Shortly after November's electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews's TV show and remarked that what President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to Saturday's tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner's killing spree might fill the bill.It's either/or for the progressives, but RTWT.
With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's words, a "climate of hate."
The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant. Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—"lock and load"—and talked about "targeting" opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics. Palin critic Markos Moulitsas, on his Daily Kos blog, had even included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's district on a list of congressional districts "bullseyed" for primary challenges. When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama's famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"—it's just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.
There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source ....
To paraphrase Justice Cardozo ("proof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do"), there is no such thing as responsibility in the air. Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on "rhetoric" and a "climate of hate" to obscure their own dishonesty in trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty remains.
To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?
BooMan responds, for example, repeating the same old line that Loughner was most likely clinically deranged, but it's the rights fault anyway, or it's the right's fault that they're getting blamed, false or not. Got that? Freakin' asshat.
PREVIOUSLY: "Jared Loughner Fixated on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Attended 'Congress On Your Corner' Event in 2007."
And the Megyn Kelly clip is available here as well, in case this one gets pulled down before I'm back online tomorrow morning.
RELATED: Doug Ross, "Which Democrats objected to the use of mass murder as a vehicle for disseminating propaganda?", and "Breaking: Sarah Palin responsible for mass bird kills, genocide in the Sudan, and AT&T's loss of exclusive rights to the iPhone."
Plus, at Gay Patriot, "Why no theories of left-wing responsibility for Reagan’s shooting?", and The Rhetorican, "Alinsky: Original Sin In the Glass House of Eden."
Laughner's posts on YouTube say he was having a mental break.
ReplyDeleteOnce you understand that the fault for speech disappears.
The cause of his mental problem may never be known. But there is a simple explanation that might be the cause.
Forty years ago designers accidentally found a feature of human physiology that caused mental breaks for office workers. The cubicle was designed to deal with it by 1968.
Today home computer users can create the "special circumstances" for Subliminal Distraction exposure and have this mental event.
The Virginia Tech, Jokela Finland, Redlake School, and Atlanta Day Trader killers all created the problem.
VisionAndPsychosis.Net is an eight year investigation of it.
As usual this is already backfiring for the Left. I still posit that it took very little time for those who are pushing Left ideas to find the propensities of this individual. When most of the people who know him intimated that he is a "Radical Left Wing Pothead" they would have known early on that this was not going to go well in the long run. A "Google" of UTUBE would have also provided more information as to his leanings. This would have taken maybe 5 minutes to ascertain.
ReplyDeleteThe "fever swamp" of the Left being the useful "mind numbed" robots that they are would not have considered taking the time to ascertain the facts. NOTE:Some of your commenter s jumped right to the conclusion that it was Sarah Palin, TEA party, et al fault. No crises should go unused is part of their mantra so they jumped in with both feet while the leadership demurred.
Once those in leadership positions created this climate for hate and libel they are wont to stop the ground troops even if they desired.
As much of a disaster as I think "hate speech" laws would been the Left would be the first ones prosecuted because they have such a rich history of perpetrating these things.
If they were smart they would have just left it as a disturbed young man, a paranoid schizophrenic and not some plot by the those who disagree with them. But to expect the Left to extrapolate the possible outcome from the actions they take is just a bit too much. Without Hate the Left cannot exist.
For a group that prides itself as tough & liberal to be wimps I just read a post by a god damned conservative crybaby.
ReplyDelete"Second Amendment solutions?" "lock and load?" "Targets?" If you had called for all retarded rhetoric to stop then I could agree. But instead you called yourself out to be a retard. A retarded crybaby.
Completely different from those born that way, you choose to be a retard. Like the gays (in conservative nonsense logic).
Obviously as an American liberal I am OK with political incorrectness. That's because you are a retard & evidently no one on the right cares enough about you to tell you so OR there are so many of you no one can tell the difference. I'm going with the latter, but as with a lot of things, there are going to be differences of opinions. Again, by your own standards you qualify as a liberal. Willingly stupid and a whiny crybaby.
Sincerely yours,
madmonq