Giffords shooting

[Sounder]

There is an irony here where Cheney does not get ‘blamed’ for the killing of hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings, yet all dissenters can become tainted by the localized actions of a single unstable person. --That leads to further use of the aforesaid, now well practiced force by Cheneyan follow travelers as they redirect its killing energy toward those that may protest the imperial insistence that it has a universal right to kill.

These situations do so much to promote establishment objectives that one has a hard time avoiding the notion that there was some prior design element involved.

[Simulist]

Peter King, Leading Republican, To Introduce Strict Gun-Control Legislation

Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, is planning to introduce legislation that would make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official, according to a person familiar with the congressman's intentions.

[...]

[LilyPatToo]

A good analysis from a feminist perspective.

Thank you for sharing that link, Crow. The media blathering was really beginning to get on my nerves and I kept wondering how they could miss Loughner's glaringly obvious stupidity...not to mention the fact that it was the most pathetic kind of dumb: the wanna-be-seen-as-smart/hates-smart-women sort. That was apparent to me and to most of the people I know very early on. Here's Sady's take on it:

Here’s what it took to make Jared Loughner hate Gabby Giffords:

“That interest might have triggered Mr. Loughner’s first meeting with Ms. Giffords in 2007. Mr. Loughner said he asked the lawmaker, “How do you know words mean anything?” recalled Mr. Montanaro. He said Mr. Loughner was “aggravated” when Ms. Giffords, after pausing for a couple of seconds, “responded to him in Spanish and moved on with the meeting.”

And I am sorry. But this is classic. A man tries to impress a woman; she is not impressed; he hates her very much (he told a friend that she was “stupid” later, as per the friend), and then he retaliates. Whether that’s a guy calling you “bitch” because you won’t let him buy you a drink at the bar, or a street harasser telling you that you’re “not really that hot” after you tell him to fuck off, or your college classmate targeting you for shittiness all semester long because you’re doing well (I, personaly, had a guy sit behind me and pull faces every time I talked, occasionally making the “yap yap” motion with his hand), or an abuser slapping his wife for sassing him back and not making him feel Important and Like a Man, or a guy pulling a gun on a female politician because he couldn’t outsmart her at a meeting, that is some classic misogyny happening, right there.

And now we're getting truckloads of "mustn't badmouth the Right" stuff. Blithely ignoring the fact that it was clearly the hate-and-violence-filled rhetoric that takes the place of rational thought in their terrified followers' minds that set Loughner off, otherwise smart people are donning massive blinders and calling for unity. Fuck unity when one group has called openly for violence. You don't "gather" with frothing-at-the-mouth crazy people, you educate the public about their danger and you deal with them with extreme caution. There's unfair labeling and then there's seeing and pointing out the callous manipulation via fear of huge numbers of people and calling it what it is--dangerously wrong-headed anti-social behavior that amounts to mass mind control. The author on the Far Right's culture of violence:

Uh, yeah buddy. For one, Gabby Giffords had been subject to large-scale harassment, in terms of phone calls and e-mails; someone had smashed her office window; she had received multiple death threats. All of this action was directly affiliated with the Tea Party. Giffords was very public about the fact that this was happening; she even went on TV to talk about it, aside from whatever she may have done privately. Everybody had every reason to know this was happening. And nobody stopped it. Nobody condemned it; the language did not change. So, for one, we knew that this woman was being targeted for some scary, scary violence, by a lot of people, already. That’s reason one that they had every reason to see this coming.

[ED: I mean, just to re-iterate: There was a culture in which violence against this one specific woman was not only incited, not only acted out, not only talked about, but actually threatened against her, and to some extent -- the harassment, the smashing of the window -- acted upon. And this was permitted and encouraged. And we want to talk about whether the fact that one person actually decided to commit an act of violence against her miiiiiight have poteeennnnntially been influenced by this, and whether it's irresponsible to come to that conclusion. To which any reasonable person must say, COME ON: The shooter lived in a culture where it was acceptable to target Gabby Giffords for violence. No matter who he was, or what else was going on with him, that's what happened. Multiple people were already targeting her, and the condemnation of those people was not all that strong, and the people who created the rhetoric didn't tone it down. Yeah, he could have been not at all influenced by this rhetoric, conceivably. You could also get struck by lightning and hit by a car at the same time. When somebody shows up with tire tracks on them, you don't conclude they were struck by lightning.]

What I'm seeing called "pointing fingers" and "a lack of civility" in the MSM this AM looks to me like an attempt by TPTB to shame everyone who's outraged back into silence. So getting to read this article was a relief. I'm not the only person who sees the tragedy the way I do and I'm not the only one outraged by all the calls for tolerance. You don't tolerate violent sociopathic misogynistic manipulators--you oppose them. Even if you haven't an icicle's chance in Hell of ever seeing them driven from power, you speak out against their tactics and behaviors because it's the right thing to do. "Civility" toward the instigators in this case will simply keep all of us in the thrall of would-be Controllers. And their hate-spewing public spokespersons will continue to play dangerous games with the minds of people like Jared Loughner. Even very Centrist politicians (like Representative Giffords) who are targeted by them will live in a kind of danger that no legislation about gun control or limiting the distance an armed person can be from a public figure will ever affect in the slightest.

