The violent, gun-loving rhetoric of Scott Beason, Alabama state senator

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's like the Arizona shooting, and the aftermath with all the talk of violent political rhetoric, never happened:

State Sen. Scott Beason said he's been flooded with phone calls since saying at the end of comments on illegal immigration Saturday that Republicans need to "empty the clip, and do what has to be done."

Beason said he was not urging violence against immigrants, but using an analogy.

"I did say that but it was completely taken out of context," said the Gardendale Republican. "Look, I'll take my beatings when I mess up. But no way was I urging anyone to do harm to Hispanics or illegal immigrants. I would never do that." 

Er, no, of course not, never. But his excuse is not just lame but, well, an expression of violence that hardly vindicates him:

Beason said the quote stemmed from a story he told at the beginning of the breakfast.

"I began telling the story about a family visiting a big city when some guy with a knife or gun jumps out from behind some bushes and comes at them," Beason said. "The story talks about how a Democrat handles the situation, I think I said the Democrat tells the guy he'll put together a charity basketball league or something to raise money to help him. The second family, that father has a gun but takes only one shot. The third family, and that father also has a gun, but he empties the clip. He solves the problem."

Solving problems was one of the themes of Saturday's speech, Beason said.

"I think we face a lot of problems and we need to tackle them with everything we have, with all of our brain power, our imagination and with courage," Beason said. "That's what I meant by emptying the clip."

First, it's a ridiculous straw-man argument against Democrats. If a Democrat were to be confronted by "some guy" with a gun, he'd "raise money to help him"? Please. That's simply idiotic.

Second, even as an analogy, Beason is still saying that a legitimate solution in some cases is to shoot someone to death with reckless aggression. (You kill someone by emptying an entire clip? Really?)

Third, yes, fine, taking that figuratively, the idea is to respond to problems with "everything we have," but then why not just say that? Why the violent, gun-loving analogy?

I'm not for censoring political speech, but a certain amount of responsibility is in order, especially from elected officials who are widely quoted and who have a great deal of influence.

Benson's right-wing (and mainstream Republican) views themselves are abhorrent. But he should have known better to express himself in such a way -- except that he expressed himself like so many on the right do, with just the sort of violent, gun-loving rhetoric that is so much a part of the problem in a violent society that loves guns.

Glenn Beck's continuing obsession with Professor Frances Fox Piven and the roots of violence in America

By R.K. Barry

Several months ago I published a post about Glenn Beck's obsession with City University of New York Professor Frances Fox Piven. I talked about having met her briefly in the early '80s in a grad course and about what a wonderful experience that was.

Mostly I wrote about how Beck, and those inclined to buy into his hateful message, can't stand anyone who helps poor people be heard or helps them make a legitimate claim to a decent life in America. I wrote about how Piven's career has been largely dedicated to helping us understand marginalized people and helping them help themselves, and that for this sin Beck was using the full weight of Fox News to vilify her.

Such was the nature of the bile directed at Professor Piven by Beck that it was clear that she would become a target for those misguided sorts who take Beck seriously, which is precisely what is starting to happen.

At the time I felt a bit like I was shouting in the wilderness, as few others seemed to be speaking out about this.

I was therefore pleased to see the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) get involved by writing a letter to Fox News directly to encourage the network to intervene.

In a press release dated January 20, 2011 about the letter, the CCR stated that it has:

issued a written appeal to Fox News president Roger Ailes to help put a stop to the increasing threats against progressive Professor Frances Fox Piven, largely incited by Fox News host Glenn Beck. In the letter, co-written by Legal Director Bill Quigley and Executive Director Vince Warren the CCR asks that Ailes distinguish between First Amendment rights, of which they are "vigorous defenders" and an "intentional repetition of provocative, incendiary, emotional misinformation and falsehoods [that place that person] in actual physical danger of a violent response."

