A US congresswoman has been shot at point blank range at a meeting in Tucson, Arizona. Democrat Gabrielle Giffords is in critical condition and a nine-year-old girl is dead.
A US congresswoman is among at least 10 people who have been shot by a lone gunman at a public event in Tucson, Arizona.
Democrat Gabrielle Giffords was holding a public meeting at a grocery store in her home state of Arizona when a man emerged from the crowd and shot her in the head at what has been described as point-blank range.
US federal judge John Roll of Arizona was killed in the shooting, along with four others, including a nine-year-old girl.
It has been reported that a 21-year-old gunman has been taken into custody.
The congresswoman’s condition is understood to be so serious that she was initially thought to be dead. But the local hospital has since said she is in surgery.
Republicans such as Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle, as well as US shock jocks, have been joining the Tea Party in advocating “2nd Amendment Remedies” for the evil socialist government. Palin published a map of the US with targets on it representing democrats of whom the target, Gabriel Giffords, was one. She has hurriedly pulled this from her website, but it can be viewed here.
They will all get away with it, of course, except for the confused young man who bought their intemperate rhetoric and pulled the trigger.
Apparently there’s a statement from Palin at the Huffington Post, but I can’t get it to load. Presumably it’s been crashed by the traffic.
The files from Sarah Palin’s ‘Take Back The 20′ website can be downloaded. It appears to have been taken down.
More: Take Back The 20 Taken Down
As I read about Brisenia Flores, a ten year girl murdered in Arizona last year, I wondered how toxic the hate is in that state when immigration and other issues are tallied. Then add Fox News, guns and young angry men.
Thanks Helen, I have saved that webpage and the image for the record. There is way too much of that reframing of history by webpage alteration. A lot of that went on with the CPRS and the triggered electricity prices, as power companies said one thing one day and another the next. If you do not think to capture the page at the time then the story becomes altered as the evidence vanishes.
There are 6 dead so far in this horror shooting.
Anyone who blames Palin/Tea Party etc should have a look at this:
http://www.verumserum.com/?p=13647
Way to bait and switch City Slicker.
Yes, the Rep Map and the Dem Map both feature targets.
But show me where a Democrat has recently said something like this:
For the benefit of City Slicker, let me explain that a “Second Amendment” remedy is a veiled reference to assassination by firearm.
Bait and switch that City Slicker.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a link in all this back to the Obama Administration.After all, targeting people is both a marketing process as well as a cultivation process.Much talk about Obama’s use of on line communities at the last election.It is simply tripe and guilt by poster to land this on very amateur Sarah Palin’s lap.And seeing I am an Australian living in Australia, I cannot see the point in regurgitating stuff that is as narrow focused as the weapon.
I was wondering if the shooter went for Giffords because she was an “ordinary” Congressperson and thus not as well protected as Pelosi and Reid etc.
But, yeah, this is the culmination of years of eliminatorist rhetoric. You saw the same sort of thing during the Clinton years.
While targets have been a common image in corporate presentations/graphics for many years, and the Democrat graphic shows “things” (e.g. Democrat seats) as targets, the Palin graphic shows crosshairs, and individual people as the targets. Not the same thing.
This also ignores the many references, veiled and overt, to the “responsibility” of the “patriot” to rise up against the oppressor voiced by tea partiers and Republicans in the last year. I’ve certainly noticed it. The rightwing cartoonist Chris Muir has made his characters refer to it several times.
The “Tree of Liberty” T shirt (as worn by Timothy McVeigh) is still available, I see.
In the meantime Twitter has revealed that
The interesting thing is that Twitter sought a court order to allow them to reveal what they had been asked to produce.
Perhaps the effort going into the Wikileaks case should be diverted to investigating a conspiracy to incite terrorism by organizations and individuals far more dangerous than Wikileaks.
More generally, Islamist suicide bombers tend to be persons thoroughly indoctrinated in the morality of self-immolation in the name of Allah.
Some of these bombers are indoctrinated in face-to-face institutions such as madrassas. Some of them, especially those drawn to violent Islamism in the West, form their views and learn their methods via violent Islamists sites on the web.
Thus, face-to-face contact is not necessary for indoctrination to be efficacious.
FoxNews prides itself on the efficaciousness of its indoctrination into right-wing thinking. They have provided much oxygen to the likes of Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle.
Was the shooter a devotee of FoxNews? He certainly chose a self-immolatory method to make his point. However, he has survived so far. And now he’ll become a cause celebre by means of a murder trial, if he lives that long. One may recall that Lee Harvey Oswald did not live long enough to stand trial, even though he was in police custody.
Many Muslims view violent Islamist sites without ever committing a violent act.
But the operators of those sites need only a vanishingly small number of persons to act on their provocations in order to claim mission success.
Exactly the same applies to FoxNews.
I’ve just checked your link CitySlicker and, unsurprisingly, the attempt to claim a parallel between the “bulls eyes” and the gunsight crosshairs is utterly absurd. Apart from the context, one might have assumed these were locations of Target stores.
The word “target” is regularly used in discourse in utterly banal fashion (e.g “targetting marginal seats”) and this reference was reproduced by the VS complainant (Bush seats on margins under 10%).
Secondly and even more obviously, the matters raised in the accompanying caption boxes were not about the meta-siises of gfovernance “let’s take back America/the country” but about cutting back on bus services and similar. There were no references to “second amendment remedies”. Indeed, the whole Second Amendment issue has long been a Republican stalking horse, instantiated often through the Republican claim that government encroachment on the rights of individuals is most clearly manifest in attempts by government to adopt a less permissive gun availability regime. Taken together, the meaning of the crosshairs from the websites of Republican sympathisers talking about taking back America and reduxing the Boston Tea Party is very different from a Democrat website talking about marginal seat campaigns with a Bullseye graphic.
That such a parallel is even attempted underscores just how defensive and desperate the Republicans have become, now that they are being wagged by their fundamentalist fringe tail.
Anyone seen his youtube page’
Its got a picture of a guy in hoody wearing what looks like a garbage bag for pants burning the American flag.
with the title:
America: Your Last Memory In A Terrorist Country!
There is nothing on there to suggest he was a member of the tea party. Cept Ayn Rand’s first book. (The language above certainly isn’t tea party rhetoric. They don’t see America as a terrorist country, just one being taken over by humans with compassion I mean socialists.)
Then again he listed To Kill a Mockingbird as one of favorite books. hardly what you’d call tea bag fodder. Its certainly convenient to blame the tea party cos they are a bunch of kooks, obviously. But lets see some actual evidence of this alleged Sarah Palin conspiracy first.
Katz, you’ve hit on an excellent characterisation:
Fox News – the madrassas of the right wing.
* Bill “tidal power” O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, the imams.
* Bachmann, Angle, Palin again, the Al Qaeda political leadership
* The Tea Party its Taliban.
Another element of the Tucson shooting merits notice.
Whereas the assassinations of JFK or of MLK were targeted and as precise as they could be under the circumstances, the Tucson atrocity targeted not only political figures but also their audiences, presumed probably also to be enemies worthy of destruction.
Thus, this atrocity transcends the political and tends toward the genocidal.
Did Palin etc use the phrase “second amendment remedy” or was this phrase coined by Common dreams? If the former then that would be a unequivocal incitement to violence but from a brief scan, I can’t find where they did so.
@Julies,
Nobody is saying that Palin was part of an overt conspiracy. They’re saying that she irresponsibly and cynically used inflammatory rhetoric that painted Democrats as legitimate assassination targets through her use of well known dog-whistle phrases.
Those phrases are on the public record, and the crosshairs graphic is archived. Don’t try and drown these incontrovertible facts by misrepresenting what is being claimed as something else entirely.
Palin deliberately used inflammatory rhetoric about assassination to an audience that she well knew included people predisposed to act on it. This is more than just negligent irresponsibility – this is culpable instigation.
Lets get this straight. You lot are blaming Fox news and Sarah Palin for this. Right now, before any evidence has been gathered or anything. There are people talking about Fox news conspiracies.
Fuck! There are people online pointing out all the MK Ultra bullshit that could surround this (kind of ironic after that Mel Gibson movie last nite.) Right now they have as much cred as you lot.
Go back in time and pat Tipper Gore on the back. After all Ozzy Osbourne makes people suicide and the Dead Kennedys are promoting baby rape or something….
Yes there is a chance this guy is influenced by Tea Party rhetoric. There is also a history of similarly disturbed individuals (Have you read some of the stuff he has written down? Its insane sure but there is nothing to connect it to the babbling insanity of the Fox crowd,)going ballistic with guns in the US with absolutely no connection to anything political.
Instead people use a tragic event where people died including children to push their own political bandwagon.
FFS.
All his booklist suggests to me is that he didn’t understand the books.
City Slicker at #5: one of the many obvious points you seem to be missing is that no Republican politician in the places (not people) marked by targets (not crosshairs) on your Gotcha graphics have actually been shot dead.
whoops- there is the quote in Katz’s comment. Surely that sort of language could result in charges?
Su, take a look at the quote I extracted @6.
Sharron Angle actually said those words endorsing “Second Amendment remedies”.
Jules, he also listed in his favorite books, Mein Kampf, and the Communist Manifesto. He was also it seems, a supporter of a gold-backed currency standard (a pretty standard Tea Partyist / La Rouchite political position). He was also, it seems, an atheist.
No doubt the violent right-wing rhetoric about “second amendment solutions” was an enabler of this act of terrorism.
I await the right wing to condemn their own violent rhetoric and pledge to work towards a state in which the peaceful practice of political persuasion is again the norm.
Su
I understand the “second amendment” remedies quote is actually attributed to Tea Party and Palin backed candidate Sharon Angle. See here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/sharron-angle-floated-2nd_n_614003.html
However Palin herself has the following despicable post on her Twitter account from 24 March 2010:
“Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” Pls see my Facebook page.”
Im not linking to her Twitter account because, quite frankly, Id rather gouge my eyes out with broken glass but if you dont believe me Im sure you can find it easily enough.
All over the Interwebz right-wing trolls are claiming the shooter is a leftist.
I managed to get a look at his YouTube page and it is full of the deranged sentiments straight from TeaBagger Central.
Arizona cops are currently looking for a man who was with the shooter.
Sorry tigtog I posted that before I saw your reply.
I don’t disagree that Palin is an odious dangerous individual and I don’t doubt she would love to see something like this coming from her alleged support base. Despite the fact that the original tea party ala Texas 2006 was almost the complete opposite of what we see now. (It even started before Obama was on the radar – by a group of left and libertarian activists in Texas oppposed to Bushes wars and the war on drugs actually the connection between them anbd what Beck built is tenuous but there. They are probably bemused about the long term outcome of their little thing.)
This individual on the face of it has more in common with the like of the Columbine shooters or that guy at the uni, or that Muslim bloke (member of the US armed forces) who went ballistic at his army base in Texas. Even then the right wing nut job Muslim haters weren’t as quick to jump on the bandwagon as this.
I’m actually a conspiracy theorist, and I know that doesn’t go down well here …. but come on, you lot don’t want to end up like me.
Yes, my mistake for not reading the OP properly. Utterly despicable. There is no way that she could claim that metaphor was used in innocence given Angle’s previous statement.
You’ve grabbed the wrong end of the stick Jules.
1. No one has alleged conspiracy.
2. No one has accused FoxNews of inciting this killing.
3. No one has accused Sharron Angle of inciting this particular killing.
However, it is undeniable that Angle countenanced political assassination.
And it is undeniable that FoxNews did not call Sharron Angle to account for countenancing political assassination.
I doubt that any network made much of Sharron Angle’s comments. They all bear some responsibility for that dereliction. On the other hand, it may be argued that in the fevered political environment of the US, merely highlighting Angle’s incitement could provoke someone to act on it. This is a touchy ethical issue.
Remember how al Jazeera made itself unpopular to the Bush Clique by broadcasting Osama bin Laden’s missives. Coincidentally, perhaps, al Jazeera’s offices in Baghdad came under direct attack from US forces.
Whatever ‘wing’ his politics (I can’t discern one myself), his written reasoning and performance in the flag-burning video show deep, deep psychosis.
They are the words of a raving nutjob with no grip on reality. (OK thats hardly something that disqualifies him from being a Tea Bagger, but come on.)
And thats hardly the tea party position on currency. The call for a return to the silver and gold backed days of pre fiat (or whenever) currency is part of Texas culture (apparantly) and nothing to do with the Tea Party. Ron Paul has been calling for it for years. He ain’t a big fan of the Tea Party especially as it is now.
(And personally I think Ron Paul is a racist capitalist pig. But no nowhere near as bad as the likes of Palin.)
Helen, to set the record straight,Mrs Palin, despite her distinguished political history – she served a half term as Alaska Governor – has yet to be elected to the US Senate, or state senate. I do not deny she is a major political figure and a well funded one.
Apparently in Arizona, the law allows concealed guns to be carried. Politicians now regardless of the prevailing violent rhetoric are going to have second and third thoughts about holding public meetings in that state and others with unrestricted gun laws.
Who knows at this time what all the relevant evidence might be, but it is possible this horrible event is the work of a single deranged person helped along by permissive law. And I agree it constitutes terrorism.
Cross hairs can have more than one meaning in whatever form they come.There are many stories about Obama, for example.And the history of cross hairs may not be so abundantly defamatory of Palin.I seem to also recall many inflammatory words by Obama.I am not defending Sarah Palin.This is Australia our attitudes to gun ownership and use hasn’t got the same stridency that the U.S.A. has. Timothy McVeigh was set up as far as I am concerned ,the same as one Martin Bryant.
Jules:
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, speaking about Arizona:
“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.
“It’s not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. And that’s the sad thing of what’s going on in America. Pretty soon, we’re not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.”
He later added:
DUPNIK: Let me just say one thing, because people tend to poo-poo this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech. But it’s not without consequences.
REPORTER: How do you know that that’s what caused it.
DUPNIK: You don’t.
Helen has a point Jules. It’s the same as the Sherrif’s. People may well be unbalanced but politicians have a responsibility to not incite violence.
A second suspect is being sought in the shooting by the way.
John D @9 I don’t think anyone cares (sadly.)
As soon as I heard this on the news, I knew it would be a Democrat politician and that the ever escalating calls for violence from the Tea Party would be reaping their violent rewards.
Let’s remember that the Tea Party has been defended by various Liberal politicians here. “Sure, there’s a few extremists, but most of them are completely reasonable”.
According to radio reports, Giffords’ meeting was held outdoors in a shopping centre plaza. Under those conditions it would have been impractical to frisk members of the audience.
Moreover, the shooter used an automatic firearm, much larger than a handgun.
The shooter could have done all these things regardless of the legality of carrying firearms.
Fewer may have died if automatic firearms were absent from the US scene. But it is too late for that now. They are common. I could have bought an AK-47 from a Texas pawn shop during my last trip to the US.
Here’s what Giffords said after her office had been vandalised following her inclusion on the Palin hitlist:
This was not the first incident with Giffords, apparently.
It seems that Giffords’ politics may have put her in the “Blue Dog Democrat” grouping, and thus closer to the right than the liberal left.
That said, she was apparently also a strong supporter of the Obama health care reforms, dubbed “Obamacare” by the right. This has been a touchstone for the Tea Party.
It does seem that she was the primary target as the gunman shot her first and then sprayed the rest of the crowd until he ran out of bullets and attempted to flee.
Apparently police are seeking an accomplice.
Yes.
By definition, a conspiracy. Now the question is how far it goes and who it involves.
Thats true but the premature certainty of people about a crazy guys motives is something I find disturbing. This guy is an atheist – the Tea Baggers claim to be a Christian movement etc etc.
Maybe people aren’t alleging a conspiracy, just implying there was one to pump up the rhetoric until something like this happened.
Before everyone links this to the tea party think about his public internet actions. A video of a flag burning and the claim that America is a terrorist nation. These are not Tea Party claims. If anything that’s the sort of thing the tea party reviles.
FDB thank you for showing a measure of restraint and consideration.
A couple of things. Gabrielle Giffords was a conservative Democrat who supported gun laws and Arizona’s anti-immigration policies. BUT she was hated by the RWDBs for her fervent support of Obama’s health reforms, according to the Guardian. Strong word hated, to come from a careful Guardian journalist.
Peculiarly, only Fox News seems to be going out of its way to be trying to paint the assassin as a misguided criminal misfit with a long list of minor criminal convictions. Now, why would that be? I know I sometimes have a suspicious mind, but could it be they realise very well their RWDB rhetoric could very well be a cause of this man’s action. A cause. Not the only one, but a cause. Seems Palin might feel the same too, since she’s taken down the gun-sight map.
Link to the Guardian article.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/09/gabrielle-giffords-profile
I am not going to link to Fox’s odious disinformation campaign. If you want to read it, its easy enough to find on Google News.
Just saw Katz’ thing.
BTW Judge John Roll was killed in this shooting. (No ones mentioned that yet.) Check him out.
Maybe it was a criminal conspiracy to get payback for the 32 million some Arizona rancher lost in an immigration lawsuit?
Maybe the sky is purple and the moon is made of cheese. Doesn’t matter so long as we get to vent right?
It appears that at least two persons were involved in this atrocity.
Thus, the “loan nut” trope no longer applies.
Fanatics tend to flock together. Nuts don’t.
loan = lone
duh!
My gosh Jules, I get your point, but aren’t you lurching a little too far the other way? To read you – you would seem to have it that this person, obvs mentally ill, existed in isolation unaffected by the discourses which surrounded him. Impossible. Now who knows why at this stage. The fact there is a second suspect suggests something more now. But people are affected, are made angry, react to the public discourse they are surrounded by. Whether they are stable (and Timothy McVeigh was found to be) or whether they are not. See some of the commentary on this very site at times if you want to check out the phenomenon. If politicians are cynically point scoring by using incendiary language and rhetoric, well this is the moment where they can give pause to consider if anything they said or did just got someone killed.
Maybe not Katz, but have a read of the guys words.
And what about Columbine? Were those two fanatics or nuts?
Terrorism? I think it’s a bit early to make that call. Terrorism is about intentions. Without knowing the shooter’s reason for attacking, we can’t know if it was terrorism or old-fashioned craziness.
I think there is plenty of vitriol on both sides of the pack:
[link]
Sorry it is a long link, from a website I have never previously visited. [sorry, lost the link when I attempted to change it to hyperlinked text ~ tigtog, moderator]
She may have been targetted by left wing fanatics who were disappointed that she voted against Pelosi?
Just for the knowing.
News item re second shooter.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/congresswoman-gabrielle-giffords-shot-five-killed-as-gunman-opens-fire-in-arizona/story-e6frg6so-1225984447824
It is rupert’s rag, but there might be some truth in it. Now, this is the one I’m really interested in.
Jules
Are you seriously suggesting this was not a politically motivated assassination? For God sake the man shot a Democrat politician in the head at one of her public appearances! He shot her first and then opened fire on the crowd which included the Judge.
Its apparent you want to absolve Palin and Co from any blame in this tragedy which you are entitled to argue but trying to suggest it wasnt politically motivated is really beyond the pale!
I’ve just viewed a compilation video of Loughner’s. On this showing, we are dealing with a disturbed person.
NB: If you are near your download limits, it’s not all that worth seeing — largely a banal stream of consciousness kind of thing (he claims that his “favourite activity” is “consciousness dreaming” which is “the greatest inspiration for my political business information”). The video has the marks of someone suffering from paranoia (“mind control”) and megalomania. He’s apparently very keen on “English grammar” yet his text is largely a word salad and with a syntax that points to someone whose education was chaotic at best. At one point his consciousness dreaming morphed into conscience dreaming. Maybe he used Google spellchecker, which just goes to prove that … (oops let’s not go there).
So what do we get from this? This is in part a story about the poor condition of the US health system in general and of mental health in particular. Map that onto a situation in which ownership and deployment of guns is culturally acceptable and right wing populism seems an easy way to vent one’s angst at everything in general and one’s personal problems in particular and events like this are what you get.
In the last couple of weeks there has been one incident in which a disturbed 10 year old in Ohio shot his mother dead and in Oklahoma (allegedly) a sex game gone wrong saw another woman shot dead by her lover in some weird attempt to play Russian roulette.
It’s this disturbing context that informs the Palin hitlist.
Yeah maybe.
Tho honestly it seems like the two things put together (my lurching and the “groupthink” on this thread) might actually achieve some balance.
My first reaction to this was very like Helen’s. Its the obvious conclusion.
One of the things I’ve noticed at this site is that when people react that way normally a voice of moderation steps in far quicker than has here (and no I’m not the voice of moderation, but FDB might be.)
Maybe I went off a bit cos I can see myself in others reactions. The fact remains this is a tragedy and a crime the speculation, based on political point scoring is ugly.
True, and we shouldn’t be doing it in response. (Likening the Tea Party the Taliban, isn’t that a little like calling Obama a secret Muslim?)
Yes true, and in the past when people have done crazy things, and jerks like the PMRC have come out and laid the blame for their actions at a single cause. Like some music they don’t like or video games, we (well maybe not you guys, but most “right thinking people”) have reacted with scorn.
Yet people are just as influenced by the music they listen to and the video games they play.
Re Columbine Jules: Those guys didn’t shoot politicians.
The gunman went for a politician and eyewitness accounts are saying he aimed for the congresswoman.
He just didn’t go out and shoot cause he was nuts. He went out and shot a congresswoman. He jumped the queue and got told to go to the back of the line. He did that and when he got to the front he shot.
Now that suggests he has been affected by some discourse relating to the political. By virtue of his target alone. He did not come to whatever beliefs he had about that congresswoman on his own. Like all of us, he is and was impacted by what he saw and heard.
This post offers a valid critique of the sorts of low blows being dealt by the right in America at the moment and the potentially tragic consequences of that when you throw it into the mix of a constitution with that second amendment remedy which was shopped around by the nutty right just prior to this happening, the right to bear arms as some kind of untouchable sacred holy rite and the nutters who like to shop at guns’rus. Something’s got to give when you got all that going down.
Definitely fanatics. Crazy people are incapable of agreeing upon intentions and formulating a plan of action.
Although I do grant that the word “nut” has come to describe a wide range of states of mind.
Accordingly, it is possible for a person to be described as both a nut and a fanatic.
Just for the knowing, some right wing vitriol.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/01/jared-loughner-high-school-pal-twitter-page-describes-arizona-shooter-loughner-left-wing-quite-liber.html
Fran, lol banal stream of conscienceness… good description.
True Casey and he also considered the US a terrorist nation, which to a certain extent I do too, regardless of the Rethug vs Dumbocrat dynamic in play fundamentally their foreign policy inflicts terror on the rest of the world. maybe not on their allies of the moment, but Saddam was one of them once.
Tea Baggers do not consider the US a terrorist nation. They consider it Gods gift to the universe. But it is under threat by Socialists.
To me, after sussing him out a bit, I no longer hold my first opinion – that this is the result of tea bagger rhetoric.
But that is only an opinion. After all we don’t actually know.
Katz @51.
Ok fair enough then.
What Casey said.
Since the 2008 presidential election the rhetoric on the right has become more extreme by the month and the Palins & Angles of the world have made a major contribution to that. I personally believe that the election of a black president is behind most of it, although dressed up in other ways to seem more socially acceptable.
It was only a matter of time before a politician was shot although again, I thought it might be Obama himself. If the Congresswoman pulls through, then maybe over there some people need to take a big deep breath and dial back on all the hate and be thankful that she didn’t die, although others did, and that is unforgivable.
I have a hostage to this madness and I will be advising him to stay as far away from these wingnut states as possible.
Friends of the family lost relatives and best friends in the Coptic Church explosion in Egypt on New Year. Others who usually would have been there were not due to circumstances. One man who left his family in the church to get the car lost them all. His wife was a doctor who would likely have treated people connected with the bombers at some stage.
The brand of politics is irrelevant. The incitement and circumstances that allow it to fester are not.
City Slicker,
You can’t be serious! Or has the significance of the website you linked to being called Atlas Shrugs escaped you? Let me explain it to you in some close to single syllable words in short sentences so you get the picture.
Atlas Shrugged is a book by Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand is a far right wing philosopher and would be novelist who wrote in the 1950s. her works are the bible of the Tea Partyers. I doubt that the web site you linked to has any credibility (that means it is hard to believe – sorry for the big word.) It probably has even less credibility than comments by Sarah Palin or Rush Linburgh. Or Fox News.
Look, Palin’s rhetoric is offensive, dangerous and abhorrent.
I don’t deny that. People should be reacting to it the way you guys have in this thread as a matter of course.
But rushing to assume a link between it and this guys actions is not necessarily a good thing when there may not be one.
I’m not saying there isn’t, but it hasn’t been presented yet.
And for the record, at least at this stage, I’d not call this terrorism. So far, what we have is a disturbed person who has committed a spree killing. There was no specific political or cultural claim attached to the act, to compare with, for example, that anti-abortion terrorists targetting family planning clinics in the US.
Further information may force a reconsideration of the term here, but I believe we should hasten slowly in defining it this way. We leftists ought, in addition, to be cautious in giving the US (or any) state a rationale for implementing further “national security” driven curtailments on personal freedom.
Personally, I don’t include a far stricter gun usage regime in that caveat. That was called for long before this incident, but the US has a most unsavoury history of using national security to truancate freedom. The Smith Act for example was aimed at N*zis but ended up being used primarily against ostensible communists, and indeed, it was leftists who ran afoul of it in 1941.
jules @ 56,
one way to try and make sense of an event is to try and place it in context. I’d already posted this link on Saturday Salon, but I think its worth reposting. To get some sense of that context.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2041408,00.html
And Time is not exactly a far left mag.
@Paul Burns, I was simply providing Geller’s rhetoric as a balance to the left wing rhetoric on Daily Kos I posted earlier.
Helen wildly speculates:
Talk about a rush to judgement leading to shooting your foot. And bizarre that Helen seems to be blaming people at three degrees of separation, rather than the shooter himself.
There is no evidence (yet) that the shooter (and accomplice?) were affiliated with Right-wing organizations, such as the Tea Party. Please present this before jumping to the conclusion that this is a terrorist attack.
If not then it is more likely the motive is personal, rather than political. That is to say, lone crazy gunman. The Congresswoman was possibly chosen because she presented an easy target, out door activity with little security.
Press reports an acquaintance of the suspect described him as Left-wing:
Note, the assassins of JFK, RFK and John Lennon were all Leftists. Not that Leftists are especially prone to political violence. But they do protesteth too much when there is even the smallest hint of suspicion that it comes from the other side.
It is noticeable, although conveniently ignored, that the press reception to the Fort Hood mass shootings was ultra-cautious and skeptical of motive. Despite the fact that the shooter was clearly a political terrorist with Islamist convictions.
Notice a pattern? Blatant double standards of Left-liberal media-academia complex, situation normal.
Yes Paul that is the only way to deal with it, and that article is a good one, measured and considered.
It asks a valid question. And it asks it well.
It doesn’t dogmatically answer it based on political dislike.
@Roger Jones, I am sorry to hear that. It must be horrible to lose friends in such a manner.
The Guardian quotes Giffords from March 2010:
Could we at least be clear who the target was? According to the people on the ground, it was not the judge.
The Time article obfuscates this, or does not know, and yet an eyewitness account from a democrat volunteer who spoke to the gunman makes it very clear it was the congresswoman:
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/article_76bc3c24-1b79-11e0-b748-001cc4c002e0.html
Roger Jones @56 Sorry to hear that.
I have an online aquaintance/friend who is from Egypt, and a Copt. Its a terrible thing. She told me that at Christmas her church, and many of the Coptic churches were full of Muslims who came to act as “human shields” in the event of other attacks.
Human shields may be the wrong term, but their compassion and solidarity is a great thing. Every time we hear similar inflammatory rhetoric (to Palin’s) about violent Muslims and their “so called religion of peace” it might be worth remembering and mentioning that tale of the “true” spirit of Christmas.
“This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.”
From HuPo’s coverage.
“A neighbor was going to the Giffords event and invited Christina Taylor Green ( the nine year old girl killed) along because she thought she would enjoy it, said her uncle, Greg Segalini.
Christina had just been elected to the student council at her school. The event, held outside a Safeway supermarket north of Tucson, was an opportunity for constituents to meet Giffords and talk about any concerns they had related to the federal government.
Tucson CBS affiliate KOLD notes that Green was featured in the book, “Faces Of Hope: Babies Born On 9/11.”
Thanks, WMMBB – will edit “Republican senators” to simply “republicans”.
Those on here who are attempting to refute my supposed claim that Tea partiers, Palin, Angle or any of the voices of the Right wing Noise Machine were “behind” this guy – no such claim was made, sorry. My point was simply that these intemperate opinions are so rife now in the right of the US, whether Tea Party or Republican doesn’t matter. Who hasn’t encountered some wingnut in the last 12 months opining that it is the right and duty of patriotic Americans to – well, they don’t like to spell it out, but RISE UP, somehow. There is no need at all for conspiracy theories in this. It’s about contributing to a zeitgeist where shooting at your elected representative, if your mind is sufficiently febrile, becomes more of a possibility.
It’s interesting, also, that I increasingly see the words “conspiracy” or “conspiracy theorist” pop up in threads and used towards anyone who claims any connection at all between current events. It’s a smear, and a silencing tactic. We are talking of an *interaction* – violent public discourse and a possible connection with violent public action. There is no need for any conspiracy.
Casey @64.
Cheers.
Ok thats pretty clear. Its an eyewitness statement.
Honestly tho we really won’t know anything till a proper investigation is carried out. Everything else is really speculation, no matter how well informed.
Some people at least don’t think they need to change anything about their behaviour. Which is both sad and disturbing.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/tucson-tea-party-leader-we-wont-change-our-rhetoric-after-gifford-shooting.php
bmitw @ 71,
With rhetoric like that at a political rally how can the Tucson Tea Party NOT accept at least some responsibility for the attempted assassination. However confused and rambling the assassin is, or because he’s confused and rambling, more likely, how do we know thse slogans of death did not set him off? We don’t.
I’m going to bring up another aspect here, which I think is interesting. If you look through the ramblings of this mad man he seems to be pre-occupied with aspects of what used to be known as the International Financial Conspiracy. And the Congresswoman is Jewish. A constant facet of American populism, of which the Tea-Partyers are a manifestation,is anti-semitism. Its a very unpleasant thought to have, and I’m not sure if my reasoning connects, but one wonders.
Helen I’m quite open about being a “conspiracy theorist”, at least according to other people. Its nice to see someone else say that.
“But lets see some actual evidence of this alleged Sarah Palin conspiracy first.”
Its not nice to see that.
Sorry.
Its embarassing to have done that. I should have thought about what I was typing.
That hasn’t been established yet, and to me at least at the moment I can see a reasonable doubt wrt him responding to their rhetoric, cos it doesn’t fit with his internet persona/identity.
I accept that may change, and a clear link may emerge. Its probably the most likely outcome. That will be a good and appropriate time to attack the Tea Bag rhetoric the way you have. After the evidence has been gathered and tested.
We are on the other side of the world and yet you have already assumed more knowledge of the event than the investigators and the judicial system that’ll judge the crime.
Maybe thats a safe assumption but until the evidence is in and tested and a clear legally safe verdict established, there isn’t great deal of difference between what you said and any other political rhetoric.
On this thread already the rhetoric has ramped up and there are comparisons between Al Quaeda and the Taliban and the tea baggers.
Does that mean we should invade Alaskastan and convert them all to sanity?
Oh Paul.
He also had a thing for sleepwalking and grammar. As much as I’d love to blame the languatory pendants, and the lack of good quality sleeping tablets since Stilnox got a bad name, the centre does not hold and shit.
Let’s not get carried away.
Thomas Jefferson:
The belief in the beneficial effects of political violence is widespread in American culture. This is an inevitable legacy of revolution.
Tea Partiers are simply one of many groups who look back to that revolutionary tradition for its rhetoric. Sometimes, individuals or groups, having identified their putative tyrants, put Jefferson’s sentiments into action.
To blame the Tea Partiers in particular for the recent atrocity is not logical.
You may as well blame Jefferson.
No Paul I think you nailed it. This is so obviously a hate crime and the only thing unknown is what the hatred was due to and anti-semitism is as likely as anything. Because if you just want to go on a rampage you don’t need to shoot a politician, you can just go to your nearest school or post office, as others have done before.
But the squirming has already started – go to TPM and you will find mealy-mouthed expressions of condolences from the likes of Michele Bachmann, John McCain and all of the usual suspects – and of course Sarah Palin’s website alterations were made in short order.
They know they’re guilty as hell even if they pretend otherwise.
I have been reading about all those German citizens who in the early years of WW2 suspected, only suspected mind you, that Adolph Hitler was systematically murdering the Jews.They were correctly labelled conspiracy theorists.
The fools, he had nothing to do with it.
Katz @77.
Well said.
Oh, yes, the “Tree of Liberty is refreshed by the blood of patriots” crowd have plausible deniability, that’s for sure.
There’s no link.
As such.
Casey @ 32, I heard Sheriff Dupnik’s interview on the radio a few hours ago. IMHO an excellent summary, and I hope that he has ramped up his own security.
Katz,
You’re right. One might as well blame Jefferson. After all, the American Revolution was a lot more bloody and intolerant than people realise. At least, that’s my impression after years of studying it in detail. The Tea Partyers, though, are a peculiar manifestation. More than any other outburst of American populism, they identify with the actual Revolution itself and its excesses.At least that’s the impression I get from reading about the Tea Party on the web. Its not the US’s fault that the bloodthirstiness of their revolution was eclipsed soon after by the French.
bmitw,
I don’t know if I’ve hit the nail on the head.
Casey,
you may well be right. I might be reading too much into it, and I know I have a dark vision of humanity. But why this woman, who from all reports was quite a right wing Democrat, regardless of her support of Obama’s health care plan. There are lots of left wing Democrats who support what the right believes is Obama’s socialism by stealth. Why pick a right wing Democrat woman who is Jewish? That’s all I think I’m asking.
And, as you suggest,bmitw, the only answer that makes sense is that its a hate crime. Just saying this guy is mad is the RWDBs desperately trying to let themselves off the hook. If that’s not the case, why should Palin rush to dismantle her croos-hairs site? Has to be a guilty conscience.
jules @ 45:
One of them may very well have been Harelequin.
The man from Strocchiverse claimed:
JFK: Killer unclear … many theories which would torpedo this thread. We don’t know that Oswald was the killer, and even if he was and was genuinely leftist, whether he acted in concert with others. Conclusion: Unclear, but reasonable doubt as to whether he qualifies.
RFK: Killer: Sirhan Sirhan — As an adult, he changed church denominations several times, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches, and also allegedly dabbling in the occult.[1] He was employed as a stable boy in 1965 at the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, California. Sirhan showed evidence during his trial of being seriously disturbed, so his claims cannot be entirely relied upon, but he did claim that animus towards RFK’s support for Israel over the 6-Day War was at the heart of the matter, and, (years later) that he was drunk and provoked by an anniversary rally by Zionists. That doesn’t qualify him as a leftist.
John Lennon: Killer: Mark David Chapman — As with Sirhan Sirhan there was a history of family abuse, particularly from his Texan military father. He was already using mind-altering substances by the time he was 14 and started a long association with evangelical christian movements, a not uncommon pattern for those with dissociative personality disorders. Chapman had a fixation with Holden Caulfield, a character from the classic novel Catcher in the Rye. There are no references at all to leftism in Chapman’s bio, and ample reason for thinking that in so far as he had a political milieu at all, it was on the right.
So, 3 out of 3 wrong, and as usual, The Man from Strocchiverse is simply making up stuff to suit his own right-of-centre outlook.
The Right in America continue to sink to new lows.
More about Jared Lee Loughner.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/08/arizona.shooting.suspect/
Paul Burns @83:
Maybe he lives in her district?
Paul … hmmm, maybe not; just followed your link @86
Attention: Katz
I dug this up from a RWDB website before they had got on message that the shooter was some sort of disaffected leftist drug user:
I’m not linking to it because some of the material on this site is grossly r*c*st.
From the New York Times:
““As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy,” the former classmate, Caitie Parker, wrote in a series of Twitter feeds Saturday. “I haven’t seen him since ’07 though. He became very reclusive.”
“He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in ’07, asked her a question & he told me she was ‘stupid & unintelligent,’ ” she wrote.
