Was Jared Loughner's Act Political?
Was Jared Loughner's act in shooting Rep. Giffords political? Apparently this is what's being debated with a straight face now. Is this a joke? He shot a politician in the head. He called it an "assassination." What part of that was unclear?
He didn't shoot Gabrielle Giffords randomly and it turned out she just happened to be a politician. He sought her out, targeted her and then tried to kill her based on the fact that she was a politician. He thought the government was the problem and it was unresponsive to his psychotic demands on grammar and currency.
So, is Loughner a psycho? Obviously. And that's not just because he shot all of those innocent people, but also because it is abundantly clear from his writings and videos that he has significant mental issues.
But why does the act have to be either psychotic or political? It's obviously both. It was a psychotic act driven by his political beliefs. What's so hard to understand about that?
Then, the next question is whether both sides are equally at fault. Again, I'm confused by this question. What the hell did the Democrats or liberals do here? Nothing, except get shot. How can the media possibly attach false equivalency to this? Are the Democrats equally culpable for getting shot as the conservatives are for shooting them?
Loughner shot a Democrat. Gee, I wonder which side he was on? He hated the government and thought they were out to get us. Gee, I wonder which side he was on?
I thought conservatives said liberals love big government. But now some have the audacity to claim Loughner was a liberal. But if one thing is obvious from Loughner's political writings, it was that he hated the government. So, which one is it -- do liberals love or hate the government?
Come on, this is all a smoke screen to make sure people don't see what's going on here. In the last two years, there have been dozens of attacks and shootings aimed at government officials and political organizations. Every single one of them was directed at liberals, Democrats or the government. Now we're to believe that's the world's largest coincidence?
The conservative hate-mongers don't create psychos. We get that there will always be disturbed individuals out there. But the right-wing directs these lunatics to a source. They channel their fear, anger and paranoia -- and they point them toward the Democrats. They use them as hate seeking missiles.
They load them up them up with violent imagery, whether it's talk of cross-hairs or second amendment remedies or the tree of liberty being refreshed with blood. Then when they get a violent reaction they pretend to be surprised and outraged that anyone would suggest they were the least bit culpable. The reality is that it is a simple formula -- violence in, violence out. Violent imagery in, violent results out.
If pretending this isn't political or that somehow it is both-sided doesn't work (which they shouldn't worry about because so far it has worked perfectly in white-washing their culpability in the media), then they say it's political exploitation to point out what they have done.
How the hell are we supposed to point out the problem if we can't mention the issue for fear of being charged with political exploitation? Would it be exploiting the tragedy of the BP oil spill to point out that maybe we should be a little careful about oil drilling? Or are we not supposed to make the most obvious points so that we don't offend the other political side's delicate sensibilities?
You know who exploited a tragedy for political gain? George W. Bush and the entire Republican Party. They used 9/11 as a gimmick to get re-elected. Then they exploited it to attack a random country that had nothing to do with 9/11. It is nearly impossible to exploit a tragedy anymore than they did with 9/11. And maybe that's why they level the charge against us now, because they know that's the first thing they'd do.
But pointing out that conservative commentators and politicians have been inciting their followers isn't done to get anyone elected. I don't even know whose election this would theoretically effect. This isn't done to press some policy agenda (again, outside of gun control, I can't even think of what agenda we are supposed to theoretically be pushing for). This is to point out an obvious fact that is getting people killed -- if you incite violence, you get violence.
To pretend that isn't happening all across the country everyday on talk radio, etc. is to be willfully blind to reality -- and to allow it to happen again. And trust me, next time they'll also say no one could have seen it coming and that whatever we do we mustn't talk about it. Preventing another tragedy like this would be such terrible exploitation. Better to be quiet and let them do it again.
Follow The Young Turks on Twitter: www.twitter.com/theyoungturks
"Like" The Young Turks on Facebook: www.facebook.com/tytnation
Clarifications:
I didn’t think these clarifications were necessary, but apparently they are for some. So, here it goes.