The release goes on to say:

Beginning in September 2010, Glenn Beck started branding Piven, a distinguished professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, as an "enemy of the Constitution." Piven, well-known for advocating for the organizational rights of the poor and encouraging voter registration, has since received threatening phone calls and letters, and has become the subject of many death threats left open to the public on Glenn Beck's website, The Blaze.

Much as it sickens me to repeat some of the threats here, people need to know what we are up against. Here are just a few that appeared on Beck's website:

-- "Maybe they should burst through the front door of this arrogant elitist and slit the hateful cow's throat."

-- "We should blow up Piven's office and home."

-- "Big lots is having a rope sale I hear, you buy the rope and I will hang the wench. I will spin her as she hangs."

Suffice to say, they are disgusting.

Unlike in Arizona, the connections are clear. Beck has picked a target and he is to blame for the violent responses that have followed.

Beck has been getting away with slandering Professor Piven the way he slanders everyone else: with lies and innuendo. He did to her what he does with everyone else with whom he disagrees: he called her an enemy of the state; in fact, he specifically called her an enemy of the Constitution, whatever that means.

I am so weary of pointing out that Beck is a monumental asshole who can only be taken seriously by other assholes. He panders to the worst in those either too stupid or too lazy to do their own research. He feeds people's fears by creating enemies for them, which is always the best way for people to feel good about themselves when they have limited options.

But, in truth, Beck is not that clever. What he is doing has been done successfully throughout history. Pick an enemy, any enemy. Tell lies about them. Get people to focus their energy and anger on hating the outsiders, which, as I said, makes them feel good about themselves, makes them feel a part of something larger and important, at least in the short term.

Entire nations have been built on this insidious in-group / out-group tactic.

As I wrote months ago, Professor Piven's "crime" is that she has been successful in pointing out serious shortcomings in the American experience, especially in the way it treats poor people. She does what people like Beck can't tolerate. She tells the truth and at the same time tells us that we have a lot of work to do if we are to make America the country we would like it to be. Beck peddles simple answers for simple minds. Get in the way of that and expect to be made an enemy of this self-righteous fool. Expect to be made a target.

This is hateful, despicable stuff, though Fox News has already said it will do nothing about it, as it serves its dual mandate of being a mouthpiece for the loony right in America and of making lots of money for Rupert Murdoch.

I have said this so often I am getting tired. We may not yet know fully what happened in Arizona, but what Beck is doing to Professor Piven is the clearest example of a problem about which many of us are so worried. Say that your political adversaries are enemies of the state. Imply that they must be stopped and then step back until some deranged bastard decides to take on the task – until some unbalanced nutjob decides that he can become a hero to the "in-group" created by Glenn Beck and those in his camp.

This is the point. It's already happening in America. What more has to happen before Fox News decides that there is too much of a downside to being associated with someone as disgusting as Glenn Beck? What precisely?

(Cross-posted from Lippmann's Ghost.)

Right-wing blogger praises Giffords shooting, targets other politicians

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you think Jared Lee Loughner is just some crazy dude who acted purely out of his own derangement, and that the right-wing anti-government agenda and culture of violence had nothing at all to do with it?

I think that's ridiculous, but, regardless, what's clear is that the right-wing anti-government agenda and culture of violence are very real and very dangerous. And however much that socio-political context may have influenced Loughner, it is certainly influencing others, driving them to violence, as in Oklahoma City, and to more violence that may soon come.

Don't believe me? Let's head on over to Massachusetts for a rather alarming case in point:

Police in Arlington, MA this week seized a "large amount" of weapons and ammunition from local businessman Travis Corcoran after he wrote a blog post threatening U.S. lawmakers in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). In a post on his blog (which has since been removed) titled "1 down and 534 to go" -- 1 referring to Giffords and 534 referring to the rest of the House of Representatives and the Senate -- Corcoran applauded the shooting of Giffords and justified the assassination of lawmakers because he argued the federal government has grown far beyond its constitutional limits. "It is absolutely, absolutely unacceptable to shoot indiscriminately. Target only politicians and their staff and leave regular citizens alone," he wrote in the post.

