Massacre, followed by libel
WaveCameCrashin
Posts: 2,929
]Massacre, followed by libel
By Charles Krauthammer
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 /size][/b]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... inionsbox1
The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.
As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings - and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him - there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder.
Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.
A climate of hate? This man lived within his very own private climate. "His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world," said the teacher of Loughner's philosophy class at Pima Community College. "He was very disconnected from reality," said classmate Lydian Ali. "You know how it is when you talk to someone who's mentally ill and they're just not there?" said neighbor Jason Johnson. "It was like he was in his own world."
His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with "unnerving, long stupors of silence" during which he would "stare fixedly at his buddies," reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through "grammar." He was obsessed with "conscious dreaming," a fairly good synonym for hallucinations.
This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder - ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.
These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one. A classmate found him so terrifyingly mentally disturbed that, she e-mailed friends and family, she expected to find his picture on TV after his perpetrating a mass murder. This was no idle speculation: In class "I sit by the door with my purse handy" so that she could get out fast when the shooting began.
Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner's fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who had begun an article thus: "I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it."
Finally, the charge that the metaphors used by Palin and others were inciting violence is ridiculous. Everyone uses warlike metaphors in describing politics. When Barack Obama said at a 2008 fundraiser in Philadelphia, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he was hardly inciting violence.
Why? Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest - "campaign" - is an appropriation from warfare.
When profiles of Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, noted that he once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him, a characteristically subtle statement carrying more than a whiff of malice and murder, it was considered a charming example of excessive - and creative - political enthusiasm. When Senate candidate Joe Manchin dispensed with metaphor and simply fired a bullet through the cap-and-trade bill - while intoning, "I'll take dead aim at [it]" - he was hardly assailed with complaints about violations of civil discourse or invitations to murder.
Did Manchin push Loughner over the top? Did Emanuel's little Mafia imitation create a climate for political violence? The very questions are absurd - unless you're the New York Times and you substitute the name Sarah Palin.
The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?
Anyone care to apologies ?
By Charles Krauthammer
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 /size][/b]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... inionsbox1
The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.
As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings - and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him - there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder.
Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.
A climate of hate? This man lived within his very own private climate. "His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world," said the teacher of Loughner's philosophy class at Pima Community College. "He was very disconnected from reality," said classmate Lydian Ali. "You know how it is when you talk to someone who's mentally ill and they're just not there?" said neighbor Jason Johnson. "It was like he was in his own world."
His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with "unnerving, long stupors of silence" during which he would "stare fixedly at his buddies," reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through "grammar." He was obsessed with "conscious dreaming," a fairly good synonym for hallucinations.
This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder - ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.
These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one. A classmate found him so terrifyingly mentally disturbed that, she e-mailed friends and family, she expected to find his picture on TV after his perpetrating a mass murder. This was no idle speculation: In class "I sit by the door with my purse handy" so that she could get out fast when the shooting began.
Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner's fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who had begun an article thus: "I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it."
Finally, the charge that the metaphors used by Palin and others were inciting violence is ridiculous. Everyone uses warlike metaphors in describing politics. When Barack Obama said at a 2008 fundraiser in Philadelphia, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he was hardly inciting violence.
Why? Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest - "campaign" - is an appropriation from warfare.
When profiles of Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, noted that he once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him, a characteristically subtle statement carrying more than a whiff of malice and murder, it was considered a charming example of excessive - and creative - political enthusiasm. When Senate candidate Joe Manchin dispensed with metaphor and simply fired a bullet through the cap-and-trade bill - while intoning, "I'll take dead aim at [it]" - he was hardly assailed with complaints about violations of civil discourse or invitations to murder.
Did Manchin push Loughner over the top? Did Emanuel's little Mafia imitation create a climate for political violence? The very questions are absurd - unless you're the New York Times and you substitute the name Sarah Palin.
The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?
Anyone care to apologies ?
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
Conversely... the ones who would vilify 'Cop Killer' and Grand Theft Auto would be defending Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh's 'Call To Arms' as 'Free Speech'.
I think it's a wash.
Hail, Hail!!!
exactly.
Me too. I apologise for thinking it is fucking insane for civilian douchebags to carry loaded weapons to Town Hall debates.
Hail, Hail!!!
by Henry Rollins
January 11, 2011, 10:00 AM
America has a new name to splash across the front pages of its newspapers and Web sites: Jared Lee Loughner, age 22, accused of shooting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others last Saturday in Tucson, Arizona.
Almost immediately after the horrific event, which left six dead and 14 wounded, people searched for a reason for Loughner’s actions. Almost immediately, Sarah Palin’s name came up. On her Web site, Palin had posted a map of the United States with marks designating the home states of Democratic politicians to defeat. The marks, some say, resemble crosshair sights, and Giffords was one of the Democrats singled out. The map has been taken off the site, and Palin has sent her condolences to the victims and their families. I hope she’s feeling better.