LilyPat

[Luther Blissett]

I want to be sure this is disseminated (from the Tiger Beatdown blog):

[barracuda]

A good analysis from a feminist perspective.

Thank you for sharing that link, Crow.

Seconded.

[Canadian_watcher]

and maybe it's been overlooked, but has anyone considered what the title of that blog is?
tigerbeatdown

[yathrib]

"Apes don't read philosophy!"



I knew this guy reminded me of something!

[Nordic]

Peter King, Leading Republican, To Introduce Strict Gun-Control Legislation

Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, is planning to introduce legislation that would make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official, according to a person familiar with the congressman's intentions.

[...]

That's so fucking funny!!! Gosh, suddenly when it's about protecting HIS OWN ASS, he becomes a gun - controllin' liberal douchebag!!!

[Simulist]

Douchebags can be very versatile.

[Canadian_watcher]

Peter King, Leading Republican, To Introduce Strict Gun-Control Legislation

Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, is planning to introduce legislation that would make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official, according to a person familiar with the congressman's intentions.

[...]

That's so fucking funny!!! Gosh, suddenly when it's about protecting HIS OWN ASS, he becomes a gun - controllin' liberal douchebag!!!

sheesh, what a flip-flopper.
OTOH how in the world would this actually stop something like what happened in Arizona? Preventive Laws are for the law-abiding.

[Crow]

It seems to me to be a good habit to read things that contradict your established belief systems from time to time - I don't think doing so makes anyone stupid, I think it makes him/her well-rounded. Besides, these are fiction books, in large part, and it's quite possible to enjoy the writing, the characters, the tensions without worrying too much about the assigned political leanings of the heroes.

There are some good comments attached to that editorial, though.

I think there's a good case to be made for Loughner being a dim bulb. Even accounting for the cognitive distortions that come with his probable schizophrenia, he has nothing meaningful to say in any of his videos, nor does he demonstrate nuanced understanding of any political issue. He even mixed up the words "conscience" and "conscious."

Loughner seemed over-confident in his own intellectual ability, but Ted Kaczynski he is not.

I'll have to read through the comments. Haven't gotten to those yet.

[Crow]

and maybe it's been overlooked, but has anyone considered what the title of that blog is?
tigerbeatdown

Are you insinuating that the name of the blog is contributing to the atmosphere of violent political rhetoric?

[LilyPatToo]

Another clear-headed commentary on this atrocity, this one from Gloria Feldt: Giffords Tragedy: What’s the Message to Young Women?

http://womensmediacenter.com/blog/2011/ ... agedy-what’s-the-message-to-young-women/ (apologies for the lack of a clickable link--tried every way I know how to get it to embed as a URL, but failed--might be that comma that's the problem, so copy and paste--it's worth it)

I especially like the succinct way she states her opinion of the usefulness of most of the current calls for "civility":

If there is a lesson to learn from the horrible episode, it is less about decrying our declining civility and more about teaching everyone from their earliest years how a democratic government works. How to debate and discuss issues vigorously, how to embrace controversy in a positive way to elevate public awareness of the issues. To let the passion for public service that drives Gabby Giffords inspire us to emulate her leadership until there are so many of us we cannot be silenced. And to hold close the American values of tolerance and pluralism, of optimism that we can solve problems, and believe that though we are many, we can come together as one to do so. That we are the government.

Actually Gabrielle Giffords herself said it best last year at a Holocaust memorial event, the month after her office was vandalized in apparent retaliation for her vote to support the health reform bill: “We know that silence equals consent when atrocities are committed against innocent men, women and children. We know that indifference equals complicity when bigotry, hatred and intolerance are allowed to take root. And we know that education and hope are the most effective ways to combat ignorance and despair.”

LilyPat

[justdrew]

What the Right Gains From Poisoning Our Political Discourse and Inspiring Violence
By Michael Winship, AlterNet Posted on January 10, 2011

The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov had a rule: if you show a gun in the first act, by the time the curtain falls, it has to go off. For weeks and months, that gun, the weapon of angry rhetoric and intemperate rabblerousing, has been cocked and loaded in plain view on the American stage; Saturday morning outside a shopping mall in Tucson, Arizona, it went off again and again and again.

The target, Gabrielle Giffords, a member of the United States Congress, lays critically wounded, one of thirteen shot and still alive. Six others are dead, including a respected Federal judge who happened to be there but who previously had received death threats from anti-immigration extremists, a member of Congresswoman Giffords' staff and a nine-year old girl, Christina-Taylor Green. Just elected to her school's student council, she had been brought by a neighbor to Congresswoman Gifford's constituent event so she could see how grown-ups put democracy into action.