This very much appears to be the work of a deranged Leftist who hated Griffords for being a conservative Democrat (Blue Dog), not far enough to the Left (she recently voted against Pelosi as minority Speaker, for which she was angrily condemned on Leftist sites like Daily Kos; the words ‘She’s dead…’ featured quite frequently).
Not Tea Party inspired at all.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Loughner sounds like a disengaged youth with poor prospects – former community college student, rejected by the army recruiters.
I agree with Helen that USA has reaped what it sowed. American politics has been sowing hatred and this political assassination is its result.
Its only a matter of time before Australian politics produces a political assassination engendered by our toxic political climate.
Thanks for your links Paul Burns.
I am sorry that the victims, some of whom were very able people, have had their lives considerably shortened or curtailed by this atrocity committed by a no-hoper urged on by hate filled media, commentators and politicians.
Paul @86 I was watching conspiracy theory last night – didn’t know it was on, and had never seen it, but somehow it was on and I thought “well I liked Mad Max”. Anyway the bit where Mel Gibson was going on about serial killers being known by two names and political assassins known by three was just a bit weird. John wayne gacy springs to mind. The obvious example(???) Especially considering this case. I know (via the net) people who claim to be victims of projects associated with MK Ultra. Its interesting hearing their take on this. After all the entire basis of that program was inducing mental illness then manipulating peoples behaviour through stuff like word association.
I’m not suggesting anything with all this or trying to start any “blasphemous” rumours, other than that Billy Baxter was right when he sang about the cosmic jester’s sick sense of humour.
OH Loughner did sign himself off using his full name:
Jared Lee Loughner.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders how hard it would be to con someone like him into killing the congresswoman without linking him to tea party. But thats a pretty pointless exercise. Its the only way I can see to draw a link between him and the tea baggers at this point. Any new evidence and I’m happy to change to mind.
There are plenty of people who express sentiments similar to Loughner that want nothing to do with the tea party or right wing US politics. Or violence most of the time.
To me his writings suggest a worsening state of mental illness over time, and with people like that … honestly you can’t predict anything, or trust them, well maybe you or others can (thats the thesis behind MK Ultra) can but I can’t. I have been around various people who have had psychotic episodes and it’s a scary thing.
Anyway, what I’m saying is in the context of Fran Barlow’s comments @50. I do agree with them, and the idea of a tea bagger doing this … its really something we all probably expected.
Cept maybe its not the right wing populism in his case. More along the lines of political violence and american culture going hand in hand to an extent.
“The belief in the beneficial effects of political violence is widespread in American culture. This is an inevitable legacy of revolution.”
Oh please. The ‘tree of liberty” quote is the most misappropriated utterance in American history. It comes from a letter Jefferson wrote from Paris in 1787 (when he was US Ambassador to France) to william Smith – the future son-in-law of John Adams – and it refers quite specifically to Shays Rebellion. Shays Rebellion was a localised civil disturbance in Massachussetts that was basically about the right of the state legislature to collect taxes and the refusal of some taxpayers to comply.
Daniel Shays led an attack on an armoury, the militia was called out, four people died, twenty were wounded and two of the instigators were later hanged. Shays and most of the others were pardoned.
Jefferson was basically attempting to allay Smith’s concerns that the new republic was imperilled by the insurrection. Jefferson went on to say that the, “remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them.”
The fact that he wrote this from Paris two years before the French Revolution – and 6 years before the Robespierrist Reign of Terror did irrigate the furrows with ‘impure blood’ – has been taken as enthusiatic Jeffersonian approval for violent blood-letting as a concomitant of revolution. But there’s no evidence to suggest that he thought this at all and attempting to ‘read’ 18th century prose into modern political contexts is a perilous exercise to say the least.
More recently the quote has had renewed currency in the context of a T shirt slogan favoured by Timothy McVeigh. Gore Vidal may disagree, but McVeigh was no Jefferson.
The Left-liberal line that the shooter is a Tea Party sympathiser and terrorist seems to be a complete crock. But the parallels with McVeigh and the Contract with America movement is striking.
Especially the prospect of Obama using this moment to pivot against the Right-wing. But Obama has to be prepared to play hard-ball anti-Right-wing politics in order to achieve Centrist policy.
If Obama is smart he will take a leaf out of Clinton’s book and turn this around, into a denunciation of partisan vindictiveness. That would head off the possibility of a government shutdown and/or repeal of Obamacare.
Shooting an attractive blonde Congressman is definitely uncool. I predict that this moment will be the long-awaited turn around in the Tea Party movement.Lot of prospective Tea-Party voters will be turned off.
So in that sense the political instinct to pin this assassination on the militant Right-winge is sound.
Yes, its a fair characterisation: Palin / Tea Party rhetoric could fairly be considered incitement to political violence. Charges could even be laid in some jurisdictions.
Calling for “2nd amendment remedies”? That’s McVeigh all over. Its called murder where I come from.
It all reminds me that the only leaks we *know* put US agents at risk were the Scooter Libby leaks against Valerie Plame, on behalf of Dubya.
Talk of ‘nuts’ and some pretty fearful remarks on this thread about psychoses, and a great deal of ableism evident — Hatin’ on the mentally ill, much?
Helen is right — this was a deliberate, political crime. The prime target was not chosen at random. The location and means were not chosen at random. It was neither impulsive nor spontaneous. It bears all the hallmarks of planning and it was executed with devastating effectiveness.
This ‘nut’ knew what he was doing, as did his compatriots and his ideological fellow-travellers.
And US gun laws were at least as great a proximal cause of these deaths as any purported political motives, or mental illness for that matter.
The ‘zombie mentally ill person trained to be a killing automaton’ is a meme that speaks to our unconscious fears of mental disability. It doesn’t speak to the reality of this terrorist attack.
Mercurious I didn’t mean to sound like a nut job. I wrote that comment because Gifford is fighting for her life and there are other injured in hospital. Gifford was being spoken of as a presidential hopeful and who knows what her prognosis is. Judge John Roll had made judgements that had threatened his life. We know very little about most of the other victims.
“this terrorist attack”
Again I say it is too soon to call it that. Terrorism is about the desired effects of the violence, not necessarily the target. Choice of target derives from the desired effect, sure, but until some evidence surfaces that the shooter intended to create terror, or killed to advance a political or ideological agenda, there’s no point labelling the incident ‘terrorism’.
No actually. Have you ever helped someone kick a heroin habit only to have them descend into mental illness on you?
I hope not, but if it ever happens I hope you act with the intelligence and compassion I did.
That person I refer to is still one of my best friends and has a reasonably functioning and meaningful life so jam it. She now raises children.
Fearful my arse. You are calling this a political crime without a shred of evidence.
You are making the sort of baseless assumptions you accuse me of. And attributing motives to this guy that have not yet been demonstrated. Anywhere.
I expect that sort of behaviour from right wing wanna be totalitarian fascists.
No it doesn’t, cept that someone who clearly claims the govt is using grammer for mind control … well actually it sounds a bit like someone fixated on semiotics but thats just me. Show me the evidence of his right wing political allegiance and I’ll shut up about it.
Most of the people (with an appearance of credibility) who claim to be “survivors” of that stuff don’t associate it with mindless killing automatons like some stupid tv shows. They associate it with rape, sexual abuse and corruption, but hey don’t let that get in the way of your pre-position.
Mercurius – if not when someone has just killed a bunch of innocent people, and left a trail of clearly disturbed online ravings, including a 6-minute video of himself dressed in garbage bags wearing a very strange mask and burning the American flag in tinderbox scrubland, captioned with stuff about hallucinations of a fantastical bird on his shoulder with whom he chats about the government… if not then, when is it okay to call someone crazy?
The ‘Tea Party’ hasn’t done anything, because, really, it doesn’t exist. It’s a strange shorthand for some kind of Ill-defined mass of angry, anti-Obama Americans.
The Tea Party is best defined in terms of the public figures who speak to it: Beck, Limbaugh etc and it is unarguably true that the eliminationist rhetori
My son’s comment from the US was
Merc, he was crazy. The Sheriff I quoted upthread said he had a history of mental disorder and police problems and previous violent type behaviour. Further it is permissable not to trust someone in full flight psychosis. If someone had not trusted this person then maybe he would have got some help and this would not have happened. Once I did not trust someone in full flight psychosis and held them as the voice in their head told them to hang themselves. I was hoping all the time I was holding them that the voice would not tell them to kill me. You see I was scared and I did not trust the voice in their head. Not one little bit. Not until my friend and the voice were in hospital where the medicines killed the voice for good.
It may well be that the public discourse of vitriol and hatred emanating from teh tea party and this man’s mental illness collided. Along with that, this man’s mental illness may well have hooked into the discourse of revolutionary principle on which his nation is founded and he may have convinced himself he was being a patriot. It could be all these thing collided. That is not to say Palin and crew are not culpable for their part. But it is not to say the man was not crazy either. I think, given the access we have to onling stuff, that is beyond dispute Mercurious. Unless he was making it all up. But I don’t think so.
The “onling” stuff is a good freudian and I want the pendants to leave it alone, Thanks.
FDB — way to miss the point — it’s the unspoken assumption that the shooter’s ‘craziness’ is the most noteworthy or relevant factor to discuss.
There are lots of ‘crazy’ people out there who don’t do what this guy did.
That’s my point.
In that context, the exasperated trawling through his YouTubes to me seems of a type with the Victorian freak-show audiences.’Look at the freako! See what a freak he is!’
It was a politically-motivated assassination attempt. The prime target was not assassinated, and innocent bystanders were slain in the mayhem.
The ‘craziness’ of the killer is hardly the most germane factor.
Hardly the most germane factor? How do you know Merc?
Don’t you think the onling stuff is worrying?
“The ‘craziness’ of the killer is hardly the most germane factor.”
To him at least, it probably is.
FDB @ 101,
A nutter he might be – or just a very clever assassin who knew he would get caught so he prepared the ground for a plea of diminished responsibility? He had, so far as we know, at least one opportunity yo reconsider and turn back. He didn’t. It is clearly a premeditated attempted political murder. His actions on Saturday show this. There may be at least one other person involved. I just don’t buy this as an act of psychosis.
jules @ 94,
I don’t know if this guy was agin the banks. But a preoccupation with the silver standard over paper money, and the implied anti-semitism in the fact that his attack was against a prominent Jewish politician are hallmarks of classic American populism from the late 19C onwards. (and, for that matter, of Australian populism, though from memory I think we call the silver business funny money. Its a very long time since I’ve done a comparative study of Australian and American populism, but I think I’ve got the broad outlines right.) The extent to which classic American populism can be linked to the Tea Party movement, I’m not sure, since the latter seems to have pretty clear roots with popular ideas about the American Revolution.Personally, I think Sam Adams would be turning in his grave. The Boston Tea Party was a desperate attempt by Boston radicals to revive a revolutionary sentiment which had almost died out, and it succeeded only because of the way the British Government reacted to the loss of a great deal of very valuable East India Company tea. (With unreasoning force, in a variety of ways.)
On Saturday Salon I’ve linked to a very good article by Gordon S. Wood on this connection between the Tea Party movement, historical memory and the practice of history since the late 19th century.
This may be so, but I’m not one of those misappropriators. Jefferson’s formulation was provoked by the circumstance’s of Shays’s Rebellion but Jefferson knew he was uttering a generalisation about the cleansing effects of revolution.
Did I mention Robespierre??
In fact, the experience of the Jacobin Terror caused many Americans, including Jefferson, to have second thoughts about the unambiguous benefits of America’s infant revolutionary tradition.
Nevertheless, Jefferson’s comments on Shays’s Revolution are just a more dramatic gloss of his own ideas as expressed in the US Declaration of Independence, a document cannot be waved away as a private letter about an obscure local insurgency.
Moreover, the right to revolution, an idea pioneered in the US Declaration of Independence, is enshrined in several US state constitutions.
Only an ignoramus would dispute the pervasiveness of the legitimacy of political violence in American thought and constitutional practice.
“I just don’t buy this as an act of psychosis.”
Now who’s being ableist? Psychotics can be very single minded and resourceful.
Not as worrying as the typical daily output of a Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. Which they spew with the full backing of a global corporate media machine.
Casey you made the point, well, upthread that the prevalence of violent rhetoric suffusing a culture can influence the more suggestible to heinous acts — sans the ever-present violent rhetoric — this killer would most likely be just be another ‘crazy’ person with quaint views about the gold standard. But through that culture of politically-motivated violent talk, six people who went to a political gathering are shot dead in cold blood.
The violent talk precedes the violent acts, and the violent talk didn’t start with Jared Loughner.
FDB @ 111.
I’m not the one making the ablelist argument. That’s Mercurius.
There’s a lot more to this than the guy being a raving nutter, including the second person involved. I’ll wait till he’s found, and if I’m wrong willingly retract my mistaken assumptions. There’s more to this story yet than meets the eye methinks.
Yep. Merc. Don’t disagree with that.
Helen is right — this was a deliberate, political crime.
A bit too soon for you and Helen to make that call, don’t you think Merc.?
As I said before, all over the Internet right-wing trolls are trying to claim he was a leftist.
Why, in his writings, did he use the term “the second United States constitution”: meaning the post – Civil War constitution?
Who else makes this distinction apart from bitter, aggrieved Southerners?
From Paul Burns’ link at #87
Say what? There sure is reason to believe it, Sheriff. He’s just shot a bunch of strangers dead. But I can’t help wondering how many Americans think that that in itself is perfectly sane.
Mercurius, it’s not at all clear to me what you want. Is it not okay to talk about Loughner’s obvious mental illness at all? Or just not until we’ve finished speculating about the broader narrative?
Personally I think it’s absolutely pivotal to discuss how political speech creates the climate for political action in the specific case of the mentally ill. Sharron Angle or whoever else should be thinking about how simplistic and ‘only symbolically violent’ rhetoric affects the actions of those less able to see it as symbolic.
Reading JLL’s screeds induces me to conclude that his most pervasive intellectual influence was Lucky from Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”.
Fran: Apart from the context,….
Context? Targetted Republicans? You don’t see the equivalence of cross-hairs and bullseyes?
…..one might have assumed these were locations of Target stores.
Cute, but unconvincing
Katz @ 11: Many Muslims view violent Islamist sites without ever committing a violent act.
But the operators of those sites need only a vanishingly small number of persons to act on their provocations in order to claim mission success.
The target was Jewish wasn’t she? And a woman? And a politician?
Exactly the same applies to FoxNews.
So if this “nutter” was influenced by media at all, it could equally have been Islamic media?
I made no such “call”, PeterTB, I merely pointed to the violent, eliminationist rhetoric (for example, calling for or joking about assassination of Obama) which rules in the US mainstream and the fact that this climate more than likely influenced the gun toting man.
Some people appear to be under the impression that unless Palin or Angle specifically called the guy up and told him to do what he did, then everything in the garden is fine and they should all carry on saying whatever vicious things come into their heads. I simply disagree. Remember Alan Jones’ incitement of the rioters at Cronulla?
Fran: Oswald was definitely a communist. And a dedicated and resourceful one at that who acted alone to assassinate a president.
This guy Loyghner, though, is clearly inspired by Tea Party rhetoric. Its doesn’t matter if he’s an actual tea partyist or not. Their rhetoric is his enabler.
Yes, PTB. He may well have been an Islamist media addict. You may notice that I have not ascribed any particular motive to JLL.
However, I do notice that you fixate on the targets and the crosshairs but make no mention at all of Sharron Angle’s incitement to political assassination, mentioned first by me @ 6 above.
City Slicker failed to produce any similar rhetoric from a Democrat. Can you do better than him?
Paranoid delusions frequently feature either Government agencies or Religious organisations. His history, as far as we know it and the things he has written are just classic for that kind of mental illness.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/baby-of-hope-shot-dead-by-gunman-20110109-19jpr.html
Some details about some of the other victims.
Paul @110, I know what you say wrt the banks, the evil ZOG and all the rest, you can go to sites right now rife with the sort of anti semitic stuff you refer to. Thats why I checked his youtube site. Expecting to something that linked him to that particular strain of thought.
But at the same time lets face it banks suck. I always thought it kind of insane that banks were so identified with “Jews” during the 20th century, when to me it seemed if you were gonna pin an ethnicity on them it’d be WASP. The reality that acts of bastardry and being rich go hand in hand but its a human property not a racial one.
MY sense of this guy is along those lines.
Maybe I’m projecting, but there is a place you could check out if you wanted. Godlike Productions. Its a mind bending place to visit. It leaves you wondering how some people can think what they do.
This place is a conspiratainment website frequented by all sorts, but lots of tea baggers, other anti government types and nuts. There’s also racists fundies etc etc.
Plenty of lefties too, and rational people. It has an anonymous commenting facility. So people say all sorts of shit uninhibited cos the illusion of anonimity.
It really an amazing insight into the wide varieties of (predominantly) american nuttiness.
There’s heaps of racism there, and heaps of rejection of it too once upon a time, (not so much today), but over the last year or two most of its gone. The rabid offensive anti black and mexican racism is far less evident. Its not gone but its almost invisible. Criticism and fear of arabs and muslims is still there, but at the moment America seems awash in that anyway.
The anti semitism is still there, and it follows a pretty standard line. Much in line with what you’re talking about.
I dunno if those things are called tropes or what.
Anyway they weren’t there on that guys page (imo), not in the form they seem to be at the above mentioned site, and various places like Free Republic etc etc. You’d find the same ideas on Neo Nazi boards like Stormfront. Its not a healthy thing.
This guy doesn’t appear to exhibit any of that. Maybe he will soon as more info about him becomes clear.
I dunno if you remember this or not, but when Bush was in power he violated the US constitution and people made a fuss about it. At the time some right wing commentators in the US at the time associated such concerns with terrorism and betrayal. Less than 2 and a half years ago the people most concerned about the constitution were not on the right, and their concerns were actually valid, note code for racism.
Mods
There’s a comment of mine stuck in moderation, you can bin it if you want.
However:
Calling people “scared of mental illness” in this circumstance is plain wrong and insulting. The kind of feeding frenzy I’m seeing from people here and elsewhere in the absence of actual evidence is too much like a kangaroo court. I thought we were sposed to better than that’
Generalisations about people claiming to be victims of illegal aspects of documented US govt programs are also a bit off.
Thanks Stocchi for the list of left wing assasins (I didn’t realise McVeigh was left wing. Learn something new everyday I guess.)
I predict the following.
1. Shooter will be confirmed to be left wing.
2. Several columns will be written next week. “What is it with the left and violence?” This will be seen as a protest against her laxness on gun control, not her support on Obamacare.
3. Any attempt to move away from the narrative in points one and two will be decried as politicising a tragedy.
Q.E.D.
(Even better I’ve already read one comment elsewhere accusing the victim of using her status to survive assuming that there weren’t enough surgeons to save the other six despite the senator being shot in the head. Trust me, we haven’t seen the lowest points yet. I for one and going to withdraw and think of the poor deceased.)
@ 118 – Yep FDB but, here’s the thing:
For a lot of people, ‘he is mentally ill’ is the end-point of the discussion. But actually it’s the starting point of several discussions.
Discussions like:
- He was marginalised and excluded from participation in the mainstream of his society because his society doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that he has a mental illness, doesn’t know how to cater for his educational needs, doesn’t know how to provide treatment or care, doesn’t know how to offer him meaningful engagement in the workforce, has a health system that would make any viable treatment program beyond his economic grasp, doesn’t know how to provide him sound socialisation, and when he goes and kills six people, his society thinks that ‘he is mentally ill’ is a satisfactory explanation for what’s happened.
- He is white, male, young, little-educated, loves guns, and at this stage we don’t know much about his religious beliefs (if any) and socioeconomic status. But look how quickly the fact that he’s mentally ill is the issue to which people attribute great significance for his actions. It’s reflexive Othering, is what it is…
Olbermann:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40981503/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/
jules @ 127,
I’m one of those people who firmly believes if you have to chose between a conspiracy and a stuff up, always choose the stuff up.
The only conspiracies I believe in are the really successful ones where all the evidence is destroyed so you never know they’ve happened and never suspect there was a conspiracy in the first place.
I’ll give that site a miss. My brain is polluted enough by real life horrors, historical and otherwise.
Populism, btw, is not a conspiracy. It is a recognisable historical social and economic ideology which has played and still plays a significant role in most countries. Its historical characteristics have been clearly delineated by historians, who, in the future will I;m sure get to work in earnest on the Tea Party movement, though it will probably take some decades.
Why, in his writings, did he use the term “the second United States constitution”: meaning the post – Civil War constitution?
(And why do i keep getting moderated?)
Those discussions should happen, Mercurius, but so should the one that Casey and Katz have been conducting, about irresponsible hate speech and violent discourse that has crept out of private spaces onto the radio and television and into the Senate and Congress and is gradually becoming normalised as conventional political discourse and how violent speech acts affect those who hear it, including those made vulnerable to committing acts of violence by virtue of their circumstances, including but not limited to mental illness.
Sometime in the future I imagine people will have a lot to say about these years of the unending War on Terror and how it has affected the public consciousness of the countries who participated. We seem so much more violent and intolerant now than a decade ago.
I’m glad Keith Olberman recalled his vile statements about Hilary Clinton. He still thinks he is the moral conscience of the nation though, lecturing the plebs from his lofty pedestal.
fb @ 131,
Inspiring stuff. But I fear the vast majority of the RWDBs will not take the slightest bit of notice.
I do have a suggestion that might put an end to much of this disgusting right wing rhetoric though. Strip Murdoch of his American citizenship. He would no longer have a platform in the US to spread his evil propaganda.
(I do hope US intelligence monitors LP. They might even take that suggestion seriously.)
Mercurious @129.
For me it seems the rhetoric of Palin is the start and end of the discussion.
Lets see some evidence linking his actions to the Tea Party.
Or even some clear proof that the words of Palin and her political allies are more of an influence on him than Ted Kaczynski’s.
That he’s “mentally ill” isn’t a satisafactory explanation, but either is saying it was a political assassination motivated by Tea party rhetoric. That can only be said after a trial – for now its a politcal assassination but we don’t know what motivated it.
Here’s a list of attempted political assassinations in the US over the last 50 or so years lifted straight from wikipedia.
Casey Brezik unsuccessful attempt at Gov Jay Nixon (D). Bresik is Schizophrenic according to wikipedia.
John Hinley Jr unsuccessfully attempted to shoot Ronald Reagan, allegedly to impress Jodie Foster. (But really wtf knows with that one.)
Ok enough of that.
There have been heaps of political assassinations in the US most of them very low profile and in the last 20 years so far most of them appear to be either mental illness or personal political gain. There have been some attempted assassinations that failed as well, and again mental illness appears a factor. There appears to be a distinct lack of politically motivated assassination driven by the right wing.
I know wikipedia isn’t the best source in the universe but its a start.
The closest I can find at this point is the murder of Robert Smith Vance.
It appears to be racially motviated murder in Birmingham Alabama, but there is no real clear indication of a motive so I am not even sure its a political murder.
Katz @ 125. Let me stipulate that Sharron Angle seems like a lightweight blowhard.
Speaking of which…..
I don’t think you can make any kind of causal link between Fox and the their fellow travelers and these killings. However what the RWDBs need to remember is that the US has a (proud?) history of armed resistance to the powers that be and that currently the country is swamped with firearms. I wouldn’t be a cop in the US for quids. When the population’s well armed as the constabulary you have to worry. And the thing is many Americans think it vital that they be as well armed as their police forces, because .. you know … just in case (enter Palin & Tea Party ratbags).
The Westboro Baptist Church has announced that they will send pickets to protest at the victims’ funerals.
Their “press release” begins with the words:
“Thank God for the Shooter – 6 Dead!”
And later…
About the only response I can immediately think of is:
John. 11:35
Peter TB @ 137,
I bet you really had to search the web for your gross misrepresentation of Obama. It is absolutely clear he was speaking metaphorically. He did not put somebody’s photograph between the cross hairs of a gun, then take it down minutes after that person had a bullet put through the brain. Palin DID. But I’m not going to get into a stoush with you over it on this thread. Given the subject matter of the thread it would be grossly distasteful to do so.
Jules @ 136,
Can you not see that ordinary, somewhat unthinking people can be encouraged to violence by places like Fox News etc, and other peddlars of filth. read fb’s link @ 131. It really does explain the poisonous mileu of the American right wing media. America hasn’t been this bad since the days of Joe MCCarthy. These rightwing peddlers of hate need to be unmasked in the same way he was.
Here’s a bit of campaign advertising from Jesse Kelly, Giffords’ loveable opponent.
Paul @140 I didn’t need this shooting to tell me that. Have a look at the comments on Andrew Bolts blog if he re opens them leading up to Australia day.
If this event brings attention onto the poisonous nature of the tea baggers’ leaders and noise machine that is a great thing.
Its not the same thing as calling this terrorism and saying that rhetoric was responsible for the shooters actions until there is some actual evidence to back it up.
Or what? If it makes RW scum F**ks look bad its ok to just ignore the basic principles of western law? Ones like innocent till proven guilty and show me the evidence so I can test it in an open court?
If thats the case a pox on both your houses.
Here’s what the Tea Party think. Warning. You will need something to throw up in after you’ve read it.
http://teapartyroundtable.com/2011/01/08/arizona-shooting/
Jules,
All I am saying is it is very likely this guy’s thinking was influenced by the current poisonous right wing zeitgeist of American politics, whether or not he was a signed up member of the Tea Party. He does not have to be a Tea Party Member to be influenced by them. End of discussion, OK?
@Paul Burns, or maybe he was influenced by Obama himself:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/obama-we-bring-a-gun/
Just so we are clear. I wholeheartedly endorse Oldermann comments.
Especially the bit about demanding justice not revenge, and:
Alleged terrorist?
I think alleged political assassin and spree killer is a more apt term, but as Olberman said, its easy to escalate with language even when you don’t intend to. (Tho I dunno if I believe that in his case wrt HC.)
Thanks, Paul, said it for me.
As Ms Giffords’ dad pointed out, Democrat congresscritters (up to and including Obama himself) now operate against a background noise of death threats, from the jokey to the deranged. As someone on another blog commented, you don’t know which one is going to be serious.
What is the result of such a sustained low-level attack, with occasional outbreaks of actual gunfire?
Well, for one thing, people who the NRA / Tea party / Rethuglican far-right don’t like have to take all that into account when deciding to run for office. I would venture to guess that the continuous threat level would tend to discourage people running for office.
That’s terrorism.
The initial reports about her death turned out to be, thankfully, inaccurate.
The only other Congressperson killed in the line of duty was Rep. Leo Ryan, who was assassinated shortly before the Jonestown Massacre.
There is going to be civil strife in America until its a fully slave system or until the banking-government ascendancy stops stealing in their contemptuous way. We are only just seeing the beginning of this strife. Any proletarian rightist who is somewhat suicidal is going to take some of the bloodsuckers down with them. A lot of you guys think its all a joke when someone like Henry Paulson comes out there and loots the American public, to shore up himself and his mates. But not everyone is about to stand for their own enslavement.
“As Ms Giffords’ dad pointed out, Democrat congresscritters (up to and including Obama himself) now operate against a background noise of death threats, from the jokey to the deranged. As someone on another blog commented, you don’t know which one is going to be serious.”
Thats exactly what you would expect. Was she there during the banking bailout, and which way did she vote? Thanks to the banking bailout and the stimulus, Americans who are not in a government or professional job now face astonishing levels of unemployment. There whole lives have been crippled thanks to a new explosion in looting. Only corporate bigshots, professionals, and public servants are immune from the harm. They are going to turn around and blame people. And its not going to be pretty. The idea is not to think that you can steal with impunity, in the pretense that third parties aren’t going to cop it. You steal a trillion dollars, somewhere, somehow, sometime people will be dying for any number of reasons.
Insanity stalks the US. “Whom the Gods would destroy he first makes mad” Euripides nailed it back then. The only difference is that now the entire Nation is cast as Medea .
This mad obsession with guns and violence, sanctified by the falsified history of a violent and totally unscrupulous “revolution” is tearing the nation apart.
Not only are they murdering innocents abroad but they must murder innocents at home.
The only bright side is that despite 50 years of intense propaganda they have had only a mild success in the export of this madness.
Huggy
Huggy, we don’t always agree but this is absolutely 100% spot on. Couldn’t agree with you more.
The War on terror is starting to resemble the War on drugs…
Going to quote this again, and add that guns and history are no really to blame. They provide some context, but what’s to blame is the same development that we see in places like Australia, the middle is falling apart. The ideas which hold something like the US together are no longer able to lift the differences between the different sub-groups in the US.
So thats
What Paul said @ 143 not the same as calling him a terrorist and declaring him guilty of an overt political act without even waiting for evidence. Its just an assumption based on his personal bias.
He is clearly mentally ill.
Mentally ill people have physically attacked political figures in the US more than any other group over the last 30 years, at least according to the only figures I can find and admittedly that is wikipedia so its not the best source, but its not total crap either. Its fairly accurate for most non controversial topics and has refs.
This is not an isolated incident in that sense.
Especially compared to the frequency of political assassinations by politically motivated people in that time in the US. There aren’t many.
You’re making unsubstantiated judgments about someone who hasn’t even been to court to support your political pov.
Thats a separate thing to criticising right wing shitfullness.
The he who is mentally ill isn’t PB its JLL.
Also, this was an anti-semtic attack. I have absolutely no problem in identifying it as such, just like we can identify the gunman as poor white trash.
Yes, but why this heated discussion about the status of the gun man’s mental health? As in a court of law, this may lower the gunman’s culpability, but the question remains, why did he do particularly what he did? Why did he commit a political crime? Why does he identify with his nation the way he does? Etc. etc.
Odd about that, Joe @ 150.
Anyway, have to run. Look forward to reading what you all come up with.
The American Revolution was violent, horribly so at times, especially in the second half of the War for American Independencece. Of course, what the Tea Party has falsified (I just gave them a serve on that website I linked to)was the nature of that violence. Apart from wartime it was not the violence of the gun. for the most part. Instead dissenters had their houses pulled down, were tarred and feathered, or ridden on the rail – a very painful and crippling torture. The Tea Partyers even misunderstand the second amendment. To paraphrase it, it was the right of a militia to bear arms, and every male of fighting age was expected to be in his local militia. However the point of the right to bear arms was to prevent the creation of a standing army which was seen as a threat to liberty and republican virtue. Just sayin;.
I take it then, Paul, that you might be one of those who would uphold the 2nd amendment if it were restricted to the arms available at the time the amendment was passed?
My comment at No.2 did not blame anyone. The question that needs to be answered is why the website was taken down. Was it a response to the shootings?
uphold possibly support….
Why didn’t my strikeout html (of “uphold”) work???
[because some people who write css for core typography classes in sub-stylesheets these days have decided to pre-emptively declare certain older html tags as display:none; (or equivalent), and I have no idea why, but strike is one of them. They seem to want everyone to shift to XHTML, so in future use del ~ tigtog]
Oh, and loyalists had their property confiscated and were driven out of town into loyalist areas. Some were gaoled, or if they were from the ruling class, paroled beyond the fighting. Some loyalists were shot, outside of battle, in the immediate postwar period if they returned. But mostly they were just driven out of the country. None of them were ever fully compensated for lost property. IMHO, the revolutionary template created by the Americans was followed in most other revolutions, with local variations, right up to the 20th century,.Okay. I’ll shut up now.
Sadly, Giffords is actually anti gun control herself – presumably for pragmatic Arizonian political reasons. Interesting mix: she is also pro choice.
People shouldn’t assume that the gunman was acting in response to Palin. That is OTT at this stage of what we know. I’ve read that he is actually more left than right leaning. And a nutjob.
Jules: “Tho I dunno if I believe that in his case wrt HC.)”
I absolutely don’t believe it, it’s sheer hypocrisy. His insufferable moral vanity is completely unearned. He routinely uses intemperate, dehumanizing language to describe his targets, Hilary was just the anointed enemy of the hour. He’s not in the same class as Beck but this stuff begins when you decide that your opponent is so beneath contempt that you are within your rights to not only disagree with them but to use hate speech against them. Jon Stewart diagnosed the problem earlier this year and like him, I don’t believe that it is the Right who are solely to blame.
Even that speech by Obama, which is not at all offensive and could not in any sense be seen as inciting violence demonstrates the extent to which the language of violence has invaded political discourse. No doubt it is both a result of the WOT and also a means by which to keep the public in the right frame of mind for its continuance, but it is dangerous when political difference and political conflict is continually painted in terms of violent confrontation.
At least the shooter is still alive. All too often in these sort of incidents the shooter kills themselves or get shot by police.
If he remains alive until he gets to trial the authorities have the chance to interrogate him to establish motive and he has the opportunity to explain himself in court, if he wants to, but he may choose to remain silent.
Until then we can only speculate about his state of mind and motivations and we really know too little at this stage to come to any conclusions.
Palin, Angle and others may have hinted at political assassinations, but one key theme for the Tea Partiers and others has been protecting the right to bear arms, not necessarily because they want to kill others but because it is a “right” under the Constitution and Obama and the rest of the socialists want to to take their weapons off them. That would just be the first step to the subjugation of the people and so must be resisted.
When everyone has the right to bear arms, backed up by the Supreme Court, you will get some who will see that as a licence to kill.
Until the US does something about gun control laws these situations will continue – but it aint going to happen as the Supreme court has overruled some State measures to control guns.
@ 164 et. al.:
From what I’ve read over the past 10 hours from first hearing this news, none of the commentators making assertions as to the gunman’s personal political bias have got the slightest idea as to whether he’s left-wing, right-wing, Big-Endian, Little-Endian, Glug or Gosh.
Many (most) of the comments are pure speculation at this stage, written and said to fill empty holes in pages and dead-air on the radio/television programmes.
Fiona Reynolds,
No. I would restrict it to modern weaponry for the standing army which they now have, law enforcement, and the local militia.Re the latter: as I understand it, much of the fighting force in Iraq was composed of militia serving overseas. I don’t know what the case is with Afghanistan. I would totally disarm the civilian population.
Not that I support any kind of second amendment in Australia, if we were to get a Bill of Rights as a republic. I do think Howard went too far in his disarming of the population after Port Arthur, in that I’m concerned if the country was ever invaded as to how we could arm a volunteer Defence Corps or a guerilla army.
End of discussion, OK?
No PB – not OK. You are shooting off your mouth about the likely cause of this shooting in an information vacuum, seemingly pandering to you own prejudices. Even if the killer does turn out to be anything other than a nutter, you have jumped the gun.
PB1: I would totally disarm the civilian population.
PB2: I do think Howard went too far in his disarming of the population
John Howard went further than, like, totally?
I knew the man was a legend!
Peter TB @ 170,
You’re just playing word games. In this instance a waste of your time and mine.
Peter TB @ 169,
My impression of the violence of the RWDBS in the US is an information vacuum. Oh, of course it is. The United States is the most gun free country in the world. I’m deluded to suggest it might have a gun culture.
Yeah Olbermann is a slime, but I do endorse his call for a good hard look at himself and his crew.
I agree about Obama’s use of language too. I’m really disappointed in Obama. Before anyone mentions race my dad was black and my mum was white, race has nothing to do with it. Obama’s far to far to the right for my liking. He didn’t “bring a gun” to the insurance industry over America’s health care debacle.
I don’t like Obamacare either but for the complete opposite reasons the tea party claims. It didn’t go anywhere near far enough.
I am starting to come round to the idea that what he did was an achievement of monumentual proportions tho. Maybe he’s a politician cos he can compromise and still get outcomes for people and I’m not mature enough to do that.
But he’s not enough of a socialist for my liking. Still, I blame the left in the US for not holding him to higher standards as much as anything. If we don’t keep the pressure on politicians then only the right will.
The right has no monopoly on violent language either. I don’t like the Jonas Brothers either, but FFS!
Words fail me.
This are what obsessed grammar over get you.
Casey, nice work with your friend. I hope I react the same way if it happens to me.
BTW, the murdered judge was a Bush appointee. Not that it means anything unless he wrote a style guide for the government. I’m afraid none of it means anything other than society needs a better way to discern between self-medicating psychotics and harmless cranks.
After eight years of eliminationist rhetoric directed at W (including a feature snuff film no less) it’s a bit rich to jump on opponents’ speech now. If people can agree the shooter is nuts, then does it matter what he heard anyone say? Left or right? He could have got his inspiration from TeleTubbies for all we know.
BTW, second “suspect” pictured here.
That post above was in response to su @ 165.
