Politicizing the AZ massacre

You elute the fact that those crosshairs were on Rep. Giffords, that Giffords herself predicted that she would be subject to violence as a result, and that she was proven right.Is that all coincidence? It may very well be. But a responsible person who had done what Sarah Palin had done would apologize, not double-down with offensive, anti-semetic statements about "blood libel."Further - we're talking about the targeted attempted assassination of a Member of Congress. How can that not be political? So why does that necessitate targeted, veiled threats of violence against specific individuals? If appealing to the "NRA crowd" necessitates the use of metaphors and visual language that suggest the outright assassination of political enemies - for instance, Sharon Angle's suggestion that conservative gun owners exercise their "Second Amendment remedy" if they don't like the outcome of elections - then doesn't that speak to a large, systemic problem in our politics? Doesn't that suggest that the "NRA crowd" should be regarded with the same legitimacy as the KKK or neo-Nazis? Why? Sarah Palin put a target on Giffords. Giffords predicted that she would be the subject of violence as a direct result. Then she was the subject of a violent assassination attempt.Did all that happen simply by coincidence? That's what I would describe as "asinine."

Nobody's saying that Loughner should get a pass for this. Ultimately he's solely responsible for his actions.But not all figures of speech are, or should be, permissible in the national political discourse precisely because they may inflame crazy people into crazy (but predictable!) actions.The Tuscon tragedy was an entirely predictable result of conservative assassination language. How do I know that? Because Giffords predicted it. She precisely predicted this outcome.Did that happen by accident, Hyro?

Or if she had invited conservatives dissatisfied with election losses to investigate "Second Amendment remedies"? It's conservative murder language. It's an attempt to construe one's political enemies as enemies of America, and to employ assassination language to rally the base.Hyro, nobody thinks Sarah Palin actually wanted anybody to be shot. Nobody thinks that she was literally calling for the death of Giffords or anybody else. The point here is that there are some things you don't say in politics, some kinds of rhetoric you don't employ, precisely because of its predictable effect of inciting crazy people to violence.You don't put a cross-hairs on your political opponents. You don't invite armed Tea Partiers to use their "Second Amendment remedy" if they don't like how an election shakes out. You don't ask your supporters to shoot Census workers for being nosy. You don't invite your supporters to fire guns at photographs of your opponent to "symbolize your victory", as Gifford's Tea Party opponent did at a campaign event.You don't do those things, not because you don't want sane people to think you're asking for your opponent to be killed. You do it because you don't want insane people to think you're asking for your opponent to be killed. Nobody thinks Sarah Palin wanted this. The point is, she's taking literally no responsibility at all for how her rhetoric incited a crazy person to murder. The point is, she considers herself a victim of the Tuscon shooting, not a contributor to the environment that made it possible. And she ludicrously considers any criticism of her contributory rhetoric to be itself an incitement of violence against her, at the same time that she asserts that it's impossible for political rhetoric to contribute to violence.She's a dangerous idiot, and Giffords has paid the price - just as she predicted she might.

Right, and he thought that because Jodie Foster went on TV and said someone should "shoot Reagan", because she disagreed with his politics. The Foster-Reagan connection didn't come out of nowhere, or even out of insanity. Granted, but that doesn't absolve anybody. Indeed, the whole point of avoiding assassination rhetoric is to avoid inciting crazy people who may act out in earnest what you meant as a metaphor.

Why do you assume he would have had to be a right-winger Tea Partier to be influenced by right-wing assassination language? Honestly Jared Loughner's political beliefs seem to be utterly irrelevant; they have absolutely nothing to do with whether conservative assassination speech contributed to his decision to attempt to assassinate a member of congress.

Why? Remember, we're talking about someone crazy.

That's actually a complete lie. Nobody's asserted that Sarah Palin gave this guy marching orders - merely that conservative assassination rhetoric has fostered an environment where these events are sadly predictable.I'm sorry that you're feeling so deeply ashamed and defensive, Coyote, but defending your side isn't so important that you have to tell lies about this tragedy.