Charming. (And, hey, I used to live in Arlington, Mass.!)

"We certainly take this as a credible threat," Arlington police Captain Robert Bongiorno told reporters, adding that "multiple federal law enforcement agencies" were involved. Authorities also suspended Corcoran's gun license, though he is currently not facing any charges.

That's the least they should have done. But -- here's the crucial question -- is he a conservative? Is this really an example of the right-wing anti-government agenda and culture of violence in action (or preparing for action)? Looks like it:

Corcoran calls himself "an anarcho-capitalist" and while his blog has been taken down, based on his Twitter page, he appears to hold views similar to those of many in the anti-government libertarian wing of the conservative movement, like many tea party activists. Anarcho-capitalism is a radical subset of libertarianism, and is often referred to as "libertarian-anarchy." For example, echoing calls from many on the right, Corcoran tweeted, "it is unconstitutional for the Feds to even run a department of education."

Don't let the "anarcho" fool you. While anarchism is usually associated with the left, Corcoran's anarchism is very much of the right, where American anarchism is to be found these days.

He also appears to be a fan of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), re-tweeting a positive message about him in May: "Lefties: Before you start fringe-baiting Rand Paul, note that he's better on civil liberties than most Democratic senators. And Obama." He seems to dislike liberals, writing, "You so-called liberals make me laugh – you're all for free speech until someone disagrees, then it's 'report him!'" He also accuses the Daily Kos of "Stalinism."

Yup, he's a conservative, and pretty much all of this is mainstream Republican stuff these days. (And, yes, I admit, Paul has a decent record on civil liberties, and I myself have been critical of Obama's continuation of much of the Bush-Cheney national security state.)

Of course, to be fair, the vast majority of Republicans, and obviously all Republicans in Congress, and also probably most rank-and-file Republicans and movement conservatives, and probably even most Tea Party members, would recoil in horror from such violent extremism. But the point isn't that they would be against such violence but that their anti-government agenda and rhetoric, including the broad anti-government views that prevail in the Republican Party these days, including in Congress, have consequences and can mobilize their followers, or those who think like them, to rise up in violence against the "enemy" that they themselves have identified.

All it takes is one guy with a gun, but what we should realize is that there's an army of such extremists, with arsenals of weapons, preparing for action.

There's your fucking context.

That crazy Arizona shooting: Jon Stewart, Sarah Palin, and the triumph of right-wing narrative

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I don't really have all much more to say about the Arizona shooting. We've written a lot here already on it, and so much has been written elsewhere that, barring a major development, like Loughner talking, we're all just repeating ourselves. Still, it's important not to let the conservative we're not to blame for anything, it's the liberals' fault for being so nasty narrative prevail, which is what seems to be happening -- because it's easier to blame the crazy dude for doing something crazy than to delve into what might have been behind it, into the culture, into right-wing politics, where what you find now are conservatives crying victim and lashing out at their critics for being mean and partisan and trying to score political points (when of course they're the ones being mean and partisan and trying to score political points).

**********

Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart agreed with Sarah Palin that Jared Lee Loughner is crazy and that the right, Palin included, deserves no blame whatsoever for the Arizona shooting.

This, presumably, includes blame for the violent right-wing culture in which the shooting took place, that is, for the socio-political context, because those who are pointing at the likes of Palin and holding them responsible, myself included, make sure to stress that there may very well be no direct link between right-wing politics and the shooting itself. The issue isn't that Loughner is a card-carrying Republican or Teabagger (or both), which he apparently isn't, it's that Loughner didn't commit his act of violence in a vacuum.

This is what Stewart seems to be missing, and, needless to say, I have found his response to the shooting, including his refusal last week to say anything of substance, well, lacking.