Paul Burns @ 158 and 163. It seems to me that the original intention of the second amendment of the US constitution was more in line with the Swiss idea than whats preached by the right in the US.
What they preach tends to use the second amendment as justification for whats really a desire to use violence to expand territorially and economically. All that wild west bullshit, stealing half of Mexico, the rise of their brand capitalism on the back of the rest of the worlds resources when they needed to. Need I go on.
Its like there is an obsession with power and using it over other people that runs through many aspects of US culture Its deeper than just the tea party.
Its not the whole story of course. The US also has a strong culture of resisting that, and “self improvement” along those lines.
Obama is not a socialist. He doesn’t even resemble a socialist. Americans have no idea of what democratic socialism is. They think its the first step to communism. In this sense America is not at all like Australia. Up to 1983, we had either anti-communist socialist governments or conservative governments that were prepared to retain some aspects of socialist programmes brought in by Labor, and a conservative party that arguably had a bunch of agrarian socialists as a minor party in their coalition. Two things changed all that. The first was peculiarly Australian – viz Labor;s reaction to the 1975 constitutional crisis post 1975, and the supremacy of right wing neo liberalism in the conservative parties and its consequent spread to the Labor Party, because Labor believed it necessary for political survival.
So far as I’m aweare the last prominent socialist in US politics was Eugene Debs,who ran unsuccessfully for President, and that was pre the Russian Revolution, I think.
Jules @ 174,
Tend to agree with you. The urge for western expansionism predates the Revolution. British attempts to limit such expansionism in the Proclamation Line of 1763 is seen as one of the main causes of the American Revolution, which began about 1763 and ended about 1789,so it predates the War of Independence. That;s one of the things you never hear the Tea Party talk about, any more than they talk about the Quebec Act of c, 1774 as a cause. Its pretty hard to come to terms with the fact that one of the major impetuses (impeti, pendants?) of the Glorious Cause was a rabid anti-Catholicism.
You’re right. Palin should reinstate that page immediately.
Paul, I am not trying to nitpick, but I would appreciate a clarification of your position on “disarming the population”. Your comment @ 170 is ambiguous.
Olberman:
The facts:
Olberman is a sentimental, self-deluding ignoramus.
Fiona Reynolds @ 180
I guess I’m looking at it from an historical perspective. During World War 2 the Government relied on rural citizens who were to institute a scorched earth policy and form guerilla units to fight any Japanese invasion to provide their own arms and ammunition, as I understand it. This can’t be done now if we were invaded because they don’t have the necessary arms. Does that make it any clearer.
Goodness me! The Tea Party Web site, after making a big thing about how they don’t censor liberal opponents’ opinions the way liberal (American terminology) sites do, have put me in moderation. Funny, that.In essence it was my comment at 177 re Obama and socialism, with a couple of extra lines that Americans don’t have a clue what they’re talking about when they talk about socialism. Ah, well.
Paul, thank you for that clarification.
As for your second paragraph, how surprising
One of my cherished “gobsmacked” moments back in 2007 was listening to an American saying that he would vote against (now) President Obama because of his stance on socialist health – and this despite the interviewee’s having been bankrupted because of health bills.
One laughs only because of the alternative.
For those who have been supporting the politics of hate in the US – its definitely time to be ashamed.
Sources say the person who sent two incendiary packages was angry over electronic road signs, asking people to report suspicious activity.
A note inside one of the packages read: “Report suspicious activity . . . total bull**** . . . you have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Signed, X.”
Another one
As I wrote upthread, Lefty E, I hope Sheriff Dupnik is keeping good care of himself. Can imagine only too many people who would like to give him a well-deserved bullet in the brain for being so uppity.
Given the apparent power of rhetoric, I am suprised that Bush, Howard and Blair are still all alive.
Isn’t it too early to be apportioning blame or questioning policy? Or, does that only apply to Tony Abbot and the Coalition.
I am also amazed at how so many here have a line into exactly what other people think e.g. @25 – “I don’t doubt she would love to see something like this coming from her alleged support base.”
That last comment was where I stopped reading this thread – I request the moderators of this site review comment 25 with respect as to whether it merits editting or removal and or sanctions against the poster.
@Katz 181.
My reaction was similar. Olberman is very self important. And the notion that we ought to against violence is really silly. One cannot be against violence as a universal principle; it is not a Kantian categorical imperative, one might say. Even if we don’t compare the letter of the constitutions you list to Olberman’s comments, the world’s democracies are practically based upon violence, whether this is wars abroad, policing at home or the powerlessness of life within so much of capitalism that leads to all sorts of personal violence: depression, alcohol ‘miss use’, domestic violence.
I personally believe that spontaneous acts of violence, as dreadful as they are, are signs of life. No matter how senseless the acts are, they are referents to the way this world breaks people in a very real (violent?) way. So much of this pain can be ignored. It is only reacted to when it is crimialised as something malignant. Is this shooting really worse than the person who dies slowly from drug abuse – both, I think, result from utter social exclusion. There is nothing nice about politics, violence or exclusion.
From a commenter on CNN: “Even if it turns out not to be a Tea Bagger, they need to come to grips with why it was so easy to assume it was one of them.”
Whether you’d call him prominent or not is debatable but Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist (independent) is in the US Senate.
http://www.bernie.org/
sanders.senate.gov/
oh come now Razor, what government officials, public media figures with major television shows, or even major bloggers called for the assassination of any of the people you mention? What equivalent of Limbaugh or Palin demanded these things? When did any left-wing protester stand outside a building with Bush inside, carrying an unconcealed handgun and a placard quoting the “tree of liberty” passage?
Get over yourself.
Razor is correct. I remember all to well when John Howard was attack by someone who got close enough to him to call him a rodent and throw a block of cheese at his feet. He was also assaulted by a smelly hippy who tried to throw his shoes at him.
Bush was also assaulted in a similar matter.
This is of course directly comparable. Someone could have lost an eye. How do we know the Honrable Mt Howard isn’t dairy intolerant?
Oh Razor you’re sweet. I’ll make a deal with you. Stop the rain, and I’ll go outside and get something done.
@129
Sadly you’re probably right. In the spirit of the centre not holding:
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Things just go from bad to worse.
tssk, he even had to wear a bullet-proof vest because of those pesky left-wing gun nuts in rural queensland. How can we forget the perfidy of the Australian left?
Cuppa 2 190,
That really gladdens my heart. There’s hope for America yet.
Is it yet known what the kids motivation was or are people jumping the gun a little bit? Whatever the reality of the individual case, Congressmen ought to prepare to be shot at like rabbits and cane toads. Since they do much more damage then either.
Consider the extremist nature of government or shadow government behavior in the States at the moment. They are humiliating people at the airport for no reason. Their tourism industry is going to hit a wall, since no human being who doesn’t have to put up with it is going to put up with the invasive procedures that are being employed. They are making lists of names of being who don’t want to put up with it. This is part of a comprehensive full-blown attempt to establish a tyranny in the US.
I’m not arguing the rights and wrongs of political violence.
More practically, I’m demonstrating that contrary to Olberman’s sentimentalism, political violence is accorded a vital and legitimate role in American constitutional theory.
Thus, to allege, as Olberman does, that violence “has no place in [American] democracy”, is plain ignorant.
In other words, “fake, but accurate”.
A new low on LP!!!! If Palin and the right-wingers were responsible for inciting this and Giffords was the target, than why did this nutjob also kill 6 people and injure 20 others? Hey, I think the 2nd amendment is just as much of a joke as the next person, but to blame it on the Tea Party!!!! Get a grip people.
Jamo I do hope you have left some scorn in reserve for Tucson’s Sheriff Dupnik:
Do you suppose Sheriff Dupnik is referring to ACORN and The Southern Poverty Law Centre in his remarks?
And do you have similar disapprobation for Spencer Giffords — Gabrielle’s father?
Tell that to the relatives of the bystanders who died. Tell that to the nine year old girl’s mother.
What I see many here doing, on all sides and especially in the US, is making a big noise now about what they wish the gutless so-called-liberal media had been making a big noise about for ages – that the rhetoric from the far-right in the US about “Second Amendment Solutions” etc is recklessly inflammatory in a nation where they have such a vigorous gun culture that is built on fetishising that very same Second Amendment. There are a great many politicians in the US who ought to be ashamed of themselves for going along with such pandering rhetoric even a little bit nudge nudge wink wink plausible deniability, and people have been waiting for the national media to take them to task, and by and large the national media has not, apart from a few opeds and columns here and there that have not been generally noticed.
So what we have is a groundswell of outrage that is failing to distinguish between what we don’t know – how much, if at all, Jared Lee Loughner was exposed to such rhetoric and how he responded to it – and what we do know – that their national media has been absolutely gutless in declaring that any such rhetoric is disgusting purely on principle, and that any politician who resorts to it should be considered a blot on their community and ethically ineligible for office.
If the “liberal” media had had the guts to call out the pandering pollies months/years ago on this, people wouldn’t be so willing to jump on this particular case as somehow proving the point, which it obviously doesn’t (at least not on the information we currently have). There’s a lot of shame to go around on this one.
Andrew Bolt on how not to respond to tragic shootings
Honestly? It’s a bit early to draw that link between Palin/Tea Party rhetoric and this shooting surely?
That said ALL politicians should be just a little worried when things like this happen, you can’t incite people to violence and shy away when the violence happens. They are supposed to be sane and rational people capable of making sound policy decisions, why even in jest would you suggest that violence is an appropriate way to address political differences in this situation?
@199-201 – There’s an attempt to distort the debate by claiming that the concern is merely about the Tea Party. There seems to be a bizarre idea that if the Tea party is not involved, the US right as a whole is off the hook. If you read US sources, not just this thread, the concern is for the right wing noise machine in toto – FOX news, Palin, Angle, Tea party, Beck and a long list after that.
It’s a zeitgeist, people, and being protective of the deluded Tea partiers is neither here nor there.
-New Yorker
Oh, just went to Bolt link, and obviously there is a pattern here. It’ll be the modus operandi for the next few days I guess.
(1) Pick ONE of the protagonists I mentioned @205
(2) Demonstrate that the shooting couldn’t be proved to be down to that ONE protagonist, which isn’t hard as that would probably be unproveable.
(3) See!? No problem.
Foreign Policy has been running a debate in the last couple of its issues about “America’s Decline”.
What they’re really concerned about, of course, is the decline of the American led world-order and the death of that “Enlightenment Project.
Cf. eg. Jurgen Habermas “The Divided West”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/think_again_american_decline
I’ll note in passing, that when Immanuel Wallerstein wrote his book “The Decline of American Power”, in the wake of 9/11 and Iraq War II, Wallerstein was widely mocked for his views. Now, it seems, at least in American Foreign policy circles, people are taking his thesis very seriously.
Indeed, Wallerstein himself, also features in the latest issue of Foreign Policy Magazine.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/unconventional_wisdom?page=0,9
Anyway in this context of self-reflection/self criticism, there appeared this article by David Rothkopf.
http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/09/how_can_a_gun_crazed_society_lead_the_world
Oh Good Lord – People, this guy is a lunatic. Thats why he decided to open fire on 26 others plus Gifford. Who knows what the hell motivated him. And btw prejudice, hatred, bigotry etc and the passion that goes along with it is nothing new in Arizona. It has been happening for decades. Of course that doesnt make it right but to blame it on the Tea party or the American Right is complete crap. And mercurius – to use that quote of Spencer Giffords as some how evidence that this guy was linked to the Tea Party is worse than pathetic.
William Randolph Hearst called for the assassination of President William McKinley.
Perhaps coincidentally, soon after, McKinley was assassinated. Nevertheless, at the time many folks were inclined to blame Hearst for the “Buffalo Tragedy”.
Recovering well from this setback, William Randolph Hearst went on to become the greatest media tycoon in the US.
The Tucson shooting incident may also be a good business opportunity for Rupert Murdoch.
Jamo,
You’re right about one thing; the man that committed these shootings is unhinged. His target could have been anyone or anything. The question over the next few days will be what influenced his decisions and choices.
Now certainly there is a lot of jumping to conclusions about the Palin/Tea party rhetoric, but I would argue that we wouldn’t be talking about this as a possibility unless the words at least sounded like a call to arms (Which in the case of Sharon Angle, is literally the case).
Now obviously, a rational person will not draw a conclusion saying that a bullseye on a national map is a call to kill a politician (or for that matter even just saying a second-amendment remedy is appropriate for that matter) because that’s just heated and largely stupid rhetoric. But in the mind of a person who is not wholly sane, it’s harder to predict the result.
If anything, it reinforces the importance of being very careful with your words when you are in a position of power. Especially in the case of seasoned/trained politicians and their speechwriters who are fully aware of the impact that their words can have.
This (hopefully) isn’t about pinning guilt on electoral rivals; this should however serve as a wakeup call to those who would use violent rhetoric. All actions have consequences, so just be careful.
Why did Bremer shoot Wallace?
Never miss an opportunity guys.
While it is an appropriate time to talk about gun control in America (the point everyone is missing), the other stuff is stomach churning. Stuff like this happens all the time in the USA, well before Fox News and Sarah Palin.
Also, have a look at this, Richard Farmer (with some help from Bill Clinton)
Words do matter – The Stump
PinkyOz,
I largely agree with what you have said. But if our politicians and public figures have to censor everything they say through some sort of nutjob filter…..then what level of public debate are we going to have!! Mentally unstable persons even take rational and sensible things the wrong way.
The point out of all this for mine is – How does this guy get to own a gun in the first place.? Repeal the 2nd amendment, increase mental health awareness and solutions and reduce the risk of this sort of thing happening by 80%. It is not that hard!
While that is true HC, and I have made the same point myself, nevertheless what is new is the fact that an officially endorsed candidate of a major party for the US Senate [!] openly countenanced the physical destruction of her political opponents.
I think you have to agree that this is new.
This is a question born out of true ignorance: did this sort of “incitement” happen during the 1950s-1960s with regards to the civil rights movement? There was certainly strong language used in allegations about the Kennedys, and two of them were assassinated.
Tyro Rex said:
I’m not going to nuke this thread by inviting a Warren Commission discussion. Let me stipulate that I regard the “Oswald acted alone” assertion as incredible and move on. Assuming, purely for the sake of argument, that the official story is accepted, it was clear from before Oswald joined the marines that he was a leftist? He received apparently, psychiatric treatment before he joined the marines and then didn’t cope all that well with being in the marines. Accordingly, one must put an asterisk next to his commitment to Marxism. It is also the case that like most small ostensibly left organisations of the time in the US, the FPCC had a government agent in its ranks. This does raise questions about the integrity of the FPCC, given subsequent developments.
You tell me HC.
I am unaware of any other major party candidate for or incumbent of federal public office ever openly countenancing the assassination of his/her opponent[s].
Do you have better information?
Peter TB said:
No. In context, this was different.
Now if the 2nd Amendment argument had been about the desire to possess and use bows and arrows and the resistance of the Republicans to permissive use of self-loading crossbows, and Loughner had opened fire with a bow and arrow on a Republican, you might have a point.
Jamo,
Agreed, tighter gun controls (especially on former felons and the mentally infirm) would go a long way to stopping this from happening. But I have been told on occasion that Canada has similar gun ownership laws to the states and doesn’t have these problems on even close to the same scale. That might suggest a fairly severe cultural problem around both guns and politics in the US.
The answer may be somewhere in the middle, but I doubt there is much will to enact such measures, even after a tragedy such as this.
@ KATZ 198.
I think that’s a good point; it speak to the problem of rhetoric over political letter. Those constitutions obviously have something to do with the whole Lockean tradition: that a broken contract authorises violence against a sovereign. But we’d at least have to ask about the efficacy of those letters. You’d think that the American people would for a long time have been constitutionally enabled to murder their government; that hasn’t happened. Again I know you aren’t making a normative claim. I’m also trying to avoid that. I think we ought to think about the composition of elements that make up the contemporary world: it is a machine that involves brutal violence as a matter of its function, whether this is in Palestine, Congo, Juarez or Arizona.
Jamo, if you are going to obtusely misread and wilfully misinterpret every remark on this topic, there is little point engaging.
We don’t know who the shooter was ‘linked’ to. Spencer Giffords remarks aren’t ‘evidence’ of anything other than he believes that the Tea Party are, en masse, an enemy of his daughter. But according to you, it is “worse than pathetic” to make such suppositions. OK, fine. Obviously you know better the root causes than the investigating Sheriff and the father of the prime target. Please contact the Tucson police with the benefit of your superior insight into the situation, they could use the help.
Translation: ‘Climate change happens all the time, well before humans evolved, therefore humans are not responsible for climate change now.’
The second suspect is no longer a suspect. He was the cab driver who drove the assassin to the shopping centre.
Police have found firm evidence at the assassin’s house that the attack was premeditated. He has invoked his right to remain silent, to not self-incrimimate. Case solved, The mad right can get back to invoking the second ammendment as the solution to political differences. Fox News, Beck, the Tea Party et al can go back to their violent rhetoric safe in the knowledge that sooner or later abother nutter gearing them on the radio or watching them on TV will be inspired yo continue the good work. No worries, eh?
mercurius – We are talking in the context of an attack of a politician and the alleged motives behind such an attack. And you then bring in a quote of the father about who her her enemies are!!! Whatever the interpretaion we are supposed to take, it is still dumb.
However you do make a very good point in the sarcasm contained at 220 – No-one at this stage knows the root cause or primary motive behind this. Not me and not you. And that is why I’m arguing it is stupid to blame the American Right for this instead of focusing on the facts we do know. i.e this nutter had a gun and was mentally unstable.
By all means, Mercurius, put words in my mouth. You’ve done it before.
I wasn’t suggesting it’s a problem that cannot be solved, or a solution shouldn’t be attempted.
I was actually suggesting the common theme during the course of this period in the USA has been the existence of the second amendment, and this crazy idea that people should have guns.
Mental illness or seriously and dangerously maladjusted views of the word will always exist, although we can work to minimise them. But access to firearms is so frightfully easy to make harder, and therefore save lives, that is almost doesn’t bear mentioning.
How many large scale (more than 5 casualties) shootings have there been in Australia since mid-1996?
Jamo, you and many others are selectively focussing on some facts you know. The focus of your selection is instructive. Because there are other facts we know that apparently aren’t worth talking about…
…we also know he is white, male, young, little-educated, and at this stage we don’t know much about his religious beliefs (if any) and socioeconomic status. But like many, the fact that he’s mentally ill is the issue to which you automatically attribute great significance for his actions. It’s reflexive Othering, is what it is…and it reveals more about our society’s attitudes towards mental illness than it reveals about the causes of this massacre.
It certainly is reflexive Othering Mercurius. Would someone like to come up with statistics that show that mentally ill people are more prone to violent crime than the rest of the population? I doubt those statistics exist.
Some mentally ill people commit violent crimes. so, some some people in any other category of humanity you’d like to mention. Mental illness may be a factor here, but it isn’t a very useful tool for talking about why this occurred, imo.
No-one is saying the Tea Part caused this in a direct way. But there is a culture of violent rhetoric being used in contemporary USA politics. Add this to their lax gun laws and you’ve got a recipe for violence.
The alleged stoking of the fires of political violence by forces such a sthe Tea Party and its fellow-travellers reminds me of the question, did Gavrilo Princip cause the outbreak of WWI. Without the background of ultra-nationalism, militarism and imperialist one-up-man-ship, Princip would, I believe, only be an insignificant footnote in history.
wrong+arithmetic:
Yes, that is an interesting point.
Don’t forget that Indians and slaves did rise up from time to time against tyranny. South Carolina nullified federal laws. And there was some protracted nastiness in Utah.
And let us not forget the attempt of the South to secede in 1861. The Federals asserted that the states and the citizens of those states had no such right and fought a war to insist that citizens of the Confederacy would never successfully exercise any right to secede. (Texas BTW agreed to become a US state on the express condition that Texas could secede if its government so desired. Lincoln welched on that agreement.
But the overriding truth is that for most of the time even US discontents have not attempted to proclaim the right to rebellion. I think that there are some very pragmatic reasons for this:
1. The Federal government response to any such challenges has traditionally been uncompromising. Dissidents have been cowed into compliance.
2. For most of the time, compliance with the status quo has been perceived as ultimately beneficial for the dissatisfied. Working within the system promised satisfaction.
There may come a time when one or both the the following may happen:
1. The political Right will allow the assertion of sectional interests in the states. This state of affairs might follow from a failure of the Right to achieve national hegemony.
2. The US system, as it is presently constituted, no longer offers dissidents the hope of satisfying their expectations. This state of affairs might follow from success of the Right in achieving national hegemony.
Mercurius,
Yeah, ok, fair point. There could be a number of reasons that lead to this point. Not every mentally ill person is a killer waiting to happen. That said, I really don’t think allowing guns into the hands of people who may make rash, irrational decisions is in all a good idea. But yeah, could well be a separate issue to this
I do fail to see how focusing in on mental issues as the problem/cause is wholly different from focusing in on the right-wing noise machine’s call to arms as the problem/cause, or for that matter when (inevitably) the media focuses in on rap/emo/heavy metal music, violent video games and depression medicines as potential problems/causes.
We are so bad at this, we are all ready to get onto the soap box and talk about our favourite issues regardless of the link to the problem, how about we wait for some actual facts
“certainly is reflexive Othering Mercurius”
Not necessarily. Not if every person who makes a comment about Loughner being a nutcase is treated to the accusation. Some people have personal experiences with profoundly psychotic friends and/or loved ones, and feel very keenly how outside influences can set them off in unexpected and heartbreakingly wrong directions.
Don’t go too far with the brush-tarring.
Profoundly psychotic people, just like other mentally ill people, are still AFAIK much, much more likely to be victims of violence than to commit it themselves.
I do find the leap by some to Loughner’s probable mental illness status being sufficient explanation on its own for his actions to be intensely problematic and Othering.
REf 219 – a quick glance at the Canadian gun ownership laws suggest that they are way tighter than the US though probably les strict than Australia.
Fine @ 227 I left a link unthread showing that in the last 30 years the majority of attacks (ie attempted or successful assassinations) on political targets in the US have been carried out by people with mental health issues.
I can’t say its definitive, but it is worth considering wrt what happened in Arizona. If someone wants to debunk the info there go for it, cos I’d rather have accurate info. Until someone does then:
Its been done upthread and no one addressed it. Well ok not more prone to violence, just more prone to target political figures with violence in the US over the last 30 years.
For the left to be pointing the tea party types and making these claims is a bit rich. Being as the left is founded on the idea of violent revolution and enslavement. If this kid turns out to be a tea party type, which seems unlikely, then it will still be the case of the left setting up an untenable position from which Americans will have to fight their way out.
“Profoundly psychotic people, just like other mentally ill people, are still AFAIK much, much more likely to be victims of violence than to commit it themselves.”
That’s as may be, but in my (repeated) experience it’s the other way around.
“I do find the leap by some to Loughner’s probable mental illness status being sufficient explanation on its own for his actions to be intensely problematic and Othering.”
Oh, okay. I hadn’t actually seen any comments to that effect. I agree that such views betray ignorance and fear of mental illness.
Doug,
Thanks for that. I do remember something about a tightening of those laws after a university shooting there. I really wish it didn’t take a shooting to change gun laws.
From rackjite:
http://rackjite.com/archives/6269-Top-Ten-list-of-those-responsible-for-Arizona-the-Gabrielle-Giffords-TERRORIST-ACT.html
The Tea Party is a loose coalition of right-wing forces, mainly Christian Conservative and Libertarians. Loughner’s comment about being an atheist puts him in the Ayn Randian Libertarian camp. His rants about currency put him in the LaRouche camp. My experience with LaRouchites (I have known a considerable number of them) is that they are confused about their religious beliefs. Many of them here in Australia seem to go for New Age type beliefs.
Tigtog @ 232 isn’t the trend on this thread to lay all the examples of offensive and dangerous political language invoking violence at the door of the right just as much “othering”.
Or doesn’t Obama’s use of gun and knife imagery and his joke about predator drones wrt to the Jonas brother (one of who was under 18 at the time) seem a little worthy of the same disgust. Especially given the situation with drones and dead civilians and the degeneration of the situation in Pakistan?
Sure its a question of scale, but if you wonder about words causing violence think about that joke and how you’d feel in Pakistan if you lost a family member or friend.
Or doesn’t that sort of stuff matter here.
is this just an excuse for us on the left to indulge in the same rhetoric, generalisations etc about a political target we don’t like?
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/09/why-the-shootings-me-1.html
Pinkyoz @219: It is not so long ago that Australia had almost no restrictions on the ownership of long guns. However, the Australian “gun culture” was mainly about hunting and was built on a pioneering culture that had at its core the idea that we had to help each other to deal with a difficult environment. It was also a culture where fights were expected to be conducted with fists, not weapons.
By contrast, the second amendment is all about the “right to bear arms.” The right to bear arms to defend against internal or external oppressors.
To make matters worse the history of the country is full of examples of armed conflict between individuals, groups etc. Hollywood has painted the American hero as an armed person riding forth to smite the bad guys who are also Americans in most cases.
My understanding is that Canadian culture is more like ours hence the relative lack of gun problems compared with the US.
The tea party has got nothing to do with hatred. Its simply the exploited sector of society saying “hey stop that.” Its fundamentally a slave revolt of sorts. Nothing to do with racism or hatred.
This is worth wathcing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZzsjULXDnA
Schaeffer is former Religious Right – here he notes the parallels between exterme evangelical Right rhetoric and fundamentalist Islamism, which takes it beyond normal robust critique of US presidents in effectievly calling for old testament style holy war.
He labels it “trawling for assassins” and argues the moderate Christian rigth must come out and condemn it.
No they don’t.
This whole thread began on the premise the killing in Arizona was a terrorist act and there was a direct connection between the views of the right wing media in the US and the shooting and the right wing media were effectively directly responsible for it.
No consideration was made of the guys mental state, and when it was brought up then we are accused of “othering’ when the simple fact is that we have no business making judgements on why he did what he did in these circumstances till there is at least more evidence. But really until a court of law makes judgements based on the sound legal principles that plenty of anti-fascist, anti-totalitarian anti-opressive people have died for over the last 800 years.
As for political violence – I’m firmly on the side of those people rioting in Eurpoe and I will remain so.
Suppose he turns out to be tea party. Then indeed we can call this for what it is. A slave revolt. The public service and the banks, as well are to some extent the big corporations, enslave everyone else. Everyone else revolts. Clearly there will be some shooting in such a revolt, since the exploiters are not giving up on their exploitation. Are most of the departments going to voluntarily close? Are the bankers going to give back their bonuses? Be quits with fractional reserve? I don’t think so.
If you are a slave and don’t want to be a slave, unless the elite wind up agreeing with a William Wilberforce, you wind up with John Brown.
I’m talking about the rioting by ordinary people inresponse to the measures taken against by govts in regards Europes sovereign debt crisis.
Likening the tea party to a “slave revolt” is a joke. Especially in light of whats just happened.
John D,
Yeah, I’m with the idea of problems around the US gun culture, and it’s certainly part of the picture. Thanks for the clarifier.
Just a small fact. The alleged “crosshairs” various hysterics are claiming are nothing of the sort.
They are ‘crop marks’. They are used in printing templates quite routinely.
See for examples here:http://www.clker.com/cliparts/f/9/2/1/1194984965147498815crop_marks_mo_01.svg.med.png
No jules its not a joke at all. The tea party types represent the exploiters in society. In a situation where the parasites have turned actively against their benefactors in an orgy of thieving and illegality. You must not let naked contempt for your betters spoil your analysis.
A Nock @ 243
Jared Loughner is Spartacus!
/sarc
John D @ 240
I used to know someone who claimed that hollywood movies, esp b grade ones (pre Rambo 2) were like a seduction by violence, with the bad being shot at the end in what was basically a simulated orgasm.
Usually the final killing was painted as a just and righteous act.
(That was the early to mid 80s he was talking about. The late 80s seem to have taken that further. These days he’d probably say the situation was more like a planet wide orgy.)
Anyway make of that idea what you will.
I meant to say the tea party types represent the EXPLOITED in society. They are also the non-extremists in society. In the sense that they are the people who want a return to legality. Law and order. This is an anti-extremist point of view.
Whereas their opponents are really very happy with rampant illegality and being able to steal as much as they like, whenever they like.
The situation they are in is very much like what Spartacus faced. Really the bankers and public service is not going to stop the stealing. They aren’t. They cannot be persuaded to moderate their lust for spending. So thats the situation. There is no use being in denial about it. Rome wasn’t going to give up on its slaves any more than Wall Street bankers and Washington bigshots are. Rome wasn’t going to bend to the arguments of a slave. Neither is Washington.
Alfred @ 248.
It is a joke. many of the tea baggers come from the privileged section of American culture, white, middle class, conservative and scared of losing the privileges that screwing the rest of the world got them.
The recent violence in Greece is more like a slave revolt than the tea party.
I agree that corporations, banks, govts and bureaucracies enslave people on some level, tho usually in the US context it was people working in sweat shops on the other side of the world, or being killed in their villages near gold mines etc etc.
Likening the shooting of a Jewish congresswoman to a revolt against the “banks” is also tasteless in the extreme.
I’m not happy to call Jared Loughner’s actions anti-semitic yet, but your say that again and I’ll call it on you.
“It is a joke. many of the tea baggers come from the privileged section of American culture, white, middle class, conservative and scared of losing the privileges that screwing the rest of the world got them.”
Who? Name names? And plus being as the tea party is about legality why would not some of their number be from the middle class? I mean its a big movement. Not all of the exploited are poor. Some are small businessmen, watching the favouratism towards the “too big to fail.” Being exploited is not about being poor. Its about being robbed.
You are the one that is claiming that John is a tea bagger. This is speculation on your part. But if its true its a slave revolt. I don’t think he’s a tea party type. I think he’s mentally ill, and an anti-semite. But you are the ones making that speculation as to where his heart lies.
The choice of target is very odd for a tea bagger. A young Congresswomen, a nine year old girl and others. Where is that in the tea bagger list of hates? Its not there. You would have expected them to take down the former head of homeland security. Or Al Gore. Or Hank Paulson. But its this thread that thinks it knows what this fellow is all about.
Taking the focus away from Loughner’s mental illness, its interesting to look at his political reading. Karl Marx and Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Delving into what passes for historical knowledge on Tea Party Web Sites, the tea partyers, among their many historical howlers seem to think Nazi fascism is a variant of socialism (a stupid misunderstanding of Nazism held by some RWDBs on this site in the past). Even when its pointed out to them by commenters that fascism is NOT the same thing as socialism they don’t get it.In fact, they think Hitler was a socialist liberal. So its no surprise Loughner was equally politically confused.
Now, as to the texts themselves: I don’t know which work of Marx he had. Presumably it was either Das Kapital or The Communist Manifesto. If the latter, as one of my philosophy of history lecturers said to a student too lazy to read the book for tutorials who claimed he couldn’t understand it, Marx wrote the Manifesto for dummies. Anyone can understand it.
Hitler’s Mein Kampf is more problematic. Unless you’re a Nazi,or you share Hitler’s anti-semitic views, the only reason to have this turgid piece of raving trash on your bookshelves, is because you’re studying WW2 or the history of Nazism.
Of Loughner’s political motives, only one thing is crystal clear. The Congresswoman was shot because she was Jewish, as myself and other commenters have already noted. So, logically, she was a victim of somebody who espoused far right politics, whether they thenselves believed it or not.
Now, who else in the USA espouses politics of the far right, though not necessarily fascism? If you can’t work that out you haven’t been reading this post and its comments.
“slave revolt.” That’s hilarious. What were these “slaves” doing a few years ago? Buying property so they could make themselves rich.
A beautiful piece of political projection there – a predominantly white, strongly racist movement that formed after the election of the first black president declares its members “slaves” in a nation with a history of actual enslavement of black people.
Oh Alfred, you are a funny chap.
Alfred Nock @ 241 & 243:
I suppose billionaires could be described as “slaves”.
Alfred Nock @ 235:
Politically, in the British tradition (which applies to the U.S.) “the left” is a descriptor of which side of the Speaker the Opposition party occupied in Parliament. At present in Australia, for example, you could say that the L-NP coalition is “the left”.
In late 18th-century France, the Royalist party occupied the Right, and the revolutionary anti-royalist party occupied the Left. Although the French Revolution was far from peaceful, it’s drawing a long bow to equate the goals of Liberté, égalité,and fraternité with “enslavement”.
And if you want to go way, way back and leave the European tradition, the second most powerful non-royal position in the Japanese court was that of “The Minister of the Left.” Once again, it is unlikely that a senior minister in an Imperial court would have been dedicated to the concept of violent overthrow of the State and enslavement of its peoples.
sg @ 257,
The idea of a slave revolt comes from American Revolutionary rhetoric. It was common for white American revolutionaries from 1763-1775 to describe themselves as in danger of being ‘enslaved’or as freeing themselves from the British, despite the paradox that all of the thirteen orifinal states lived in a slave society. It is one of the many paradoxes of the original and only American Revolution. The tea-Partyers have simply adopted revolutionary rhetoric without any understanding of its nuances.
Maybe – or maybe she was shot because she is a woman with the public persona of a strong and independent professional woman, and pro-choice policy positions. I don’t think we should underestimate the ressentiment of many young American males and the ease with which ressentiment can tip over into rage in the sort of discursive atmosphere which Fox, Limbaugh, the Tea Party types, etc., have created.
Of course it is all too true that hatred of Jews and hatred of women are often found coexisting in the same twisted mind, so the presence of either of these motives would by no means preclude the other.
correction @ 259: freeing themselves from the slavery they were subjected to by the British.
Terangeree commented:
Neither was the French monarchy, but of course, for rightwingers, some forms of violent oppression are legitimate. One might add that one does what one has learned. If the traditional way of dealing with enemies is to kill them, then one can scarcely be surprised if one’s political rivals follow that usage when the tables are turned, and indeed, when the Jacobins were ousted, the royalist repression of all seen as associated in some way with the revolution was very savage.
Note: “Alfred Nock” is a troll, and is best ignored, IMO, although as always, YMMV.
PN @ 260,
Take your point, Paul, and agree with it absolutely. I had not thought of the violent tendencies of American pro-lifers. Or the potential rage that anti-feminism can arouse. Its interesting to recall that one of the first people to identify the Republican right under Bush as having all the hallmarks of fascism (hallmarks which still endure and are probably more apposite today) was the feminist, Naomi Wolf.
It was the Communist Manifesto. His favourite books (according to him):
The Catcher in the Rye is missing, as is any book I’ve read.
His ranting included stuff about using only gold and silver as currency, and any alternative being unconstitutional.
I’m not going to use the common language, but the guy clearly had a uncommon understanding of reality. The main problem here is access to firearms and the second amendment, but I do agree with Clinton’s sentiments at Oklahoma City.
Obama has been very careful during his short presidency to try and involve Republicans, to emphasise what can be achieved rather than what he desires, and to treat the status quo with respect. Will he try to shake things up regarding the second amendment, or will he be reluctant to create more anger among the far right towards him and also spend political capital?
Yeah paul @ 257, lets cherry pick his reading list … To Kill a Mockingbird – a well known tea party classic, Farenheit 451 – a dystopian US where it looks like the Tea Party has taken and are control burning books. This guy was obsessed with books. There’s a photo of him looking like he is involved with the Tuscon festival of books.
There’s one book that could be associated with the Tea Party – We the Living.
I’ve read most of the books on that list and by the time I die I might have read them all. Everyone should probably read the Communist manifesto and mein Kampf at some point, cos they are probably two of the most influential pieces of writing on the 20th century.
I venture to suggest that JLL’s library represents the search of a troubled and untutored mind for meaning and for something to believe in.
Very little can be read into the titles mentioned besides an unfocussed rage with the present order, or at least JLL’s perceptions of his place within the present order.
JLL’s actual pronouncements are a chaotic mash-up of half-understood slogans and catch-phrases.
In terms of his ideas I predict that JLL will continue to be a human rorschach test because it will be discovered that there is nothing to be seen beyond what his examiners will project onto him.
Doug upthread, and others, the contrasts between gun culture here, in Canada, and in the US are instructive. I saw a movie some time ago (I’m pretty sure it was Bowling for Columbine) which pointed out that at the time the major difference between the US and Canada was that Americans are far more fearful than their northern neighbours. The film maker claimed that was the primary reason for the US having so many more firearms-related deaths.
For what it’s worth, I reckon we have gun control just about right in Australia, and it’s one of the few things Howard got right. (Disclaimer: I own several firearms and am an active member of a pistol club.)