If it's not predictable, Oni, then how did Giffords predict it?

And she specifically predicted that those consequences was violence against herself.Was that by accident, Oni? Was she just proven right by coincidence? Everybody who predicted that conservative assassination speech would incite some nut to violence - they've just been proven right roughly every six months or so just by accident?The massive uptick in threats made against Congressmen since 2008? That's just coincidence and has nothing at all to do with the sudden increase conservative murder analogies since 2008? That has nothing to do with the masses of armed men who rally under Tea Party banners? The DHS was utterly wrong to have released warnings against an increase in fringe right-wing violence, even though their warnings have proved to be true?

What on Earth does that matter? Who says Loughner had to be a conservative to be influenced by conservative murder rhetoric? Seems like it's a pretty obvious fucking dot, Hyro. Don't you wonder why people objected to Palin's murder speech back in 2008? In 2009? Because we were all sure this would happen, someday. Hell, Tuscon isn't even the first. Did you forget the Ron Paul curbstomp? Did you forget "Kill Him!"? Did you forget "pallin' around with terrorists"? The IRS suicide plane? The shooter in Philadelphia who listened to almost nothing but Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck? The Department of Homeland Security warnings about the surge in right-wing related violence?Nobody's saying that Sarah Palin wanted anybody to die. But the reason politicians shouldn't use assassination language isn't because politicians shouldn't want their opponents to be killed, it's because, as national media figures, they have a responsibility to use speech that doesn't incite crazy people to violence. Slander? Did Sharon Angle not invoke "Second Amendment remedies"? Did Sarah Palin put a crosshairs on Giffords' district or not? Did Sarah Palin urge her followers to "reload" instead of retreating, or not? But Democrats didn't do it. Dart boards aren't crosshairs. But Jodie Foster did bear some responsibility for the attempted assassination of Reagan. Jodie Foster should not have gone on TV and said that someone should "shoot Reagan." After the assassination, Jodie Foster largely stopped doing late-night talk shows. Sarah Palin just doubled-down with anti-semetic posturing that tries to portray Palin, hilariously, as one of the victims of Tuscon. Yeah, outright. What else is it when a politician holds an event where supporters fire an automatic weapon at a picture of their opponent? Thomas Jefferson was talking about opposing tyranny, not opposing the will of the people. Thomas Jefferson recognized the utility of warfare in achieving the right to have an election - but never with the aim of achieving a specific electoral outcome.Frankly, Hyro, this is the kind of apocalyptic murder language I'm talking about. If you think you can find support from Jefferson for the idea of shooting your opponents because they beat you in a fair election, you're insane and dangerous.

The First Amendment protects you from government oppression of your viewpoint, not from moral outrage. I've not advocated for any restrictions on anybody's speech.There's no need to tell lies to defend your side, Hyro. What need, when it was broadcast on TV? Are you saying Loughner never watched TV? That he never was on the internet? That he had never heard of Sarah Palin?Why does Loughner need to have been a conservative to have been influenced by Sarah Palin, or by other examples of conservative assassination rhetoric, particularly when such examples usually make the national news and are disseminated far outside their original context? Just because you forgot about "Second Amendment remedies" - note that the Second Amendment, in fact, actually has no remedy for electoral outcomes you don't like - doesn't mean that Loughner did.