In agreeing with Palin, all he was doing was buying into, and propagating, the right-wing spin, the narrative conservatives, finding themselves justifiably on the defensive, are trying so desperately to impose upon our discourse. I get that it's better to be civil than uncivil, but politics is politics, the right is the right, and Stewart is deeply naive if he believes a) that political civility is possible with conservatives being what they are these days, and b) that right-wing politics, and the right-wing culture of violence, had nothing at all to do with the shooting. If he truly believes the latter, it makes you wonder if he's watched his own show the past few years. Wasn't he the one pointing out all those gun-toting extremists at health-care town-hall events and Tea Party rallies?

**********

At Politico yesterday, Michael Kinsley provided a fine analysis of the right's "breathtaking bait and switch on Tucson":

In the week since the Tucson, Ariz., massacre, pleas for "civility" have turned into accusations of incivility, and the whole, useful discussion of "civility" versus "vitriol" has turned into the usual argument over competitive victimhood. The vast right-wing conspiracy has played President Barack Obama like a violin.

And they've done a pretty good job of messing with the heads of the liberal media as well. As a result, anyone who even raises the issue of who might be responsible, or more responsible, for the "atmosphere of vitriol" in which we conduct our politics is guilty of contributing to it. In just a few days, it has become the height of political incorrectness to suggest there might be any connection between the voices on right-wing talk radio and the voices in Jared Lee Loughner's head.

Republicans generally praised Obama's speech at the memorial service in which he took care to absolve conservatives and Republicans of any special responsibility for the tone of the political debate. It is, he said, "a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do." This sounds like a noble sentiment. But who is to blame for what ails the world if not those who think differently? If those who think the same as you are responsible, it's time to start thinking differently yourself.

Once again, liberals and progressives and Democrats and those generally on the left just don't seem to get it. Or, at least, a lot of them don't. I understand that Obama needed to be cautious, to walk a fine line, and that he said what had to be said. It would not have been "presidential" to have gone on the offensive.

But rank-and-file Democrats and mainstream liberals are backing off, too, perhaps because Obama was so effective (and they feel guilty fighting back against the right), perhaps because they, too, don't want to delve too deeply into what really happened and why, perhaps because they're terrified of Republicans. Whatever the reasons, the upshot is that conservatives like Palin are largely getting away with it.

And, again, what is Stewart's excuse? Given that he has made a name for himself criticizing the "crossfire" of the news media, and that he has fashioned himself a voice of the silent majority against the extremes, even as he himself, not to mention his audience, leans left, it may just be that he thinks now is not the time for partisan rancour. Or maybe he really does believe that Loughner is crazy and that it's irresponsible, and simply wrong, to suggest that there may be more to it than that.

Whatever the case with Stewart and others like him, backing off simply enables the right, and allows it to win. No, this isn't all about partisan winning and losing, but ultimately politics, and hence governing, which is what you need to do if you want to change things, is about who wins and who loses -- not just at the ballot box but in the media, in the world of narrative, in the world of spin. And if you let the right win, in this case and others, nothing will change, including a socio-political culture that is deeply disturbed as a result of years and years of abuse at the hands of conservatives and their ideology of division, violence, and power.

If you really care about America, and Jon Stewart does a great deal, you must do everything you can to prevent that from happening.

Many questions, few answers left in Tucson’s wake

By Nicholas Wilbur 

What is government if words have no meaning?

That was the question Jared Lee Loughner posed to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in their first meeting. In their second meeting, he shot her in the head.

The round-the-clock media circus has taken a swipe at every minute detail of Loughner's life in an attempt to understand his motivations for killing six and wounding 14 others in the attempted assassination of a congresswoman.

Unfortunately, the 24-hour-a-day speculation-based coverage of every non-development and irrelevant insight into the life of the accused has taken center-stage in a nation-wide theater production that continues to say a lot but reveal almost nothing.

