Peacenik has a feeling that the discussion about the attempted assassination of Gabriella Giffords won't have anything to do with the sentiment expressed in the above headline. Peacenik suspects that the media's frame will be that it would be mean to blame right wing rhetoric for inciting the shooter. Peacenik suspects the media will call for a mature bi-partisan response to the shooting. Right wingers are already saying it is McCarthyism to blame right wing rhetoric for the shooting. Expect the media to play along. The march to fascism continues.
It's too soon to say what motivated the man apprehended for the shooting. But the Tea Party culture of political intimidation affirmed his violent impulses.
January 8, 2011 |
Photo Credit: A.M. Stan
It's too soon to say what, exactly, motivated the man apprehended for the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and 18 others outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday. All we really know about Jared Lee Loughner, the 22-year-old alleged shooter, is that he is apparently a profoundly disturbed young man whose paranoia involves some indecipherable notions about the U.S. Constitution.
Some say Loughner regards himself as a leftist, others chart him on the right. But the screen shots of his (now deleted) MySpace page and the incomprehensible videos he posted on YouTube -- as well as another video he named a "favorite" that shows a masked, hooded figure burning an American flag to a soundtrack of a chant, "Let the bodies hit the floor" -- seem short on coherent ideology and long on violent impulse.
So to those who would like to attribute Loughner's actions to the Tea Party, I say, hold up; take a breath. But to those on the far right, and to the more mainstream right-wingers who fail to condemn the poisonous claims of the far right, I say, you're hardly off the hook.
