Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Tom Cod
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I thought I saw him in a mirror years ago babbling incoherent garbage about
"pabloite revisionism".  He's better now, seriously.

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 2:03 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

>
> Cod, you apparently don't have any close relatives who suffered from
> schizophrenia.



>
>

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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Tom Cod
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for what it's worth, I was disagreeing with Mailer, not echoing him, a point
I made to him in person from the audience at a personal appearance he had in
Sacramento in Feb 07 before he died:  Hitler was not a lone nut but like
fascism a product of the capitalist system. To the extent he had mental
problems they were those that thousands of veterans of the trenches of the
Great War had, not being the product of some mysterious forces.  Mailer
demurred, saying he thought part of it was a product of "supernatural"
forces of evil at work, the theme of his book being that Hitler was the
spawn of Satan.


> On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 1:34 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:
>
>
>
>> Cod, aren't you aware that schizophrenia is a mental illness? Don't you
>> understand that Hitler was completely sane even though he was a mass
>> murderer? If you want to understand the difference between sanity and
>> insanity, you should check the Physicians Handbook, not Norman Mailer.a
>>
>>
>>

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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Louis Proyect
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> gee, I thought that's was what I was saying? although now that I think
> about
> it, Hitler could have had mental problems and been a serious political
> actor
> at the same time, like Nixon was.

Cod, you apparently don't have any close relatives who suffered from
schizophrenia. Schizophrenics are extremely disabled and are fortunate
enough to hold down only the most menial jobs. The overwhelming majority,
however, are on permanent disability. Watch this to understand the
disease:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moP_e-gx5hk



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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Greg McDonald
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On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 4:52 PM, Tom Cod  wrote:

  I mean Palin's going hey, this is about some
 pathetic criminal nut and had nothing to do with the likes of me.  Bullshit.


I think she's right, but that doesn't mean she's not also a narcissist
and sociopath totally lacking in empathy.

Greg


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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Tom Cod
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gee, I thought that's was what I was saying? although now that I think about
it, Hitler could have had mental problems and been a serious political actor
at the same time, like Nixon was.  Moreover, while the Arizona guy surely is
crazy, his particular psyche is conditioned by a certain political and
social context that makes him an extreme example of a certain political type
which is what I think is being said by others here.  Thus all the right wing
vitriol IS part of what's behind this event, not just some medical condition
that sprang out of nowhere.  I mean Palin's going hey, this is about some
pathetic criminal nut and had nothing to do with the likes of me.  Bullshit.

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 1:34 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:



> Cod, aren't you aware that schizophrenia is a mental illness? Don't you
> understand that Hitler was completely sane even though he was a mass
> murderer? If you want to understand the difference between sanity and
> insanity, you should check the Physicians Handbook, not Norman Mailer.a
>
>
>

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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Richard Seymour
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On 12/01/2011 16:58, James Holstun wrote:

> By recognizing the reality of mental illness, one is not “paying
> tribute to the neoliberal cult of individual responsibility.” It’s 
> just a basic materialist observation that mental illness is a real 
> thing, apart from ideology, which occurs in particular ideological
> contexts. If you don’t leave actual mental illness there as a possibility,
> you’re heading off into early Foucault or Deleuze-and-Guattari land,
> with contradictory claims that mental illness is an effect of discourse,
> or some primal revolutionary phenomenon outside of all discourse. 

But there is no dispute that mental illness really exists, or even that
Jared Lee Loughner probably suffered from some form of it.  No one,
certainly not I, has suggested that mental illness is an effect of
discourse.  Nor did I say that to recognise the reality of mental
illness is to succumb to neoliberal ideology.  The
Foucault-Deleuze-Guatarri bogeyman is a sock puppet of your own
manufacture.  If you recall - and I direct you to the passage from which
you quoted - what I said was that to foreclose analysis of wider social
and political contexts and reduce the issue to one lone nut, was to pay
tribute to "the neoliberal cult of individual responsibility".  This is
exactly what Louis Proyect, with whom you say you agree, has done here.