The birth of the left in political violence.
Or not.
Alfred Nock is an artist giving us a performance of the Tea Partier, with all their weirdness. It is best not to engage with him. Just wonder at him.
The reading list does look like someone searching for meaning. His thinking is obviously completely disorganised.
Howard, thanks for that list. What? You haven’t read Lewis Carroll? That has to be remedied. You should go out and buy Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass immediately. Trust me. You’ll have the time of your life.
But back to Loughner’s potential political thought. I can’t comment on Meno, Pulp, or We the Living. I haven’t read them.
Five other books stand out as possibly influencing his political thought. Animal Farm, Brave New World,Plato’s Republic and possibly Gulliver’s Travels, though I think the latter unlikely.
Loughner seems to have had an interest in totalitarianism. The Republic is an ancient prototype for a fascist society. Animal Farm,Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 all deal with forms of totalitarianism and are a critique of the same. On of the characteristics of Republican critiques of the Obama administration is that Obama and the Democratic Party are leading the US into socialism, and that socialism is the precursor of communism. One might argue, from some of his reading, that Loughner believed this, and that, because of her strong support of a “socialist” health care scheme and because she was pro-choice (Does Brave New World come in here?) Congresswoman Gifford was one of the agents of this march towards a socialist, then communist state. hence, in loughner’s mind she deserved to die.
What then, do we make of the fantasy books, among which one can probably include Siddartha. Simply that he was a young man with a liking for fantasy books – the simplest explanation is almost always the best.
Of course the above is speculative to some extent, but it does present a coherent argument as to his political thought processes and how, with the influence of the current American zietghest he became an assasssin of a Democrat politician.
I been moderated cause I used the F word. [sighs[ I shoulda known better ind put in some assterisks.
I said it before and I’ll say it again, books are dangerous. Everyone beware of Paul Burns with his “reading” and his “thinking.”
Oh yeah. US citizen does to US Democrat what US Army has been doing with total impunity to citizens of other countries since about 1850. What a shit hole of a nation. Pity about the nine year old child killed into the bargain.
Paul Burns
My wife has illustrated copies, which I am sure I will read to our child, due in June.
Until then, I have a copy of Lazarus Rising to knock off (bought for me for Xmas).
Trawling for assassins, a concept mentioned by Lefty E @ 242 above, is a concept that seems to have some currency.
LE’s YouTube carries a testimony from a pioneer of the religious right, who professes himself to be horrified at the delusional opinions and views that he admits he promoted.
He’s been there and done that, and he’s scared.
Re: Loughner’s library.
There are books on my shelf that I haven’t read.
There are also books on my shelf that I have started to read that I haven’t finished.
There are also books on my shelf that I have read, but not understood.
There are also books I have read and understood, that aren’t on my shelf.
Just sayin’
Mercurius @ 278,
That thought had occurred to me which was my analysis was carefully qualified – might, possibly, etc as is all historical method. After all, he could have just listed these books on his social networking page to impress, without reading any of them. But I doubt it.
sg @ 274,
I know reading and thinking rot the brain. So does sex. But the world keeps going on.
Alfred Knock has some pertinant points that we on the left would do well to listen to. FOr instance…mo. I can’t do it.
I made a resolution this year not to troll or talk shit or play devil’s advocate.
Alfred? You’re on your own kid.
BTW have you heard the newest Rublican talking point? Those symbols on Palin’s literature weren’t crosshairs. They were surveyor’s symbols.
I would laugh if it wasn’t so tragic.
@203
I agree completely. The slide seems to be inevitable however. I’ve been waiting for over a decade for someone of influence to stand up and say enough is enough. But that hasn’t happened, on the contrary, we have the current PM equivocating over asylum seeker legitimacy for fear of upsetting western Sydney as though the views of a few ratbags should prevail over the facts.
It appears to me that the right have developed a tactic over number of years now that entrails ramping up the rhetoric whenever they appear to be vulnerable. The MSM isn’t historically geared up to deal with this, you need to have a debate and debate involves taking a position and the MSM, unlike Fox, seems to have it encoded in its DNA that taking a position is tantamount to developing a mental illness. In fact this appears to be the position of most “liberal” minded people in positions of influence.
For instance, how does a federal minister deal with the crazed outpourings of a Barnaby Joyce? Not by calling him for the lamebrained dickhead that his, no you hide in Canberra and send out a civil servant to deal with the masses and issue a statement that fails to even mention said dickhead.
Unless the non-right end of the political spectrum develop an efficient counter tactic the right’s trajectory will continue uninterrupted. And that can’t be good.
‘After all, he could have just listed these books on his social networking page to impress, without reading any of them….’
Hold that thought, Paul.
Paul @ 272, possibly tho on the basis of that list I could make the complete opposite argument and maybe a couple of others as well. (Many of the fantasy books you mention are cited by people who go about the US govts “mind control” programs ala MK Ultra. If this is a disturbed or sane individual with an interest in those topics its likely that could be a motivation for reading those books too. Anyone can manipulate that many ambiguous points of data to reinforce any argument they want.)
If we are gonna disappear this far up our own bums lets have a look at his youtube video.
He burns the flag and calls America a terrorist country, a favoured and regular thing among the conservative right wing $%^&*# the tea party represents. He doesn’t say America is under the control of a terrorist government.
He says the government is trying to control peoples minds through grammer. Anyone who has read Bernays might make the same argument with a minimum of linguistic gymnastics.
These are different things. I think if we are gonna be this silly about it then clearly he has made a distinction between the country and its government and blah blah blah.
jules.
I would think the additional evidence you supply strengthens my conclusion, which was perhaps implicit, that Loughner’s crime was a political one. Not that of a madman, even if he is mad.
Patrickb @ 281.
The right in Australia effectively waged a war against the Rudd and Gillard govts, esp since Abbott got elected opposition leader. In fact the did it very effectively cos the left still hasn’t worked out that its a war.
The right is not interested in debate, its interested in attack – like its read J Robb and Shloky and taken notice. The left has never heard of them. This puts us at a serious disadvantage.
The only solution to this is more independant media, or at least a much greater variety of media ownership (while we still use trad media as our “national campfire”,) and a compl;ete change in the board at the ABC.
This seems to be mirrored round the world at the moment, not just in the US but in the UK as well, as the latest ugly and dangerous effort from the BNP has shown.
Surveyors of the First World?
I was being sarcastic.
http://www.michaelbauer.com/?p=156
Of course it was political, when isn’t attacking a political figure political?
I just object to the certainty that people have that this is a political crime on behalf of the political right in the US.
Jules – Wallace and Reagan assassination attempts weren’t political. Hinckley wanted to impress Jodie Foster, for God’s sake. Bremer wanted to “assert his manhood”.
jules @ 287,
Here we go again. I’ve got your point. I don’t agree with it. I think you’re wrong. This particular debate with you is utterly tiresome.
Extracted from “White Terrorism” by Prof. Juan Cole
http://www.juancole.com/2011/01/white-terrorism.html
[unnecessary link characters deleted - moderator]
Jules @285, the reported response of Billy and his local community is a great example of real community values turning what could be a feel-bad story into an inspiration.
Tea baggers hate flag burning.
Its fox news so watch it at your peril. Two rwdb complaining about flag burning at an anti war rally, and then whinging about the “Mainstream media” (cough, choke, laugh at the disconnect) and how it ignores flag burning by liberals but always criticises the Tea Party for racism before going on to whinge about black people.
That was a rally where Ralph Nader spoke.
So whats the association now?
Flag burning, Nader’s recent criticism of Obama flag burning at a rally Nader attended and there you go, the right wing can throw this back in our faces because of our premature certainty.
Well what is your point Paul @ 289?
OK I’ll stop hassling you for using your misinterpretation of an untried crime to publically reinforce your own political prejudices.
If you stop doing it.
Paul of Albury @ 291.
It is isn’t it.
That story, and the solidarity of the Muslims in Egypt with the Copts after the horrendous bombing the other week are two things that give me some hope for the world.
Especially the Egyptian situation. There has been plenty of tension between the communities over there and they have come out publicly and said they want to end the tension and disunity. There seems a genuine desire to work rogether and end the conflict there.
I hope something similar happens in the US after Giffords shooting.
jules, what I want you to stop is the personal abuse. Unless my memory fails me, I have not personally abused you. And its against comments policy anyway.
They weren’t cross hairs – they were UN World Government satnav landing beacon plans leaked from Geneva.
/etc
Look, Jules.
It’s about creating a climate through the rhetorical metaphors of violence that are used whereby vulnerable people go and do crazy things on the basis of what they hear and think they hear. There need be no direct link. He doesn’t have to be a member of the Tea Party. He doesn’t have to be on the Right. There just need be a climate of discontent. . There just need be a dishonest movement which will take up that collective memory of revolution by talking about the constitution, use gun and shooting imagery and there you have it. A climate where it’s considered an act of patriotism against a despotic government.
And again. They are seeking a second suspect. They have released an image.
Now he is mentally ill IMO, that should not be forgotten, but is also sane enough to not be talking and has invoked his rights under the law, according to the reports.
And check this reaction:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/09/tea-party-nation-founder-_n_806489.html
Now what that really means, is that the Tea Party are feeling the heat. And by targetting the sheriff, what that really means is that this Sheriff’s words have had an impact across the nation and the world. His statement has been reported everywhere. The Tea Party is on the defensive and so they should be.
In Australia, in the 1993 election the Liberal Party had to pull an ad where you had the view of looking through the cross hairs of a sniper’s lens which randomly targeted people. I can’t remember what the metaphor was about now. Something that Labor was doing that they were hammering. Do folks remember that? I suppose not. It was quickly pulled as in one of the liberal marginals there had been a shopping centre massacre and it did not go down well.
The Liberals did not win the election, GST and a cake and all that, but they lost that seat. I always wondered about that ad in that seat.
Now I hope that electorally, the Tea Party candidates suffer a backlash for the use of those sorts of images, suggestions and words. I hope they do.
And there is nothing wrong in the world with that Jules.
Does anyone here feel that Palin and co should be charged with committing a crime with regards to inciting violence?
Even though I believe that much of the rhetoric used by this women and the Tea Party means that they do have some moral and even a causal responsibility, they should not have actual legal responsibility. I’m against laws that silence the extremists, as I prefer to be able to hear what they really think and give them more than enough rope so to speak. On grossly irresponsible words that can trigger dangerous actions in otherwise friendly schizophrenics, that Abraham guy from the three predominate monotheistic religion’s story books, or whoever wrote his story, has a lot of blood on his hands. Please people, if god speaks to you and asks you to kill your son, seek psychiatric attention and remember that God is supposed to be able to kill people without needing your help!
The second person of interest proved to be unconnected with JLL.
We appear to be back into disgruntled loner territory.
FWIW, JLL’s grievances appear to be not only personal but also incommunicable to any non-delusional person.
HC 288, Ok I should have said the last 29 years.
Casey,
The second suspect has been discounted. He was the taxi river who drove him to the shopping mall. God knows how that poor fellow is feeling.
But I thank you for your clear exposition and draw Jules’ attention to the link Silky provided. I’ve given up trying to get through to Jules with his false accusations of political bias and his anti-intellectual smears, at least on this topic.
There is always an interconnectedness between events, even if it is not a direct one, and it is that interconnectedness that helps us make sense of them. Some peopke unfortunately don’t seem to be able to grasp that. Which is sad.
Paul Burns – apart from that comment a 293 have I abused you? (And that isn’t abuse I’m questioning your behaviour.) If so point it out and I’ll publicly withdraw it.
AFAIC We have disappeared up our own bums with this, but that comment wasn’t directed solely at you, “Cherry picking” – then you went to consider the rest of the books on the list so I’ll take that back.
Just so we’rre clear we includes me.
James Wakefield #297, I generally agree with your main point. Ultimately there is no getting away from the political, intellectual and moral challenge of attempting to improve the quality and civility of political discourse, and politically marginalising hateful and incivil political “communication”.
There is a more general issue here for democrats of various stripes to engage with, and that is to remind ourselves that it is possible and even necessary to support the legal right for citizens of a democratic state to do certain things, whilst at the same time reserving the right to ethically and intellectually criticise instances of citizens exercising those rights in an irresponsible or unethical way.
Poor cabbie.
Casey @ 296
Ok and heavy metal music causes suicide?
Good. Fantastic even.
Jules @ 301
You’ve just about covered them.
I’m not politically biased in this. I’m looking for explanations, and the only one, apart from JLLs state of mind, is the poisonous right wing political milieu he lives in.
Believe me, when I’m politically biased,you’ll know it. Its mostly in matters of Australian politics,not history, almost always the Coalition. I treat the ALP a little more gently, though I can be fiercely critical of them. On accassion I’ve even had a go at the Greens.though I do have to admit I did take a set against the American Imbecile.
It’s interesting reading The Guardian’s comments section on its main story about the Arizona shootings. The thread has been utterly over-taken by RWDB posters claiming JLL was actually a lefty anarchist. A lot of posts quote a former classmate, who described him as a “leftist” (a leftist in the US being anyone to the left of Donald Rumsfeld).
Jules @305: What you thought Casey wrote at 296 is not what Casey wrote.
Just sayin’
That is how I see it too. I certainly have no problem with people exercising their free speech in their condemnation of the Tea Party’s irresponsibility. The non-insane right, who know damn well that the likes of Palin are dangerous fools but love them any way, need to start pulling these people in to line instead of giggling that she insights such disgust in lefties.
I’ve been wondering why this particular event has had such an impact on me. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say its been almost as bad as 9/11 for me. i don’t live in the US, I generally like Americans, and my head is buried in American Revolutionary history, though not as the Tea Party see it, more on the left. I don’t know anyone in Tucson, though I have American friends in San Diego and New York (which made 9/11 particularly horrible, especially since I wasn’t on-line at the time.Fortunately she was nowhere near the Twin Towers.)One is a Democrat, the other a Republican, but a sensible one. I have followed the Tea Party a bit, but mainly from an historian’s perspective. Yet this assassination attempt has really shook me.
Generally, I don’t believe prediction is the business of historians, but I think the Tucson Massacre will have far-reaching effescts on American politics, and maybe even the society in general.
Paul, I have been feeling rather as you have. For what it’s worth, the best explanation that I can offer at the moment is that we are living in nihilistic times, with the decline of America happening sooner and faster than might have been expected.
Jules, did you know your name means son of Jove? God there are a lot of you lately. And you all have very very impressive hair. Decisive hair. What’s with that?
Anyway, I have specifically mentioned the use of the history of the revolution to whip folks up along with talk of the American constitution amendment thing along with using metaphors and words about democrats like ‘targets’ and ‘taking them out’ and pictures of hair thingies and maps and shit. I don’t remember Black Sabbath doin that but I could be wrong.
It’s a reasonably mild point really. It’s a point being made everywhere in the wake of this tragedy. And in a country where a number of politicians and civic leaders have actually been politically assassinated, it resonates for a lot of people, from what I am reading in the online papers and blogs across that nation. Unlike Dr Seuss upthread, I do not think America is a ‘shit hole’ of a nation, and I think a lot of reasonable and intelligent people are thinking through the nature of their political culture and its escalation of incendiary rhetoric in recent times and they are considering if this a factor. In the light of this shooting, naturally this would be become a point of concern for Americans. We, and by we I mean the white nation, wouldn’t the frack know in this country as we have no history of tearing apart from the nation that founded us, nor have we torn ourselves apart in a civil war, we do not have a constitution which gives us and our pets the right to bear arms, nor have we raised up the figure of the patriot as a founding myth. Our history is a different again. We’ve had no one leader shot dead in the name of patriotism. Not a one. Yet you see fit not to consider with that history and climate if the tea party rhetoric may be a factor, without some visible proof that the shooter is a card carrying member of something or other which links to them.
Oh well, if you are going to be a belligerent ellipsis about what is a reasonable point, and stick to your marvin the martian guns about it, then there is not much more to say I suppose. Even though the point is completely unremarkable.
Given your obstinatiion, I can only hope, Jules, your hair is as good as your name.
Paul if I’ve got you wrong about this I’m sorry.
I understand we are all emotional about this and we should be, cos a similar thing is happening in Australia, and elsewhere probably, among the worst elements of the media. I have my suspicians about Andrew Bolt.
He claimed to go on holiday and that he’d be back around Australia Day. Till then comments were closed.
He’s back blogging but the comments were closed last I looked.
It seems he’ll re open them around Australia Day. If he does I expect a flurry of hate filled nationalist nastiness.
Maybe he won’t, but I’m sus on it.
It may well turn out JLLs a rwdb, but honestly to me it doesn’t seem that way. I feel premature certainty about this could be a bad thing for us on the left cos I see in it similar reactions to ones I have hated on the right.
The certainty … like the certainty that John Walker Lindh helped Osama plan sept 11.
The thing Casey @ 296 just mentioned is to close to the PMRC and Tipper Gore’s logic for me. She destroyed one of my favorite bands as a teenager.
Thats what is getting me even fired up about it.
(And of course the principles of innocent till proven guilty and the right to a fair trial and an advocate to defend you.)
Sometimes, maybe most times, there is no easy explantation of anything, especially the things that really horrify us, cos … how could people do that? Really at that moment how could they look at their victims and do that?
But its not only the right. Obama’s Jonas bros joke … I know I keep going on about it but its a whole culture thats sick when that sort of thing can be seen as acceptable.
And its with that in mind that I think this guy could have done what he did if the tea party didn’t exist.
But I’ve said that every possible way it can be said.
One single point tho. If I am right with all mu whinging then associating this guy with Palin then being shown to be wrong will not be a good thing. As others have pointed out they will use it to hide from their responsibility for calling for political violence.
And for poisoning the discourse in the US. (And here.)
Thats where I am coming from this. I’m not doing it just to be a prick.
Honestly Paul you are one of my favorite contributors here. You are always well informed (even if I disagree with you on something, at least you usually have a sound thought out basis for your opinions) and you bring some great insight and interesting info.
I’m not trying to pick a fight with you, I’m just stubborn about stuff like this.
I’ll try and chill tho.
Anyway he has just been charged apparently.
Jules the comparison with the 80s heavy-metal-suicide claims is silly. No-one is saying that Palin or anyone else caused this man to do this thing. The claim is that the environment encouraged an already unstable and dangerous man to channel his energies in a specifically deadly and terroristic way. No-one’s saying, e.g. that there is a back-masked message in Palin’s speech. Just that the right-wing noise machine has been saying for a while that this kind of thing needs to be done, and encouraging an environment where people see violence as a political solution.
Lets face it, the Teabaggers are a thinly-veiled hate group, encouraging physical force politics under the flimsy guise of ’2nd amendment rights’.
Many have crossed the line between ‘rejecting big government’ to ‘rejecting democratic government’ per se.
Lets hope they all make a stand at Waco or whatever.
Jules, the murderer isn’t of a political wing, separating his incoherent views into a left or right is an impossible and irrelevant task. No one is claiming that he was going to be the Republican’s next presidential candidate.
The political climate in the US is too hot and there is ONE side of politics over there that are deliberately fanning the flames out of pure opportunism, and most people on this site, including myself, want to point out the blood on the Tea Party and some Republican member’s hands.
Casey I bow to your insight.
About the hair? Honestly I don’t know, but mine is pretty decisive. Its way longer than JAs tho. I used to coach some kids AFL footy and they nicknamed me Furball cos of the hair. Then cut it short to Fur. I only mention that cos last week I discovered a show called Fur TV. Its so totally wrong, but so funny.
You’re uncanny.
Son of Jove? I didn’t know that. Cool tho. I love invoking archetypes and stomping through psyberspace. And thanks for putting a smile on my dial. It makes sense actually cos I was named after a Gore Vidal novel.
Wrt to what you said @ 311. Maybe you are right. But maybe everything you mention would have had this effect on that guy without the existence of a tea party.
I totally agree with your point, and what sg said @ 313 about the potential for something like this to happen. We all have expected it.
And I expected to see something about this character that implied some connection to them (the evil them – rwdbs) however tenuous. The closest I can come is Ayn Rands book. Her first novel. (We the living) Everything else points in the opposite direction.
Which puts it back in the general background noise of violence thats always plagued the place. Not a specific outcome of the tea party’s odiousness.
Last I heard he had a previous meeting with Giffords, in 2007. (10 5 oclock news nsw I think.)
Cheers Jules
@Lefty E:
This is where the traditional left-right divide when applied to the Tea Party extreme fringe breaks down. They’ve gone beyond right-wing into something new where they meet up with anarchy coming at them from beyond the left-wing, and what they have in common is the idea that any government at all is a form of oppression. They’re not conservatives, they’re radicals.
The politicians who are pandering to this emotional rejection with violent rhetoric are all still very much on the recognised right-wing though. That’s where the right-wing responsibility for poisoning the level of discourse lies. They’ve played along with these people for purely political points (and in the case of broadcasters like Beck and O’Reilly and the networks who employ them, for cynical profiteering from an anxious group of people by shamelessly feeding their anxiety with lies about the coming socialist dictatorship of Obama/Pelosi/Reid). That’s what is disgusting.
Casey, I didn’t say that?!! God damn… But I think you have a pretty superficial understanding of the States if you see it only from this perspective.
I was not referring to you, you know. And as for the rest of your comment, I’m not sure how you could come to that conclusion on one sentence rejecting the sentiment of another sentence, so whatever.
I think I find the actions of Patricia Maisch rather extraordinary. Some people are just very very brave in the face of great danger:
“There have been reports of a female and two males who tackled the suspect. Ms. Patricia Maisch was at the event, in the rear of the line, waiting to take a photograph with Congresswoman Giffords when the suspect began shooting. When the suspect tried to load a fresh magazine into his weapon, Ms. Maisch was able to grab the bottom of the magazine and prevent it from being inserted. This pause in shooting allowed for two men, Roger Salzgeber and Bill D. Badger, to tackle the suspect to the ground and restrain him until deputies arrived. An additional male, Joseph Zamudio, also assisted in restraining the suspect’s legs. Initial information reported Ms. Maisch was injured during the event. This information was inaccurate and she did not report having any injuries.”
http://pimasheriff.org/files/4312/9461/3517/Shooting_010811_update.pdf
From the Guardian, these are two extracts from a diary of some kind that a classmate of his at a community college wrote:
Imagine living in a society where you have to think like that?
“I was not referring to you, you know.”
Casey, can you explain the Dr Suess reference then? I’d imagine that’s what provoked Joe’s comment, given his gravatar.
@Joe,
It’s quite easy to do a page search on ‘shit’ and find out exactly who Casey was quoting, you know. Before jumping to conclusions and all.
Oh I dunno, how about doing a word search on the sentence I quoted and see who actually said it, if its so fracking fascinating.
Thank you Tigs. Perhaps the Inquisitor General might also take fracking note.
I think folks generally following this thread might usefully take a few deep breaths and do double due diligence on ensuring that they have indeed read what they think they just read before hitting the keyboard themselves, as most of us seem to be a bit more agitated than usual. Especially when in any doubt as to who is being quoted/attributed – do a word search, link to the comment you’re quoting, all those little bits of netiquette that grease the wheels of an ongoing discussion.
“Perhaps the Inquisitor General might also take fracking note.”
I realise you’re magically (and I use that term advisedly) immune to criticism here Casey, but how about you explain why you referred to ‘Dr Suess’ if not to refer to Joe.
And having failed to do that, maybe you should… I dunno… apologise for getting your shit wrong.
Just a thought…
“Oh I dunno, how about doing a word search on the sentence I quoted and see who actually said it, if its so fracking fascinating.”
Seriously, the suggestion that I should search for whom Casey was referring to (despite herself) and ignore whom she EXPLICITLY referred to is pretty crazy.
And look, I wouldn’t mind if it were acknowledged (even reluctantly and sarcastically if it must be so) that Casey made a basic arror here and categorically failed to even TRY to take responsibility, and was encouraged by admins.
I know that was a troll, but …
Over the past few weeks the UK’s activist movement has been rocked by the revelation that an extremely active person within its ranks, who had been at the heart of many major direct action campaigns, was in fact an undercover policeman.
Whats really interesting about that article is the author’s reflections on the culture of daring, masculinity and violence in the UK activist community and how unhealthy it is for activism in general.
@FDB,
But she did not EXPLICITLY refer to anybody. If she had, there wouldn’t be any argument about it. Which is why I mentioned that linking to comments one is quoting would be a damn fine idea, in future, especially on a thread this long.
Oh I get it, I get it. I done heard the secret chord.
Okay.
Bless me Father FDB for I have sinned.
It has been 834938745893475983475934y753498 centuries since my last confession.
I’ve been vewy vewy busy, don’t freak out.
first, I became a witch and shit. I KNOW this sounds really really bad but really, the Goddess is one. Once you get that, it will be fine. Imma fracture the Vatican walls yet.
Two: I like being a vampire too. But it’s not a daily thing. Really, it’s just like a glass of wine on a friday night.
ninth, I put hexes on people which don’t work. Imma workin on it.
fourteenth: I don’t do grammar well on this blog. I am unrepentant. I will burn before I change.
seventy seventh, I don’t observe Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. But Sabbath. Now Sabbath rocks.
Tweltfh: Now, I am not sure what you want me to apologise for, but whatever it is, I’m sure you are under the assumption I give a shit. Come on. You know I don’t. What, are you a moderator now? No. No you aint porkchop.
Now, let us pray.
Now Monseignor, I know your faith was strong, but you needed proof. That’s cause you done gone weird again. It’s not my fault someone broke your throne and if you ask me, cutting your hair is a good thing. I’ve seen your picture FDB. CUT YOUR HAIR.
I don’t understand why you lay out demands for explanations and apologies when you don’t even get it. You KNOW I left the church years ago. Like I cared about that flag on the marble arch. And anyway, if you haven’t ever paid any attention to exchanges between me and AKN you won’t get it. Love is not a victory march, you know. So get over it and get a life yeah? The point was about whether one agrees with “America is a shithole of a nation” [link to relevant comment added by moderator ~ tigtog] and my answer is, like, no. Hallelujah. Cold and broken, but I think every American will be pleased.
Right : Just TELL me my penance is to drink a shot every time you ask me a question and we will be right from here on in, cause I think I’ve done very well here by doing exactly that.
You and Stevie have a nice night now.
@ 334: Hallelujah!
That was directed at Casey. Nobody else, mind. Just Casey. The one who types the posts entitled ‘Casey’. With the witch gravatar.
*ducks*
Having just got back from IRL things.
I was going to delete comments 329 onwards as not at all germane to the discussion, but since you put so much work into them, I’ll just threaten to do so from here on (if not germane to discussion, that is).
Arguing about who’s the most popular or favoured child in the family – that’s just really sad.
FDB – I believe the proud author of the “shithole of a nation” quip was AKN. I don’t understand your comment 330. Asking for apologies from anyone is upping the ante, and you should be doing due diligence before doing that. I do not think “Dr Seuss” is an insult requiring that level of intervention. YMMV, but it’s my thread
What *is* my bad is the fact that I am not able to be at the computer / moderating much during the day. I’ll close the thread if it all gets too fraught. As for the bickering, take it to Saturday Salon!
(Ahem, remembering to be nice)…please.
Hello, someone’s been bathing on the roof again. In the moonlight.
I have a question for all the people here who keep saying that rhetoric does not affect behaviour. If rhetoric does not affect behaviour, what is your explanation for the fact that politicians use it all the time? To try to make people, you know, do stuff?
Askin’.
jules @ 313,
No worries mate. And thanks for the compliment. Glad to oblige.
I felt something horrible and sort of terrorist related was going to happen in the US, but I thought it would be 27th December 2010. I did mention it somewhere on LP. I was very agitated for several days around the solstice for no reason. Which usually means some heavy shit going to go down somewhere. Will be interesting as things come out at the trial if 27.December 2010 has any relevance.
Now, as to America descending into chaos etc. They’ve been through periods like this before – I’m not that good on 19th century America but I think I read somewhere it was the 1870s and it went on for quite a while. On a blog somewhere a fear was expressed they were going back to those days. Willing to stand corrected. Anything beyond 1799 or the Great depression and WW2 in US history and I’m cactus, so if some-one with more knowledge could explicate, it would be appreciated.
Of course rhetoric affects behaviour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Becket
I also have the lyrics to “Dee Doo Doo Doo Dee Dah Dah Dah” running thru my head –
Poets priests and politicians
Have words to thank for their positions
Words that scream for your submission
And no-one’s jamming their transmission……..etc
But the inability to accept responsibilty for their part in this is only to be expected from the wingnuts as to do otherwise would require them to alter their beliefs and behaviour, and that would never do.
@Pavlov’s Cat,
I bet they think they’re immune to advertising too.
For anyone interested in reading up on the connection between rhetoric and politics the relevant pages in Maurice Cowling’s The Limits of Politics is enlightening. He’s a conservative, but his explanation of political behaviour and his histories of the high politics of the 1832 Reform Act, the Munich negotiations with Hitler, and the Rise of British labour in 1921 are classics of their kind.
@338 Well PC, I’ve been here before, and I think what’s really going on below is that people, to preserve their self-perception as the “good guys”, want to disassociate their own rhetoric (or the rhetoric of people they support) with the commission of violent acts (like how to shoot somebody who outdrew you) even though that violence closely mirrors the rhetoric. A lot of people equate free speech with freedom from responsibility, when in fact free speech entails greater responsibility than almost any other civil right.
Hopefully this will all lead to a major lift in standards of civility and conduct but we’re not dealing with somebody who’s seen the light, so who am I kidding?
Fiona Reynolds @ 311,
And if you’re right, and I fear you may be, who’s going to fill the vacuum scares the shit out of me. (I don’t think it will be China – unless I’ve got my Chinese history all wrong, they won’t be interested. It can’t be Europe, unless there’s a sudden economic miracle, and it probably won’t be Russia as they have as many internal problems as the USA.) I can’t even find a candidate.
{Hope I haven’t gone too far OT here.]
Oh, and Cowling postulates political behaviour is comprised of self interest, principle and passion in their various commbinations. Right now the right of politics in America seems to be in the grip of passion alone, untempered by principle, which, if I remember rightly, is Cowling’s worst case scenario.
There’s an awful lot more to him than that, but I could go on for pages about him so, to restrain myself …
For all the right wing ding bats.
I doubt that any sensible person would deny that rhetoric can motivate action.
A trillion dollar p.a. industry that goes by the name of advertising goes a long way towards proving that point.
The issue is whether a person exercising the most persuasive rhetoric in the world can be said to be legally responsible for the actions of others.
Some jurisdictions have developed a crime called “incitement to riot”. One can be guilty of incitement to riot whether or not the words were deemed to induce the perpetrator to perform an illegal act. I believe it might be possible to construe the words of Sharron Angle “Second Amendment remedy” as an example of incitement to riot.
Were such a principle adopted and a few prominent figures prosecuted for egregious examples of incitement to riot then perhaps we’d have less of it, and it would no longer be relevant to debate endlessly the barren proposition whether or not certain words utter by one person actually excited illegal acts by another person.
And then perhaps public discourse may become a little more civil and the fallacy of monocausal analysis would be committed less frequently.
Nice one katz.
@285
“The only solution to this is more independant media, or at least a much greater variety of media ownership (while we still use trad media as our “national campfire”,) and a compl;ete change in the board at the ABC.”
Couldn’t agree more whole heartedly. But that’s the problem, it hasn’t tended towards more “independent” media or a diversity of opinions on the board of a public broadcaster like the ABC. It has tended towards a consolidation of media and an ossification at the top of the ABC.
No one on the liberal side wants to be seen to be rocking the boat, to be scaring the horses or upsetting the status quo. Meanwhile the cowboys on the right are swinging axes in the boats, shooting up the corral and (inadvertently) upholding the status quo.
Oh and BTW, G. Henderson thinks that the ABC needs to be reigned in vis a vis this matter as it’s allowed far to much radical rhetoric to be passed off as analysis of late. See todays SMH if you can be bothered. I’ll wait for Loon Pond’s take.
So where do we stand on this atm? The main points:
1.
One group of people think that the murderer was just a crazy guy, and acted in a relatively random (and therefore independent) way and that therefore, if we step back a bit from the event, everything can go on as before, this act has no relevance for politics, media, etc.
2.
The other group of people see the murderer as a person influenced by a constellation of things including the history/ traditions of the US, the current aggressive political rhetoric and maybe even more generally culture of violence. These people would like to see changes or at least an acknowledgement of the problem, to help alleviate these problems.
3.
A smaller group, but a significant number of people would like to see a restriction of weapons that individuals are allowed to own as assault weapons, for example, are simply too dangerous to be in public hands.
4.
A smaller group see this in what could broadly be described as a failure of the american way of life. This is capitalism eating it’s children, might be their motto. They see the effects of US on the periphery, whether it be South America (Mexico atm), The Middle East, global financial industry, War on drugs, turning back on the center.
This is a hack, just a summary, so I’m not preaching 100% accuracy, but is that a dirty grouping of the above positions?
@296
“The Tea Party is on the defensive and so they should be.”
And now let the FoxNews/Murdoch-press magic begin. Sink into you Jason Recliner and marvel at how these straight talkers weave there spinmeister magic. So beguiled will you be that by the end of their performance you will not only support concealed weapon legislation, you will support a bill to round up all those who don’t support it.
It’s simple revivalist tent preacher stuff … but it has a strange effect on the American psyche. The opening of Cormack MaCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” illustrates the effect beautifully in words.
By the way: I notice that in the press, the alleged assassin’s name has now gone from Jared Loughner to Jared Lee Loughner. You can’t be a famous and violent psychotic in the U.S.A. if you don’t have three names or at least a middle initial. Let’s all thank the media for correcting that.
And now let the FoxNews/Murdoch-press magic begin.
At least they will have waited until some facts around the matter became available.
I wonder how Helen is feeling about her headline about now?
Thats right Patrickb. Well said. All laid out in that opening of Blood Meridian.
“See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt…He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.”
“What is government if words have no meaning?” That was the question the alleged killer allegedly asked Gifford. What does anyone imagine the topic was?
Is it? It may be your issue, Katz, but it’s not my issue, and very few other people here have mentioned the far narrower issue of what is and is not legal either. I thought we were having a discussion here about the nature of language and causality.
Come on. The media adds the middle name to the coverage around cases like this so that other individuals with the same personal-name and surname don’t get unwarranted attention due to the coincidence – the number of people who also have the same middle-name is likely to be very small. It’s not meant to indicate that everybody in his daily life knew his middle name and regularly included it in addressing him.
P.S. I’ve got three names – fear me!
@Pavlov’s Cat
Exactly. This is about public opprobrium against recklessly vitriolic hyperbole, holding public figures to ethical standards rather than pursuing legal consequences. I only hope that it translates, finally, into palpable damage at the ballot box and in the ratings.
Notice a pattern here??
http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and-freedom/insurrection-timeline
If you want to find out why god is rejoicing in the shooting of the 9 year old child you might look at the very different perspective of the Westbro Baptist Baptist Church. Warning: This might offend most people. Try the lead in:
Makes Sarah Pallin sound positively benign.
NOTE: This is not a spoof. The Westbro’s are famous for the vilification of homosexuals and picketing things like the funerals of veterans they suspect were homosexual. I guess a blog that uses http://www.godhatesfags.com as their URL ssays it all.
No wonder the sheriff is pissed off about vitriol.
TT — I was thinking yesterday afternoon listening to the radio that there may actually be some hope of that. Reports from Washington and further afield were saying that the Republicans were falling over themselves to distance themselves from S– um, anyone who habitually uses such rhetoric. With any luck she will have Annie Oakleyed herself right out of any chance of a comeback, and without even lifting a finger. Sweet.
As for the three names of Tigtog and Jared Lee Loughner (whose name was being commonly reported that way right from the beginning, BTW), I too am to be feared — by the logic of the RWBDs who thought Obama’s middle name proved he was a Muslim terrist, the fact that my middle name is Lee proves that I too am a crazed gun-totin’ assassin.
You people don’t mind jumping to baseless conclusions without waiting for the evidence to emerge. This is the funniest blog I have ever read
Of course there’s no direct link…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/10/935046/-Liberal-hunting-license
To believe there’s no connection, you kind of have to enter the same sort of disassociative state that JLL exhibited before the shooting. “How do you know that words mean anything?” he is said to have asked Giffords at a rally encounter in 2007
After all, it’s just a random cartoon of a donkey with gunshots and the words ‘Liberal Hunting License’ over it. If people take that as an incitement to violence, well you can hardly hold me responsible. I mean, if you look closely enough at the sticker, it’s just a random series of tiny red and black printed dots. Not my responsibility…it’s disgusting of you to suggest otherwise!