Instead, this child - born on 9/11 -- became just one of the latest victims of more political violence in America, violence fueled by an incoherent rage against government and elected officials who cannot instantly bring back prosperity and the jobs lost overseas or restore in a blink some idealized vision of a nation that might once have been but is no more. And all of it egged on by right wing leaders and their cronies lurking in the swampier reaches of the Internet, hate radio and television We now see the deadly effect. The root causes are many and less distinct: fear of the future and what it may or may not hold, hostility inflamed by the economic injustice and uncertainty that force too many to live from paycheck to paycheck without anything saved or the slightest guarantee of security -- a gnashing of teeth and sharpening of claws because others may have what you have not. Or this: the simple fact that there are just too many damned guns in this country. One in four Americans owns at least one. The NRA would order gun racks in the cradles of newborn infants if they could. Too many weapons are used not for hunting or target shooting or legitimate protection, but for combating feelings of inadequacy and weakness with fantasies of firepower -- fantasies that crazed gunmen too often try to make reality. That someone like Jared Lee Loughner can walk into a store and buy a weapon that fires 30 rounds a clip is probably not what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they talked about "a well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State."

No one can prove that the vitriolic talk from the right was in the killer's mind as he carried out his attack, but no one can prove it wasn't, either. So in the absence of evidence to support either side, why doesn't the right just volunteer to put an end to all the ballistic language and images it's been employing for many years now? Why not cease and desist if there's any doubt about the impact on lunatics of provocative violent-saturated words and images? Sarah Palin must have suddenly felt queasy about those crosshairs over Giffords' congressional district that were still up on her website, because the mama grizzly, half-term governor took them down soon after the violence (although as of this writing they were still on her Facebook page). But then she sent an aide to do a radio show in which she agreed with the sympathetic interviewer that the crosshairs were more like "surveyors' symbols"! Why prolong that kind of stuff? Why not just knock it off and apologize or simply shut up?

The fact is, it has been the right's goal to poison our political discourse for years. Remember the notorious "GOPAC Memo" back in the 1990's, created for the Republicans' leadership training institute and endorsed by Newt Gingrich? Titled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," in it, candidates are instructed in what words to use when defining their opponents (i.e., liberals). "These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contract," the memo said. "Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals, and their party" (in other words, demonize them).

Among them: intolerant lie pathetic radical sick steal traitors. Gingrich and his allies deliberately set out to employ toxic language against their opponents, and are still doing it. They will say anything to get a vote, especially now that the angriest and most irrational so often make up a majority of those who bother to go to the polls. This kind of talk is part and parcel of their strategy, and no matter what motivated the Tucson killings, it needs to stop.

Their lock and load rhetoric is reinforced by the rambling ranks of those who go on the Internet to spout any conspiracy theory, distortion of history or outright lie that helps them make it through the night. Add, too, the men and women of radio and television, the Limbaugh's, Beck's, and their ilk who use the airwaves as a cudgel, battering viewers and listeners with the certainty of their illogic, their thinly veiled messages of bigotry and meretricious embrace of Constitution, religion, flag and family.

All of them will huff and puff that this is an isolated incident by a madman that cannot be blamed on their bombast and bluster. But let's call it out for what it is, let's debate what in our gut we know to be true: even if it was not their intent, it's likely the words of the right on radio and TV and in the books they publish spurred on the man who killed two and wounded six in a Knoxville, Kentucky, church in July 2008, and the murderer of George Tiller, one of the few doctors in America who still performed late-term abortions for women with problem pregnancies whose health was at stake from life-threatening complications, or whose infants would be born dead or dying. Their invective, whether inadvertently or not, has encouraged the vandalism and threats faced by so many of our candidates and elected officials, including the now desperately wounded Congresswoman Giffords. Her shooting, and the death and wounding of so many who came to meet with her are just the latest example of ideologically-motivated bloodshed.

"Let me say one thing," said Clarence Dupnik, sheriff of Pima County, Arizona, where the shootings took place, "because people tend to pooh-pooh 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." He singled out radio and TV and said, "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." An elected Democrat, he was immediately attacked by Republicans and the right, his statements dismissed as partisan and inappropriate. "The facts weren't even out there, Rep. Giffords had been carted away in a stretcher, we didn't even know her condition, but the war had already started. The folks on the hard left were already out there blaming the tea party." So complained Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation. He told The Washington Post, "If we ever needed an official political obituary to political civility in this country, we've seen it."

Mr. Phillips, that obituary was written long ago, thanks to you and your friends.

Michael Winship is senior writer at Public Affairs Television in New York City.

[Canadian_watcher]

and maybe it's been overlooked, but has anyone considered what the title of that blog is?
tigerbeatdown

Are you insinuating that the name of the blog is contributing to the atmosphere of violent political rhetoric?

no - not any more than crosshairs on congressional districts does, anyway. just drawing attention to the inarguably violent connotations of the blog title.

I think there's a good case to be made for Loughner being a dim bulb. Even accounting for the cognitive distortions that come with his probable schizophrenia, he has nothing meaningful to say in any of his videos, nor does he demonstrate nuanced understanding of any political issue. He even mixed up the words "conscience" and "conscious."

Loughner seemed over-confident in his own intellectual ability, but Ted Kaczynski he is not.

How can you separate out cognitive distortion from stupidity based on what you've read that he's posted? And what makes you think that he meant to say conscious rather than conscience?