> Nor is it “psychologizing” mass murder to say that some instances 
> of it have immediate political motivations and consequences, and 
> some do not.

Yet again, this is not what was at issue.  The context in which I
mentioned psychologism was the reduction of reactionary political
paranoia to a specimen of pathology, its subtraction from the political
field.  I understand Jared Lee Loughner's outlook to have included a
certain kind of right-wing conspiracism.  Allow that some of the reports
about his views on federalist laws, fiat currencies, abortion, the New
World Order and mind control at least suggest this.  That being the
case, the rush to dismiss all these elements of Loughner's purview is
unseemly, and does risk collapsing into psychologism - even if it is
motivated in the first instance by an exaggerated fear of being coopted
by the Democrats.

> Nor is it “medicalizing” the problem to talk about the collapse of mental
> health services in the US in general, Arizona in particular

If you'll recall, you said that the "reasons why" were "material" rather
than "ideological".  Your elaboration of those "reasons why" touched on
the issues of weapons, and mental health services.  This seemed to be
you offering an explanation for "why" the murders and attempted
assassination took place.  So while I accept that the provision of
medical services is relevant, what I described as 'medicalizing' the
problem was the attempt to explain what happened basically in terms of
the man's mental distress, and the failure of the state to adequately
care for him.  In truth, I also think the dichotomy of 'material' vs
'ideological' is more than a little problematic for a marxist
perspective - as if ideology is anything other than a material process
in its own right.  Which is to say that the your reasoning in this case
relies on a dualism that I don't believe you really cleave to.

> I think Michael Moore got it wrong in Bowling
> for Columbine. Canada may have similar levels of gun ownership—primarily long 
> guns,
> not including assault rifles—but it does not allow deranged people to buy
> and conceal pistols, particular not Glock 19s with extended clips (30+ shots):

I'm not entirely convinced that this is a telling rebuttal.  Allowing
that this makes a real difference (and hence I support gun controls), it
would still seem that if a person was so motivated, s/he could get hold
of a gun sufficient to kill many people.  I think the truth is that the
US has more people who are motivated to kill than most other societies.


> We still don’t have a very good idea of how political Loughner’s
> motivation was: his video of the American flag burning in the desert doesn’t
> seem very Tea Partyish to me, for one thing. 

Perhaps.  This is not a straightforward case.  There are, however, signs
that Loughner was influenced by reactionary ideology, and the rush to
declare consideration of the political context out of bounds is coming
from the Right.  Unfortunately, this baton is being picked up by some on
the Left for not-very-good reasons.  My agenda here is to keep the case
open, and to keep the wider issues in view, because it is wholly
plausible that the barbarism of the American Right would create the
enabling context for murders like this to take place.  And they should
be answerable for that.

> But that’s not the same thing as saying all killers are motivated primarily
> b

Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Tom Cod
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Why is that "ridiculous" and what basis is there for concluding he and
others who knew him are not credible or have some hidden agenda? While not
admissible in court, these observations can give some insight into this
person unless one is a doctrinaire ideologue who already has all the answers
in advance.



> Of what value is this ridiculous heresay from someone who 'claims' to be
> his
> friend, although I find it curious that his question is straight out of V
> for Vendetta.

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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Louis Proyect
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> Some interesting letters to the NY Times, contesting an article by the
> conservative scum bag David Brooks, who suggests that Loughner's
> rampage had nothing to do with politics:
>
> January 11, 2011
>

Well, this is also the viewpoint of the psychiatrist who was interviewed
by Salon.com. Let me repeat what he said:

Q: We've heard a lot of debate about how heated political rhetoric
might have led to this. What do you think about that?

A: I think it's a red herring. We have seen these kinds of things in
periods with relative peace in the political environment, we've seen
it in turbulent times. I think it's unrelated, frankly.

The only reason we're talking about this today is that he killed six
people rather than one person and that one of the people he shot is a
congresswoman. These are not uncommon events. People like this man,
with likely untreated schizophrenia, are responsible for about 10
percent of the homicides in the United States. That means about 1,600
homicides a year.