Since then, popular conservative radio personalities have been talking nonstop to deflect the onslaught of incoming flak from people accusing them of inciting dangerous behavior with the content of their shows.
Meanwhile, no one has been able to determine exactly what may have caused Jared Loughner to walk up to a group of people and start shooting. Thus far, Loughner, who is in custody, has been uncooperative with law-enforcement officials.
For now, with little information on Loughner, we are left to speculate. Is it possible that the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck inspired Loughner to attack these people? Can what he did be classified as radical-right-wing behavior? Is it fair, with so little information on this man, to put the blame on conservative talk show hosts? What about liberal talk show hosts? Until we know more about Loughner, can’t they too be potentially to blame? I’m only trying to be even-handed.
I may be at odds with a lot of people on this, but I don’t think the Limbaughs and Becks of America are to blame for what happened in Tucson last Saturday. I do believe that some of these personalities say some pretty intense stuff that I find myself in complete and strong disagreement with. But I also find it impossible to take them seriously. That is perhaps a mistake on my part. To me, these people are pathetically lightweight.
I saw Glenn Beck in action last summer at his Restore Honor Rally. His speech sucked and his audience looked ancient and out-of-shape. Rush Limbaugh makes money getting simpleminded people to feel good about their intellectually undernourished brain spasms. He’s very good at it, and I scarcely believe a fraction of what he says. Sarah Palin embarrasses herself almost immediately upon opening her mouth to speak or upon moving her fingers to send messages to her dull flock. I just don’t believe these people can really motivate anyone to do anything except misspell words on the signs they take to their corny rallies and vote for candidates who will immediately screw them upon entering office. Past that, I don’t think much gets done.
I could be completely wrong here, but I think there is a much harder-core element in American society that doesn’t listen to these pundits, doesn’t care who is president, and has nothing but contempt and hatred for government in general. I don’t believe it mattered to Timothy McVeigh who was president or who his congressional representative was when he blew up the Murrah Building in 1995.
I know that Loughner had a history of extreme dislike for representative Giffords. I just can’t believe he got that from a map drawn up by Sarah Palin or the bug-eyed-baby ravings of Glenn Beck.
One thing I think we can count on is that no conservative radio personality will be toning down their rap at all. They are now almost forced to keep it up, to show that they are in no way a part of this case.
Again, you might not dig this, but I don’t want them to tone it down. I want them to have the same First Amendment rights that I enjoy. What I want is for everyone else to evolve and stop listening. I want for these talkers to have such low ratings due to non-interest that they are dropped from their contracts and fall into immediate and absolute obscurity. That would be the ultimate victory. The right people would win and the right people would lose. For Limbaugh and his ilk, it would be a defeat so totally crushing that they would never recover. Even if they did, no one would notice.
Immediately, what is to be done? Gun control? Too late. You can always get a gun in America. Censorship? Slippery slope. In my opinion, it always comes down to the same thing: education. You pump up the volume on the smart factor in America and this regrettable and tragic era would be in our collective rear-view with all speed.
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/ ... ntion.html
EXACTLY! ... that an the ability to think critically! ... the fact Sarah Palin has an audience should be proof enough that there is something wrong ...
"You know, Sarah Palin just can't seem to get it, on any front. I think that she's an attractive person, she is articulate," Clyburn said on Bill Press' radio show. "But I think intellectually, she seems not to be able to understand what's going on here."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/1 ... 871.html?f
seems there is a lot of finger pointing for what a young punk kid dill by him self,this is starting to sound like a modern day JFK conspiracy theory.
Godfather.
Does that mean we have to stop blaming anti-American rhetoric from Islamic religious leaders because some crazy Muslim tries to blow up his underwear on a JetBlue 737?
Hail, Hail!!!
uhhhh no ! I'm picky that way LOL!!!!
COSMO you ever thought of having your own t.v or radio show ? Larry King got nothing on you.
btw I don't do guest appearances
Godfather.
I would get ZERO ratings because I don't spew crazy shit about Birth Certificates and I know the difference between Socialism, Communism and Fascism and that they are not interchangeable.
Plus... I'm not a fucking blubbering cry-baby that fucking cries every fucking time the deadgum cameras are on me.
Hail, Hail!!!
well then how bout this for a opening show...
I was really confused when I heard the word "Service" used with these agencies:
Internal Revenue “Service”
U.S. Postal “Service”
Telephone “Service”
Cable TV “Service”
Civil “Service”
State, City, County & Public “Service”
Customer “Service”
This is not what I thought “Service” meant. When I was a teen I worked in a Survice Station , and we helped customers by cleaning the wind shield and checking the air pressure in the tires . Checking the oil and water in the batteries and radiator.
