What really drives me nuts in the wake of the Giffords shooting is the chorus of voices -- mostly on the right -- tut-tutting that "we can't jump to conclusions." As though they are the source of caution and reason and all things prudent and high-minded. Well, guess what: Your candidates are anything but. I don't really care whether Loughner is schizo, or what particular bits of tea party propaganda he swallowed or didn't. If you don't find the violent language of the right utterly repugnant, then it's a sign of how far we've drifted away from normalcy in this country.
As any anthropologist will tell you, human behavior doesn't happen in a vacuum; we live in a cultural stew, and by all accounts, that stew is a-bubblin'. Tom Tomorrow linked to a depressing timeline of armed insurrection in America just since 2008. Hint: it's long.
I don’t really care whether Loughner is schizo, or what particular bits of tea party propaganda he swallowed or didn’t.
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In other words, you aren’t interested in the facts because you already know the truth.
…and you don’t see why others urge folks like you not to “jump to conclusions”?
Really?
We now know that Loughner’s path to craziness bore left – Marx, Mein Kampf, videos on Youtube of him burning an American flag, school friends recalling him as leaning left politically (and yes, I know that there’s a right turn that leads off the playing board too).
Does that matter to you?
You know – the facts, the truth?
Will it now be valid for The Rest of Us to ask progressives to disassociate themselves from Lochner – tar you all with responsibility for his horrendous act?
Or will the episode be chucked down the memory hole now that progressives can’t spin it to their use?
Left? Did you actually see his list of favorite books. Here it is:
“We The Living” is, of course, the bible of the left as is Ayn Rand’s entire oeuvre. There’s also that notorious lefty fable, “Animal Farm.” The list of political writings on his list seem more like a sampling of the political spectrum than a reading list for a committed leftist or rightist. Nor, may I point out, is flag burning solely a trait of the far left. The far right does this as well.
Can you provide a link to any of his school friends claiming his politics were leftist? All the quotes I’ve read pointedly say that he wasn’t political. They say he was interested in philosophy not in politics.
Has the right been asked to disassociate themselves from Loughner? I missed that. The right has been asked to cut out the violent rhetoric, though.
Great post! I couldn’t agree more. I am sick and tired of people trying to shush me into silence whenever I try to analyze this or other traumatic event. I’m sorry but I am going to analyze, draw conclusions and opine. And those who think that the entire discourse around these events should be reduced to senseless clucking and hand-wringing have no right to try and prevent me from offering an actual analysis of what’s going on.
The more I think about it, the more dishonest I find Ben David’s comment. “Mein Kampf” is a leftist tract? Wow. Ignoring “Animal Farm,” “We the Living,” “The Republic?” Convenient. Claiming that the guy’s friends say that his politics slant left? An outright lie. Ignoring the point of the OP? Par for the course but, still, dishonest.
Stop it.
Loughner’s overwhelmingly obvious leftist roots .
/sarcasm
A friend of Loughner’s claims he was a leftist radical.
He was anti-war.
It’s not as if the left never uses violent rhetoric.
First of all, Kai, I’d be hesitant to use Atlas Shrugged as my source. Here’s a link to the actual interview:
Interview with Catie Parker
That’s some mighty strong inference from AS and other right wing sites. And to use the one line at 3:03 about “… that was the only thing to signal that maybe he was getting a little radical,” as evidence he was a leftist in the face of the many statements by classmates that he was not political is a little…. dishonest.
Secondly, anti-war isn’t exactly the sole province of the left nor is it evidence of being a leftist radical.
Third, “The other guys do it so STFU,” is pathetic.
Dishonest, dishonest, dishonest.
It really isn’t difficult to uncover a bald faced lie with google you know.
A friend of Loughner’s claims he was leftist… three or more years ago, when she knew him in high school before he dropped out.
High school is a time of notorious identity instability. It’s fairly typical for a teenager to be passionate about saving the earth at 14, passionate about gun rights at 16, and passionate about something else entirely at 18.
Late adolescence to late 20s is also the typical window for onset of schizophrenic symptoms. I cannot legally diagnose or treat someone whom I have not personally interviewed, but the transcripts of videos I’ve read strongly suggest the kind of loosening of associations, tangential and circumstantial speech, and paranoid ideations common to pre-schizophrenic or schizophrenic individuals.