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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Jeff Goodwin
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Some interesting letters to the NY Times, contesting an article by the
conservative scum bag David Brooks, who suggests that Loughner's
rampage had nothing to do with politics:

January 11, 2011

To the Editor:

I disagree with the narrow way that David Brooks presents the Arizona
shootings in “The Politicized Mind” (column, Jan. 11).

The suspect, Jared L. Loughner, seems to be a disturbed individual,
but all societies have mentally unstable citizens, and yet the United
States has a high rate of these killing sprees; Columbine, Fort Hood
and Virginia Tech come to mind. These mass killings do not happen with
such frequency in any other developed country. There must be unique
contributing factors beyond the mere presence of mentally ill members
in American society.

I can think of at least three:
¶The easy, unfettered access to guns.
¶The difficulty of obtaining health care for the mentally ill.
¶The toxic and inflammatory political rhetoric in this country.

It is incredible to me that it is easier to buy a semiautomatic pistol
than to operate a car in the United States. There is great irony that
Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s support for the law to provide
health care for more Americans like Mr. Loughner inspired vitriolic
opposition. All societies have their share of Loughners, but only the
United States has the unique environment and lack of support systems
that cause them to act out at a higher rate and with such devastating
consequences.

Chris Librie
Racine, Wis., Jan. 11, 2011


To the Editor:

I take exception to David Brooks’s efforts to separate the climate of
political hate from the shooting rampage in Tucson. If Jared L.
Loughner had staged his rampage at his workplace, or in his
neighborhood or in some other place devoid of political implications,
Mr. Brooks would be right — another senseless mass killing by a man in
need of treatment in a country in need of better gun control.

But Mr. Loughner was not, as Mr. Brooks contends, “locked in a world
far removed from politics as we normally understand it.” Mr. Loughner,
even if mentally disturbed, chose his venue — a political gathering —
and chose his victim, a Democratic congresswoman.

Furthermore, he made these choices in an atmosphere fired by hate
speech, much of it explicitly directed at Democrats. Mr. Brooks is
correct that we don’t know whether the Tea Party or Sarah Palin’s
targeting of Gabrielle Giffords using cross hairs played any explicit
role in influencing Mr. Loughner’s choice of victim, but his heinous
act, however irrational, was inescapably political.

Mary-Lou Weisman
Westport, Conn., Jan. 11, 2011


To the Editor:

The explanation on your opinion pages for the Tucson shooting seems to
divide along liberal and conservative lines. While liberal columnists
like Paul Krugman (“Climate of Hate,” Jan. 10) emphasize the current
political environment that they contend encourages outrage and
violence, conservatives, like David Brooks, point out that the suspect
is mentally ill and answers mainly to the voices in his own head. Both
offer interpretations that confirm their and their readers’ worldview.

Is it not possible that they are both correct?

Edward Abrahams
Bala Cynwyd, Pa., Jan. 11, 2011


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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Louis Proyect
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Richard Seymour:
> Lastly, just to get the record straight, you do *not* avoid commenting
> on the internal politics of other countries at all costs.

Well, you can check my blog and you will find absolutely nothing on the
British elections. I have no business telling British leftists how to
vote. But you will certainly find me sticking my nose into how the British
left *organizes* itself. My views on this matter are totally detached from
politics as such. I advocate a break with sectarianism whatever the month
or year.



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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Louis Proyect
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Richard Seymour:
> It does matter, actually.  This 'rhetoric' is part of the political
> mobilization of business-based groups to prevent the Democratic base
> from achieving moderately social democratic policies like decent
> healthcare, etc.  Forcing the Right into retreat would leave the Left in
> a better place to apply pressure to the administration, which is
> otherwise going to come exclusively from the Right.  Frankly, you're
> missing a huge open goal here: this should be the end of the Tea Party
> as a mainstream political movement.  They should be finished, and the
> Left should be chucking dirt on the grave.

How depressing to read this. It is obviously Richard's attempt to
superimpose his party's turn toward Labour on the American political
landscape. That is why I try to avoid commenting on the internal politics
of other countries at all costs. Of course, Richard should feel free to
dispense advice from afar.