1. I am not saying all conservatives are responsible. I got an e-mail from a conservative saying I am blaming him for breathing. I am not blaming him at all (unless he had a national platform and talked about “targeting” liberals, Democrats, etc.), let alone for breathing.
2. I don’t believe the proper remedy is limiting anyone’s freedom of speech. I never suggested that. In fact, I am sure if anyone passed such a law, not only would it be unconstitutional, but it would be almost exclusively used against the left.
2a. Of course, I don’t mind Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin attacking Democrats. That’s their job. I am asking them to use some caution in how they frame their attacks and not to use violent imagery that eggs people on.
On the show, I was very specific on what kinds of language I was referring to (I also have a link in the story above to examples). Here is the video where I list some of the examples of conservatives using violent imagery.
3. I don’t think that Jared Loughner necessarily listened to an episode of the Glenn Beck show and then went and did this (although others, like Byron Williams did specifically do just that). I am saying that these conservative leaders are purposely creating an environment in which this type of violence festers.
4. Lastly, I am not saying that these conservative leaders celebrated this news or wanted this specific outcome. I assume they are still human. But they knew, or should have known, that they were creating the environment that led to this kind of violence — and they didn’t give a damn.
What did you think was going to happen when you kept telling people to grab their guns, the government was endangering their family and way of life and that they should defend themselves? This was going to happen. Don’t pretend otherwise.
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter
Sign-Up Now for the Opposing Views Daily Newsletter
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter
The Hickory Chair are Combination of Living Room Furniture,Dining RoomFurniture,Office Chairs,Desks,Patio Furniture.Dixie Seating Slat Seat Adult Chair Relax In Style . This Season The Slat Seat Adult Chair is a ladder chair that comes fully assembled and features hand-steam bent posts. This stylish chair is available in multiple finishes and offers ash, hickory and...Dixie Seating Slat Seat Adult Chair Relax In Style This Season The Slat Seat Adult Chair is a ladder chair that comes fully assembled and features hand-steam bent posts. Hickory Chair
The Armenian Genocide in Turkey, 1915-1918. It would have been "insurrectionist" and illegal to defend these Christian Turkish citizens against the Muslim government killing them with wild citizen approval.
From "Armenian Golgotha":
"It's wartime, and bullets are expensive. So [Muslim] people grabbed whatever they could from their villages -- axes, hatchets, scythes, sickles, clubs, hoes, pickaxes, shovels, -- and they did the killing accordingly."
After having been "invited to participate in this sacred religious obligation."
6,400 women and children massacred by their neighbors.
"The police soldiers in Yozgat and Boghazliyan ... would even boast to some of us how they had committed tortures and decapitations, cut off and chopped up body parts with axes, and how they had dismembered suckling infants and children by pulling apart their legs or dashing them on rocks."
Testimony of a Muslim Turk to an Armenian Christian man being taken to his own murder by government, so he saw no harm in giving details.
This is FASCINATING. The Supreme Court has ruled that police OUTSIDE a building can, if they suspect flushing or other destruction of evidence INSIDE, break and enter without a warrant. If they smell marijuana and then hear a toilet flush, CRASH is kosher.
How's your pucker factor NOW?
http://www.macon.com/2011/01/12/1407754/case-of-the-wrong-door-opens-at.html
No metaphors here.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/tucson-tea-party-chair-warned-to-stay-away-from-public-places /
In his speech at the Tucson memorial, Obama made much of the right to peaceably assemble in public. It's what Gongresswoman Giffords and her constituents were doing when they were attacked by a politically neutral maniac.
But that's beside the point. Rahm Emanuel says never to let a crisis go to waste.
Are you really Turkish? Oh, it's just an expression.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/can-we-get-someone-to-shoot-sarah-palin-twitter-users-call-for-palins-death /
http://michellemalkin.com/2011/01/10/the-progressive-climate-of-hate-an-illustrated-primer-2000-2010 /
Another metaphor, not actually referring to cooking utensils, okay?