/sarc
@John D,
The Phelps family (the core of the congregation at the Westboro Baptist Church – there are only a very few members who aren’t part of the clan) are deliberately courting outrage in the hope (thus far proven correct enough to be profitable) that they will piss people off sufficiently that some people will defame and/or assault them in ways that they can then sue those people for. They are incorporated as a church to minimise tax and public liability, their major source of income is via lawsuits against people who step over the line that they’re egging them on over, and the more attention people pay to them the more money they make.
Please don’t link to them again. Ironically what they’re doing wouldn’t be possible without their reliance on the public safety machinery of the State they decry – they rely on police protection against any danger of significant violence perpetrated against them for their provocations, and they want people to shove them just hard enough that they get a convincing photo of it to show in court before the police come and break it all up. They’re cynical as hell about their rhetoric.
At lesast there may be one good thing come out of this. Palin might be finished.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/10/sarah-palin-arizona-shooting-fallout
The UK telegraph has a similar article that categorically states Palin is now cactus.
The UK Telegraph article.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/us-politics/8251160/Arizona-shooting-Have-Sarah-Palins-election-chances-been-damaged.html
As I suggested, no sensible person could deny that rhetoric has agency.
I guess there are different kinds of agency. Perhaps this old chestnut could be roasted on that flame. I haven’t noticed any sustained discussion of that issue. Correct me if I’m wrong.
And/or, having established (again) that rhetoric has agency, the question is what does one do with that unsurprising piece of information. Clearly one reason for understanding the world is to try to improve it. How is hate speak to be stopped and/or punished? One may perhaps rely upon persons suddenly being seized with an appreciation of their evil ways. That may work for some. Unfortunately, for most, it may be argued, nothing short of fear of punishment will suffice.
On Planet Fox, meanwhile, Glenn Beck has reached outpublicly to the victim of the shootings….Sarah Palin.
Obscenely, insanely, Beck has sought to construe the attack on Giffords as a plot by “leftists” to destroy the capitalist system.
See also my blogpost on the media coverage on The Failed Estate.
More on the rhetoric war.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/10/sarah-palin-glenn-beck-arizona-shootings
For most of the public figures engaging in it, losses at the ballot box and in the ratings should be punishment enough to make the loudest pull their heads in. Once public figures start to use the caution against using such rhetoric that they should have engaged in the first place, the Overton Window shifts back to where saying such things is not considered normal, and those who do it are no longer lionised.
See The Failed Estate on this issue, particularly regarding the urge to explain before the facts are in and how this need is being exploited.
http://thefailedestate.blogspot.com/
[link future-proofed by linking directly to actual post: http://thefailedestate.blogspot.com/2011/01/itchy-triggers.html ~ moderator]
Tightdog: I checked Wikapedia to make sure that Westboro was just a sick spoof. Problem is there are lots of groups out there that are just as bad if not worse. I am not sure what the best way of dealing with this sort of stuff is. It certainly isn’t putting angry comments on their blog but I am not sure that keeping the sane part of the population ignorant of their existence is the right strategy either. (Part of the uncertainty comes from a fear of helping the insane part of society feel normal.)
My own view is that the most corrupting thing is something that encourages you to think that going a little bit further than you are willing to go now.
Interestingly, “public figures” cannot sue for libel in the US. Which allows for much more robust attacks on politicians there than our libel laws would tolerate. Sounds like the Westboros should be honoured with the public figure title.
That assumes that inflammatory rhetoric is unpopular. The US populist Right has risen to prominence fuelled by inflammatory rhetoric.
Far more people died in Oklahoma City than died in Tucson Arizona. As I recall, the very same pleas were issued to tone down verbal violence. Those pleas fell on deaf ears. The populist Right continued to grow. The soundbites I heard on the radio this morning strongly suggest that, far from being shamed by criticisms of their language, mouthpieces of the populist Right are ramping up their rhetoric.
In today’s US verbal violence = political success. One must understand that these conditions of success involve mobilising an angry, insurgent base. Popularity is not the immediate ambition of the populist Right. Their strategy is more patient than that. The primary ambition of the populist Right is to take control of the Republican Party. Then they can quest for hegemony. This strategy is very foreign to the Australian experience, whose politics is blandly short-termist and avowedly majoritarian.
In those US circumstances, the loudest won’t pull in their heads. They’ll grow louder.
Katz @ 347: The issue is whether a person exercising the most persuasive rhetoric in the world can be said to be legally responsible for the actions of others. Again, and Jules please note, NOT the opinion in the OP.
Once again, and *please* let this be the last time this has to be pointed out, the OP is not positing that the killer had a “link” with Sharon Angle, the Tea party, or whoever, but that he was triggered by that violent discourse of which Sharon Angle and the Tea Party are a part. (This sentence is couched in general terms so as not to mention S–P–, I’m embarking on a project to deny this attention junkie her oxygen.) There is NO suggestion of or need for a reference to a legal liability. It’s plausible deniability that’s the hallmark of the language we’re discussing. Yes, it’s incitement – and if there isn’t a legal slot to put it in, it doesn’t touch on what I’m saying in the slightest. Indirect consequences of a whole nationwide climate of intemperate violent speech is what I’m talking about. (Pavlov’s Cat @357 says this much more concisely!)
PeterTB@354 – Will feel very pleased if FOX news and its supporters finally realise that terrorism doesn’t necessarily have a brown face.
Tigtog@358 – Me too! And my Dad has 4! TREMBLE!
Oh, for heaven’s sake.
Via @tomtomorrow on Twitter.
Are the left then not part of this same scene, and if so how do they escape responsibility? He’s one of yours. And like the commenters here will not listen to right-wing radio sources enough to be incited by them. Like the people here he probably has an entirely fictional understanding of what the tea party is about. If he was angry about not enough action taken on CO2 then who is responsible in that case? If it turns out that the incitement came from the Daily Kos then is it the fault of the daily Kos?
@John D:
WTF? That’s one hell of a “typo” there. Shame on you.
Huh?
That’s what I’ve been arguing all along.
Viz @ 27:
*Please* do me the courtesy of criticising me for things I actually wrote.
OB observed:
Timothy (James) McVeigh and Ted (Robert) Bundy had middle names, but I can’t recall them being used in public. The “Unabomber” (Ted Kaczinski) doesn’t get a name at all in popular conversation, though of course he had one.
Ok Helen, but the wording in your Op suggests that there is a link to me.
Yeah and once again I’ll say that violent discourse is and violent action (with guns) is, so much a part of the American psyche that this event, and the tea party are both manifestations of that unhealthy cultural baggage.
But to say one triggered the other does not stand up to analysis.
Correlation isn’t Causation.
Point this out and suddenly I’m denying the link between rhetoric and people’s actions? Come on. That didn’t begin with Back and the Tea Party. If you want to point to a date that I think marks the latest upsurge in the violent rhetoric as background noise thatyou refer to, I think a good one would be the day they say that poor kid was born.
Not once Obama was elected.
However if by that violent discourse you mean the one thats been taking place in America since day one – I totally agree.
It had to have influenced him.
I’m not comfortable linking this event to what the Tea Party et al says on the basis that I don’t like what they say.
@Radio Raheem:
Evidence? I hope you’re not relying on Facebook profiles since shown to be fakes.
For all the cynics out there, here’s a copy of something written just after 9/11 which with a few cut and pastes could be relavant today.
From http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html
That “its the fault of both sides” attempt? Oh please.
Nicely put, Jules.
You know that we have disagreed on detail and perhaps on how to get to a point of consensus. I think you are right about the background of violent rhetoric in America. I have mentioned how it is enshrined, for example, in US constitutional thought. Vigilanteism and lynch law are also manifestations of it. The Tea Party is simply the latest iteration of that tradition of violent political rhetoric.
Thus, it is impossible to quantify how much the Tea Party has contributed to the rhetorical fuel that drives the likes of JLL.
I think we can agree that the Tea Party has done nothing to decrease the force of this violent tradition, however.
Given the longevity and force of this tradition, it is a little presumptuous of Australians to suggest nostrums that may serve to make this tradition disappear. It appears to me that it is condition to be lived with rather than a problem to be solved.
I don’t know many “leftists” who would have Adolf Hitler and Ayn Rand on their reading list, unless they were studying far right politics. And who is the far right philosopher who is such a goddess of the Tea Party that Hollywood recently made a movie of one of her trashy novels because they thought so many RWDBs would come and see it they’d make a profit out of it? Ayn Rand, that’s who.
Every cloud has a silver lining……
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/the-market-for-palin.html
Katz
That’s all well and good, but innocent people will continue to die because of an acceptance of American culture. The second amendment is a problem, but anyone of moral courage who suggests doing something about it will be attacked firstly for attacking a quintessentially American character trait, and also for making political ground out of a tragedy. And these persons may also come under physical pressure.
Attacking on politicians by other politicians for playing politics is something that is on the rise everywhere now, including in Australia, but it stifles discussion about real problems. Black Saturday is a good example.
Canadians have nearly as many firearms as Americans (per head), but they don’t see it as an essential aspect of being Canadian. They also don’t have this delusion that their undertaking (being the USA) is favoured by God over other nations. Of course, Obama was criticised last year for making the sane point that citizens of countries other than the USA think their countries are pretty good too.
We can all start, all people, everywhere in the world, by removing every scrap of war-like language from our political debate, unless it directly relates to warfare. We all want what’s best: we just differ on how to get it.
I defy anyone to point to an example of a post on a left-wing blog or in a left-wing media outlet which matches the following effort:
Tigtog: Apologies. Lousy speller, not Freudian slip. Anything not on spellcheck slips through.
There are analogies between the Tea Party and One Nation. The success of one Nation led to tighter scrutiny which highlighted the influence of people who didn’t belong to the “ordinary battlers” the party was supposed to represent. Campaigning for things like a flat tax simply emphasized whose interests counted.
There was also a realization amongst the media that One Nation was a creature of their creation and they had to take responsibility for this. (And yes, changes in Howard’s policies and Abbott’s attacks on One Nation helped helped too.)
Hopefully, some of these factors apply equally to the Tea party. In addition, moderate r Republicans are looking for ways of stopping the party of Abraham Lincoln being taken over by the crazies.
hear, hear, Howard.
And I know you and I are on different sides of the political fence.
My worry is that those days of sensible accommodation are over, and, so far as the LIbs are concerned, have been since the exit of Fraser. I can’t pin-point exactly when they ended on the left, but it was sometime during the Howard era. We have to get back to a more gentle politics, but I’ll be buggered if I know how. I fear its gone too far for that.
That’s very succinct summation by Andrew Sullivan above.
Although this may stop Palin in her tracks, I think violence is to well much part of the American Dream for much to change. No-one is going to seriously challenge the Second Amendment. I know progressive people in the USA who, albeit reluctantly, see the right to carry a gun as an essential, because the bad guys have guns and will use them. So, the cycle continues.
There’s too much money being made by rabid right media commentators for them to tone down their act. FoxNews will claim that the assassin was a leftist because of some of the books he owns and because there’s a tweet from an old high school friend who claims he was when she knew him.
alternatively the shooter went for Giffords because she was convenient. he was a local resident of Tuscon.
Quite true, HC.
Naturally, I’ll do what I can to keep it out of Australia and out of Melbourne.
For example, I held my nose and applauded with one clapping hand when Howard had the courage to clamp down on firearms.
Australia’s political culture has always been different from that of the US and it is growing more different, despite the pervasive influence of US popular culture. I don’t perceive Australia adopting political violence by aping the US. Australia’s political violence was home-grown and now has almost completely disappeared. Read D. H. Lawrence’s “Kangaroo” for a fascinating insight into a dangerous period of Australian life when serious political violence was a real possibility.
As to the US, well Canada has been tut-tutting across the border for centuries without measurable effect. I somehow doubt that we Australians can do much about it.
That’s a great post by Mr Denmore. To some extent the reduction of political discourse to personal attacks and banal insults by media figures like Beck and Limbaugh and (IMO)Maher and Olbermann has become part of the business model of media outlets. The more outrageous the language, the claim and counterclaim, the higher the hits and viewer numbers – restraint and sober speech don’t make for great theatre.
I wonder whether there is much capacity for change given the symbiotic relationship that has developed between networks driven by revenue and politicians driven by the desire for exposure. They will both likely have to accept some contraction if sanity is to be restored, to use Jon Stewart’s slogan.
I think the point he and others, like the blogger at Boing Boing in the post Jules linked above, have made about this event being immediately absorbed into the prevailing polarisation of political opinion is a really worrying sign that things are not going to change very much.
tssk, already linked (somewhere round 240 I think.)
Helen @ 383 What sides?
The only reason reason the centre doesn’t hold is that there never was one and no firmament either for that matter.
There are no sides in this. America is a culture that has always manifested its desires through violence. Thats not the only thing you can say about America, but you can say it, and you can point to the massive and detrimental influence it has had on the culture. (Yet still they strive to improve themselves – no where else went from slavery to Obama with quite the same intensity and craziness and wondrous and terrible novelty.)
If you think this escalation of violent rhetoric can be seperated from Obama saying “they bring a gun we’ll bring a knife”, and referring to how the footy fans in Philadelphia love a good brawl I’d like to know why.
Same with his joke about bombing the Jonas brothers with a predator drone. “You’ll never see it coming.” (Bomb Pakistan much?) How is that separate from this situation?
Granted, Obama is not a leftist, but in the context of this discussion he’s constantly painted as one.
Anyway
That guy you quoted is foolish, cos I’m a hyperbolic lefty and I know what i’m capable of. In the right, well wrong situation he’d have a lot of reason to be afraid of me.
When Thatcher beat Scargill she effectively cemented the states monopoly on violence – we can’t have a non state actor capable of putting a million working people on the street. That happened in the 80s when Class War basically meant what was written on the covers of Riks textbooks.
Probably couldn’t have happened before then. WHat is it with the left and violence?
We use it to defend our rights. That should be it.
Yes you are making Katz’s point for him. It’s because they are founded in violence and they have enshrined the impulse of revolution in their constitution. They cannot easily undo their originary beginning. Actually you can’t undo a beginning. If you are sewn together in a certain way, you live with it as Katz says. It’s in the mythos of the figure of the patriot they keep raising. Yesterday Gabrielle Gifford’s brother in law called her a ‘true patriot. Timothy McVeigh went to his death thinking he was a true patriot. They can’t both be right but what they both were doing was calling to an originary moment where patriotism meant tearing away from dishonest government and founding something good and true, something to be loved and something to be proud of. It’s their Eden. It was wrought by violence but it’s theirs and they are proud of it. They’ve been formed within that discourse. And yes they actually did consider themselves the new Jerusalem on the Earth at founding. It’s a point of origin for them too. They can’t but not be affected by it. They have that city on the hill thing going. The transcendentalism of their early days still wafts in and out of their discourse. And some of them, clever seers that they are, write again and again of their disappointment at the failure of that Eden.
Consider asking all Australians to forget Gallipoli. Tell them they are having themselves on about it. That Australians mateship is a load of crap. That there is nothing to honour, nothing to remember. That’s its violence that is being celebrated. Go on.
I’m curious PB. What attributes of Ayn Rand put her, in your view, on the far right? Yes, Rand, an enthusiastic supporter of “small government” and unregulated capitalism is certainly a rightist, and arguably a species of fundamentalist, but far right? What makes her more rightwing than, say, Malcolm Turnbull?
(For me the far right refers to reactionary supporters of capitalism and the brutality bound up with protection of the system)
“Evidence? I hope you’re not relying on Facebook profiles since shown to be fakes.”
What do you make of this question?
“What is government if words have no meaning?”
Not much of a tea party question in my view. Think also of his reading list. Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto are socialist/collectivist tracts. If he’s not one of yours he’s pretty conscientious in his reading.
I would counter that almost the last thing most Australians think of when they think of Gallipoli is violence.
Paul Burns’ sentiments are lamentable, in as much as he seems to think there is no turning back from the escalation of rhetoric. Well, how about you and me try to scale it back? Others are welcome to join in as well.
It’s hard to arrive at any other conclusion than the USA is in some serious trouble. Their fiscal problems are on a massive scale, they have a large population of people disconnected with the rest of the world (and I don’t mean they wouldn’t like living in Melbourne, but it’s almost like they seem themselves persevering in spite of the rest of the world, which is ridiculous), and their political system is so broken that they cannot get anything done. Oh, and they love guns, which is sort of like saying you like broken legs.
And this coming from a guy who will get up early next Monday morning to watch NFL playoffs. Go figure.
Sorry got that Obama quote the wrong way round.
Oh its in moderation anyway.
Katz @384
I spose … it depends what you mean.
Its the only side of the story. MLK is a classic example.
And in that context I think you are right. In that MLK lived it and lived with it, all the way to the bitter end, and that was how he brought about change. He didn’t indulge with it, he acknowledged it and said “Yeah, but we can be better” or words to that effect.
And by his death you might be able to say that malcolm X was moving in the same direction, or toward the same conclusions that MLK voiced.
They are not the only examples.
But if you mean a way of life to be lived in the sense the American right is expressing it today, (and to an extent the Australian right), that is why I posted that Chris Wilson song at @ 346.
Its a dreadful shame and an awful sorrow
Its crossed the evil line today
How in hell can you talk about tomorrow
When you don’t have one good word to say?
What in hell has come over you?
What in heavens name have you done?
[Slight correction - song by John Prine. Mod]
You are missing the point Howard. I think Katz has made a really interesting point about how moments of origins become moments of return and reverberate down the years. But I don’t disagree with the need to do away with all the violence, as you say. I just think it’s imposible given America’s beginning.
Yes Casey, you have summarised elegantly my argument. Your “moments of origin” figure is a good one.
These days there is little vigilanteism or lynch law in the US. The expressions of social and political violence change over time and according to circumstance.
What remains constant, however, is the belief in violence as a legitimate and effective means of expression.
Even the disgruntled loner thinks “I may be nothing now but tomorrow everyone will know my name. As a white male (and we are nearly always white males) by committing a dramatic act of violence I have requited my duty to leave a mark on the world. This duty to leave a mark is the right, privilege and burden of us white males, who invented this country with a musket. Via this trigger, I am asserting my connection with the Founding Fathers.”
Yeah Prine wrote it. Sorry if I didn’t give that impression. Wilson changes some lyrics in that version tho, hardly noticeable but just enough for it to be really relevant. imo.
Tigtog: Sorry to keep on about WBC. My son sent the following on WBC:
http://thefbomb.org/2009/11/corduroy-skirts-are-a-sin/“> here Started me chortling every time I thought of it.
Dark days of course when the Hells Angels have to be the champions of decency.
Some more information from my son to give strength to the forces of decency:
I thought that given that we are discussing matters of context here …
Here is Rachel Maddow, describing the parallel conservative universe of undebunkable made up stuff at work.
This is the context within which the recent events in Tucson take place, and of course much else that bears balefully upon public policy more generally.
For the record, this clip was posted on 4/11/2010, well before the Tucson matter.
PS: I’ve long regarded Rachel Maddow as one of the most articulate commentators in the US media scene, and it’s a damned shame we seem not to have her like here.
Re the WBC there is always God Hates Shrimp as an antidote.
@354
You’ve missed the point. They’re already trotting out rhetoric designed to make themselves appear as the victims of a vicious smear campaign. Next there’ll be over the top histrionics as they exploit their victimised, underdog position. You must be either disingenuous or credulous. Either way you’d make a good Fox news consumer.
@362
My middle names’s Marshall. Sadly I don’t own one and wouldn’t so it justice even if I did.
Fran,
I’ve always seen Ayn Rand as a supporter of conscienceless rampant individualist capitalism, in so far as she is readable. That seems like far right to me. far right doesn’t necessarily equate with f*SC*sm.
Paul @ 410.
Its only one Ayn Rand book, and not the one’s that get the publicity.
I haven’t read any, Atlas shrugged or the Fountainhead, one I tried, it was drivel. They are sposed to be the seminal ones, and I’d imagine if it resonated that much with him he’d have at least sought them out.
But hey I don’t want to stress you out about it.
There is way more going here than it appears on the surface.
I reckon.
I’m happy to be wrong if evidence proves it, and I don’t mean legal evidence. What I’m saying isn’t gospel, but I think it needs consideration.
Helen @ 384 (or whatever the random number generates gives us That “its the fault of both sides” attempt? Oh please.
That is exactly the point. The language of the Left is just as vitriolic as that of the right in America today. I would give you illustrative links, but the Bolta has beaten me to it.
Do yourself a favour and pop on over.
This is a tiny exchange from a “conspiracy board” not one I mentioned. Its one I’ve been pert of for years, its none of the cliches people will assume. It doesn’t even consider itself a conspiracy board, tho the guy that coined the term 9/11 truth (to his eternbnal charin these days) is there, anti fascist is a more apt term.
(And non violent not aligned to anti fa not that they are necessarily violent either..) Please read it in the spirit its meant and think about it in the context of rhetoric and people who struggle to build a coherent worldview.
I didn't write any of that, but it does sum up my feeling pretty well.
You guys might not see much of a difference between the likes of mainstream right wing psychos like Beck and Limbaugh and people like Maxwell or that idiot tax protester mentioned above.
But its there and its probably more significant than you realise, cos its where the real loonies gravitate.
None of this should let mainsteam right wing psychos off the hook either.
Oh the music culling song thing. Don't take it too seriously. Its a reference to the generic garbage music that accompanied the flag burning video. Music for people who think Creed or Nickleback is hardcore.
Bolta as the arbiter of truth? That is certainly amusing. Yes, if you dig and dig and dig (as the right-wing noise machine are now desperately doing) you can come up with examples of left-wing viciousness. But you don’t have to dig for examples of same from the Right. You just have to turn on Fox news / O’Reilly / Limbaugh etc – daily.
Moreover, the worse examples cited by Bolt were immediately and soundly comdemned by other left-wing bloggers. Other examples aren’t even relevant – calling Bush a war criminal is tantamount to calling for him to be tried in court, not lynched or shot. Which just goes to show Bolt is simply scraping for anything, however tangential, he can use to prove his “point” with his less than critical readership.
Far out PTB.
You and Blot are really scraping the barrel.
Which of those persons mentioned by Blot have run for office?
Now pay attention. Both sides of politics have adherents who make rude, derogatory and insulting comments about their political hate objects. Nothing new about that.
But what *is* new is the likes of Sharron Angle advocating political assassination by means of firearms. Some time ago I invited you to find something like that from the other side of politics. You have failed to come up with anything.
Why, oh why, don’t you just acknowledge that and move on with the rest of your life?
Calling Bush a war criminal is a legitimate accusation. That may not suit you, but he broke internationally accepted laws wrt torture and military aggression. If that’s your best example of ‘leftist’ aggression that’s pretty pathetic.
@396
I’d be surprised if Canadians have the same appetite for or access to the types of firearms that the Americans do. Most of the recent massacres in the US have been carried out with weapons that have only one purpose, killing or maiming large numbers of people at close range. The US is the only country where the rule of law prevails and yet these types of single purpose weapons are widely and legally available.
Sorry should have been @397
It’s also worth noting, last year when Congresswoman Giffords was asked how she felt about threats made against her during the heated debate over healthcare, she said, “I have a Glock 9mm, and I’m a pretty good shot”.
So much for the imflammatory language being used by the Right!!!
What’s inflammatory about stating that one is willing and able to protect oneself, Jamo?
Just for fun, who said this?
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”
http://nation.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/10/obama-flashback-if-they-bring-knife-fight-we-bring-gun#
Or this bit of wish fufilment?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvwyx8Ai14U
Or just a simple google search of “Kill Bush”
http://www.google.com.au/images?q=kill%20bush&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7GGLL_en&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi
This is not to defend one side or the other of US politics, the tea party odes use radical (more than is called for) speech far more than it should.
But to just wish away the vitriol thrown at the Republicans before Obama, and Clinton before that is a bit silly.
And has any political figure had this treatment?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who's_Nailin'_Paylin%3F
Or been this villified for FAILING to win an election? She should be a non-entity in politics, I can understand US democrat strategists trying to keep the oxygen of publicity alive for her, to inflict a republican candidate whos essentaily unelectable upon them. But FFS, cant “teh left” as a broad group just get over her?
Jules @ 412,
I did read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged many, many years ago. Apart from a lingering distaste from the philosophy behind the books, all I can remember is that they were very hard going, had extremely poor characterisation, were very large, and entirely failed to give me any kind of satisfaction. I don’t know why I kept going, but in those days I used to refuse to put down a book until I’d finished it, mostly.
Paul Burns
Then never pick up and read “the tribe that lost its head”, the ONLY book Ive ever willingly thrown overboard (literaly) 1/2 way through.
It starts with a plane crash and cannabalism, and …he…makes…it …boring….
The Montserrat novel? I’ve actually read it, many years ago/ wow, that’s way OT.
“Just for fun, who said this?”
Why “just for fun”? The more serious take on this thread is that it is an example of hate incitement, pushing the reality of hate incitement, onto the victims of hate incitement. As soon as there was a killing these people race to get in their first with the blame. Taking time off from promoting their environmental philosophies that promote the idea of a human plague on the planet.
Thats the one… back on topic now…sorry….
The fact of the matter is few US politicans have been killed/assassinated by people without significant mental health issues.
Given extremely few US political figure are provided with any sort of security (unless they have their own private bodyguards) it is quite suprising there have been so few.
Groups like militas/paramilitary/race based groups seem to surge and wane, but the level of violence stays below the surface.
Bush had thwarted (incompitent0 assassination attempts, Obama has at least 2 Im aware of.
Where the deaths seem to happe is when the killer decides to attack “the government” as a whole rather than its elected officals.
McVeigh is one of those. A terrorist of sorts, but it would be impossible to deny his target was Clinton/his administration. Hes probaly the “best” example of a sane assassin/terrorist recently.
Paul Burns. Whichever one I started reading … it lasted about 20 minutes. And back then I tried to read anything. Might have been Atlas Shrugged. Don’t think much of anything she’s come out with and less of the people that follow her ideas blindly.
I think there’s a lot more nuance on the non left of US politics than this discussion allows for. Libertarians are not the Tea Party, especially as it stands now tho members of both groups overlap.
Ron Paul is not Sarah Palin, and not even a fan of the Tea Party these days IIRC.
Ron Paul may be a racist, someone who makes his personal wealth of what I call US imperialism (check his share holding and what the gold mines he had holdings in have done if you don’t believe me), a conservative, not a fan of equal rights for the sexes ( a bit like Scalia last week) and a lot of things I don’t like, but his brand of right wing libertarianism would never lead to a totalitarian fascist state.
The same can’t be said for Palin.
In fact I think she is dangerous precisely because she could lead to that totalitarian situation, possibly a capital F Fascist one. To me thats the logical extension of all this current rhetoric, given the right combination of circumstances. Someone once said when fascism comes to america it’ll come draped in a flag.
There’s no possibility about it actually. If she gets the chance at power thats what she’ll do.
So in that sense everything you guys have said here that I appear to disagree with I do agree with wrt the power and danger inherent in the current right wing rhetoric.
Palin is a cult of personality, gaining raging momentum and dangerously absent of any sense of coherent guiding ideology. Its full of sound and fury, but it signifies the loss of unearned entitlement and the petulant rage that accompanies it.
That movement will gravitate to power for powers sake, cos thats all that can restore its non existent loss.
There’s more to the story of JLL than that.
The attempts to exclude from any involvement in this criminal act, of one Sarah Palin, on the basis that she did not pull the trigger of the gun, is of interest.
Perhaps the barristers at the Neuromberg trial should have put this forward as a far reaching defense argument.
Inciting that someone does the act is not sufficient.
Cross hairs from a rifle scope over the face of the victim on her website some how mean something other than take this one out!
Maybe the Tea Party believe in the unbelievable but many who can think their way through a wet paper bag have a different conclusion.
@419 Jamo accuses a victim of an assassination attempt of using “inflammatory language” in response to threats against her life.
Giffords said she was a good shot with a gun. I guess JLL was just testing her out, huh, Jamo? I guess Giffords had it coming, given her propensity to “inflammatory language”, huh, Jamo?
I think in the dictionary, under the entry for ‘vile’, there’s a picture of Jamo.
Here is Giffords:
She seems to see the problem as being one of extremism versus moderation rather than left vs right. Perhaps we should too?
I don’t actually think libetarians are very centred politically at all, Jules. The American ones might be different but the Australian ones I used to hang out with as a raw teenager were all over the place.
Mercurius @ 429, my point exactly. I had considered asking Jamo how he would regard a statement that I was a martial arts expert, or had a large can of mace – or that I liked flaunting my assets by wearing low cleavages – but that would (a) undoubtedly have been inflammatory, and (b)certainly derailed this thread.
I’m far too respectful of Helen to do the latter.
I hope my point(-’s)/(-s are) clear despite the misplaced auxillary verb.
Incidentally, I thought that First Dog’s offering yesterday was one of the most delicate pieces of black humour that I’ve encountered in a long long time.
Katz, I’ve acknowledged that Angle is a lightweight blowhard nearer the top of this thread – and given that it now seems clear that the shooter is indeed a nutter, and that there is no evidence that Angle influenced him, you should let it go. In any case, while Angle’s words were stupid, I have read them, and it is possible that she was speaking metaphorically – like Obama was when he ran with the “gun to a knife fight” thingo
Much has also been made by others of Palin’s contributions. Given that Palin’s crosshairs on maps post-dated a democrat map with similar bullseyes – people should wonder why a fuss has been made about the one, and not the other.
Helen opened this thread with a headline and content clearly blaming the “right” for contributing to this attack – and more broadly being mainly responsible for the rise in the level of vitriol in US political discourse.
I don’t think she is correct on either count.
If any of this ever gets out of moderation then people might notice the crazy sounding post I did above mentions another well ideology isn’t the word, it might be called an emergent trend but it is there.
In that post a clear difference was made about the origin of motivation of the people who push these ideas.
The difference between negligence and Malignant behaviour.
The things that seem to resonate most with JLLs obsessions are more likely negligent than malignant.
Palin probably is representative of a political movement that is malignant. In the sense that is a tumerous growth with a lethal potential wrt American politics.
So its malignant, it chokes and at the same time feeds off the energy and nutrients needed for a healthy body politic.
But worse – its malicious. It feeds of maliciousness and generates more. To me that says an egregore and a dangerous one at that.
No I’m not on the way to losing it. You’re probably thinking its just a nasty case of groupthink around a fear that can’t be spoken post civil rights and basic human respect.
I’ll wager I know alot more about some of the more esoteric aspects of that side of US culture than most here, and I can spot a clear difference between what he left behind and what I’d expect if the the two Mal words inspired his actions.
How many times to I need to repeat it?
I have never asserted that Angle influenced JLL.
My argument is about the violence of political rhetoric, NOT about what influenced JLL.
See my comments above, especially @ 27, which is very early in this thread. For good measure, I reiterated it @ 379, which is much later in this thread.
For God’s sake, pay attention.
Paul @ 432 I’m a left leaning libertarian or a leftie with libertarian tendencies according to those political compass things. Usually I end up as far from the centre in that box as possible. Not that you can draw much from that. A game of 20 questions with competing political dog whistles is a bit different from the century or more of political debate that informs how we view the left and the right.
I mentioned Paul and Palin together cos I see them as far right extremists with different political philosophies. Paul is a libertarian, Palin a dangerous power junkie.
I find most of Pauls personal motivations and politics odious, but I do get that he has a certain respect, even grudging respect on the left for the way he stuck to his political principles within a clear framework. I think if he were “in charge” much of the work the US has done to enable equality would be at risk.
If it were down to me I’d trust him more than many Australian politicians of either major party. But American politics is in a very bad state if Ron Paul’s consistency looks good. (No comment on Australian politics cos this situation is new and I can’t make an informed judgment.)
One intriguing idea I’ve come across was a Ron Paul Dennis Kucinich ticket. If they ran as a unit and the more popular one got top billing after the election then thats an intriguing situation. Dunno how practical it is but as an idea I liked it.
Progressive American politics has been in real trouble since Paul Wellstone was assassinated. (jules runs and hides.)
PB @ 422 (or thereabouts), your experience with Rand’s writing (for want of a better word) mirrors my own.
My maternal grandparents had “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas doesn’t give a fuck” for some reason (my grandfather was an engineer who married my grandmother in the US when he was over there building dams in the 1920s, which may go a way to explaining it), and I read them both as an impressionable yoof about 45 years ago. Well, they didn’t impress me, except to give me a huge distaste for Rand and her running-dogs.
jules @ 427, Kurt Goedel reckoned he’d found a flaw in the US constitution that would facilitate a fascist state. Seeing as he was Aristotle’s heir (and one of the smartest men who ever lived), I’d be interested to know in detail what he found.
Katz @ ~437 – fair enough
DI (nr)
There are right wing writers I’ve enjoyed – Doestoyevsky, Tolkien, Faulkner, Celine, etc etc but none of them have had the pernicious influence Rand has had. And in any case I wouldn’t call her a writer. She can’t write. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept of individualism, but the individualism spruiked by Ayn Rand, as I recall it, has very little to do with the ideal of individualism as expressed in the ideology of the American Revolution which has very litle if any resemblance to the cult of selfishness idealised in Rand’s writings. The true revolutionary ideals of liberty, republican virtue, etc etc are utterly missing in the ideas expressed by the Tea Party. And the only people who think the Founding Fathers were religious nuts are the religious nuts.
I don’t suppose the above is too far OT- after all we are, in a sense, trying to get at the ideas that caused the attempted assassination of Giffords.
DI(nr), perhaps start with the “this is a republic, not a democracy” claim.
This bears repeating:
“In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.
We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another–until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.”
Richard Milhouse Nixon
From his first inauguration speech.
DI (nr) @441.
Yeah? Thats interesting. You are right about Goedel – he is a tripper. (pardon my slang)
I struggled with what he says, tho I read that Hofsteader book years ago, 20 or more, and that made a lot more sense.
I still dunno how much I understand Goedel tho, or if I’m still regurgitating Hofsteaders book.
The implications of Goedels ideas are pretty important from what little I get. I know enough of that maths to get about halfway through it and then realise I’m suddenly very lost. My wife is a tripper tho too. She learned all sorts of uni level maths by just going through every undergrad and some post grad maths books and completely understanding them. Took her less than a year.
If I get the implications correctly then he mathematically demonstrated William Blake’s lines:
Thats mind boggling.
DI (nr) @ 440,
I would suspect it might have something to do with the potential abuse President’s powers as Commander-in-Chief. Godel experienced Hitler’s rise to power and the way Hitler took over control of the Whermacht, and set up the paramilitary SS, which, if I remember rightly, was used in the Night of the Long Knives to give him absolute power within the Nazi Party, and later over and within the Army. And during WW2, we were seeing the beginnings of the imperial presidency within the US. Of course we’ll never know, since his exegesis was cut off by the judge who was hearing his claim for citizenship, for fear it might not be able to be granted to him.
Paul B @ 443 There’s a clear difference between my understanding of the founding fathers and the tea party’s.
There’s a lot of unnecessary and inaccurate mythologising about the US founding fathers, and lets be honest, the idea that the constitution is an unchanging solid thing in an ever changing world is foolish. If the founding fathers could jump in the good Dr’s Tardis and have a look at today I suspect they would have taken a slightly different attitude to the constitution. I hope they’d make it a document that would be more adaptable, I dunno if anyones come across Scalia’s latest ruling that gender equality isn’t actually guaranteed constitutional protection.
I’m still wondering if I misread that. I must have.
These things can be unpacked beyond ridiculousness maybe, but the tea party’s misuse of the founding father myth, which is nasty, but understandable even typical in American politics, takes place against a cultural background where the SCOTUS can make a ruling like Scalia seems to have done.
There was no centre, thats why it can’t hold.
And, of course. the constitutional amendment limiting a President to two four year terms was not in place during WW2. It was passed in the 1950s, 1954?
I am not convinced that this was an act of terrorism. The psychological profile of the killer was not consistent with the motives of a terrorist. He did not appear to be trying to make a political statement concurrently with the attack and he doesn’t appear to have any supporters or an organisation that he is working with. It seems he was more motivated by same dark, crazed, mysterious blood lust that operates in the American psyche to produce events such as the columbine massacre and other similar shootings. It is probably something that we will never really know the truth about.