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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Richard Seymour
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On 12/01/2011 13:24, Louis Proyect wrote:
> Because the ulterior motive is to stigmatize "extremism". This morning I
> am watching MSNBC news hosted by a former Republican Congressman named Joe
> Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (Zbigniew's daughter) and all they are
> talking about is the need to ratchet down the rhetoric on both the left
> and the right.

I realise this is your fear, but it is misplaced.  The Left does not
engage in 'extremism' of this kind.  The fact that it's being presented
by the media in this way is a predictable effort at obfuscation, which
we should not buy into.  We have nothing to be afraid of.  The Left is
not doing anything remotely equivalent or analogous to what the
Palinites and the Tea Partiers are doing, and we should be saying so,
and telling the Jon Stewarts of this world to fuck off.

>  It doesn't matter if the rightwing ratchets down its
> rhetoric. They have a surrogate in Obama who is carrying out their agenda.

It does matter, actually.  This 'rhetoric' is part of the political
mobilization of business-based groups to prevent the Democratic base
from achieving moderately social democratic policies like decent
healthcare, etc.  Forcing the Right into retreat would leave the Left in
a better place to apply pressure to the administration, which is
otherwise going to come exclusively from the Right.  Frankly, you're
missing a huge open goal here: this should be the end of the Tea Party
as a mainstream political movement.  They should be finished, and the
Left should be chucking dirt on the grave.

The argument that there's essentially no difference between the
Palinites and the Democrats, that the Dems are basically surrogates for
the Palinites, is also mistaken at best.  There are differences, not
merely those within the spectrum of pro-capitalist policymaking, but
also in terms of the base they each relate to.  Those differences do not
make the Democrats allies of the Left or the working class, but they
should shape how the Left responds.

> Also, I take strong exception to Richard referring to "any protection for
> immigrants" as if this has something to do with the Obama administration.
> In fact, more undocumented workers are being thrown out of the country
> than under Bush.

Indeed, the capitalist crisis is driving the state to ramp up repression
and racism against immigrants.  There are some sections of capital who
want to go harder than others, and they're backing the Tea Party
reactionaries.  The Dems aren't giving the Tea Party everything they
want.  Giffords was specifically targeted on this issue, despite being a
fairly mundane conservative Democrat.  So, the point here would be that
the Tea Party wishes to treat as communist totalitarianism any position
that isn't as completely brutal as theirs.  But all this was obvious in
what I said, which makes it all the more mysterious what you're taking
"strong exception to".

To return to the issue motivating your stance, I think you should
reconsider the idea that left-wing 'extremism' (whatever that is) is
remotely comparable in any conceivable, arguable way to the racist,
near-fascistic demagoguery of the Republican Right - in terms of
viciousness, violence, or the social powers ranged behind it.

-- 
*Richard Seymour*

Writer, blogger and PhD candidate

Email: leninstombb...@googlemail.com

Website: http://www.leninology.blogspot.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/leninology

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Seymour_(writer)

Book 1: http://www.versobooks.com/books/307-the-liberal-defence-of-murder

Book 2:
http://www.zero-books.net/obookssite/book/detail/1107/The-Meaning-of-David-Cameron


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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-12 Thread Richard Seymour
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On 12/01/2011 00:08, James Holstun wrote:
> Agree with Lou. The reasons why are not immediately ideological, but material:

Well, the poor messed up guy does appear to have had ideological
purposes, among them hostility to the federal government, to fiat
currency, to abortion, and to the 'New World Order'.  All of this was
bundled together into some sort of paranoid conspiracy theory about
government mind control.  Such is what has been reported, and this is
unmistakeably the stuff of the lunatic far Right.  The social and
political context of ruling class barbarism, and particularly the
deliberate cultivation of punitive resentment and paranoid irrationalism
on the Right, shouldn't simply be discounted as a factor here.  The
context has already, arguably, contributed to more than a few 'isolated
incidents':
 
In my opinion, any position which seeks to foreclose this kind of wider
social analysis in favour of reducing it to one man's pathology is
paying tribute to the neoliberal cult of "individual responsibility".