Loughner has remained silent. The 250 federal officials tasked with investigating the horrific shooting have failed to deliver a motive. And so the media is left chasing its tail in an attempt to assemble a puzzle that has no pieces.

We know he's male. We know he's white. We know he was kicked out of community college for saying weird shit. Based on the videos he posted on YouTube, we know he has a severe distrust of the government, a fascination with the gold standard, and an obsession with currencies, new languages, and grammar.

Are we to believe, as some have claimed, that Loughner was so disgruntled about Giffords' failure to adequately answer the "what is government" question that he decided to try and assassinate her? Was his passion for the gold standard so strong that it drove him to murder, that he thought Giffords was an inadequate leader because she hadn't created her own language, or that his plot to kill the Arizona Democrat was retribution for her not electing him as her campaign treasurer, where he would be in charge of creating a new currency?

Maybe.

Or maybe Loughner had a girlfriend in the Farmtown game on Facebook who dumped him because his land wasn't well kept, and in a fit of rage he took a semi-automatic pistol to a political event. Maybe he read a violent comic book or played violent video games. Maybe he wasn't breastfed as a baby. Maybe he didn't eat his Wheaties. These aren't the actual hypotheses the media have concocted to fill news pages and clog up the airwaves, but they're just as useful in understanding Loughner's motive.

The truth is, we still know almost nothing about his real motivations, and the media's continuous attempts to make sense of his gibberish have become vexing.

I'm not one to delve too deeply into conspiracies theories (mainly because any good conspiracy is unprovable and therefore a gargantuan waste of time), but as the media begin their second week of continuous coverage of this tragedy, my hopes for an explanation – other than insanity – are dwindling.

It's entirely possible that nothing will ever be revealed that adequately explains this tragedy, that there will never be closure for the families who lost loved ones and the victims who are left wondering, "Why me?"

Such an unsatisfying and unresolved ending to the Tucson tragedy wouldn't be unprecedented. The many unanswered questions surrounding the assassination of JFK, the Oklahoma City bombing, and 9/11 – even Roswell, the alleged plot to kill Princess Diana, and the moon landing "hoax" – continue to plague many Americans who struggle with the frustration of the unknown with every anniversary.

It's unlikely that even Loughner himself could provide us with a satisfying answer to the nonsensical question he posed to Giffords, or to the shooting itself. In tragedy, there is no satisfaction.

But it would be better than nothing, which is what we have now.

 

(Cross-posted from Muddy Politics.)

How conservatives are deflecting responsibility for the Arizona shooting

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've written it again and again, including earlier today: There may be no perfectly direct connection between conservatism and the Arizona shooting, but that does not necessarily mean that what Jared Lee Loughner did (or, rather, is charged with doing) may be detached entirely from the broader, right-wing political context that may very well have informed his thinking, or his derangement, to some degree. And while he is evidently not a card-carrying member of the Tea and/or Republican Party, it is wrong to treat him as a detached loner, as a victim of mental illness who acted purely in a vacuum of his own derangement. 

This is the case conservatives are making -- that Loughner is crazy -- and it's their way of avoiding any and all responsibility not just for the shooting itself but more broadly for constructing the socio-political context behind it.

For more on this, see David Dayen at FDL, who says what many of us have said, and keep saying, but that we need to keep saying, not least with the right, which has been on the defensive since the Arizona shooting, trying desperately to impose its responsibility-deflecting we didn't do anything, we're victims of a left-wing plot narrative:

Republicans have pulled off a neat trick with respect to Jared Loughner. They have worked very hard to characterize him as a "whacko" and a "nutjob" (inadvertently hurting the prospect of a successful prosecution, by the way), going so far as to use the shooting as an opportunity to revamp the nation’s mental health system. I'm all for that, but the ulterior motive from the right is to absolve themselves of blame and marginalize the voices talking about overheated political rhetoric.

Now, you don't have to believe that Sarah Palin purchased the gun for Loughner and whispered in his ear about targets to believe that the rhetoric on the far, far right played a role in amping up the paranoia of a mentally unbalanced man...