448 was an addendum to 446.
Now Jules @ 447,
My impression is that the US Constitution is pretty flexible despite its 18C origins, and I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was drawn up by the Founding Fathers so it could be open to future interpretation, just recently. Chernow’s Washington, or Gordon S. Wood’s book on the founding of the Republic. Can’t remember which.
Though I think the Revolution is a great deal broader than its constitutional aspects, though they are of undoubted importance. I go along with Gary B. Nash’s hypothesis that the ruling elite stole the popular revolution from the poor who won it for them through the Continental Army, and set up a republican oligarchy that preserved the powers of a pre-war elite. It was a different elite to the pre-war mob of course, many of whom had remained loyalists and were driven out.But then again, I’m a leftie, and that was originally a left wing hypothesis. But on reflection, it sounds horribly like some of the more extreme Tea Party claims.
Oh, the perils of interpreting the American Revolution. Fortunately, I’m concentrating mostly on the Brits, so I do and will avoid some of them.
Sydney Lawyer, c’mon man, the largest civilian amok massacre was that Bryant guy in Tasmania. American psyche‘s a bit of a generalisation.
One of the problems is that the US is so big and regionally and culturally different. Maybe that’s why it should be understood as a republic and not a democracy (in the sense of equality and citizenship.) Maybe another thing which has changed is that there just is no longer the space, the wilderness that’s so important in the American myth, to just keep expanding. Americans need to find a way to integrate themselves more into a common understanding, where they can decide disagreements and not just say, “whatever” and ignore the others. The problems which we are increasingly facing require a certain kind of totalitarianism, in that ‘everyone’ is going to have to be involved.
Even stepping back from areas such as energy resources and climate change, if we look at the hot political issues in Southern Nevada, immigration is no longer solvable in the framework of simple private ownership. Even the concept of total emplozment as a basis for a national politics is no longer solvable within a nation, so what can you do as an individual?
Sydney Lawyer @ 450 I have a comment that is in moderation at 414 (hint hint) that might give you some context for what you say. Its got to do with the ideas spouted by the real freaks of the US political spectrum, people who claim to have been at area 51 when the govt signed the treaty or are trying to resist paying taxes based on some obscure misunderstanding of the last bailout.
It appears this guy was mentally unstable to begin with and playing around with some sort of occult stuff.
Some people might say that about me , but anyway. I know a bit about the “western magical tradition”, and a few non western ones.
Ok assuming this is true then the second photo here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/galleries/rep_gabrielle_giffords_shot_in_head/rep_gabrielle_giffords_shot_in_head.html
is of JLLs alleged magical alter. (It looks like a joke)
Ok its arizona, maybe he forgot to clean up after that day of the dead celebration.
Or maybe he was trying to use something like this:
http://thewanderingscarecrow.com/skulls.html
Either way mental illness and fracking about with the infinite don’t mix. Other shootings in the US include a armed man at an LDS temple shot dead after babbling something about the birds coming (WTF?) and a kid at a school late last week, he apparantly shot the deputy principle after being suspended.
jules @ 452,
I think they might have a flood to deal with. Hence your missing comment missing?
Dear oh, dear. How embarrassing this has all been for Larvatus tragics. Tch tch.
Mainly because the Palin map named PEOPLE and the cross-hairs thus CAN be interpreted as putting PEOPLE in the gun-sights.
The Democrat map named DISTRICTS (not one individual was named) and a bullseye means that you’re NOT targeting a PERSON.
There’s more: http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-national/phony-comparison-between-palin-s-lethal-crosshairs-map-and-democrats-map
@jules #452,
Your comment went into moderation because the formatting was borked and one part of that triggered the modbot. The formatting was so borked as to be virtually illegible, and sometimes one just looks at all that correcting by hand that needs to be done and says “I’m too fucking tired”. FYI.
Sydney Lawyer:
Incorrect.
JLL’s psychological profile is based on amateur speculation. So far as I know we have only the opinions of amateurs and anecdotal evidence to support any “psychological” eplanation.
JLL’s own words are much better evidence. Clearly his concerns were political. He expressed himself in political terms. He targeted a political figure.
It is true that JLL’s statements upon these topics were confused, incoherent, and illogical. But since when did a terrorist have to pass a test on political doctrine to be deemed a terrorist?
JLL sought to bring about political change. He used violence in this attempt designed to induce terror. He is a terrorist.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/01/after-tucson-one-day-sales-of-handguns-jump-in-ariz-calif-ny/1
WTF?
PB @ 447, he also had Einstein hopping nervously from foot to foot and trying to shut him up for the same reason.
Fiona @ 444, that’s part of it, and I think PB is making a similar point.
Tig @ 457, fair enough. I was just being a dick. Sorry for hassling you. I used a double of these > instead of quotation marks for some reason that might be why it went blurgggh.
In light of this thread I noticed something disturbing today. The comments in Piers Ackerman’s disgusting attempt to use this tragedy to score political points are reflecting many of the points people here have made. I don’ usually read his column let alone the comments – I have to go wash out my eyes.
DI (nr)@ 460.
Indeed/ Perhaps somewhat contentiously, I have reservations about the extent of American democracy before the Jacksonian era, which I hasten to add I have not studdied intensively the way I have the Revolution. And I say contentiously, because there is definiteevidence for democratic leanings before Jackson. People seem not tho realise that the creation of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights was more or less the last act of the Revolution, and the Constitution would not have replaced the unworkable Confederation Constitution if the Convention had not agreed to a Bill of Rights. The extent of Federal power was highly controversial, so much so that one of thedelegates the I forget who, but I think it was one of the Virginoia delegates (Randolph?) refused to sign off on it because it gave too much power to the government and threatened the liberties of the people. The key word before Jackson was not democracy, but liberty, an entirely different thing.
mercurius @ 430. I’m not sure whther you’ve heard of that saying that its better to remain ignorant and stay mute than to open your mouth and remove all doubt, however it seems very relevant regarding you and your comments. Your problem is that LP has dug a hole with this post by suggesting that Palin and the American right, by using inflammatory language, incited this attack. You have then been provided with examples of the American left using the same sort of language and advocation of violence. When you get in a hole, stop digging!!
Oh and btw, I’ll tell you what is vile. Using the attempted assasination of one of your own as a convenient tool to attack those of the opposite political ilk. Thats vile.
LP – Shame, Shame, Shame
Correction : Articles of Confederation. It was not a constitution. Its worth noting the Founding Fathers’ attitude to democracy. Uncontrolled democracy lead to anarchy they believed, so they hedged it around with all kinds of checks and balances. But it was considered the lesser of two evils. The greater evil was untrammelled power of the executive, hence all the checks and balances on the Presidency by powers gien to Congress. Given the Americans’ perceptions of abuse of power by the British Parliament as creatures of an all-powerful king, their attitude is not surprising and has its roots in the ideology of the Commonwealthmen of the Cromwellian era and radical, stress radical Whig theory of Government. Throw in a bit of good old fashioned Puritan theocracy, and you’ve actually got quite an explosive mix.
I don’t know why I bother. I enjoy getting into debates with the intelligent right wingers who frequent this blog but RWDBs like yourself Jamo, I’m not sure.
But let me ask you this one question: If the far right of American politics have such bllodless hands as you seem to be suggesting in your childish tit for tat game, how is it that it was not until after the Tucson Massacre, Sarah Palin’s chances of being the next Republican American candidate for the Presidency suddenly slipped to zilch? That’s the American people speaking there, lad, not us uninformed Australians.
PB@ 462 I heard Sam Adams (Mass?) refused to allow Mass. to ratify the constitution until a Bill of Rights was included and held Mass. out of the Federation until that was addressed. Something like that anyway.
I get the impression that that is actually what is going on with the likes of Ron Paul, a continuation of that tradition.
(PB @451)
Yeah maybe, if I get the chance I’ll check that idea out.
As far as a document for enabling a functioning reasonably free society it does seem to work. I’m sure part of that is the reverence it is held and the good faith many on both sides of US politics must have.
Bush and Cheney violated it, they should have to face legal sanction for that imo, just for the external and internal cred of the system. So you can’t really put their abuses down to a failure of it.
And in opposition to the idea it failed is the fact that in the US over the last 50 years of the 20th century it enabled stuff (womens rights, civil rights for black people for example) that we all respect.
So yeah good point.
Someone’s got a hypothesis for that idea? I tend to agree. Thats politics, and especially revolutionary politics – swap one elite for another.
Thats the flaw with the Tea party philosophy too. They see themselves as a revolution but all they are doing is enabling another shift of power. Its really dangerous in that they see Obama as an unconstitutional leader. Despite the fact the previous mob could actually be said to be in violation of the constitution for real reasons, not some racists imagination. The elite that gather around them have no respect for the positive elements of US historical development.
Assuming you’re not merely promoting the “Left-opinion-is-no-more-than-a-mirror-image-of-Right-opinion” meme, I have to agree that the fresh faces here who’re agitated about what they consider biased claims against Sarah Palin et al, they are a rum lot.
What are they protesting against? I don’t get how any ideological tendency can instantly frame a political assassination as it’s big chance to make a stand against the very things the gunman’s victims were representatives of.
It’s as simple as that. Forget every claim about this Lougner character being either a genuine political actor, or him being the spawn of genuine political rhetoric: a pro-Obama politician is shot after she spoke about being under threat for being pro-Obama, a judge involved in making a particular (non-conservative) controversial ruling is dead also.
And to invoke those dread ‘post-’ schools of intellectual theories, at least the Left only ever goes nannas over outrages that are universally considered Official Political Actions We All Agree Can Be Debated. They don’t try to both criticise Israeli military assaults and then declare there just isn’t any legitimate politics to be had there in that non-political non-debate they’ve just engaged in, for example.
And your problem Jamo, is that after it’s been painstakingly explained time and time again on this comments thread, you remain unable to comprehend that the OP is NOT “suggesting that Palin and the American right, by using inflammatory language, incited this attack”.
You don’t understand the proposition that has been put. You don’t understand what we’re actually saying. You don’t understand nuance. You don’t understand the point that’s being made.
So whatever it is you think you’re critiqueing and condemning, when it’s all said and done, you’re just shadow-boxing, mate.
In any case, your “helpful advice” to “stop digging” is a pretty reliable point of confirmation that the OP is on the right track with this analysis. If the OP’s approach is so “ignorant” and so “shameful” and so wrong and so guaranteed to result in humiliation and ignominy as you reckon it is, I’d expect you to encourage its continuation…
Mercurius, I think Jamo is talking about digging holes in the ground as an act of good faith.
Man’s only defending Palin because he’s a lifelong surveyor, and promoting the value of good surveying equipment through poster art is the only activity Ms Palin has been up to since she quit halfway through her term.
Jules @ 466,
Sam Adams did initially oppose the ratification of the Us Constitution but came round in the end. The big sticking point was that the Constitution did not have a Bill of Rights. Several states refused to ratify Until there was one,the first ten amendments, ably drawn up by James Madison. The ideas, (and I think I’ve got the chronology right here) about a Bill of Rights had been floating round in the ether for quite a while, as part of the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate. The main thrust of the debate was not the Bill of Rights, though, but the inability of a Federal Government to operate because of the circumscription of its powers in the Articles of Confederation. In many ways, its a miracle the Americans, on both state and federal level were able to administer the Revolutionary War at all. Bureaucratically speaking for much of the time it was a disaster waiting to happen.
PB@462. OT but I’ve only stumbled on the Jeffersionian / Jacksonian distinction this morning (via Clark Kerr on the City of the Intellect so I’m coming into it from a somewhat elitist perspective).
But it seems Jacksonian democracy is very much about electing the comfortably dumb (like Reagan, GWB, Palin) who identify with the common (white) *man* rather than people with that dangerous book larning stuff who know how to spell things right.
And making policy based more on gut feeling about what should be rather than on some understanding of observed reality.
And that it also gave us manifest destiny and a willingness to prosecute politics through military action.
So it seems that Jacksonianism these days is far more practised on the right – Fox, the Teapots and a lot of the ‘Republicans’.
Is this an unfair characterisation?
Paul Burns @ 465. I’m not even going to give that the credit of a response, however just for the record, Im actually a member of the democrat party in the US and regard myself as holding views in the political center. Which is why I think that we should be talking about repealing the 2nd Amendment and being more proactive towards mental health issues. But you are entitled to your opinion.
mercurius @ 468.
NOT “suggesting that Palin and the American right, by using inflammatory language, incited this attack”.
Oh Really. Then what about this quote directly from the piece –
Who bought their intemperate rhetoric and pulled the trigger!!!!
You can run but you can’t hide mate.
Jamo, you missed this:
And, thanks to the Jamos of this world, Helen’s remarks will prove to be every bit as prophetic as the remarks of Phil Hare back in March 2010 — “If this doesn’t get under control in short time, heaven forbid, someone will get hurt,”
They will all get away with it, Jamo. Because of you and people like you, who need no encouragement to leap into the fray and become apologists for hate-speech.
Jamo, you won’t take anybody here’s word for it, fine.
Google ‘Stochastic Terrorism’ and try to understand.
“If the far right of American politics have such bllodless hands as you seem to be suggesting in your childish tit for tat game, how is it that it was not until after the Tucson Massacre, Sarah Palin’s chances of being the next Republican American candidate for the Presidency suddenly slipped to zilch? That’s the American people speaking there, lad, not us uninformed Australians.”
Goodness me, what a cavalcade of poor logical inference.
Reclusive Leftist
FWIW I think it is possible to simultaneously agree with the premise of this post that violent and extreme speech acts are toxic for the polity and could well provoke violent acts and also agree with some of Violet Socks’ points about the staggering hypocrisy of some and the disturbingly disproportionate hatred that is sent Palin’s way cf other figures who utter similar or worse.
paul of albury @ 471
Yes, I’d say so. I’m still getting my ideas into shape on Jefferson and his ideal of the agrarian society, republican virtue etc. Hoping to get a good collection of his writings in the very near future and I’ll have a better idea of what I think of him then. So far I’ve only really viewed him through the Sally Hemmings connection and the Jefferson/Hamilton conflict, the pro-French versus pro-British debate post the Revolution.
Jamo,
If you quack like a duck and you walk like a duck you are a duck. Nevertheless, I wish you all the best with your efforts to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Can’t ever see it happening though. despite my ascerbity, my sympathies go out to you, your party and your country for the losses and pain of the Tucson massacre. Genuinely.
PB, it’s an unfair characterisation? I should avoid ending posts with an invitation to disagree with me – it makes your agreement ambiguous
Chris at Sadly, No! comments:
paul of albury,
No. I don’t think it is an unfair characterisation from the little I’ve read on Jacksonian democracy. Is that less ambiguous?
“Stochastic terrorism”. Hmm, sounds a lot like “trawling for assassins” mentioned above.
If it could be demonstrated that any public figure knew and believed in such a mechanism and then set about to achieve that objective, then you have sufficient guilty mens rea. But on the other hand, the person plunging pins into a voodoo doll also has a guilty mens rea. It is undoubted that it would be an injustice if such a person was found guilty of murder, or of any other crime, if the hate object happened to die, even if that death was caused by impalement.
Mobilising “lone wolves” would also probably be quite inefficient. One wouldn’t know whether one was mobilising a sympathetic lone wolf or an unsympathetic lone wolf bent on killing you!
On the other hand, if Sarah Palin were caught either acting on the belief that “stochastic terrorism” was real, or sticking pins into a Giffords doll, then that would not be good for her political career.
Look I wouldn’t waste any ore time on Jamo. The best way to deal with an attention seeker is to ignore them. Or better yet patronise them (it’s a bit more effort but more fun!). Yes, yes Jamo we know you’re right. Now sit down and do some colouring in while the adults have a discussion.
PB, thanks, the ambiguity was my fault. Stochastic terrorism sounds about right although I’m unsure how much is intentional and how much merely grossly reckless- ‘it’s not their fault if crazies don’t realise what they said was only meant figuratively’.
You describe matters well Katz. But this is what the left does. This is what they did to Palin, Reagan, Thatcher. To radio hosts. To Pym Fortuyn. Pretty much anyone else who goes against their group-think.
Palin. Reagan. Thatcher. Pym Fortuyn. Sure, these people never did / said anything that could attract criticism from reasonable people! – Mod
Some other views:
1. A view from that bastion of leftist agitation, the WaPo.
Via @tomtomorrow.
2. A view from Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown:
3. A view from The Moderate Voice (this reminds me of the graphic style of Punch magazine, the defunct UK one, not the stupid online Murdoch one.) Also via @tomtomorrow.
Note: The “[ED]” in square brackets in the above comment is within the Tiger Beatdown blog itself and is part of the quote, not my interjection.
To which I say pshaw. As I just wrote over at Hoyden, reckless endangerment has a way of catching up to foreseeable consequences sooner or later. If they claim that they didn’t/don’t foresee such consequences then they’re unfit for any public office or mass media soapboxes because they obviously lack either perspicacity or integrity.
This has got nothing to do with politics of either side really. People are still suffering, the disaster is still unfolding and he is there criticising the leadership of the people responsible for leading. I can easily see Ackerman calling a similar thing treason if it didn’t agree with his politics.
Maybe after the event in the analysis/debrief there is a place for that criticism – tho judging on the performances so far thats looking less likely. Maybe if the leadership was obviously bad and dangerous there would be a place for an immediate public call out. It clearly isn’t.
Right now there isn’t any of that. Its clear that the leadership (shown by everyone) has been as good as can be expected. Here is one event where everyone else is united by the fact that other Aussies are suffering and Ackerman (and to an extent Abbott) is trying to make political mileage out of it. His criticism of the military bloke who is more concerned with doing his job than courting the media is just low.
I’ll tell you how the left is a mirror of the right now.
Anna Bligh and Campbell Newman are both doing a great job and its excellent to see.
dexi @ 478, there may be a difference, but can you claim that Obama comment isn’t an escalation of violent rhetoric?
If not why not, if so why didn’t he realise that in America a comment like that is gonna lead to “they bring a gun we’ll bring a converted to full auto armalite rifle, and 300 pump action shotguns.”
Now there may well be a difference in intention there, to me there obviously is, in that Obama may be being metaphorical.
But is anyone suggesting that Palin’s map was actually deliberately designed to trigger someone, maybe many people to go out and kill those people.
To use a crass metaphor:
If Obama’s comments are humidity and Angle’s an enema where does that leave Palin’s gunsight garbage.
Its either a deliberate attempt to incite violence which means you are suggesting an intention and obviously some sort of conspiracy. And I’m not saying that to debunk or write off the idea, cos it might be worthy of merit.
But thats a very serious accusation. Its an extraordinary claim.
The implications of it are so full on. (It basically reinforces my thoughts about Palin being a wannabe totalitarian btw.)
If thats the case then OK come out and say it, but be aware of the implications, and the requirement for more than this one shooting to make a case. (A clear difference between Osama and Palin is Osama stated declaration of war not rhetorical political war, actual we want to kill you and wipe you off the face of the earth war.)
That makes it a lot easier to draw a direct link bwteen his pronouncements and an intention for others to commit violence.
If however it isn’t the case then the only difference between Obama’s “we’ll bring a gun if they bring a knife” and it is that it came later in an escalating war of words.
Understand I’m saying all this in the context that I’d hate to see the organisers of the S11 protests in Melbourne in 2000 being charged with ‘Stochastic Terrorism’ because of the violence that happened there. For example.
tigtog @485, I agree with you. Gross recklessness (as well as being intent from a mens rae pov) is something nobody should accept from anyone with pretensions of leadership. Denying they have done anything wrong only makes it worse
WTF is it with the word “event”?
WTF is it with the word “event”? And why does that bastion of English usage, ABC News Radio, have to parrot its use?
(Disclaimer: not disputing the appropriateness of the memorial service of course.)
There doesn’t seem to be a way to direct link but Echidne also has a worthwhile post “The Arizona Killings and the Tea Party”.
[Moderator note: Some templates at Blogspot don't have permalinks enabled for post titles. They still should have a permalink at the foot of the post, such as this one -
Posted by: echidne / 1/11/2011 01:06:00 AM
~tigtog]
No, no, no. People are not saying it’s a conspiracy They are saying something quite different, and to keep going this way you are either amazingly disingenuous or really don’t understand the thread.
Here’s another explainer for you, this time “Chris” in Comments at Sadly, No, via Tigtog:
Yes, double facepalm.
Helen wrt to Sady Doyle’s piece …
Specifically points 2 and 3 the question she doesn’t ask is has a mentally ill person attempted to murder you, in which case the answer becomes a bit more fuzzy.
Just saying, cos how can you tell when you wake up in the middle of the night and someone in the middle of a breakdown is there at the foot of your bed stroking a knife and muttering to themselves? (Yes that has happened to me.)
Maybe they were just keeping guard?
Point 5 is rubbish. If you talk about Gold Backed currency you’re automatically part of the tea party? I don’t think thats actually pert of their official platform iirc its one of the reasons Ron Paul distanced himself from them. And they are the only group calling for revolutionary violence in the US right now? They are not part of the extreme psycho militia that doesn’t really have a coherent policy, (unless meth psychosis counts as one.)
She uses the term tea party interchangably with the tea party and “people who I don’t like or who fit my generalisation of right wing tea partiers”.
His video isn’t crazy as in incoherent. It sends a clear message – this guy is gonna be dead soon (past tense language wrt to himself), and the last public statement he makes is to burn the flag and call the US a terrorist country.
If anything to me that seems he’s going out of his way to distance himself from the tea party.
The phrase “some right wing rhetoric” is so vague as to be meaningless in the context of linking him to the Tea Party.
Just out of interest there are people claiming claiming that Giffords was one of two subscribers to JLLs channel, and the other might have been him under another account. Its hard to seperate them from the odious right tho at the moment. @ online accq’s lefties and anti war types (protests etc) claim to have seen it and verified its real. FWIW (Not much at the moment I know.)
That would make sense if the subscription happened after the shooting, but apparently it happened a long time beforehand. Just a rumour, like so many others surrounding this tragedy.
Sometimes we see situations where people get into a state of mind where they see their case as being so righteous that it justifies all sorts of rule breaking. The example that sticks in my mind was a major strike in the Pilbara a few years after the breaking of union power at Robe river. Unlike any other strike I have lived through the company/union conflict spilled over into the community. Some members of the union movement thought that their cause was so righteous that it was OK to cut the brake lines on a forman’s ute, pour petrol into a swimming pool and light it and commit a range of vandalisms around the town.
The interesting thing was that most of the community was shocked by what had happened. There was a change of key management people including the CEO (who was sacked.)In addition, the more extreme elements of the union lost influence. Many of them left town.
The other interesting thing about this particular conflict was that, after the strike, the foot soldiers from both sides felt that they had been conned. The real issue was the privileges and power of the union leaders vs the power of the CEO rather than issues that affected their welfare.
My observation of other major industrial conflicts is that, when a strike lasts for more than a few days both sides bunker down. They often “talk past each other” and don’t hear the others point of view. Within each side people who want to argue for something other than “we can’t afford to let these bastards win” come under pressure to shut up and conform to what has become a righteous cause.
The US right seems to be getting itself into the same righteous position as in the examples above. There is the belief that the right is the rightful owners of America and regaining what they rightfully own is important enough to break some of the rules. I can also see a situation where the bulk of the Tea party has been conned by major supporters like Murdoch and the Koch brothers. For example, when you look at the Tea party member profiles there is no logic in their opposition to the health plan.
Perhaps this killing and combined with people learning about the other threats and incidents involving Gifford will shock both sides of US politics to the point where serious changes will be made on both sides.
Helen @ 491 I clearly don’t understand this thread then.
Because if its not a conspiracy then its only an extension of something thats already dangerous in American culture.
Do you really think the “eliminationist rhetoric” is not a natural extension of everything that has come before it in American Culture?
I don’t know – I admit that.
But to me if it isn’t, then its deliberately malicious and indicates a deeper intent.
Because
Both sides of US politics have been engaging in “eliminationist rhetoric” wrt some brown people in other parts of the world for most of this century.
Is that somehow separate from what Palin and co are doing?
PB (and others), I recently read something by Joe Bageant about the roots of redneck culture. He doesn’t have a very high opinion of George Washington. (I think his words are “elitist land speculator”.)
DI (nr) apparantly Joe Baegant has inoperable cancer at the moment. I hope its not as serious as it sounds. He’s got a clearer view of his culture than most.
There’s your problem, Jules—you have no context for this ‘hot rhetoric’ crisis in today’s American society.
Hint: Up until this weekend the conservatives were boasting about being in the ascendancy when it came to grassroots activists, broader electoral support, more effective media organs, and better all round partisan leadership. Now they are saying they are no different and no more vocal than those progressives and Democrats they were so very loudly beating in political combat just four days ago. You’ve obviously taken their newfound claims of modesty at face value.
Sure, Obama quoting from a Brian De Palma movie once sounds intimidating, though for some reason I’d never heard about it, or had heard it and forgotten it. That’s not something I can say about the inflammatory rhetoric of Angle, Palin, Limbaugh, Beck etc and ad nauseam. Obviously I don’t perceive the levels of Beck-equivalent hate speech spewing from Barack Obama’s mouth.
I’m not going to force myself to be a contrarian and accept that he’s just as irresponsible.
Sorry, I only now realise that you appear to be commenting on Akerman ranting about both the Arizona tragedy _and_ the natural disaster in Qld (though I’m hardly going over to his website to find out what exactly it is he’s saying).
I really have nothing to offer about that kind of Akerrant. It’s no different than when he pushes his little conspiracy theories.
DI(nr) @495, bloody hell, I come from that stock, but my mob were all commos and atheists. Where did I go wrong?
Katz @ #6 asks:
A quick googling of Pennsylvania Democrat Congressman Paul Kanjorski will reveal the following quote by Democrat Kanjorski about Republican candidate Rick Scott:
Bait and switch that Katz.
(I believe the appropriate term in such circumstances is: “owned”)
Nickws @497 To be clear, I was commenting on Ackerman’s stupid comments about the flood disaster.
In the comments that follow his piece there is a hate filled eliminationist rhetoric that seems to flow through. I was just acknowledging that cos I get the sense people think I’m blind to it.
No
Both sides of US politics have been engaging in “eliminationist rhetoric” wrt some brown people in other parts of the world for most of this century.
Is that somehow separate from what Palin and co are doing?
Nothwithstanding the faux horror of sundry commentators at the bluntness of my expression I’d stand by my (only) prior comment regarding the state of the states. The place is rotten and saturated with the blood and gore of too many innocents others to be redeemable. I suggest that the potential for democratic dialogue between those of differing views is highly limited in a nation where the rate of gun ownership is so high. Still, dissent from the dominant model of freedom USA style can lead to worse outcomes especially if you are not people like us or worse,of no account at all.
jules, I’m sorry to see you use this kind of sub-Pilgerite non sequitur as a creampie to the face of we non-wingnuts and non-contrarians (Ron Paul, seriously?) who fear what’s happening in America right now.
I am gravely concerned about Gitmo/Bagram and the drones, I know the issues that you’re ostensibly referencing with your astroturf, but if the fuckers kill Obama you best not come into these comments sections and start on about how he was an ‘eliminator’ of ‘brown people’…
What is going on in respect of the numbering of comments? Are there an unusual number of comments going into moderation or something?
tigtog @ approximately 456: “The Democrat map named DISTRICTS (not one individual was named) and a bullseye means that you’re NOT targeting a PERSON.
Sorry tt, but if you read all of the verumserum post, it appears that the Democrats did, in fact, name targetted individuals.
Dunno, jane, that’s between you and what passes for your god.
Giffords is breathing unassisted now.
WTf not? He is.
I’m a “brown people” too like Obama. The world is full of violently dangerous racists who’ll kill people over politics. You’ve just noticed this now?
@PeterTB,
I hadn’t seen the second map, and was referring to what I knew of the first one, about which my claim is accurate. I agree the second map names individual Republican Representatives in Congress. However, a bullseye still specifically indicates that no PERSON is being targeted. People do not have bullseyes painted on them – only inanimate objects used in sporting exercises have bullseyes painted on them.
@Peter TB,
I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to re your problem with the comments – comment numbers, is it? I’ve only been dropping in on this thread occasionally today, so I’m not aware of any particularly large number of comments being put into moderation, but even if they have been then that’s a matter for the discretion of the moderators and not a matter for discussion on-thread.
Anyway, you could always do what I do whenever it matters and link to the permalink for the comment to which you are responding. You can find it at the line of metadata under the moniker which gives the date and time of the comment.
Seriously Nickws you have no idea.
Thats why I’m letting you off, but you don’t know how deep the wounds you’re scraping your fingernails across actually are.
(To be fair neither did I till I read your post.)
Oh dear, SATP, you just don’t understand, do you?
Kanjorski accused Scott of major theft.
Clearly, Kanjorski was talking about a judicial process. The “they” being the appropriate authorities, the shooting meaning capital punishment.
Don’t you understand the difference between capital punishment and assassination?
What do you have against capital punishment SATP? I thought a red-blooded fellow like your barstool-perching self would favour capital punishment for major crime.
I can’t see in anything what jamo said above, that should lead people to jump on him, the way some of you have. It all seems fairly logical. What he seems to be saying is:
1. The rhetoric in American politics is ridiculously violent and aggressive.
2. Not only the republicans and the Tea Party are guilty of using this language, there are examples of the same type of language being used across the political spectrum, including by the democrats.
3. It’s impossible to infer that politicians and media commentators in this particular case are responsible for inciting the murderer.
Another issue, which I feel uncomfortable about, is calling this terrorism. If we call this terrorism, what’s the difference between terrorism and murder, (or even political murder.) Is there a difference between terrorism and assassination?
I don’t think that any of the above, btw, changes the fact that there is a high probability that one of the reasons why the murderer killed Gifford, is because she’s Jewish. (I personally think it was a so-called hate crime.) Equally, for someone who has killed a number of innocent civilians, it’s not reasonable to insist that he would not at least agree with some of the ideas/ images in violent political rhetoric, wherever they come from. For the murderer, (at the very least on a bad day,) murdering people to try and get what he wants is acceptable. That makes most people angry.
Honestly, if you sit down and start reading about what happened, you’re bound to get upset about it, but it’s important to still try and order this event so as to understand what’s going on. Ultimately, it’s important to try and come to some kind of agreement, even if it’s a compromise about what happened and what it means.
In this context, I think jamo is saying, what happened is not a reason to only censure one section of political rhetoric. That’s it. That’s a good point, even if we on this board, in general, don’t agree with free-market, corporatist, martial type politics.
Yes. You have shifted the terms of the discussion for one. This is not al critique of America’s imperialist tendencies.
But now you have raised the field of race, I agree with you that both sides of politics, regardless of the skin colour of its President, have worked on behalf of the western white subject that constitutes discursively as the dominant subject in the nation and have historically engaged in imperialist projects which benefit that subject and that the people that often suffered because of them, were,as you say, brown.
But if you want to drill down for a sec to the two sides of politics, or the two voices of whiteness (whiteness as a set of practices and beliefs which privileges a certain group – not necessarily based on skin colour – more an aspirational destination – and you can think Condoleeza Rice as much as you do Barack Obama working on behalf of the discourse of whiteness or the white western subject) then what this post is about, to get back to the post, is how that conservative, paranoid racist white voice is using increasingly violent images in its rhetoric in order to dominate over its anti racist moderate counterpart. Whether both those voices are conjointly culpable of atrocities in the world through out the past century, and internally even, is another post yet to be written Jules. What this post is about is the rhetoric used by one voice of whiteness, or the conservative side of politics, and the possibility of a deleterious impact upon the other side to the point of real violence, if you like. And since you’ve raised race, I would suggest that the fact that that moderate anti racist voice currently has a brown leader would be one reason the conservative voice has gone increasingly nuts. Though its true they’ve been around for years and years. But Barack Hussein Obama, as they like to say and Michelle Antoinette Obama, as they like to say ???? are driving them to distraction a bit.
Elvis was also Scots Irish David Irving and had Cherokee. What’s the bet Johnny Depp is too. They are rather good looking those sons of Calvanist guns.
Katz,
I agree with most of what you say and I think some of the stuff you’ve said is brilliant, but this is exactly the kind of rhetoric for which the Republicans have been condemned for.
That some people have to add a trailing owned onto their own comments is pretty mindless, but he does have a point.
How else are we going to solve this?
Casey said:
Yes, great comment.
Now, what’s going on? Why is this message successful? Is it really just the rhetoric?
DI (nr) @ 497.
Bageant’s right, as far as he goes but the situation is a lot more nuanced than that. I’ve read quite a few Washington biographies now – 5 of them (there are over 1,000.)All members of the Virginian House of Burgesses were elitist. They were the cream of the Old Dominian’s aristocracy, and Washington was, I think, what might be termed, from the Virginian perspective, ‘nouveaux riche”. One would expect such people to be British supporters, in fact. (Washington was an Anglican/Episcopalian, but not a very devout one.)He had several grudges against the British – one peculiar to himself – he could not advance in the British officer corps because he was a colonial -and the rest he served with his class – he resnted being in debt to British tobacco merchants; he resented the fact that the the British locked up the Ohio Valley for the Indians in the 1763 Proclamation Line Act, and one or two other minir complaints. When he was made C in C of the Continental Army he was initially apalled at the lack of military discipline, the democratic tendencies and the personal hygeine of the New Englanders. As the war progressed, though, he came greatly to admir their fighting qualities and in this respect his elitism mellowed. True, he was in favour of big government, because he believed small government and state’s rights had nearly caused the war of Independence to be lost, and he was suspicious of democracy, but he was not an autocrat. His guiding principle was that the army must be subjected to the civil governm,ent of the day.
True, he made his fortune in land speculation, and to a lesser extent, through a series of ingeritances, which enabled him to give the appearance of donating his military services gratis to public service. (They weren’t actually gratis – he claimed expences which probably meant he earned more eventually, than if he’d taken a salary). By the end of his life, though, despite his once massive wealth, because of debts, property and family oblogations he was quite impoverished.
The key to Washington was his dignity and his charisma. Very early on in the war he came to signify certainty of military success and disinterested political service.For this he was, somewhat tiresomely, adored by the American public.(He was also a very, very clever politician.)
Michelle Antoinette Obama?
You mean she’s a Frenchie cheese-eating surrender monkey as well as a [insert racist tag of your choice]?
Shit, Casey, I’ve got some Cherokee too. Plus one of my ancestors was on the losing side of the Restoration and spent his twilight years in hiding in the colonies (according to a family legend).
Dunno that I’m as good looking as either Elvis (before he got fat) or Johnny Depp, though. I don’t write as incisively as Bageant, either.
Do you play guitar? I suspect you might be quite devastating if you do.
PB @ 516, I think Bageant sees everything from a rather particular point of view, probably way further to the left than mine (and I accede to your vastly superior knowledge of the American Revolution, and Washington in particular). I just think his point of view is interesting, and rather unusual for an American.
Casey @ %!%,
Johnny Depp is I think about onequarter or one eight Native American. I recall him mentioning when he was talking about his forthcoming movie, The Lone Ranger, where he plays Tonto.
Now, to get back on thread …
You must be a mind-reader, Casey. I do play the guitar (rather badly) as it happens.
And I don’t look much like the chicken.
DI (nr) @ 522,
Then you want to check out Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution, especially. You’ll be fascinated.
But not by me, Joe.
I didn’t object to Palin’s targets. Nor do I object to Kanjorski’s call for capital punishment.
I do object to Angle’s “Second Amendment remedy”.
Perhaps I am less squeamish than some and more squeamish than others. That’s just how I am.
@ 509: “WTf not?”: What, why not repeat your offensive, context-free stock response? You’re cutting and pasting it into multiple posts, fer chrissakes. That’s one reason why you shouldn’t troll it around in any form.
It sounds like nothing more than a tactic to shout people down once you realise they’re not going to just lie back and accept the brilliant insight of jules, heterodox thinker extraordinaire. So I think it’s only fair of me to warn you that (a.) we weak-kneed useful idiots who are concerned about the goings on in the States (because we’re not as sharp as you are) we really do wonder if Obama will make it to the end of his term, and (b.) if he doesn’t, you really shouldn’t go about crowing about the death of this Racist DemoRat War Criminal. And I offer (b.) as advice for reallife, ’cause if Obama does die your little true progressive bubble won’t protect you if you decide to act out. Not even in Oz (if you do indeed live here).