The gun issue is relevant, but Michael Moore raised a perfectly good
point about this in Bowling for Columbine: lots of countries allow
widespread gun ownership, but only in the US does this provide fodder
for regular massacres.  I think he rightly attributes this to a mixture
of racism, imperialist culture and the terrible stress that, eg, kids
are put through in schools as part of the competitive culture of the
US.  Mark Ames draws this out more pointedly.  If you want to understand
someone going postal, don't look for an individual profile, he says:
there is none.  Look at where he works, or is educated.  Socialization
is the issue here.  Sure, restrict access to guns - I'm all for it.  But
in all likelihood those who are motivated enough to want guns would
still be able to get hold of them.

As regards healthcare, this seems to simply medicalize the problem
rather than addressing its cause.  Yes, perhaps the state could spend
more on a good, pro-active mental health system (or, so much the better
for the neoliberal state, just lock people up when they show signs of
mental distress), and it would sweep up a few of the people who are
obviously dangerous.  Yet it would require a highly repressive and
intrusive system to catch every dangerous person before they do
something dangerous.  Not everyone who is mentally ill is obviously so,
and not everyone who is mentally ill is dangerous.  And even if every
dangerous person was fully pre-diagnosed and detained, the problem would
only have been contained, not addressed.

If we want to address the issue properly, we probably have to do some
thinking about how right-wing political paranoia and conspiracism
works.  And here it would help if we didn't relapse into
Hofstadter-style psychologisms, wherein such derangement is simply
substracted from the political field proper and subsumed into a category
of social psychology. 

A marxist approach, I think, would see the rise of such reactionary
ideology as being bound up with neoliberal praxis.  The destruction of
welfare and trade unionism, the unleashing of market forces, the rise of
a penal policy designed to cope with the social fall-out, have all been
accompanied by a stress on 'individual responsibility' and a punitive,
resentful political culture in which the ills of the wider society are
projected onto an Othered minority - welfare queens, gays, uppity women,
lazy bums, and so on. 

The crisis of neoliberal accumulation has now seen the Right escalate
this punitive zeal, blaming poor people and African Americans for
causing the crisis by borrowing ineptly.  They have been demanding (and
getting) tyrannical anti-immigrant laws.  They have been calling for the
'voluntary' imprisonment of the poor - as when real estate magnate Carl
Paladino pledged to put welfare recipients in prison dorms where they
would work in state-sponsored jobs and get hygeine lessons.  In the
context of the 2008 election, they engaged in the most vicious
race-baiting and screamed socialism over the most moderate proposals of
the Obama campaign.  Since then they've been escalating further still -
their opponents are like Nazis, totalitarians, the president is a
foreign interloper with an agenda of tyranny. 

And now they've successfully mobilised a movement of petit bourgeois
bigots to do the footwork.  They've done all this with considerable
resources, availed to them by business supporters and by the far right
segments of the corporate media.  This is all to protect the profits of
the rich.  Given all this, millions of people are in the position of
believing things, and wanting to act on things, that would make armed
insurgency seem like 

Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-11 Thread Mark Lause
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James Holstun  wrote:

>
> Agree with Lou. The reasons why are not immediately ideological, but
> material:
>
>
If there were any more straw men introduced into this argument, we could
rent them to do half-time shows

ML

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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-11 Thread James Holstun
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Agree with Lou. The reasons why are not immediately ideological, but material:

1. Because the capitalist gun lobby in the U.S. is as well organized as the 
Israel Lobby and the anti-tax lobby (a.k.a., "American capitalism in its 
Republican and Democratic wings"). It's staggering to notice how infrequently 
the words "gun control" have been mentioned in the MSM and by congresspeople. 
For the same reason, we never hear "Gaza Massacre" or "genuinely progressive 
income tax" from the same mouths. To take a stand is to assure that your 
opponent in the next election will have a shitload of pro-massacre (Tucson or 
Gaza) or anti-tax money.