I don't see how any of that is relevant or necessary. It's irrelevant whether Loughner followed Palin on Twitter. It's utterly irrelevant whether he was right-wing or just a crazy dipshit. It's utterly irrelevant whether you can draw a direct legal causal chain from Sarah Palin to the assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords.None of that matters to the question of how conservative assassination rhetoric contributed to the environment that's been fostering this swell in right-wing violence against government workers, liberal groups, and politicians. No, it's not, because the things that happen on South Park or in the lyrics of a Metallica album aren't reported as true. When Stephen Colbert marries a gun, nobody understands that to be genuine because everybody knows that Stephen Colbert is an actor portraying a character of his own creation called "Stephen Colbert". But people don't perceive Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell, or Michelle Bachman as portraying characters, they perceive them - and more importantly, they're reported on the news this way - as speaking in earnest.The NBC Nightly News doesn't report that Cartman's Mom was embroiled in a paternity scandal, because that didn't happen. They do report that Sarah Palin was talking about death panels in the health care bill, and claiming that the government was going to show up and kill your grandmother and your retarded cousin. They report Sarah Palin saying those things because Sarah Palin really is saying those things and really means it.There's a big difference between conservative murder speech and gangsta rap lyrics, and that is that everyone understands that rap lyrics are entertainment. Conservative murder speech isn't meant that way. It's not meant to entertain you, it's meant to get you to get out there and take action. Political speech is inherently directive; it's meant to persuade and spur action and involvement. When it spurs action in the form of legitimate political involvement, that's fair. But we've seen a marked increase in the number of people who view these political disagreements in such stark terms that they truly believe that the other side is so intractable, they have to be killed for the greater good. And that increase is pretty clearly driven by conservative murder speech. No, Oni, we know that's not correct. Loughner specifically targeted Rep. Giffords in her capacity as a congresswoman. The attack was not random; it was the planned assassination of a targeted political figure to achieve Loughner's political aims. This was most definitely not an indiscriminate or random attack; Rep. Giffords was the specific target.

But we're not claiming he was "motivated by it." We're claiming that the Paranoid Style of Politics, as practiced by headlining conservative voices and leaders, leads some people to have paranoid ideas about politics. Jared Loughner believed that the Democratic government was out to control everybody's attitudes, perceptions, and actions. Don't you think that repeated claims by top political leaders of the conservative mainstream, including former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, that Democratic liberals including the President want to control everybody's attitudes, perceptions, and actions might have contributed to that view?Nobody thinks that Sarah Palin ordered anybody to kill Rep. Giffords. Obviously she meant to do nothing more than rally her base with "fightin' words." But a responsible - and presidential - person who used that language would apologize in the light of Loughner's actions, even if they had no direct responsibility. They would apologize for how a crazy person might have taken them out of all context, and hope that nobody would ever use violence to settle electoral scores.But, tellingly, no conservatives are doing that. They're doubling-down with conservative murder language. Sarah Palin is making anti-semetic claims of "blood libel", and portraying herself every bit as much the victim of Tuscon as the people who were killed there. Why are conservatives and their leaders suddenly under attack in the aftermath of this shooting? Because their response to it has been so abominable and blinkered. It's like they just have no fucking idea what matters. I mean, look at Coyote in this thread. Oh, come on. Almost none of them represent any reality at all. Those guys are MBA's, middle class guys making rap for suburban white youth. Gangsta rap is for white kids.And again - nobody treats the claims of hip-hop music like real claims. When Jay-Z says he has 99 problems but a bitch ain't one, that's not reported and repeated as something true. When Sarah Palin says the heath care reform bill has death panels, that's taken as an earnest claim of fact. Everybody understands that rap is entertainment. Sarah Palin may be entertaining but a considerable number of people consider her, Rush, Hannity, Beck, and other conservative bullshit artists as though they were engaged in a genuine act of truth-saying.Do you understand that? That when Sarah Palin says "death panels", millions of Americans believe her? Loughner's journals contain notes about his plans, which he refers to consistently as an assassination of Rep. Giffords. She's targeted by name in his letters and journals. We know he had previously visited Rep. Giffords at another event, probably to scout her security (if there even was any.)We know he planned ahead, Oni. This wasn't a random act of violence by a crazy person who snapped; this was a premeditated, planned act of political assassination of a specific member of Congress.