But today, I overheard two farmers talking, and one of them said he had hired a bull to “Service” a few cows.
BAM !!! It all came into focus. Now I understand what all those agencies are doing to us.
You are now as enlightened as I am.
Godfather.
"American values are not our values; we should not seek to emulate them. We do not agree with our gov't's decision to allow American soldiers on our soil."
versus
"America is the great satan and must not be allowed to continue to exist."
Obviously these aren't real quotes. The point is, you can disagree with someone or thing, even vehemently so, without being considered to have overtly incited violence. You might say, "well then, what constitutes overt"? Just apply the reasonable man standard; our legal system does it, so can you.
Yours is black or white... Mr. Nice Imam vs. Mr. Ayatollah Imam.
How about a mix:
"American immorality is nowhere near our values of virtue and righteousness; we should not allow them to shove their perverted love of money over the love of God down our throats. We need to take aim on America's influence and take back what God has graced us with by expelling it (America's influence) from our soil and from our hearts."
Then, some disenfranchised 22 year old decides to go out and blow shit up.
...
The Religious leader should not be responsible for his words... because, obviously... he was a disturbed individual, acting on his own. Carry on with your sermons, Imam... your words have no influence and you are free of any responsibility of someone else's free will.
...
Is that your point?
Hail, Hail!!!
amen.
rip to all the fallen. i think obama spoke very eloquently tonight.
I thought I put both sides in my post.
No... I am pointing out that your two examples are on the far ends of the extremes... first one being nice and polite and the other being harsh and nasty.
I'm asking YOU... what if the statements are closer towards the middle, in that grey area? What about speech that delivers harsh rhetoric with softened language and use of metaphors? Taking Aim... Shooting Back... Taking back... Regroup and Reload... Watering the Tree of Liberty with the Blood of the Patriots...
what if an islamic cleric said the words I used as an example in a sermon... and some nutcase in the audience interpreted it as a call to arms to take action?
I am saying, the cleric needs to take on some of the responsibility... you are saying he is free from any sort of responsibility.
Hail, Hail!!!
I stand corrected... I read it to mean that people blaming Palin would defend Ice T and video games.
So, yes... i agree with you that a lot of people will defend free speech... as long as it agrees with them.
Hail, Hail!!!
Glenn Beck anyone?
Not saying that anyone should have jumped the gun in this one, but its easy to see how they would. Its not like this congresswoman hasn't been targeted before. And its not like anyone hasn't taking ridiculous cry-baby babble seriously before..
people will always jump the gun ... it's natural and will happen every time ... all i gotta say to conservatives/tea party folk who are feeling slighted is this:
9/11 --> iraq --> saddam hussein ... at least now, most people are attributing this to mental illness yet, there are still many americans who think saddam was somehow responsible for 9/11 ... so, it isn't so much the theorizations as it is ... what people think when more information comes to light ...
I'd say context and audience are very important and, fair enough, in that respect a speaker has some responsibility to temper their words. However, I don't think you can ignore the fact that political rhetoric in the U.S. has often connotated warfare.
Further, over the past couple of hundred years, most of our internal disputes have, especially political ones, been settled peacefully. With few exceptions, we don't shoot the leaders we don't like; we tolerate them until we can vote them out in 2-6 years.
On the other hand, the Middle East (along with many other parts of the world) has been anything but stable over the past couple of hundred years. Violence has proved a much more common MO for resolving disputes.
The words you chose are gray enough that it's difficult to make a judgement call without being in the head and heart of the speaker (or whoever organized the gathering). If the organizers went out of their way to gather up disenfranchised young males or males with a proven proclivity for violence, then sat them in front of this speaker, and then those words were used...then there's a much stronger argument for the speaker bearing some responsibility.
It's funny, you don't like my "example" speeches because they are too black and white, but then you expect me to make a black and white judgement about whether a speaker should be responsible for the downstream effects of their words without considering the softer, grayer science of context behind those words.
Just off the top of my head:
Lincoln, Malcolm X (yes I regard him as a political leader, of sorts), MLK, JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Harvey Milk...are there any more?
Seems like oftentimes they don't get as far as becoming 'leaders' per se, but get bumped off before they make it that far.
Well thats just killed
Reagan, Truman and Ford all had attempts on their life as well.
so a handful of people over 230 + years.
the guy above was comparing us to the middle east...
Well, it's more than a handful. I was just talking the last 60 years or so. Add Garfield, McKinley, Lincoln and Jackson to that list. That's almost 20% of our presidents that have had assassination attempts on them.
I didn't read through everything, I was responding to the number of presidents that have been shot at. I am not trying to compare us to the Middle East or anything but having almost 20% of our leaders have attempts on their life is a bit of a problem.
The Middle East = approx 40 countries. The U.S.A is just one country. Maybe you could be more specific?