2. Because American capitalism continues to privatize health care, including 
mental health care, with great efficiency.

It's been worrying to hear all the talk about the necessity for a "culture of 
civility," etc. One of the results will be that Sarah Palin's star will fade, 
while some more polite and civil pal of the surplus extractors will take her 
place.

Of course, if Loughner had been a crazy-ass Muslim or ex-Muslim, the rhetoric 
would be markedly different.











  

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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-11 Thread Louis Proyect
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> Let's be honest, Louis, you don't know anything.  About this, I mean.
> You don't know the difference between Malcolm X and the Tea Party, and
> you damned sure don't know why Jared Lee Loughner attempted the
> assassination of Gifford (as well as killing numerous others).  Your
> strategy so far is to latch on to any bit of gossip that will enable you
> to write it off as a simple case of a man gone bad, ignore everything
> else of relevance.

What gossip are you talking about? That the school demanded that he be
examined by a psychiatrist? Or that his causus belli with Giffords was her
inability to answer the question about "the power of words" to his
satisfaction?

Let's put it this way. These types of incidents are endemic to American
society. We live in a very violent state that is permanently at war. When
people "go postal", it is a reflection of the society that they are living
in undoubtedly. Someone like Loughner could easily have killed his
classmates at Pima Community College rather than Giffords and the people
standing on line to talk to her. He was psychotic but also reflected the
broader social forces that surrounded him, as I stated in my article. This
obsession with the Tea Party is something that is off the mark in my view,
although understandable. However, we are not dealing with the kind of
cause-and-effect that existed in the "right to life" movement and abortion
doctors being assassinated. Loughner's reading list, his Youtube videos,
the reactions that classmates and teachers had to him indicate that we
were dealing with someone like John Hinckley, not Timothy McVeigh. I know
that I have made these points before but will make them this one last
time.

>
> It's a good book, well written, thoroughly researched, and far more
> incisive than most of the bullshit that you get about these killings -
> whether from it's emanating from the perspective of reactionary moralism
> or liberal individualism.  You should perhaps read it instead of
> simmering with resentment.  Eh?  Chin up, there's a chap.

Simmering resentment? Detached amusement is more like it.





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Re: [Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-11 Thread dave x
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>
> Richard Seymour wrote:
>
> Let's be honest, Louis, you don't know anything.  About this, I mean.
> You don't know the difference between Malcolm X and the Tea Party, and
> you damned sure don't know why Jared Lee Loughner attempted the
> assassination of Gifford (as well as killing numerous others).  Your
> strategy so far is to latch on to any bit of gossip that will enable you
> to write it off as a simple case of a man gone bad, ignore everything
> else of relevance.  This stridency does not, you may be interested to
> know, convey confidence in your understanding of matters, any more than
> the retreat to non-sequiturs does.
>
>
I can think of various I might criticize LP for but confusing Malcolm X with
the Tea Party is not one of them.  RS's baiting, demagogic style in this
argument does him no favors. It is RS who has failed to produce solid
evidence that Loughner was a racist Tea Party murderer and not a simply a
very mentally ill man as an examination of what evidence does exist shows
him to be. Worse it appears that the evidence does not matter much to RS.
There are indeed real dangers from the racist right in the US, particularly
as we lurch ever deeper into crisis, but these dangers are not served by
adding to the already ample supply of demagoguery and fantasy. Unless
perhaps Loughner, in his schizophrenic delusion, was actually right and
words 'have no meaning' anymore.

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[Marxism] Why Loughner shot Giffords

2011-01-11 Thread Louis Proyect
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Tierney, who's also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords
event he attended during that period. He's unsure whether it was the
same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner "might have gone to some
other rallies," he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment
for Loughner: "He told me that she opened up the floor for questions
and he asked a question. The question was, 'What is government if
words have no meaning?'"

"He said, 'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question.' Ever
since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her."

Giffords' answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy Loughner. "He said,
'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question,' and I told
him, 'Dude, no one's going to answer that,'" Tierney recalls. "Ever
since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her."

full: 
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message?page=1


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