I’m too tired to get snarky or otherwise question this assertion you make about yourself, but if true it genuinely saddens me that you really do appear to have Ron Paul as your favourite American politician (you write upthread about him being preferable to Kucinich as head of an anti-establishment presidential ticket). I can’t be bothered going into how woefully undergraduate this kind of thinking is at the best of times, but the fact you’re a person of colour who thinks the world about Paul all the while telling us you know the real score about what it’s like to live among racists… That just makes me sick. You’re either ignorant of the real politics of the man or else your radical chic BS is truly, defectively amoral.
@ 512
What the bloody hell is this? You’re responding to me again half an hour later, again about the same post I wrote, because you didn’t read it the first time you commented about it?
You’re whole routine has degenerated badly over the course of this thread.
Get over yourself. You have no place here to be regally ‘letting people off.’ Not when you open your mouth before even thinking what it is you want us to listen to.
Hell, I last posted here several days ago on a thread about Australian labour regulation and wages, and I take it that if I were to post a million times on those kinds of threads I’d never run into you. Frankly you’re obviously not a useful or well rounded contributor to this online community, you’re politics is nothing but a melange of contrarianism and posturing, you almost certainly have no interests other than your ridiculous grand narrative culled from shitty US Leftlibertarian sources.
I might take note of your future comments on this thread to see if the sisters can be bothered taking your anti-anti-sexist arse down (for a guy so obsessed by identity politics you sure are uninterested in Ms Gifford’s unique plight). Of course they may instead follow the advice they regularly hand out: don’t feed the troll.
Fiona, its more rhetoric and imagery which raises that revolutionary thing and the decay of the old regime, etc, etc.Let them eat cake and stuff. If you google Michelle Antoinette Obama, you will see how it’s been taken up and used.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/04/2010-08-04_material_girl_michelle_obama_is_a_modernday_marie_antoinette_on_a_glitzy_spanish.html#ixzz0vka65lxZ
That sounds very interesting, PB. I shall acquire a copy after next payday.
Katz:
Yeah, she’s a weirdo.
Amazing isn’t it about the rebranding of Obama’s wife. Especially given the ‘let them eat cake’ attitude by the last regime towards New Orleans.
Oh I’m sorry. That went too far. I remember reading that George Bush felt bad about that because someone said something mean about him.
I take it back.
Casey and Fiona – the wingnut cartoon “Day by Day”, as well as hints at 2nd Amendment Remedies, has regularly featured Michelle Obama as Marie Antoinette and Obama as Louis XVI, complete with costumes, wigs, etc. I often read this as a barometer of just how feverish the wingnut imagination can get about how downtrodden they (the wingnuts) are. And we all know what happened to Louis and Marie Antoinette – nudge, wink.
Casey: What this post is about is the rhetoric used by one voice of whiteness, or the conservative side of politics…
That’s certainly where Helen started, but 500 posts later it’s clear you haven’t been following the thread if you can still blame one voice of whiteness over the other.
Its a wonder they haven’t depicted Obama as George III. I suppose he’s too stylish. Queen Charlotte would never do for Michelle Obama. The queen was too frumpish.
But, some info.
JLL’s legal strategy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/us/12legal.html
Oh dear, Helen and Casey, I truly had no idea that that sort of stupidity was rampant. Sort of thank you for letting me know.
Was it terrorism?
I think not.
LOL Craigy, at least you’re concise.
Fiona,
It was the Republican way of trying to stop another Camelot myth. If that had got going the Republicans would be cactus for decades.
Anyway,
at the risk of setting off another stoush, this is how the Arizona Tea Party are reacting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/11/arizona-shootings-tea-party
This is the result of a Mother Jones interview with a long time friend of Jared Loughner The interviewee comes across as sane and the picture he paints is of a person gradually becoming less and less normal. The motive appears to be more about Jared’s attitude to Giffords and her reaction to a question he asked at one of her rallies than any influence by outsiders.
Dammit, why does a gravatar change take so long? Paul B, I take your point, and it would have been especially galling for the GNOP to have a [insert racist expletive of your choice] in the White (!!!) House inspiring such irresponsible thoughts.
Which might have (gasp, slaps own wrist) been true.
Sorry everyone, especially PB, I should have looked at the link first:
Except that there’s a bit of self-serving going on here – why, Mr Humphries, why might it be that “for a little while yet you won’t be seeing any politician holding an AK-47 or an M16. I’m pretty sure that’s going to go away, and the last place that would go away is Arizona”?
Don’t want your brand associated with (holds nose) unpleasant (lets go of nose) connotations?
Fascinating link John D. Thanks.
John D @ 539,
reading that link, its going to be quite hard for JLL to plead insanity. The Attack was clearly premeditated and seems to have been planned. But to be shot because she couldn;t answer a nonsensical question on grammar satisfactorily? THis will not end the political debate, of course. Or do anything that could result in the repeal of the Second Amendment.I suspect we will not be done with the uintended consequences of the Tucson Massacre for some time yet
The interesting question now is, apart from killing her stone dead (in which he failed) what on earth was JLL hoping to achieve by assassinating Giffords, (which was clearly a political act, albeit for the bizarrest reading of politics one could imagine.) Clearly he expected to creat a national debate, but a national debate about what? Grammar? He must have known his act would result in debates about much more than that. So, since he wasn’t acting as an agent of RWDBs, was his intention to embarass them? I doubt his thought processes were that coherent. Beats me.
Nick @ 527 Funnily enough my fave US pollie was Cynthia McKinney.
You touched a nerve with this comment:
I didn’t realise how deeply till I came back half an hour later, cos I was sitting on my doorstep trying not to cry.
Cos I don’t fear what’s happening in America right now. You fear what you want. Its your life. I don’t actually care that you didn’t read what I said (obviously), or that you think I’m a liar.
Here’s identity politics for you, white people arguing about the potential risk of something on the other side of the world hanging shit on a mongrel. The most moving thing I ever heard a pollie say was when Obama identified himself as a mongrel. Thats how I’ve always seen myself tho you lot have used terms like black, boong, nigger, coon and the like. I thought he (Obama) might have got “it”, but obvously that was a naive projection. I don’t want to see him shot, I’m just sad he was such a disappointment.
You’re scared of him being shot, well thats not as scary for me as it is for you. I mean what? – its gonna make things worse for me. Thats already happened actually, anything “worse” is only really gonna be “just as bad”. If you think I’m raving I have a link that will clear things up.
Worse for black people in the US? I doubt it.
So my interest in the identity politics of this is personal, its also complicated.
Its clear he wasn’t a terrorist.
Its clear he didn’t buy Palin and cos rhetoric before he acted. He acted within the context of American cultural madness.
You are using the fear of a politcal racial killing that as yet never happened, to link some fucked up kid to a political thing. Using some sort of racism as your justification?
2 other politically motivated racist killings that never happened.
My Dad. When he wasn’t scared of that.
Me. An 11 year old kid.
But it may have been a close run thing.
This didn’t happen in America, it happened in Australia, a little over 30 years ago.
The story is here.
Thats my story, well some of it. I ytped it then, cos of you. Thanks.
I did it for myself and the people I love. But it needed to be told cos its been too long festering. So thanks, genuinely. No snark, no shit.
Thanks.
Maybe you’re right and my identity and the politics of this tragedy are screwed up badly. Read the story, then if you want I’ll tell you the other bit that puts yet another spin on it.
Then you’ll understand why I don’t see this in the black and white terms you do.
Or you can tell me to frack off again.
Casey @ 515. Fair enough. Obviously I don’t have any place in that debate.
I don’t know Paul, he sounds pretty deluded to me. In his deluded world Giffords seems to have represented something, which needed to be killed and removed.
We can only really speculate as to what it was that made Giffords the target of his aggression, and while I think that one interpretation is Xenophobia, he seems to me to be insane. I’m starting to get the impression that while he may have tried to murder Gifford’s because she was Jewish or a democrat, the reason for trying to murder her is that Jewish people/ members of the US government know English grammar, or something completely irrational. Seems to me like he doesn’t have a very firm grasp of reality.
Hey Jules,
pick yourself up and try and relax. This isn’t the right place to confront people with your stuff, and you’ll only confirm what you suspect or fear if you keep going, because nobody can really interact with you on that personal level on a political blog. Is it flooding in Casino?
I interpreted Casey’s comment as just pointing out how restricted and poor the arena of political debate has become. And both of these gladiators are actually really similar and it’s the spectacle of confrontation, which keeps us distracted from questioning this. A political scientist at uni a couple of months ago said to me that the US has one of the least effective governments and is unable to pass the legislation and make the reforms the country desperately needs. I think the issue at the time was financial reform or something.
Joe, if you are referring to what I said in response to Casey. I don’t feel kept out or anything.
As far as that goes I’ve made it clear that Palin is malicious and dangerous, Paul a racist but principled. Paul is an old man, he probably formed his views at a time when America was actively practicing eugenics of in the years just after.
Yet the generation that followed him pretty much turned against alot of that, and America is a better place for them. Can you imagine Palin in that position still voting against the Patriot Act or the Iraq war? Against torture or what some people think is in store for my namesake the hacker. (Indefinite, illegal detention of detainees.)
I can’t, and if that difference isn’t worth noting then there is something wrong, especially if we’re sposed to be the good guys. People may be getting Ron Paul and Rand Paul confused. Rand Paul has a cement block for a head.
Otherwise it should be acknowledged. If that makes me what someone said above thats ok I spose. Really I’ve got other things to worry about. I have to choose between going to brissie for a week or staying here in case something similar happens (again). With the added comp that my wife can’t drive for medical reasons, and my responsibility as her partner is to her first, everyone else second. This is just an argument on the net (albeit one that touched a nerve). BFD Other people lost homes and loved ones.
I said its a sad day for America when Ron Paul can be said to look good. What part of that don’t people get?
Anyway.
I don’t feel excluded, and Casey’s cool she didn’t try to make me feel that way. I get what she and you are saying.
Thanks for caring tho. (No snark.) I am a bit raw cos I just dredged up some stuff. Thats the link in the post @ 544.
Anyone else who thinks I’m a jerk.
I dunno if people know how many black people get killed by cops in the US every year, in so called “drug related killings”. Most of the time these don’t have to be investigated, by definition.
I don’t know if people know the true extent of white on black, and black on white violence in the US. And thats one form of race violence. It didn’t just get bad over the last year.
A young white male, hoodie wearing listens to metal with occult alter, shoots an American, of Jewish extraction, congresswoman, Dem. Apparantly under the influence of the language of one group white people. This scares another group of white people who are worried that the first group were going to inspire another (probably) white person to shoot a black man they think represents everything thats good about them.
- He defines himself as a proud mongrel by the way. Dunno how everyone feels about that but it makes me proud too. Years ago one of the racist nicknames I had was Gomez. Don’t ask me why, I spose all us non anglos look alike. -
Anyway I wonder how a Mexican illegal in Tuscon feels right now, standing in land that was rightfully his till the US stole it in one of its many illegal resource related territorial grabs. Its called the Mexican American war I think, and the winners reckon it was fair.
I wonder how that illegal feels about which one of his colonialist oppressors shot which one of his colonial oppressors on the orders of what?
Sorry I lost you.
Well put. When you said you have no place in that discussion. I don’t think that is true. This is what I mean about how the dominant subject can make up the terms of the discussion. It’s hardly been mentioned on the thread that the anxieties over illegal immigration had reached fever pitch in Arizona.
Don’t worry about Nickws he loses his temper all the time. I’m not even sure what he is going on about at all. Don’t take stuff so seriously here. It’s not that important.
First two paras of that are yours Jules.
Of course Jules, I’d lend you my own personal moderator. Generally he likes to hang around and, you know, moderate me. I dunno why. It makes him happy though, I’m not complaining. The point is, I’d lend him to you, but he seems to have disappeared after I gave him my last confession, dagnabbit. Too much information. I don’t blame him though. It’s been the same since I was little. A priest would generally see me coming and flee from the vestibule, vestments akimbo. I should be nicer. He is, after all, a volunteer moderator for the blog. But I’m a witch. What does he expect from an expiation when it comes from a witch? Anyway, if he shows up, I will point him your way. He is rather good with the mortals.
Yes, Casey, but what is priest if words have no meaning? Know what I mean?
THIS IS ANOTHER dagnabbit.com COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT. THE ABOVE MESSAGE IS AN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED RESPONSE AND IS NOT LEGALLY BINDING.
According to Sarah Palin’s latest public statement, it’s a ‘blood libel’ to point a finger in her direction.
Blood. Libel.
A Jewish woman is shot by a gunman, and it’s now a ‘blood libel’ to suggest that violent language, gunsights on political ads, and talk of ‘Second Amendment Remedies’ are a bad idea.
Anyone who doesn’t get how disturbing the use of that phrase is in this context needs to try out The Google.
So, does Palin reckon she’s Christ — or Pilate??
You know what? I don’t care. I just realised something important. She mightn’t blog (much), but Palin’s a troll. A troll with a camera and a spot on Fox News.
She’ll derail any discussion and make it all about her, if you let her.
As the more sensible people around here constantly remind me, don’t feed the troll!
Blood libel???
Whew.
The air-brushed, brash halfwit has just jumped the world’s biggest shark.
Sayonara, you contemptible, brainless excrescence.
Something good has come out of this, after all.
She’ll derail any discussion and make it all about her, if you let her.
Merc, I’m on record here as not supporting Palin for Pres., but I do think you could acknowledge that in the current shooting context, many others made the discussion about Palin within hours of the event for their own crass political purposes. I think she has a right to respond.
Spare us, PeterTB. As if anyone here would wish to deny her a right to respond. It is, however, already abouthowshe has responded.
And that is in a particularly inappropriate, ugly, but clearly thought out, manner.
The po;ice/FBI in Tucson are puzzled how JLL got the money for the weapon and ammunition, or more precisely where he got it from. He has no money apparently, yet somehow he had over $1000 to buy the gun and ammo on the day of the killing. Perhaps this is a long way from finished yet.
PeterTB @ 555 Its one thing to respond its another to do that.
I’m still trying to pick my Jaw off the floor cos I can’t believe even she would be so stupid.
Stupid is interchangable with heartless, braindead, provocative nasty and a lot worse words too.
And fir those very, very few commenters who don’t get what a blood libel is and how utterly, disgustingly offensive it is for Palin to claim she’s a victim of one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
This woman sounds more and more dangerous every time she opens her mouth. People are right to be concerned about Palin, and to rejoice in any damage the Tucson massacre has done her. This is parallel to the kind of crap Hitler used to come out with. God hekp America if she gets her hands anywhere near the levers of powerm because no one else will be able to.
Sarah said:
from: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=487510653434
Before you all get carried away. You should all better read what she said. She’s too smart for you. She’s actually comparing the falsity of the blood libel myth to her being accused as the inciter of the murderer. Perhaps, it will be even argued, if the murderer is found to be antisemitic, he will be portrayed as a believer in blood-libel type prejudice.
Paul, this isn’t like Hitler at all. Anyway, Hitler would never wear glasses on camera.
The only possible reaction to Palin’s latest comments are “No, she didn’t!”
She wasn’t about to win anything anyway, but she’s finished now. The events of the last week have meant she’s about as attractive as radioactive waste.
In the comments at Shakesville on the “blood libel” whine, they home in on the very obvious contradiction in Palin’s video:
This inconsistency has nothing to do with stupidity on Palin’s part. This is a strategic exercise of doublethink as part of her propaganda.
There’s also some concern that perhaps the whole point of using the term “blood libel” by not just Palin but also by Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldberg is that it’s a dog-whistle to anti-Semitic NWO conspiracists who can be guaranteed to start frothing on cue about the Jewish-owned liberal media going after that nice Christian lady.
In that spirit tho Casey I hope you enjoy this.
Joe has a point. From the point of view of appropriation of an historical allusion, he is right. The reference is quite subtle — much more subtle than Palin is capable of.
Nevertheless, her spinmeisters could have chosen a less loaded term, but chose not to.
Palin’s spinmeisters must have known that using the term “blood libel” would kick a hornets’ nest of Jewish and liberal interests. I can understand why Palin would want to antagonise liberals. But why would she want to provoke the enmity of Jewish groups?
Sure, Jews vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Florida, a swing state, is the only place* where the Jewish vote actually comes into play. Are Palin’s spinmeisters attempting to arouse anti-Jewish feeling specifically in Florida?
If that is their game, then American politics has just taken a whole new toxic turn.
BTW, Philip Roth, “The Plot Against America”, is about an imagined past when Charles Lindberger rose to the Republican presidency in 1940 by playing the anti-Jewish card. I imagine that Roth had post 9/11 politics in mind when he wrote that book.
______________
* more Jews live in NY State, but NY is so firmly Democrat that the state is not in play for a Republican, especially a Right Wing Republican.
I’m with tigtog here. I doubt the incident will make much of a dent in Palin’s support, and her idiotic linking of criticism to anti-Semitic canards will play well with her mentally challenged followers. People who believe in blindingly obvious falsehoods (young earth creationism, for example), will have no probs believing in whatever Palin tells them.
It may well, however, rouse the sleeping lion of the great American apathetic masses to oppose her seemingly inevitable rise. That’s the real issue in US electoral politics – bring in some of the majority who can’t be bothered to vote. Obama did it in ’08. Just maybe, revulsion against the dangerous lunacy Palin represents may lead to her downfall.
There’s no point in being too smart, especially when you have a reputation for the opposite. It’s the use of the term that will resonate.
Joe and Katz, reading that Palin thing is disturbing.
There’s heaps there I could have written, some that mirrors what I’ve said on this thread. After all she is human like you and me and the vast majority of hits on this blog.
There’s a fair bet that if you are comprehending the words on this thread you have more in common with Palin than you have differences.
Don’t be fooled by what you think I said.
There’s a powerful thing happening if you can see that similarity.
Its means the “right” and the worst of their bullshit can’t get you.
They rely on people focusing so much on these little differences that we forget the overall similarities. (There is no they btw, or we, only us, even in the US.) Thats how they prosper and thats how they generate political and personal power to effect change in the world.
It is the only real weapon they have, but its a good one, its subtle and powerful. Its the perfect weapon for a 5th generation war. Cos even when you know about it it still works. probably cos of that othering people keep going on about.
And I’m sorry to keep harping on about it, but the OP is exactly what those bastards want from the left.
The last thing they need now is a real genuine solidarity between all the PEOPLE in the United States.
William Saletan at Slate:
Sarah Palin, Blood-Libel Hypocrite – Sarah Palin opposes collective blame for monstrous crimes, unless they’re committed by Muslims.
Could I just point out two excellent principles wrt commenting on this and other political threads, especially where the situation is complex and volatile with new information coming out daily.
(1) If you feel the OP, in their short summary of the situation for which the comments thread is effectively an open thread for discussion of that event, omits {related issue X}, rather than wasting pixels on a preening complaint of how the dreadful bloggers of LP IGNORE {related issue X} and are therefore not quite up to your level of understanding, perhaps you could use those pixels to type an intelligent comment ABOUT issue X and how it is related to the event at hand?
(2) This is a political blog. Personal revelations that aren’t directly related to the thing being blogged about belong on your personal blog, in your counsellor’s office, or – if that’s the way you roll – the confession box.
Joe @561, I thought that was obvious – it was the only way it made sense.
But it means she’s equating the criticism she has been receiving for her reckless or worse inflammatory statements with centuries of oppression against Jews based on invented vilification without factual basis.
Isn’t this still outrageous?
Her rhetoric is much closer to those who have created and used the blood libel mythology, not the victims of it. This may have confused people when she suddenly claimed to be the victim of it.
Mods re 564.
No they don’t. But this thing jumped the shark from minute 1.
Inm 1974 my father sued the Law Society of Tasmania on behalf of an Indian man. they were both black men in Tassie in 1974.
the shitfight that followed meant he was chased out of the state, after being told if he didn’t I might get killed.
Thats the sort of political racist stuff some people are scared of happening in America.
It happened to me here. BFD worse things are happening to people right now less than 200km from where I am now.
naturally as a kid I was upset by this, and if anyone has noticed the shitstorm over some poor kid in Melbourne and some footy players they might have noticed that teenage kids do dumb things without thinking through the consequences. I nearly did, and can see a similarity in this kid in Tuscon even if you can’t. That does not justify murder.
It does help justify objecting to the original post because of this inflamatory rhetoric:
Let’s call this for what it is: terrorism.
….
No I don’t need counseling. i do need to live in a world where people on all sides aren’t so hungry to milk other peoples pain for their own personal political motives.
Of course it is outrageous, POA.
But the horrible possibility is that politically significant members of her base, especially in Florida, may not think it is outrageous.
Good grief. This is ridiculous.
Empathy. We get it.
Okay?
Jules you are entitled to your view. But people calling for various elements of the rightwing noise machine to dial down their references to assassination of political figures is not “milking other peoples’ pain”. Any more ad hominem remarks will be disemvowelled, as you’ve had more than enough attention already. Keep them on your own blog.
Helen @ 575
Here here. and Jules..this incident and the varrious opinions expressed about it may not actually be about you. Chill, you could be wrong, being wrong is ok.
Sherrif Dupnik was not exaggerating how toxic the atmosphere in Arizona politics has become: Anthony Miller, the first African American to hold the office of District Chair of Republican district 20 in Arizona has resigned because of fears of violence from more conservative Republicans including members of the Tea Party “I wasn’t going to resign but decided to quit after what happened Saturday,” Miller said. “I love the Republican Party but I don’t want to take a bullet for anyone.” He was referred to as “McCain’s boy” and an opponent mimed shooting him.
S lts dmp th crp bt my hstry.
Hln @ 570 s hv sttd bv (rptdly).
Yr rgnl hdng, nd th frst nd lst lns f wht y wrt r clrly syng th shtng f cngsswmn ws trrrst ct crrd t by dstrbd yng mn, mtvtd by th rhtrc f th rght.
Rght nw thts n nsf clm.
Th vdnc fr tht s qstnbl.
pntd tht t.
G bck t wht wrt n th frst 30 cmmnts.
hv bn syng th sm thng th ntr tm.
K ts gt bt ff th trck hr nd thr, bt bsclly f y hd sd bck t 50 cmmnts smthng lk:
“Yh wll myb thts bt rgh, bt y cn s why sd t.”
Thn w mght hv hd cnstrctv dscssn bt ths.
s t s ppl, y ncldd hv ssmd ‘m tryng jstfy Pln’s rhtrc r whtvr.
nstd f fcng sm vry rl sss tht ths brngs p.
nvr thght tht mch f Jn Stwrt rlly.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/01/11/jon-stewarts-moving-monologue-on-the-tucson-shootings/
I call that terrorism. Republicans need to stop excusing this behaviour and do something to either moderate this faction or expel them from the party.
Katz:
A late response to a question without notice, but how about this:
Or this:
Anyone who is still pushing the “eliminationist rhetoric” angle, days after it has been thoroughly debunked, needs to take a long hard look at themselves.
Having had a few days to mull over the question posed by Helen originally and the responses …
1. I’m still not ready to agree that this is best described as an act of terrorism. That might well reflect a too narrow view of terrorism on my part — for me, terrorism presuspposes a clear and actionable political or cultural objective and I don’t see one from the accused, Loughner, nor is there any evidece that he was the patsy for forces he didn’t comprehend.
At this stage, there’s simply no evidence that he acted in express or implicit concert with any other person or was expressly moved by even the ideas of any other person in the US polity.
I reserve the right to change my mind on this if something more impressive than gossip emerges showsing that some of the considerations above have been met.
2. Nevertheless, is it not the case that the political climate and context in which Loughner operated made such an act reasonably foreseeable?
That, it seems to me, is beyond reasonable demur. Giffords had already spoken expressly on this question, following an incident in which her office was vandalised. A person had dropped a gun at a similar event previously. She certainly foresaw it as a possibility. Although the context may not have predisposed Loughner to act in this way, it certainly might have predisposed someone else to do something similar.
We have a context in which people with a national profile are normalising the idea of “2nd Amendment remedies”, identifying true Americanism with gun carrying, and anti-Ameriocanism with gun regulation and permissiveness towards (ostensibly) undocumented aliens. On the right, those associated with the Democrats are constructed as agents of foreign powers or world governance or the Club of Rome, demeaned in expressly racist terms. If I were to borrow from Judith Butler, one might say that politicians, and those associated with Washington in general, and liberal Democrats in particular were seen as less grievable and thus more available for violent and perhaps lethal assault. Solipsism, the right to rebellion, the idea that treason is afoot in Washington, parochial angst, a culture of carrying guns as a statement of patriotic commitment, existential angst over foreigners, the existence of a widespread and organised insurgent movement on the right scared silly by the dislocation of the economy and an ideological organising centre in the syndicated corporate mass media is a context which is likely to produce incidents of this type, and at the very least to intimidate those inclined to speak against it.
Perhaps the right term here is not terrorism but reactionary bullying. That alone is a sufficient reason from condemning the right. Their causal connection to Loughner may be zero. Yet they are responsible for stirring the mob.
It hasn’t been thoroughly debunked, there has been an immense effort in the last few days to dredge up any and every intemperate remark by anyone who isn’t on the right to try and concoct a false equivalence. In the washup, we have people like Giffords and Tiller dead, not conservative doctors or Republican senators.
The Anthony Miller thing is sad, and does support a charge of terrorism – the ‘use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes’. That in this case it’s purging moderates from the Republicans may make it worse by making it harder to step back from the toxic rhetoric.
The only question is whether the people responsible for the threats have plausible deniability
I agree, Su. I think what happened to Anthony Miller was at least terror-inducing. It worked too. He’s quit.
What happened to Giffords before she was shot was terrorism, too.Terrorism of the mind. You don’t have to beat some-one over the head with a baseball bat to intimidate them. You can do it with words and pictures. SHE SAID AS MUCH, BUT NOT EXPLICITLY, ON TV LONG BEFORE SHE WAS SHOT. (That’s in capitals for the one or two repetitiously boring fuckwits that don’t get it.) Because she wouldn’t back down, because she felt obligated to press on despite Palin’s threats of violence, She ended up being shot by a lone nutter who apparently didn’t have $1000 cash to buy the gun and bullets with which he shot her and killed and wounded other people.
And Palin and the Tea Party are heaps on the defensive about it, so they probably think its some kind of terrorism too. If they were truly without blame all the charges against them would have veen convincingly rebuttable within hours.
Judge John McCarthy Roll
From the Mother Jones link above:
JLL constantly called himself a “nihilist”.
Whether he knew it or not, his behaviour closely resembles that of Dostoyevsky’s nihilist character Alexei Nilych Kirillov in “The Possessed”. Kirillov was called “mad”. Yet he had a political program. Any violent act committed in pursuance of that program has to be called “political violence”. One subset of political violence is political terrorism.
Hillary Clinton, interviewed on CNN: “Based on what I know, this is a criminal defendant who was in some ways motivated by his own political views, who had a particular animus toward the congresswoman. And I think when you cross the line from expressing opinions that are of conflicting differences in our political environment into taking action that’s violent action, that’s a hallmark of extremism, whether it comes from the right, the left, from al Qaeda, from anarchists, whoever it is. That is a form of extremism.”
PB said:
True. I’d certainly call putting a burning cross on someone’s front yard, in a place where the Klan was active, not just intimidating, but an example of terrorism.
The content of the symbol is unambiguous and one could scarcely doubt that determined people stood behind it. There’s a clear cultural claim.
Regardless of his tales of family history in Tassie, why do I get the feeling jules is a sockpuppet of j_p_z?
It’s my experience that people don’t just jump onto Internet forums and immediately start taking liberties with the other commenters as if they’ve been interacting with them for many months.
The depressing alternative is that jules really is an Aussie who just happens to have the same line in trying to destroy other’s arguments as used by our favourite yank (and why isn’t j_p_z all over this topic? I’d thought he’d have made one entry on this thread by now.)
Can someone fix Jule’s post at 578? It seems to have been corrupted.
I doubt Jules is JPZ Nick. The syntax is wrong. Yes, people can affect a different syntax for a while, but every now and again, despite themselves, they slip into their preferred usages.
If I were speculating, there are one or two better candidates, whose syntax is a lot closer, but I don’t think it is useful to do so. It’s best to take posters at face value, IMO. After Jules’ contribution on the “Neanderthal” thread and above, I’m disinclined to read or respond to his stuff.
Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (of which Giffords was a member)leads by example in a statement which is the epitome of moderate and reasonable communication across a political divide:
Please don’t hound him from the site, he is a relative newcomer and has contributed along with Katz, Casey and Paul to a really valuable discussion about political violence in the US.
Katz @ 586.
Exactly. And fair enough about political terrorism in that sense too, cos I get the feeling Loungher is part of an emerging trend politically, or apolitically.
The only issue wrt that is can you separate what he did from the general “background noise” of senseless spectacled American violence? Spree killings, serial killings, predator drones, army recruiting via video games. That debate has the ability to get dense and full on I reckon, and real quick too.
I’ve never read much Russian lit. My partner loves it tho, and I asked her about what you said for some context.
Russian Nihilism as she sees it is confronting from a western POV cos it challenges some basic ideas we have about everything. But from its own pov its got an internal consistancy.
OK putting aside the idea of “terrorism” – why would someone do that? (Honestly I never read Russian lit, but I hear alot about it.)
Really what you said puts Jon Stewart’s response in an interesting light.
Stewart is a clown.
He fulfills an archetypal and kind of sacred role that uses comedy to tell certain truths about the condition of his culture. Its a way to speak the truth to power perhaps.
It seems like he is confronting something that challenges his categories and he doesn’t know the appropriate response.
Mind you the one he provides seems appropriate to me.
I think the colonialist rhetoric you engaged in on the Neanderthal thread was surprising fran. Nick, Jules has been around quite a while. The fact you can’t tell the diff between his voice and jpz’s is completely astounding nickws. He may have just gone and projected all over the place but you were downright rude and your perjoratives were baseless. I think the pile on onto a person who had the temerity to make himself completely vulnerable in the most painful way has been appalling. It may have been inappropriate on his part but if you lot think you are being anymore appropriate, you are having yourselves on.
So much for the ability of the left to tolerate the discomfort of otherness or difference.
Fran I’m sorry that got so heated. I really thought I was saying was obvious. At least to all decent people.
I was clearly wrong, because you are a decent person and it wasn’t obvious.
(I base that impression on what you have said here and most of everything else you’d said (besides that thread). If you were just some jerk I probably wouldn’t have got so intense or cared cos people like that don’t actually give a toss. I think you do.)
Did we have a conversation about sport and grass roots back when the press went ballistic over some south African runner?
Anyway I’m not trying to dredge that Neanderthal stuff up, cos no doubt I came across like a jerk. I seem to do that here. But I’ll take this opportunity to say sorry and “Peace?”
I’ve been commentating on and off here for years, go have a look at the epic thread of doom. And I’d been commentating here long enough then – it was after I’d “been here” for a couple of years. I started reading this site before LP in exile. Every 6 months or so Razor asks someone to put sanctions on me.
maybe pre 2008 I made a few comments under different names. they wouldn’t have been controversial tho cos I wouldn’t have felt familiar enough with the place to do that.
Maybe not tho. Because I think everything I’ve said has been under the name jules. I’m allowing there may be a few comments, long ago that weren’t tho, be completely on the level.
Nick, I’m not a liar. This discussion obviously triggered something in me and your comment really hit the nerve. Its good to deal with shit like that. Especially if you don’t realise you are carrying it then suddenly get forced to assess and take notice. maybe I need counseling, maybe not thats irrelevent. You trying to put motives in my mouth especially when on the face of it what I’m saying sounds exactly like what the “enemy” would say.
So I feel I need to explain myself, almost in complete detail, otherwise these misunderstanding will continue. Cos I AM NOT A PALIN SUPPORTING WANNABE FASCIST.
Just for the record.
Normally I don’t explain myself to anybody. Its my life after all. But given thats what I feel I’m being accused of being.
Anyway, I needed to write that, and its incoherent cos the people who its for know the context. The relevence here is I consider myself a potential victim of political violence. Not on the ground scale of what happened in the US, just on the sordid scale of local politics and self interest.
Maybe thats not as important. It sure feels important tho.
The stuff you guys are scared of – I have seen it and lived it, and it took a long time to accept that cos I know people who escaped from Chile and what I went through is nothing compared to them.
Anyway anyone can say “I’m a victim of political violence” but it means nothing till they tell their story and it resonates.
You and me arguing helped trigger that process and so thanks.
Cos I really dunno if it would have happened otherwise.
And that would have been unhealthy.
My name is on that blog. Thats my name. The one my old’s gave me. I live in Northern NSW between Nimbin and Kyogle somewhere. I dunno if its still a disaster area, a disaster area again or what. I know what happened here is nothing compared to what happened just north over the mountains. And thats nothing compared to Sri lanka or pakistan. I’m not a nut or a troll. I’d just like to think I had some perspective.
Can we drop it now?
Casey said:
Not surprising Casey, non-existent. Your claim is utterly offensive, but this isn’t the thread to sort it out. FTR, Jules is entitled to take any view he likes on these matters, but I found his stream of consciousness style maundering pointless to try unpicking. Others of somewhat more impressive insight sought to engage with the substance of the matters raised and I’ve no problem with that, albeit that I disagreed.
The problem with Jules both in that thread and here is that he seems to be keen to play some sort of victim’s sympathy card whenever there is a challenge. Speaking for myself, that is not the kind of “otherness” I’m inclined to indulge.
This has been one amazing thread (in more ways than one).
I’m actually living in DC now, which has been interesting in that it has given me a chance to talk to a few locals about how they feel about what has happened. What has registered most is that there appears to be a kind of fatalism surrounding these types of acts. A desensitism if you like as people internalise that political or other forms of mass violence are a part of American life and that as terrible as that is, there isn’t much they, or anyone else can do to change it.
I’m not going to get myself into the middle of the “is it or isn’t it terrorism” debate, but one thing I have found interesting is the repetition of the meme that Americans are fortunate that political violence is relatively rare here. Nate Silver of all people repeated it on his blog and he isn’t the only “liberal” to have said it. But you have to be living in an American bubble to actually think that given the number of successful (two) and unsuccessful (five?) assassination attempts on sitting Presidents in the 20th century (not to mention the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King).
And two presidential candidates, Huey P. Long and George Wallace.
Not to mention Harvey Milk, Malcolm X, Medger Evers, several civil rights workers and doubtless others whom I can’t call to mind off the top of my head.
LO mentions both fatalism and and the American “bubble”. Sure America looks peaceful if it is compared with Pakistan. But wouldn’t America prefer to compare itself with some more viable countries?
Fatalism is understandable. These behaviours are well and truly woven into the fabric of American culture. American culture could unravel but the allure of dramatic acts of murderous violence would not disappear. Indeed, they may get worse.
Compared to Europe until quite recently, political violence in the US is relatively rare. de Gaulle alone was the subject of a score of assassination attempts when he was President. Germany and Italy had gangs of terrorists in the 70s; PM Olaf Palme of Sweden was murdered in 1986; never mind the Balkans the 1990s; etc. If you venture a little further afield, political violence is endemic in Turkey, Israel had a PM assassinated in 1995, don’t get me started on Lebanon …
With the gun culture in the US the way it is, it’s a miracle the level of political violence isn’t 10 times higher than it is.
@ 598 – Thank LO. My experience living in the states dates back to ’08 (amazing year!). But yeah, it’s apparent that “might makes right” is the default justification for political action over there, and many locals are resigned to the ‘inevitability’ of this proposition.
After all, it’s not like slavery was extinguished following a good sit-down and a chat and a civil exchange of views…
Yeah, I can remember Jules commenting for years here. I also wonder why our American friend has been silent on this issue.
LO, I have USA friends who also seem to share this sort of fatalism i.e. their gun culture is bad, but there’s nothing you can do about it. It may just be realism.
I read all the threads, but I fire up when I sense injustus. I know thats a loaded comment cos I doubt people are deliberately trying to be injust, but still it happens.
And yes its personal cos the politcal is personal. Via marriage I’m related to the one of the leaders (Datus) of the last Indigenous tribe with any recognition in the Phillipines. Those people are still facing the implications of the colonialist language you’d never condone Fran. In the form of being being murdered by mining and logging interests.
And they can’t fight back with violence, cos they’ll get hammered by the Phillipine army and lumped with the Southern Mindinao Muslim Turrists with whom they have had peace treaties for generations. One’s that are codified by the maintainance of certain plants – specifically a certain bamboo. “For as long as it holds water.” the treaty holds, and a tiny bit of care is all thats needed to keep the treaty.