Really? Words have no ability to influence anyone at all?That's not at all what you're claiming in the other thread. What you're claiming in the other thread is the exact opposite, that words do influence people. Are you sure you're just not arguing because you're obsessed with contradicting me? The government is democratic, Oni. Yes! Because her language, along with other examples of conservative murder rhetoric, had an indirect effect. It contributed to an environment that made this attack an inevitability - just as Giffords had predicted. I notice when you get your back up against the wall, you resort to the No True Scotsman fallacy. "He's not a real conservative. "He's not a real rapper." I really did think you were a lot less naive than that. Right, but CNN never reported that Tupac claimed to have shot any cops, because the lyrics of the song were understood to be entertainment. You're conflating two arguments, here - one is the conservative argument that people can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. My argument is that conservatives are offering fantasy as though it were reality.Do you understand the difference? People understand that Tupac is trying to make an entertaining song. Sarah Palin isn't trying to be entertaining when she talks about death panels, she's actually trying to convince people that the American Care Act institutes real, live death panels. No, it was claiming that entertainment would convince people to shoot cops. Nobody reported it as Tupac confessing to shooting a cop. No, you asked for evidence that he targeted Giffords specifically and didn't just shoot up random people at a random Safeway. That's another thing I've noticed you do - when you challenge people for evidence for their claims and then they provide it, you pretend that you asked for evidence for a completely different claim.And what? He got paranoid all by himself? He never talked to anybody in his life about politics, or heard anyone talk about it on TV or the radio?That's absurd. And, it wasn't just "somebody random who just happened to be in politics", like you said it was. You were utterly wrong about that - Giffords was the planned and intended target from the get-go, according to Loughner's own writings. No, she lived. Jesus, Oni, do you have any idea about what we're talking about? Maybe you should do a little research on this issue before you make claims about what's true or not, because you keep being completelhy wrong.

Is it just that you don't understand what the word "promotes" means? That must be the case.For instance, for me to truthfully claim that Rogaine promotes hair growth, somebody actually has to grow some hair as a result. It's going to drag out if you're not prepared to admit that you say things that are wrong: Ok, but the difference between the words "kill" and "shot" is that the latter is an accurate description of events and the former is not. If you simply can't ever admit to error, then yes, this is going to "drag out." I'm not prepared to simply let you say whatever wrong things you think you need to lie about to defend your position. If your views can't be defended on the basis of the truth, they're indefensible. Right. The ones who run the government. It's a democratic government, Oni. The enormous increase in death threats against Congresspeople. Conservatives openly carrying loaded firearms to peaceful townhall meetings. The Ron Paul facestomp. The IRS suicide attack. The Philidelphia shooter. The ACLU shooter. The George Tiller murder. The Department of Homeland Security warnings about right-wing domestic terrorism. "Second Amendment remedies." "Kill him."Why do I think that Sarah Palin's speech contributed to an increase in right-wing political violence? Because of all the increased right-wing political violence. Did that stuff just not happen? Well? Don't you think it's kind of important? Don't you think that, when people assess the truth of claims being made to them, they take into account whether the person making the claim seems to believe it? As it happens, they do. Don't you think, therefore, that phony claims made in the context of politics matter more than phony claims made in the context of fictional entertainment? Sure - the evidence is, he targeted a liberal Democrat for assassination because he believed the Democratic government was trying to control people's thoughts, attitudes, and actions. Are you saying that we should assume that his belief in that regard was utterly unconnected to the common conservative complaint that the Democratic government is trying to control people's thoughts, attitudes, and actions?That makes no sense at all. No, that's exactly what you said:

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All you have is a guy who shot a group of people who some happen to be involved in politics.

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It's perfectly fine for you to change your mind, Oni. If new facts you weren't aware of lead you to change your mind on things, I'm not going to hammer you for it (though I may try to show you how your new position should logically lead you to change your mind on other things, too.) But I'm not prepared to have this conversation with you on the basis of you telling lies about what you did or didn't say. What you said is a matter of record. For better or worse we can all go back and see exactly what you wrote.You didn't know Jared Loughner had targeted Giffords specifically. That's fair - this is a very recent event and nobody can be an expert on it immediately. The responsible thing to do is admit you were wrong, not deny that you ever said something that everybody can go back and see that you said. The physical evidence is laying in a Tuscon hospital. Last reports were that she had regained consciousness to some degree. I doubt she'll ever resume her duties as a member of Congress.