You must have missed this example of a Democrat saying of a Republican "They ought to put him against a wall and shoot him." Then he says it again.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/01/ex-rep-paul-kanjorski-d-pa-fla-gov-rick-scott-they-ought-put-him -
Or Spike Lee calling for the death of Charlton Heston. Or rapper Sistah Souljah saying enough of blacks killing blacks, they should take a day off and kill some WHITE people.
Or a member of the New Black Panther party standing in the doorway of a voting precinct with a big hickory stick to discourage non-Obama voters... When asked why he had the club, he asked "Why do you have a camera?" The video is on YouTube.
If you want civility, BE CIVIL.
That's a metaphor. Heard of it? Metaphor. Simile. English usage in which one thing is used to refer to something else. You don't literally have a shovel in your hands out in the yard. It's a figure of speech. Ever used the phrase "the whole nine yards"? That's the amount of fabric in the average Scottish kilt, or the number of yardarms on a great sailing ship, meaning all sails are raised, full speed ahead. You weren't actually talking about FABRIC or a clipper ship, were you? "Lock, stock and barrel"? The three parts of a musket, meaning "everything," not only an 18th-century long gun.
If you are afraid of hunting and military metaphors in the speech of the professional whores we call politicians, then you are ripe for the enemy to sneak up and beat you to death with a sockful of sh--, as Gen. Patton said. Do you not understand that in the rest of the world, people who disagree with their government just disappear? Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has convinced his government to make him dictator for a year. They've had some natural disasters and the committee approach just isn't making it. One of his first acts was to outlaw dissent and disagreement with him on the Internet. You like that idea?
Conservatives and libertarians have not yet begun to use their voices or guns to defend their freedom. We didn't after the Ruby Ridge executions by FBI snipers and federal marshals of a teenage boy (shot in the back) and a woman holding her baby. We didn't after Waco, when 86 Americans died during government enforcement of a $200 gun registration tax. We WROTE LETTERS after Seung-hui Cho of Virginia Tech took advantage of a campus gun ban and state law to kill 32 classmates who obeyed the gun prohibition and could only line up for execution. We sighed when the following year at Tech police who responded within ONE MINUTE could not save a female student from being BEHEADED with a kitchen knife by an obsessed lunatic. Disarmed onlookers could do little.
We patiently surrender 30%, 50%, 60% of what we earn to the government that feels we are "domestic extremists" until we check out OK. We are not the ones ready and willing to sacrifice OTHER PEOPLE's essential rights to "ensure order." That's a reference to Nazism and communism and fascism.
Some of us recognize pseudoconservatives as just more acolytes of Leviathan. Bigger, more overbearing government, whether they call themselves a Bush Republican or a Clinton Democrat. We reject them.
As a libertarian, I'm pro-choice on everything. If more people were, we'd all be a lot happier. I disagree with conservatives on many issues because they too want to use the force of law to stick their noses into people's business that doesn't concern them, but I fear them a lot less than the Bradys and Bloombergs and Pelosis who consider verbal disagreement to be actionable violence and intolerable.
You owe it to yourself and your readers to visit conservative and libertarian sites and get some context. If we did not feel oppressed, we would not be thinking in terms of "our backs are against the wall."
Or do you LIKE drawn-gun raids on raw food co-ops because unpasteurized milk can make you sick? Unarmed grandfathers being shot dead in drug raids at the wrong house? Half of your inheritance being seized by the government merely because it's changing hands? Having the flow rate of your toilet mandated because it affects the environment , when YOU PAY for the water?
Loughner posted this: "I'm ready to kill a cop. I can say it."
He considered everyone "illiterate," he said. Stupid, inferior. Maybe not even human, just objects.
Your references to conservatives sound eerily familiar. At least you "ASSUME they are still human."
Seek professional help.