Most of whom, of course, do not go buy guns and shoot people.
Both Tim Wise and this blogger make excellent points about how a poisoned culture can creep into the disturbed thinking of unwell people.
Do you have a link to that, Elusis? I haven’t seen a quote to that effect anywhere & the only link I’ve been given in support of that is the above-linked video which doesn’t say that at all. I’m just not finding anything credible to that effect. I do see people claiming that that is what Caitie Parker says, but watch the video. She has ample opportunity to say that but she never does.
Well, Jake, I’m not quoting an interview. I’m referring to her twitter feed, which is reproduced at that link. She says, for example, “As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy.” She also says “He was a pothead and into rock like Hendrix, The Doors, Anti-Flag.” And “He was a political radical …”
The link to violent leftist rhetoric was in response to Amp’s If you don’t find the violent language of the right utterly repugnant, then it’s a sign of how far we’ve drifted away from normalcy in this country. I believe the left’s rhetoric is also utterly repugnant.
If you’re going to call me dishonest, you’ll have to dig deeper. I thought namecalling was out of bounds here.
Caitie Parker’s tweets may be the source of that claim. It’s hard to take that claim too seriously since she seems to be all over the place in her descriptions. For example:
I guess that if you’re dead set on believing he was a radical leftist nothing’s gonna stop you, but this isn’t much in the way of evidence for that belief. It also seems to be the only evidence for that belief.
Funny how AS leaves out the libertarian tweet. If you’re going to reach, may as well be dishonest about it and skip the bits that don’t match your agenda, I guess.
Calling somebody out for being dishonest isn’t name calling. Labeling a strategy as “pathetic” isn’t name calling.
And now I’m calling you out from distracting from the issue of the dishonesty that the right wing in general and you in particular are guilty of.
That isn’t name calling, either.
Let me make it clear that I don’t know if the guy was a radical leftist, a radical rightist or somebody with no clear idea of politics. What I do know is that there is some evidence that his writing was influenced by the fringe right, a lot of evidence that he was influenced by conspiracy nuts, a lot of statements from former friends that he wasn’t political and a couple of statements by one former friend that he was, as best I can parse her tweets, something of a left libertarian in her view.
If you want to make unsupportable claims that he is a radical leftist I am going to call you out on it as dishonest.
1. Jen, not Amp.
2. I think there’s a difference between random people on internet boards saying violent things — which is inevitable on the edges of any large, passionate movement, left or right — and similar rhetoric coming from the movement’s leaders, people like Glen Beck, or elected congresspeople. It’s obviously a fool’s errand to call on 100% of all human beings to keep their rhetoric responsible. It isn’t, or shouldn’t be, too much to ask that millionaire radio hosts and elected national politicians do the same thing.
3. The examples of violence were pretty pathetic. For instance, one example was a pro-prop-8 manager of a musical theater company, who resigned his position after some major writers of musicals said they wouldn’t work with him. In what universe is “I’m not going to let that person produce my musical” a violent threat?
I can’t see any political consistency in Loughner’s “favorite books” list at all. It’s all over the map. Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto and Animal Farm. Ayn Rand and To Kill a Mockingbird. Does this really say ‘right’ or ‘left’ to anyone?
I tend to agree with Sady at Tiger Beatdown, though, that what Loughner’s “favorite books” list does suggest about him is that, whatever his political beliefs, he was also kinda stupid.
(From here. Be warned: the rest of this post definitely falls into the “Sarah Palin: Mass Murderer” category, so if that position bugs or offends or disturbs you, or raises your blood pressure, or whatever, then this post is definitely best put on your Do Not Read list.)
That was pretty much my interpretation of the reading list as well. It’s the “favorite books” list of someone who wants you to think that he’s smart, but who probably doesn’t read very much on his own initiative at all.
