join the KILL BUSH, KILL CHENEY crowd because you thought the right’s rhetoric and hate was a dog-whistle call to violence? OK. Hmmmm, I think you are editing your own history. I always remember it was the “religionist,” war-on-drugs, intelligent-design, anti-gay, embryonic-stem-cell, Terri Schiavo things that put you off. The Republicans were too Christian, not too violent.
But BJ Archives will show us the real story, right? Let’s go back to your “my party left me” post from 2006. Shouldn’t be hard to find. We should see all of your opposition to Republican vitriol and violent rhetoric there, right?
Nope, nothing there about “toxic rhetoric and poisonous hate” from the “monsters” of the right. Schiavo was the first thing, though.
Nothing about the alleged violent climate of hate fostered by Bush or Santorum or whoever. Something about “religionists” (a Sully term, IIRC?), though.
Schiavo again, gays, spending *chortle*, but no mention of the violent, hateful rhetoric of the monstrous GOP that you claim had you FED UP! (Which, I have got to say, seems ridiculous when your alternative was the Dems, led at the time by Howard “I HATE REPUBLICANS” Dean, who wore his hate on his sleeve, and backed by people carrying KILL BUSH signs; but yeah, the vitriol was from the “monsters” of the GOP — sure, it was.)
So if you were indeed so horrified by the poisonous hate and toxic whatever coming from GOP, violently threatening Democrats with their dog-whistle call-to-arms, I must say that you did a hell of a job hiding it from your “Road to Damascus” post.
Looking through the old stuff was fun, though, and you were right about one thing:
If only they’d listened… but he is pretty and has a great voice!
Lorna
It’s hard to get that shit off your shoes, isn’t it? Yea, I am sure everyone here is buying it.
Bender
@hildebrand:
If you can’t suss out what Your Leader said the other day, I’ll make it easy for you: Palin had NO ROLE in the murders, and claiming in print that she did is libelous.
She should feel no shame because she did nothing wrong. The people who should feel shame are Krugman, Alter, Matthews, Andrea Mitchell, etc., who opportunistically looked into the shooter’s soul and pretended that they could somehow divine that he was driven over the edge by the GOP’s political maps and such. Have they apologized? Of course not. Can they feel shame? Of course not. They’re just doing what they perceive as their jobs.
Wile E. Quixote
@Lorna:
You can sit here all day long and attempt to play your both sides do it game but here’s the one fact you can’t spin away, the body count. Where are the dead Republican congressmen gunned down by irate liberals? Oh wait, there aren’t any. Where are the dead federal judges gunned down when some crazed liberal was gunning down a Republican congressman? Oh wait, there aren’t any? Where are the dead children killed when an irate liberal was gunning down a Republican congressman? Oh wait, there aren’t any? Where are the dead federal employees killed when an irate liberal parked a truckload of ANFO in front of a federal building? Oh wait, there aren’t any. Where are the dead children killed by an irate liberal blowing up a federal building with a day care center in it? Oh wait, there aren’t any. Where are the dead Philadelphia policemen gunned down by a crazed liberal? Oh wait, there aren’t any. Where is the evangelical church shot up by an irate liberal? Oh wait, there isn’t one. Where are the anti-abortion protesters gunned down by irate NARAL members? Oh wait, they don’t exist.
The overwhelming majority of political violence and domestic terrorism in the United States has been the work of white conservatives, from the KKK in the 1860s, to anti-immigrant violence in the early part of the 20th century, to the resurgence of the KKK in the 1920s, to the various white supremacist groups murdering blacks in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, to the Aryan Nations in Idaho in the 1980s, to Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma city bombing and Eric Rudolph and the Olympic Park bombing in the 1990s up to the present day with the murder of George Tiller, the Knoxville, Tennessee Unitarian Church murders, to Richard Poplawski murdering three Pittsburgh police officers in 2009, to Byron Williams shooting it out with the police in California on his way to murder people at the ACLU and Tides Foundation because Glenn Beck was railing against them. Show me a crazed, violent nutjob and I’ll show you someone who in all probability is a white, right-winger, someone just like you.
You can’t even begin to realize how morally inferior a human being you are, but that’s the only way to describe someone who attempts to justify their bad behavior by pointing out the bad behavior of others. Did your parents ever teach you that “two wrongs don’t make a right?” Obviously not.
Mnemosyne
@Bender:
Did she have a direct role? No.
Did she contribute to the atmosphere of violence and hate that surrounded the 2010 election? Absolutely.
That blood on your hands is never coming off.
brantl
@Mnemosyne: Well said.
And, Bender? Get your head out of your ass. These right wing chuckleheads (who coincidently steer your party), whether they are smart enough to mean to do so, or not, are trolling for crazies that will do this sort of shit, due to the sort of fear-driven crazies the crazies are, and the sort of fear-mongering that your leaders are doing, largely by lying.
If your OK with that, you’re as big and concienceless an asshole as I think you are. Hard to imagine, but still likely true.
Brisbane Belff (formerly G. Nelson Buttnergle (formerly Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey))))))
@Wile E. Quixote:
Oof. Nice.
FuzzyWuzzy
@stuckinred: The girl who was born on 9/11/2001? Mr Lang is more than a little “out of the loop,” shall we say.