[Marxism] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == NY Times Op-Ed January 14, 2011 The Tucson Witch Hunt By CHARLES M. BLOW Tragedy in Tucson. Six Dead. Democratic congresswoman shot in the head at rally. Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost. The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric. Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right. “I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!” The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity. I have written about violent rhetoric before, and I’m convinced that it’s poisonous to our politics, that the preponderance of it comes from the right, and that it has the potential to manifest in massacres like the one in Tucson. But I also know that potential, possibility and even plausibility are not proof. The American people know it, too. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday, 42 percent of those asked said that political rhetoric was not a factor at all in the shooting, 22 percent said that it was a minor factor and 20 percent said that it was a major factor. Furthermore, most agreed that focusing on conservative rhetoric as a link in the shooting was “not a legitimate point but mostly an attempt to use the tragedy to make conservatives look bad.” And nearly an equal number of people said that Republicans, the Tea Party and Democrats had all “gone too far in using inflammatory language” to criticize their opponents. Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats. Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support. You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand. Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof. • I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chb...@nytimes.com. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == More with the tedious microsurgery on Loughner's social network Let's take a deep breath and a step or two back to see the big picture. Through the last two election cycles, people started carrying firearms to political rallies. Was this even imaginable after the assassinations in the 1960s? My question is how did carrying a gun to an event like this become acceptable. This wasn't the work of a lone schizophrenic. It wasn't the work of disturbed person to plaster these armed knuckleheads across the public communications grid, was it? I mean, the media bosses who made that choice raked in record profits turning their idea of the news into a particularly dramatic kind of reality TV. The political responsibility doesn't fall on the mentally ill. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Through the last two election cycles, people started carrying firearms to political rallies. Was this even imaginable after the assassinations in the 1960s? My question is how did carrying a gun to an event like this become acceptable. This wasn't the work of a lone schizophrenic. ML Those are questions worth pursuing but on a scale of 1 to 10, they rate about a 3. Later today I plan to write something about what is in store for the USA in the last 2 years of the Obama administration. Just as Dubya took advantage of 9/11 to launch a war against Iraq, Obama will try to use Tucson as a way to forge a government of national unity to press forward with the dismantling of what's left of the safety net. His radio address today should give some inkling of where he is going: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/15/weekly-address-president-obama-we-are-democrats-or-republicans-we-are-am While we cant escape our grief for those weve lost, we carry on now, mindful of those truths. We carry on because we have to. After all, this is still a time of great challenges for us to solve. Weve got to grow jobs faster, and forge a stronger, more competitive economy. Weve got to shore up our budget, and bring down our deficits. Weve got to keep our people safe, and see to it that the American Dream remains vibrant and alive for our children and grandchildren. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Good. You see what I'm raising as an issue, our difference is on the quantitative weight assigned it. The converse of this is the relative weight we accord the danger of an Obama administration drive to use Tucson as a means to concentrate more power. Usually, the government concentration of more power and the suspension of more human rights requires a foreign threat, so I doubt Tucson will be as marketable a justification as 9/11but I'll certainly be glad to consider your argument on it... ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Usually, the government concentration of more power and the suspension of more human rights requires a foreign threat, so I doubt Tucson will be as marketable a justification as 9/11but I'll certainly be glad to consider your argument on it... ML I didn't say that there will be a crackdown on human rights. I said that there would be an attack on the welfare state fundamentals, including social security and medicare. Obama is a very slick politician. That is why, unlike Paul Krugman, MSNBC and others, he is not stigmatizing the Republican right. Basically he is trying to unite with them against the American people. In order to push ahead with this alliance, he needs to blunt the attacks from the left--like Krugman on occasion, Bob Herbert and any other MSNBC host that has a grain of integrity. Not to speak of people like Bernie Sanders. So this civility and anti-hate speech mood works very much in his favor. Even though nobody could ever accuse Sanders of hate speech, you still have pressure on him and any other liberal Democrat to get behind the president, whatever the scoundrel has up his sleeve. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The Tucson witch-hunt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yeah but, witch-hunt? against whom, the likes of Sarah Palin? maybe I'm missing something here, but this could be interpreted as a salvo against politically correct leftists we see launched against progressives in academia from time to time regarding their New McCarthyism that came up say when Lawrence Summers was forced out of Harvard. Leaving that aside, and even if progressives did get carried away in the heat of the moment, it's hard to view the Tea Party types and their advocates as victims of their political opponents in this context given the volume and weight of malicious crap they spew out on a daily basis: Obama as Hitler, remember that one? I wouldn't wring my hands about these guys too much. If anything liberals and the left have been too timid, a typical response that puts them in the role of a bunch of chumps and losers, further embolding the right wing. I think Trotsky outlined these dynamics in Fascism: What it is and How to Fight it and Their Morals and Ours: instead of moralistic hand wringing the left needs to get tough back with these reactionaries. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