The more you read by Loughner, or the more videos you see from him, they reflect these beliefs very strongly. He mentions the Constitution, illegal laws, manipulated currency, government control through grammar, and on and on. It's quite hard to follow, and it's not organized coherently, but it comes from a fairly precise place.

It's not necessary for Loughner to even understand the derivations of these conspiracy theories, or to be of sound mind, to be influenced by them. But they come from a very toxic, militia-friendly, anti-government place, and over the past couple decades the distance between that perspective and the mainstream right has absolutely narrowed; see Glenn Beck. The Birchers, militia groups and Alex Jones conspiracy ranters will always be with us; an isolated few scientists argued in favor of a flat earth well into the 19th century. The point that many who study this make is that mainstreaming some of these conspiracies, like when Lou Dobbs puts the North American Union on television, or when Beck hosts a Bircher on his radio show or concocts some bizarre blackboard theory, it hypes up and leads to greater attention to the real nutters on the fringe. And in the hands of a troubled mind, these conspiracies can do real damage.

As they did in Oklahoma City, as they did in Arizona, and as they will continue to do so long as they are not only embraced by the right but "mainstreamed" right into the heart of the GOP.

Rendell, Giuliani call for "early detection system" for mental illness and guns

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Hill:

Two high-profile politicians [yesterday] called for sweeping reforms to the nation's mental health system that would prevent individuals deemed ill from legally purchasing firearms.

Had numerous concerns about alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner’s mental status placed him on a list restricting his ability to buy a gun, his Jan. 8 rampage might have been prevented, said former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, and Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell, a Democrat.

During a "Face the Nation" appearance, Rendell called for an "early detection system" designed to keep mentally unstable individuals from buying guns. 

Basically, if you've attended more than one Tea Party event (because you could have attended one just by accident) or if you're a Tea Party-backed candidate for the GOP, you shouldn't be able to buy a gun. Period.

I'm kidding... of course. (Ahem.)

Actually, in a country that refuses to do anything about guns and gun violence, this was an admirable display of bipartisan support for a rational response to the Arizona shooting. Giuliani, once something of a moderate but now a Republican hard-liner, even talked about the country's "inability to deal with mental illness."

I would just note that while there does need to be a "rational debate" on gun control, as Rendell said, as well as a serious effort to address mental illness, the Arizona shooting -- an assassination attempt on a politician -- wasn't just about some lone crazy guy getting hold of a semi-automatic pistol with a high-capacity ammunition clip. It was also about the right's culture of violence, both in rhetoric and in ideology, and about the extent to which that culture has come to shape American politics and define conservatism.

As I wrote last week, while it certainly appears to be the case that the (alleged) killer, Jared Lee Loughner, is "deranged" (to use a loaded and hardly clinical term), as well as that he was not a card-carrying member of the Tea Party or GOP, it is wrong, I think to treat him as a detached loner who acted in a vacuum of his own derangement. To do that is to ignore context, to ignore the bigger picture, the "national climate."

In other words, there may be no direct connection between conservatism and the shooting, but that does not necessarily mean that what Loughner did (or, rather, is charged with doing) may be detached entirely from the broader, right-wing political context that may very well have informed his thinking, or his derangement, to some degree.

History reloaded

By J. Kingston Pierce

Much has been said (and probably remains to be said) about failed former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s offensive “crosshairs” map of the Democratic U.S. lawmakers she thought, in her infinite wisdom, deserved ouster because they’d supported President Obama’s historic health-care reform legislation last year. Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), who was critically wounded this last weekend during a deadly shooting in Tucson, was among the people pinpointed on that map.

Now, The Stranger--the marginally less boring of two “alternative” weekly newspapers serving Seattle--has come up with its own version of Palin’s chart, substituting for her “targets” the names of political figures who were, indeed, assassinated over the last century and a half, or who survived assassination attempts.