Jake – as pointed out by others, I was referencing the Twitter feed. And yes, it’s vague, it’s all over the map, and she makes it clear that she’s talking about how the guy was 3+ years ago. Like I say, passions in adolescence and young adulthood can change rapidly, depending on your identity development, your peer group, etc. I would not for a minute assume that someone’s political beliefs at 17 or 18 would be identical to their beliefs at 21 or 22, even without the obvious mental health deterioration that apparently began somewhere along that timeline in this case.
The rhetoric that offended me most today was a bit I caught from CNN while waiting for a flight to take off. They got the local Democratic leader, local Republican leader, and local Tea Party leader together to talk. Democrat says “we’ve got to tone the rhetoric down, Palin’s crosshairs map, vandalism at her office, etc.” Republican says “well, we’d like to see the rhetoric turned down, but then you guys start with the finger pointing…”
Obviously this is not a verbatim quote. But the implication was clear. His argument more or less boiled down to “it’s not our fault that we keep using these violent metaphors – you guys make us do it because you keep blaming us!” It was obvious that he was trying to make Republicans out to be the victims of those mean, mean Democrats.
Which is hardly a new tactic – the Republicans have mastered this approach to the point that they are more effective at crying “racist” when a person of color tries to talk about race, than POC are at raising racism as an issue themselves. But it was particularly sickening to see a Republican (and his Tea Party counterpart, who said much the same thing) try to make themselves the victims in this narrative. I had to unplug my headphones after a minute because it was giving me cramps.
Don’t forget Mein Kampf, Jake! That Mister Hitler was such a pinko! I…wait, what?
And people wonder why they say that satire is dead.
(Elkins, did you miss the whole Liberal Fascism thing? Because I mean everyone knows now that Hitler was a leftist. It’s taught in schools and everything.)
(Kip, I haven’t been paying much attention to political discourse the past year or so. I guess I must have just missed Hitler becoming a leftist. ‘Course, now I’m beginning to remember exactly why I decided to stop paying much attention to political discourse…)
(It just shows how inadequate our public education system has been for at least 4 decades. Teaching that fascism is right wing? For going on 7 decades? Total suck.)
Amp:
It’s obviously a fool’s errand to call on 100% of all human beings to keep their rhetoric responsible. It isn’t, or shouldn’t be, too much to ask that millionaire radio hosts and elected national politicians do the same thing.
Unfortunately, in many cases the use of irresponsible rhetoric made that radio host a millionaire and helped that politician get elected. For them it’s not a bug – it’s a feature.
I’m minded of my reaction to Princess Diana’s death. Many wanted to blame the paparazzi who chased their limo until the driver crashed it into a pillar. My thinking was that if people wanted to see who was responsible, every person who picked up a newspaper or tuned into a TV program because her comings and goings were featured on it should look in a mirror. The kind of rhetoric we deplore will continue to play a featured role in American politics as long as it gets votes and makes people money.
Seems to me that the voices on the right saying “We can’t jump to conclusions” are only echoing the left when they say “We can’t jump to conclusions” when, for example, an Islamic U.S. Army Major starts shooting people at a military base.
There’s been plenty of violent imagery from leftists over the past few years, especially when a Republican is in the White House. A Democrat put Republican J.D. Hayworth’s actual face in crosshairs (:08 – :10), which seems a lot more direct than crosshairs on a map. And the Democratic equivalent of the Republican map used bulleyes and the words “target” and “enemy lines”.
So why is it that the Republican crosshairs are featured in the news cycle but the Democratic bullseyes aren’t? How is it that putting crosshairs on a map – and just on a State in that map, not even a particular district – is inciting to violence but the news cycle doesn’t mention putting a person’s face in them? Which do you think is more likely to incite someone to violence?
Then there’s then-Sen. Obama’s campaign speech in Philadelphia analogizing political discourse with the Republicans to a knife fight, saying “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” Sounds pretty violent to me.
That doesn’t justify violent rhetoric from the right. But it sure shows that they are not the only ones employing it, which you might otherwise think by reading a lot of leftist commentary.
RonF @22, I keep hearing this echo that people “on the left” are vaguely excusing the actions of Nidal Hasan. What “conclusions” are those danged liberals cautioning against? Perhaps the conclusion that all Muslims would do the same and agree with him? Yes, that’s a bit like concluding that every single Republican thought Sharron Angle had the right idea, isn’t it.