--- In [email protected], "authfriend" <jst...@...> wrote: > > It's only natural for Palin's map with gunsight crosshairs > targeting Giffords to leap to mind when Giffords was shot. > That's what leaped to *Palin's* mind, for pete's sake; > that's why she immediately took down the graphic. > > Tea Party types, especially in Arizona, have been > increasingly using violent rhetoric against those who > disagree with them. Again, it's only natural for that > fact to leap to mind when a congresscritter who > opposes Arizona's anti-immigrant law is shot. > > But obviously we don't have enough information yet to > know whether there was any connection. It turns out the > guy is a nutcase who apparently had no particular > partisan axe to grind, so he most likely wasn't trying > to further a political cause by shooting her (and 17 > other people, killing six of them). > > HOWEVER, loose talk about solving problems with guns > that's sort of "in the air" can affect disturbed people > regardless of whether they have specific political goals. > > It's entirely possible, in other words, to criticize the > Tea Party rhetoric on an occasion like this without > necessarily painting the shooter as a Tea Partier. >
Exactly. Loughner wasn't a Tea Partier but talk of solving problems with guns might have set him off. Ideologues on the right are delighted that on his YouTube profile Loughner said that one of his favorite books was the Communist Manifesto. They're using this to make the case that Loughner was a lefty. They're desperately scrambling to shield the Tea Party and Palin from blame, hoping that a lefty Loughner will absolve them from having embraced inflammatory rhetoric, possibly responsible for Giffords' shooting. Meanwhile they're madly scrubbing websites of anything that might be interpreted as targeting Giffords in the cross-hairs of a rifle. After-the-fact scrubbing sure makes them look like they own it. http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/01/shooter-jarod-laughner/ Giffords has been a target of violent threats from the right wing since the HCR vote last summer. Can the shooting of Giffords and others be put into the context of Loughner having been encouraged by a violent political climate? I believe so. Violent imagery and rhetoric is frequently a loaded gun for people with mental illness. Right wingers deny responsibility for inciting violence. Anti-abortion supporters deny responsibility for the shooting Dr. George Tiller. Pornography apologists deny they contribute to sexual assault or degradation of women. If you incite violence, you own a role in it. It's not the cause of Loughner's mental illness, but it establishes violence as a potentially heroic act. Loughner is crazy, not stupid. He sees himself as a hero dispensing justice, just as Tea Partiers see Sarah Palin as a hero when she puts Giffords in the cross hairs of a rifle.