Thats powerful codification imo. And maybe this wasn’t the thread for it but regular commentators on a blog are also carrying on a meta conversation that crosses individual thread boundaries. Cut me some slack.
So anyway … the personal is political for me, cos people are surviving this stuff every day. They are not victims and neither am I. We are survivors (I’ve been through a lot more than I’d put on any blog) and we live well cos we value life. Everyone has scars, they can be wounds or you can heal them by giving them meaning and owning them. Thats what indigenous initiation ceremonies are about.
And especially in the context of this shooting if you can’t see why the personal is political for me then … I dunno.
Cos I can see why it for others, and despite that I made light of it before I know its only half the story, and the other half is actually worthy.
This will probably get borked anyway.
It seems Obama agrees with Jules –
“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarised – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds,”
Everyone on this blog should stop and consider those words for a while. Stop trying to score cheap political points in the wake of this tragic event.
This has nothing to do with truth. It has everything to do with forbearance. Maybe Obama thinks that America can’t handle the truth. Forbearance is a less than definitive alternative to truth.
Perhaps Australians can debate the truth without major danger of wounding each other.
In short Andrew, mind your own business.
Sam, I would have thought a better comparison for the US would be Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. How many leaders and politicians have been killed or even shot at in those countries? It isn’t as though the US experienced a civil war in the 20th century (the Balkans, Lebanon, Israel). Or even that a war occurred on American soil over that period. The point is not that the US is more prone to political violence than the average country (it isn’t), it is that it appears to have been more prone to violence than other comparable advanced democracies.
Cheers Casey, (and others – thanks, oo)
And dare we move on from this topic without noting the relative silence in the US media about gun control?
It now seems likely that Loughner was stopped by a police officer prior to the shooting while buying ammunition from WalMart. It is reported that he had had some conflict or altercation with his father when his father had seen him removing a gym bag from the family car. He had fled the scene with his father in pursuit. Apparently the contents of that bag (presumably the Glock, the ammunition and the knife) amounted to about $1000 worth of gear, It’s not clear how he funded this purchase.
Arizona has some of the most permissive gun laws in the country. LO speaks of Americans living in a bubble, and it does seem as if Americans (the rightwing ones anyway) simply accept gun trauma and death as an overhead of gun ownership in much the same way most societies accept road trauma and death as an overhead of car usage.
One can scarcely visit any blog site patronised by Americans and have a discussion about regulation without the same old NRA cultural tropes being trotted out, with the kind of vehemence one hears from the b-a-u crowd on climate change.
Re Gun control. Did you know Judge Roll was one of the judges that drove the Brady Act to the Supreme Court to be dismissed?
One thing that surrounds this event is an uncomfortable weird synchronicity.
Maybe some of us are having difficultry coming entirely to grips with this shooting because as Australians we don’t live in a gun culture. We don’t know what it means, because unless you belong to a gun club or live on the land or are in a profession where you’re required to carry one, its not part of one’s everyday life.And in many cases the only gun you come into contact with is a rifle you use for killing starving animals or rabbits. Not people.
So we can never realise the full horror of it when we see it really happening on TV. and besides, we’re somewhat anaesthetised by the action movie/TV culture.
We can all remember the vicarious horror of Port Arthur and how most of us, even those of us who hated him, cheered when John Howard instituted what I understand is still our strict regime of gun control. Its not that we haven’t been a gun culture. My impression is we certainly were during part of the 19C. But somewhere along the line we just decided we didn’t want it and we just gave it up.
And that may be why we find it so difficult to come to terms with the Tucson Massacre, which is heightened, lets face it by the fact that deep down we all expected something po;itical like this would happen during the Obama administration. After all, lets face it – when American political life has people in it reaching for the stars, some-one ALWAYS comes along and blows it away in a burst of gunfire.
To be fair, PB, it was in practice a lot more feasible for Howard to adopt a restrictive regime on guns here than it would be for Obama, or even the congress, in the US.
Our geography makes it a lot easier to prevent ingress of weapons for a start. There are only six rather than 50 states to deal with. And of course, there’s no legal right attached to firearms here.
But yes, culturally, guns have never been as serious a part of the Australian narrative as they have been in the US.
{well Australian narratives affirmed by the elites anyway}
Compare and contrast Obama’s response and Ms Palin’s.
Nothing more needs be said.
612,
Well I ain’t going there, Fran. It would take us everywhere from bushrangers and Ned Kelly, through the History Wars,into the goldfields, right through to the history of urban crime more or less up to the present day. In my chequered yoof I had a loaded pistol pulled out in my presence twice. Nothing chills you to the bone more, I can tell you. Nothing like the comfortable feeling you have with sensible mates over a campfire at night after a day’s rabbit shooting.
I’m a bit conflicted on the gun control Howard instigated.
I guess on balance tho I can’t really complain.
But I live in a rural area and I see some needs that people might not think are met. Honestly a semi automatic high power weapon, (not an assault rifle style one, just one that looks like a trad rifle but has that function,) I can think of several occasions when one would be useful, for dispatching cows.
For instance cows at car accidents, who had their legs crushed. It doesn’t matter how many 22 rounds you put into that animals head, well maybe over 10 will eventually kill it. I’ve seen grown men cry doing that cos of the suffering of the cow. Redneck cockies who are not squeamish.
But on balance that may be a small price to pay for community safety.
And there is a huge difference in our attitude to guns, despite, as PB said, our frontierish history.
I wouldn’t be so confident that Australia isn’t awash in illegal weapons tho, cos There are always stories going around here about how cheap and accessible guns are in Sydney. Bad guns that are designed to kill people. Illegal ones obviously.
What I would be more confident about is that there is a general contempt for using weapons to settle personal grievances in Australia and that helps with the rejection of gun culture.
Not that weapons aren’t used, but they never used to be resorted with the frequency they might be now. (In the general population. Growing up I saw plenty of fights, but no so called glassings. There’s definitely a difference in the two cultures tho because it seems like in Australia there is a reluctance to raise the stakes to the point where strangers might kill each other.
It doesn’t seem like the US shares that.
Hat Tip to Purep Poison @ Crikey for this:
http://mediamatters.org/press/releases/201101100014
Worth reading … IMO
The accessibility of firearms making the murdering of strangers more likely. Other methods of killing are too cumbersome to carry or too unlikely to succeed.
LO, why those countries, other than they are English-speaking?
And, is the US really more prone to violence than comparable advanced democracies. Obviously it is more prone to gun violence, but violence in general?
Gabby opened her eyes today.
During the squatter days, most labourers were assigned convicts. One gave such folks guns only very cautiously.
During the Victorian gold rushes the colony was awash with guns. The Eureka Stockade didn’t fall for lack of firearms.
I have done some historical research on Australia’s post-WWI secret armies. Again, these armies were huge. Many members owned their own firearms. Those who did not own firearms were supplied with them for training and drilling purposes from armories that were located in just about every suburb of Melbourne.
Yet over the years after the Great Depression, this urban gun culture in Melbourne withered away. Gun ownership became rare and slightly disreputable in Melbourne.
It is axiomatic that Australia is overwhelmingly a suburban society. What happens in the cities thus represents the national experience. I can’t speak for other major Australian cities; Melbourne may be unusual.
Other people may have heard about this, but there’s been a series of killings in China, of young children by middle-aged men using meat cleavers. Very unusual and very interesting to speculate about cause and effect.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64B0HS20100512?pageNumber=1
There’s an interesting debate going at NYTimes re gun control http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/11/more-guns-less-crime/we-need-laws-to-control-the-bad-guys
“The complexity of the issues of gun carrying is evident in the facts of the Tucson shooting: Joe Zamudio, the first lawful gun carrier on the scene, came around a corner and saw a man with a gun. Zamudio “grabbed his arm and shoved him into a wall.” Thankfully, Zamudio didn’t shoot because this was not the shooter, but the person who disarmed the shooter. Zamudio, age 24, displayed further caution in that he didn’t pull out his own 9 mm handgun because “he didn’t want to be confused as a second gunman.”
It would have been dangerously confusing if all of a sudden several people pulled out their guns but weren’t sure which one was the assassin. There’s at least 2 people (heroes) who could have been mistakenly killed in the process plus a lot more stray bullets flying about.
I think it’s fair to criticise the right wing vitriol for it’s poisonous and pervasive content that basically gives legitimacy to some very twisted ideas and actions from feeble minded or overly zealous individuals. There are however many factors that produce this kind of incident and I’m hopeful that there will be more answers as the facts come out.
LO @ 598
Since you are over there do you feel any heightened sense of insecurity about your own personal safety in the current environment and if so what steps have you taken to try to keep safe?
As HC has implied, guns represent action at a distance so are immeasurably more dangerous in a group situation than say a knife.
This whole thing, apart from the horror of what it represents to America and its people is also a bit too close to home for me now that my son is over there.
“It hasn’t been thoroughly debunked, there has been an immense effort in the last few days to dredge up any and every intemperate remark by anyone who isn’t on the right to try and concoct a false equivalence. In the washup, we have people like Giffords and Tiller dead, not conservative doctors or Republican senators.”
What equivalence? Just because the left gets there first with the blame, doesn’t mean the right is equally guilty or even the least bit guilty. Surely by now you can see this fellow has nothing to do with the tea party, and would not have been aware of anything they were saying. The tea party is hardly a nihilist movement. Quite the contrary. And this fellow is a leftist. He’s part of the Prodeo crowd, with a Prodeo outlook.
Yeah true, but its not the only factor. There might be a feedback loop between the easy ability to kill and people’s sense of safety and power tho that over time results in the toxic aspect of gun culture.
Then again if the majority of lawful gun owners are like Joe Zamudio, well for a start I can kind of see their point. Then again tho, its self defeating. He didn’t draw his weapon, surely this is the sort of situation all that gun talk revolves around. (He certainly doesn’t live up to a stereotype and good on him for his behaviour.)
Isn’t this the sort of situation that gun advocates claim they are necessary for?
So it kind of makes the necessity of carrying a handgun seem redundant.
If he was together enough to make those decisions in such a stressful situation so he is probably together enough not to pull out a weapon and start shooting back if someone opens up in a crowd full of people.
So why carry a gun in the first place?
Its a very strange loop.
jules, I take you at your word. I’m glad you’re not angry at what I alleged earlier this afternoon, or rather you’re not as angry as I would be in the same situation.
No, Casey, I never piled onto jules ‘when he was vulnerable’, my tirade against him was before he went into detail about him and his family today, before he provided a link to that wordpress blog he’d published yesterday.
And I apologise to jules for saying he wasn’t a valuable contributor to these comments threads.
This is directed at a group of other commenters, no?
I can’t speak for anybody else.
Ah, but my temper tantrums are mostly of the “fucking tories this, fucking tories that” variety.
If this were a registered forum I’m confident there’s nothing I would ever have been suspended for, no ongoing stoush where I kept posting and posting and refused to apologise for any transgression…
Final two paras are mine, not Caseys.
[formatting fixed to make that more clear ~ tigtog]
PB: If they were truly without blame all the charges against them would have veen convincingly rebuttable within hours.
Clearer PB: We will slime you with every weapon we have at hand, scraping the barrel for any link to this outrage, and using our MSM resources without limit. We will igmore equivalent behaviour by our team if it doesn’t suit our purposes. If you can’t rebutt every point we make instantly you are guilty.
“Regardless of his tales of family history in Tassie, why do I get the feeling jules is a sockpuppet of j_p_z?
It’s my experience that people don’t just jump onto Internet forums and immediately start taking liberties with the other commenters as if they’ve been interacting with them for many months.
The depressing alternative is that jules really is an Aussie who just happens to have the same line in trying to destroy other’s arguments as used by our favourite yank (and why isn’t j_p_z all over this topic? I’d thought he’d have made one entry on this thread by now.)”
What. The. Fucking. Fuck?
Dude, neither man would be much pleased by the suggestion, and also… how long have you been coming here?
Lastly, can you read?
jules 624
Many factors, I agree
Drugs were one im sure.
Oops, for some reason I too thought you had only recently begun commenting here Jules, sorry about that. Reading and gravvie recognition skills are apparently cactus. I plead school holidays.
Peter TB @ 627,
Gawd! I must’ve hit close to the bone there. Peter, at this point in American history the violent rhetoric, whether you like it or not, is coming from the far right. It seems unfortunately to be setting the ammbience for US politics. There have been times in the past when the violence came from the left – eg the Weathermen, SLA, but that is the past. Nearly fifty years ago in fact.
Own it.
PB, I had you picked @ 171.
What a shame that you couldn’t join us on the journey that this thread has become.
Peter TB,
I don’t know why I’m wasting my time – (that end of discussion, okay, was specifically adressed to Jules way back there, who was also becoming exceedingly irritating way back there, but he and I have resolved that.)
This discussion seems to be about a number of things.
1. The shooting of Giffords.
2. The other victims (addressed, but not in great detail.)
3. The nature and character of the gunman (about whom several links have been provided,that freely acknowledge he’s a lone nutter including at least one by me.)
4. The role of ultra right wing media in creating the present poisonous atmosphere of US politics
5. Ditto the Tea Party.
6. Discussions on whether it was terrorism. Or not.
7. Various going off into tangents which happens on every thread.
8. US Gun laws and gun culture.
I can only come to the conclusion you’re a bit thick. But, if I’m in the mood I’ll keep on trying. Not tonight though. I’ve got some work I want to do.
PeterTB @ 627 “We will igmore equivalent behaviour by our team if it doesn’t suit our purposes”
Confirmed
Peter TB,
To ignore equivalent behaviour it has to exist. No Democrats, that I/m aware of, have incited people to shoot Republicans; no Democrats have scared a politician they didn’t agree with with gun threats so much he decided not to stand for public office.
@606
I’m not sure what your point is but if it’s in some way to prove that the US is no more prone to political violence than other countries then you’re on shaky ground. The violence perpetrated by those opposed to civil rights during the 50s and 60s is horrendous. Remember that this was US citizen killing and torturing US citizen. Here in Australia and in most other western democracies we’d stopped lynching blacks at the turn of the 19th century. I hope in your time in the US you get to explore some attitudes outside the beltway.
Peter, I’m doing this thesis. While I’d just love to quote myself all the way through it as the logical endpoint of all authority, you know, just to see my supervisor’s face – I’d, like, be thrown out of uni. I hope this analogy spaketh to you Peter.
@615
Need a semi-automatic 243 to kill cows? It is feasible but then heaving dynamite into ponds to catch fish is also feasible … but frowned upon.
If you think I’m “new” here, nah, sometimes I just don’t bother going online for months on end, I mean not at all, cept maybe to check the weather radar and RFS site. Not even for email.
So that might add some confusion. But no worries.
Cheers Nick. As far as I’m concerned we’re all good. Everyone gets passionate about stuff, and someone pointed out that noise enters all comms systems no matter how hard you try to eliminate it. And yeah your tirade was not aimed at me after I opened up about the past. Sorry for dumping all that on you (after your tirade) I didn’t plan it.
I don’t have that much admiration for Ron Paul. I’d love to be able to ignore his voting record on all the issues so many other US pollies blindly followed dubya on and write him off.
Honestly I don’t see a lot of difference between anything I’ve said and what Jon Stewart said, cept maybe the obvious wit and grace thing he’s got going. So I was very upset that anyone could think I would be like those F#$%ers. But its cool. Peace.
BTW I think jaspers posted something in the Sat Salon wrt all this. Its probably worth looking at if you haven’t.
Honestly I think our politics are worlds apart, he’d probably find mine deeply offensive. But if we kept that out of it, I reckon he’d be an interesting person to have a beer with. We could probably laugh about that idea over one.
We are separate people tho.
I know some people who might disagree with that one. Patrick @636. Although it certainly wasn’t as bad or open and blatant as the US. Don’t forget Palm Island erupted (political violence btw*) because of the opposite perception. Cos the population thought someone had effectively been lynched.
@ 638. Maybe not every time, sure, but there have been some times I can think of where it would have made a difference. I live in a cow farming area and sometimes cows get out all the road. Sometimes they get hit by cars and need to be put down, or left to die in agony by the side of the road. There have been a couple of times I have seen people with legal weapons without the stopping power to kill a cow in that much shock.
Its not that big a deal tho. People who are gonna use guns for illegal stuff like robbing banks or whatever, they will do what they do. But having less guns in society being held by “ordinary” people probably means less opportunity for easy death, be it murder in a domestic situation or suicide.
* Not snark, just saying there are no easy answers.
@640
I take your point but would say that wrt to Palm Island the perpetrator went to great lengths to deny responsibility whereas the racists of the anti-civil rights movement celebrated their heinous crimes.
And I’d add the the case here in WA of the man cooked in the back of a private contractor’s van supports your point. The battle for a fair go is a long way from won on many parts of Australia. Which makes some of the “flood” rhetoric particularly nauseating (sorry OT).
Yeah, that was one example. I know some people who reckon at least half of all deaths in custody are lynchings, but I dunno if I agree. I do know of people who allege unaccounted for deaths in western Qld in the 60s. One of them was … I dunno if I want to identify them in any way … but they held a position of no small responsibility and would be considered a credible witness by anyone.
And while the US stuff was very overt, I remember when there were burning crosses on the hills not far from here this effing century.
Looking for a link I found this as the closest thing to evidence, just a discussion board from down near Coffs:
http://www.rotorburn.com/forums/showthread.php?57899-Ku-Klux-Klan……really.
But it was reported in the Northern Star in Lismore.
Just to get a taste of what’s up in the US I checked out this Erick Erickson dude who was mentioned via the Media Matters link upthread. Holy Cow! CNN have hired this guy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erick_Erickson
Ptb, I think it is worth the call for a thread that does a discussion of how there is such an imbalance of justice in the fair land of Oz. Will self-censor until there is such a thread.
That should be “…do know people who…”
(Ptb=Patricktb not PeterTB if you couldn’t work that out for yourself.)
BTW, in terms of killing livestock humanely, vets have used captive bolt guns for yonks. I imagine any farmer who wanted one could have one, for the necessary euthanasing of terminally injured animals. The NSW government advises that owners of captive bolt pistols must comply with the provisions of the Firearms Act, and as the bolt only stuns rather than kills the animal the further action of pithing or cutting the throat must follow, but at least the animal would be immobilised for the final stroke.
I dunno about bolt guns for real practicality tho, animals that need euthanasing (did I just say that???) are rarely in a position thats easy to deal with. If an animals been hit by a car its rarely still enough to get a clean shot with a gun, tho I’ve never used a bolt gun and the only time I’ve really seen one was that film, the seem more unwieldy.
Its not that big a deal tho.
One difference about tha attitude to guns in Australia and in the US is that they seem to be seen more in the context of killing animals on farms than humans for “self defense.”
jules, now I know you couldn’t possibly be j_p_z—-I distinctly remember him attacking Jon Stewart in his ‘I’m above your petty political hatred’ rants!
Though I have to say you’re a pretty odd Aussie radical to reference a distaste for Keith Olbermann and Tipper Gore in place of, say, Rupert Murdoch. On a thread about US politics circa 2011.
I thought a distaste for Murdoch was just assumed in all right thinking people.
Murdoch, along with some other people, is waging a 5th gen war on the left. Of course thats the thing a paranoid would say, but … well 5G Warfare was one of those things lots of people spoke a lot of shit about. Everyone, well a whole bunch of war nerds, was scrambling to “define” it at one point.
One definition is waging war without an opponent knowing. Once it was a significant part of the concept. So by definition it could be any action that messes up your enemy that no one knows about.
That may not be a productive line of discussion here. Murdoch sucks, but what he is doing is really full on and it should be stopped. Tho at what point does ordinary media mogul self interest become 5gw? – is a fair question.
Olbermann, some things he said or wrote a while ago, maybe all I was exposed to of his stuff, put me off.
Tipper Gore + PMRC = No more Dead Kennedys
Music trumps nationalism.
Patrickb
One thing about Australia tho. Cops don’t just murder our indigenous people in full view on the street like Seattle Police Officer Ian Birk did to John T. Williams last year.
As discussed here:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-buck-stops-with-nobody/Content?oid=4832659
And here, with the warning that this next link contains his police dashboard video. He steps out of video LOS to fire the shots but the video is pretty incriminating just the same.
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/12/17/the-video-the-shooting-of-john-t-williams
Now the beauty of being an online so called conspiracy theorist and having something vaguely resembling critical thinking skills is that you rarely end up talking about conspiracies, more often events, with a bit of speculation thrown in to satisfy the conspiracy side of things.
These days the events come thick and fast so its easy to lose track. But there’s always someone (fellow like minded nut usually) who is keeping track of them and can point you in the right direction when you (or in this case I) forget the details.
So naturally by the time I found the last 2 links I got this one:
http://www.thestranger.com/extras/images/Guardian2.pdf
Containing such gems as:
the first paragraph, and this:
Read it, then lets have a sensible conversation cos I’d heard about that piece of vileness in the link above and more like it, and it informed my reaction on this thread.
I think you’ll agree that in that in the context of Tuscon, and the spirit of Helen’s OP as much as I disagree with its form, this is pretty fucken explosive.
Really this is something I wanted to bring up a while ago (like 620 posts), but honestly didn’t feel I could.
BTW That prick Birk is on trial at the moment, and he’ll probably go down, and everyone will pat themselves on the back and say the system works.
Which is total bollocks. Leaving aside the I don’t know how many years of criminal brutality they have been accused of, the last one was pretty bad.
If anyone has looked at the video on the second link above then watch from 1.01 to 1.06 and tell me … do you think it says anything about the attitude of that cop, and perhaps the attitude of the dept.?
Cos I reckon it does.
Nice meditation on recent events in Arizona, by an Arizonan.
“It did not” – President Obama.
You guys must think he is wrong.
Am I right?
PatrickB – did you actually read what I wrote? Or are you so used to disagreeing with me that you didn’t realise that I said precisely the opposite of what you think? My point was that the US is more prone to violence than other comparable countries!
Razor:
Here is the quote in context:
The key phrase in this passage is “a simple lack of civility”. The key word is “simple”. Obama has left open the possibility that the cause, or at least one of a number of causes, was a complex lack of civility.
Moreover, Obama excludes the possibility that this killing was simply a manifestation of “evil”. Evil can be said to exist in the world and be beyond control and beyond comprehension. Yet Obama says this:
In other words, Obama is suggesting that Americans’ “old assumptions” may have enabled this event to take place. Now there are many things that may be cataloged under the heading of “old assumptions”. One of them may be not “simple lack of civility” but “complex lack of civility”. Another old assumption may also be America’s gun culture.
This address, perhaps, wasn’t the occasion to fill in the “threat blank”. But it is undoubted that Obama meant to leave one.
“For the truth is none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped these shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.”
. . . and yet so many here are so certain that those who are of a differnet political persuasion to themselves are the cause.
Even Obiwan clearly says that uncivil discourse did not cause this and we will never know exactly yet you are just not going to waiver from pionning responsibility on your favourite targets.
That is a self-servingly inaccurate gloss of what Obama said.
1. He said SIMPLE (as opposed to complex) “lack of civility”.
2. He said that it is possible to know more about what motivated this attack than we do now.
3. He suggested that one of the reasons why such attacks continue to take place is because thus far Americans have been unwilling to challenge their assumptions. The implication is insecapable: Obama believes that if Americans overcome their “willingness to challenge old assumptions” then these attacks will become less frequent in future.
Katz
I doubt that simple is, in this context the antonym or alternative to complex. It’s more likely to be a synonym of mere.
That still makes your point of course. It implies that a lack of civility was, or at any rate might have been, a predisposing factor.
“Mere” means “nothing more than”, “pure”, “unadulterated”, “absolute”.
Put those words in front of “uncivility”, and you get uncivility exercised not for its own sake, not unselfconscious, not innate.
You can have:
calculated uncivility
self-conscious uncivility
etc.
These are all habits of the politically aware and ambitious.
Two things, Razor.
Firstly, Barack Obama is the POTUS. He is not a character in Star Wars. Please show some simple civility yourself.
Secondly, whilst uncivil political discourse might not be the proximate cause of the Tucson massacre, it may well have been a contributing factor, and since you are no better acquainted with the shooter’s state of mind than anyone else, you can’t say otherwise.
It was certainly reasonably foreseeable that incendiary political rhetoric might influence someone to act – after all I’m sure Mrs Palin et al would be most disappointed if they thought nobody paid any attention to them.
Katz said:
That’s not how I read it. I read:
let us remember it is not because a
simplemere lack of civility caused this tragedyto mean that it was not merely uncivility (I prefer the word incivility but no matter) but a range of other things — perhaps in context, the “old assumptions” or some other unspecified causes that authored the event.
It just wouldnt be….
a proper thread without ME taking 666 now would it?
No, I don’t think so FB.
In that context, I don’t think that you can twist “simple” in to “merely incivility”. That formulation requires not one transformation of the text, but two.
1. Substitute “mere” for “simple”.
2. Transform an adjective into an adverb.
Mere and merely mean different things in this context.
And I did mention that “old assumptions” can mean more things than merely (in your sense) incivility.
If Obama had meant to exculpate incivility altogether he could have said:
“let us remember it is not because
a simplelack of civility caused this tragedy — it did not”Remember that these speeches are workshopped to death by multiple vetters.
No, the mental reservation is intended.
A cartoon on violent spin and a blog with some commentary. The other cartoons there look pretty good too.
And while I’m linking Mark Morford has a column on this too. I think he’s mellowed a bit over the last few years but he still drives moralist conservatives crazy.
Not sure if linking these is appropriate. I think they’re both well written but they probably don’t add much that hasn’t already been covered in this mega thread. And Morford is definitely inflammatory himself.
Except Katz, that in the original Obama text it is not merely un/incivility, but
simplelack of civility, so #2 above is not required. It’s a straight trade.Nice commentary on Arizona gun laws and the incident
http://www.alternet.org/news/149502/arizona_has_turned_into_a_gun_lover%27s_paradise_–_and_that%27s_why_it_ranks_among_the_highest_in_gun_deaths/
@657
Apologies. I am probably guilty as charged but I would plead some species of prior ideological provocation. I’ve reread you comment and we are in furious agreement. BTW make sure you visit the Brickskeller. Shock horror, it’s closed! But apparently rapidly reopened as the Bier Baron. Sorry for the mix up.
Nickws, why bother to even call this opinion. That is precisely unmistaken.
Blood sister, I am so pleased that you managed the 666 on my half birthday. Onwards and upwards to the 121212…
There were more reasons than the Frankenchrist debacle for the DKs splitting, but if it hadn’t been for those right wing Christian nutjobs and her serving fascism in the name of a public image (no doubt with a thought to the white house bedroom post 1992 sometime,) then maybe they would have made a few more records.
Typical that even that little dose of schadenfreude was soured by what happened to keep her out of there, but hey karma is a bitch.
As for 5GW, well the whole 1gw to 5gw thing is a bit of bullshit in many ways. I’ve already illustrated how that process works in this instance upthread (hint “its the rights only weapon” was in there somewhere) but you might have missed it.
Anyway its been nearly 24 hours so I’m about to start talking about the OP again.
Police truck DKs
Tonight’s the night that we got the truck
We’re goin’ downtown gonna beat up drunks
Your turn to drive I’ll bring the beer
It’s the late, late shift no one to fear
And ride, ride how we ride
We ride, lowride
It’s roundup time where the good whores meet
Gonna drag one screaming off the street
And ride, ride how we ride
Got a black uniform and a silver badge
Playin’ cops for real/playin’ cops for pay
Let’s ride, lowride
Pull down your dress here’s a kick in the ass
Let’s beat you blue ’til you shit in your pants
Don’t move, child got a big black stick
There’s six of us babe, so suck on my dick
And ride, ride how we ride
Let’s ride, lowride
The left newspapers might whine a bit
But the guys at the station they don’t give a shit
Dispatch calls “Are you doin’ something wicked?”
“No siree, Jack, we’re just givin’ tickets”
As we ride, ride, how we ride
Let’s ride, lowride
Stuff it I can’t be bothered.
“…we all here are nothing but useful idiots for Lyndon Baines Obama.”
Maybe, but not for the reasons you think. Obama’s a corporate stooge, but the noise on the right has made it impossible for any real criticism of him to come from the left, the people who needed to keep the pressure on after the election. So effectively the only people putting lobbying pressure on him were the corporates and no mandate no matter how powerful could resist that. US federal politics – inside the beltway is where it happens and ordinary people don’t appear to belong there.
So anyway thats Obama. Not his fault really cos he is in a situation where the only things he’ll here come from corporate self interest. Then again he could have swept the place clean instead of recycling former … who cares.
Obama represents the United States of America.
I can understand when one of the politicians in that system gets shot.
Unfortunately I can also understand why John T Williams was shot. Its closer to why you think Giffords was shot than actually why she was shot. (well afawk at this point.)
Depressingly I’m beginning to understand the difference between the two.
You got it Joe.
“I can understand when one of the politicians in that system gets shot”
should have “that people will get upset, especially in this context.”
after it.
OTOH,
I could be turning into a radish or a silver beet.
Dammit, I knew this was a stupid thing to post, and I just got back online to ask the mods to delete it, now it looks like it’ll be disemvoweled instead.
Surely jules you mean ‘It’s closer to what you were trolling me about’. I never said I agreed with my imputation about you.
Now I’ll just try to be a decent contributor & stick to saying what I’ve believed all along—Giffords and the judge were shot by a madman who might have responded to the societal restraint offered a white Arizonan male when people who look like him are in control and everything is just fine.
(If the mods could delete my post at 672 I would appreciate that).
Done – Jule’s reply also deleted. Back on topic! – Mod
[Please re-read my comment @570. Feel free to rewrite this comment, framed as a clear exposition of the issue you are writing about with reasons why it's relevant to this thread, MINUS remarks about how inferior all the other posters on LP are for not alluding to this issue.
Thank you. Mod]
Don’t worry Nick when it all gets too much at least there is still Lemmy.
Seattle is in Arizona? Jeez, you learn something every day. Jules. old boy, you’re all over the place with this. I can’t follow you you’re getting so disconnected. Slow down a bit, or something, mate, so I can follow your thought processes.
Ok Helen re 681:
OK at 653 and 654 I posted links to online media covering something that happened in Seattle last year. 3 links.
Potentially a murder, done by a policeman from Seattle – its being tried as one. What happened is up thread – the first 2 links, one details the events, the other had the police camera footage.
The following comment I posted a link showing one of several leaked editorials. These are from the publication (I think its called the Guardian) put out by the Seattle Police Dept. I just recieved it pretty much straight away so it did get me fired up.
This editorial is full of the language used by the Tea Party type commentators. Not quite the same level of nastinesss as Angle’s commentrs maybe, but its clear from reading them where the Seattle PD stands.
Helen I dunno what you think inspired me to criticise the OP you wrote, but it wasn’t the idea that rhetoric can influence behaviour. And it wasn’t some attempt to defend the sort of people who promote those ideas. It doesn’t matter now obviously.
Here is a case of a police dept with a private publication “for police eyes only” carrying out an editorial policy of publishing far right opinion and propaganda. Basically, its an echo chamber of the worst of Fox news. Now at the same time that Police dept has been involved in a series of events that paint it in a very bad light.
Admittedlty correlation is not causation, but the correlation between the same language that is used by the right wing noise machine is disturbing.
When I first posted that I wasn’t hanging shit on people about it. I left it for a day for people to read and make up their own minds to see if anyone else saw the same correlation. Not only do I not know if they did, I don’t know if perhaps people think I am overreacting.
Now people have expressed their fears for what will happen in America because of the terrible events in Tuscon.
I do understand that. A look at the actions of that cop is for me a clear example of America now (police brutality and police “power” is out of control in many places in the US), but also a pointer to where it’ll move in future.
There is one more aspect to this that is what really fires me up. I mentioned it before but again no one took notice or thinks its important. Less than 50km from where I live, this century, there were burning crosses on hills.
My personal family experience of this is that when a black man marries a white woman in Australia his life is destroyed. I am a “black” man, i married a white woman. I do know who the people are who did that with the crosses, approximately. They are evil and if people here knew the things they got away with. Anyway.
Given all this can you see why this issues is a little close to home for me? I accept the odds of being attacked by them or murdered in my bed are very low. That doesn’t make snide and potentially scary comments in the background, on the street or in a pub, any less irritating.
What has really got my goat is that people somehow think I’m defending this.
Jules, speaking as one of the moderators now: your latest comment has been unapproved due to (a) length and (b) off-topic-ness.
You have a blog of your own. If you want to draw connections between the events in Tucson and events in Seattle that you have already been told are off-topic, then do it over there and BRIEFLY link to it here.
Yeah you are right tig. Sorry. I started days ago but new info’s come in and there’s a lot to unpack. What I said here was probably a distractiion. Sorry. It won’t be on the blog I linked above tho. That was for that story and others, I reserved it years ago to type that and this thread triggered it. Sorry for getting my personal stuff confused with your discussion and making a dick of myself.
I stopped posting there after Tony Abbotts comments last year wrt welcome to country. Cos I thought I was sounding too much like Bolt et al. In light of what I said on this thread I’ll vent my spleen there and people who don’t want to be subjected to it won’t be. Again sorry.
If I could I’d go back and delete all my posts cos on reflection I can see how they don’t contribute much to the discussion, cept noise and dis chord. Feel free to delete them if you want. I would ask you to, but its unreasonable given the amount of shit I have posted. If you do tho please leave the links to music and Jon Stewart.
I won’t bother linking to here tho, cos if its any good odds are you’ll hear about it anyway and make up your own mind. But judging by what I’ve written here it won’t be.
I think this will be my lost comment here to, cos try as I might I don’t seem to be able to communicate much of any use. This is a successful intelligent blog with a great dynamic in the comments it easy to want to be a part of that. But as I’ve noticed, not just lately but over years, that I clash rather badly with it.
And I don’t want to do that cos quite frankly I respect the opinions of all the bloggers here. And the vast majority of the commentators. I have been basically stuck at home inside since Christmas,, thanks to the weather, and maybe getting a little cabin feverish, and have some pretty intense family stresses going on, that I haven’t referred to here at all.
But thats no excuse. I thought I held myself to high standards and looking over the comments here I haven’t lived up to them. Its not good enough at all. I had shit going on all my life and its no excuse.
Sorry Helen.
And everyone else.
Peace.
jules
[No worries Jules - Cheers. Mod]
As usual, The Onion gives us the best low-down on the Arizona shooting:
Very funny link, Fran!
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/14/why_is_glenn_beck_obsessively_targeting
@66
Dear bmitw,
I probably have more respect for the position of POTUS than 98% of posters on this site. That said, I am quite happy to call all politicians by nicknames – I call Tony Abbott the Mad Monk, despite being one of his strongest supporters even before he became Leader of the Opposition.
When other posters on this site stob calling Howard – Ratty and all the names they call G.W. Bush and Blair, then I might consider your request.
I also might even consider it when ABC Journalists start addressing our political leaders by their correct titles.
As for calling Obama – Obiwan – given the diefication of the guy – shit he got a Nobel Peace Prize having been POTUS for 20 days while running two wars and having troops deployed in many nations around the world – the ony way you can do that is if you are a Jedi Master like Obiwan. Am I wrong?
Would you prefer I called him Hussein or Barry?
I support Razor’s decision to call Obama Obiwan, I think it’s a very polite way of taking the piss, just as is “ratty” (remember Razor, that nickname is taking the piss out of a liberal party opinion of Howard, it’s not a spontaneous expression of left-wing feelings about JWH).
I also agree with Razor that only a Jedi could pull off that nobel peace prize shit that Obama did. Furthermore, Razor missed the point where a mere handful of days later, nobel prize still pinned to his chest, he appeared on national tv to defend the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and the murder of some innocents with a drone.
That is some seriously cool Jedi mind shit right there. “These are not the war criminals you are looking for…”
And as Michael Moore observed, if you’re wondering why people in America think it’s okay to kill their politicians, you might like to look at the rhetoric from people like Obama, who think it’s perfectly okay to assassinate other nations’ political leaders. “Uncivil” discourse is hardly new in that nation, is it?
And to that I add… John Kerry was also a confirmed war criminal and the only people able to deny this are the swift boaters, who claim that the purple heart he earned while implementing a starvation program in Vietnam is undeserved because the supporting evidence is fabricated.