Palin’s map is on the left, The Stranger’s is on the right. Click on either image to open a larger version in a new window.



(Cross-posted at Limbo.)

Gun sales soar after Arizona shooting

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, that's right, the Arizona shooting that left six dead, including a nine-year-old girl, has spurred gun sales across the country:

One-day sales of handguns in Arizona jumped 60 percent to263 on Jan. 10 compared with 164 the corresponding Monday a yearago, the second-biggest increase of any state in the country,according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data.

Handgun sales rose 65 percent to 395 in Ohio; 16 percent to672 in California; 38 percent to 348 in Illinois; and 33 percentto 206 in New York, the FBI data show. Sales increasednationally about 5 percent, to 7,906 guns.

Federally tracked gun sales, which are drawn from sales ingun stores that require a federal background check, also jumpedfollowing the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, in which 32 peoplewere killed.

"Whenever there is a huge event, especially when it'sclose to home, people do tend to run out and buy something toprotect their family," said Don Gallardo, a manager at ArizonaShooter's World in Phoenix, who said that the number of peoplesigning up for the store's concealed weapons class doubled overthe weekend. Gallardo said he expects handgun sales to climbsteadily throughout the week. 

Really? For self-protection? Then why did sales of the weapon Jared Lee Loughner (is alleged to have) used, the Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol, also increase dramatically following the shooting? Do people really need to protect themselves, and their families, with a gun that is designed to kill large numbers of people in short order? And why, in any event, would a targeted political shooting, an assassination attempt, compel so many people to arm themselves? It's not like violent crime was about to go up.

As another Arizona gun-store owner explained, "[w]hen something like this happens people get worried thatthe government is going to ban stuff." Ah, so now we find ourselves in the vicious cycle. It was very much the anti-government, pro-gun right-wing political culture that provided the broader context for the shooting. And now, in direct response to the shooting, that culture, already a powder keg on the brink of explosion, feeds upon itself and expands, with more and more people acting on their anti-government, pro-gun fantasies and arming themselves against the "enemy."

Honestly, if the shooting wasn't all that surprising, should we really be surprised it if happens again and again, and perhaps to even worse degrees?

Playing politics with the Tucson tragedy

By Nicholas Wilbur

Nobody doubted the depth of denial that would gush from Rush Limbaugh's radio studio following the murderous rampage in Tucson this weekend. The "vitriol in politics" became a primary focus of the national media almost immediately after the news of the shooting broke.

Those who had made references to "second amendment remedies" and "firing machine guns" and "violent revolution" were targeted for contributing to the hate-filled rhetoric that has marked the past two years of political discourse. Having defended most of the Tea Party and Fox News celebrities who led the march against Democrats in November by riling their base and inciting the masses to join this new wave of "activism," Limbaugh, among many others, was put on the defensive.

Before his broadcast, I ignorantly maintained a sliver of hope that as one of America's most popular political personalities, Limbaugh would join the bipartisan movement to condemn both the savage murders and the extremism that has taken over this country. Instead, he demonstrated general ignorance of mass media's influence by denying the persuasive power of celebrities and excused the tone of politics by pointing fingers at the "liberal" media for "politicizing" the Tucson shooting as some sort of bizarrely-contrived Democratic conspiracy.

The attempted assassination of a politician is as political as it gets, but a Democratic Congresswoman taking a 9-mm bullet in the head at point-blank range wasn't enough to deter the almighty Limbaugh from accusing the left of political opportunism.

In a rant that should be remembered only in the history archives of national radio as the beginning of a giant's end, Limbaugh lambasted the left for capitalizing on a tragedy and criminalizing all Americans by anticipating the assassination as a means for pushing through a political agenda.

"I guarantee you," he said, "that somewhere in a desk drawer in Washington, D.C., someplace, in an FCC bureaucrat's office or some place, the government machinery will be in place to take away as many political freedoms as they can manage on the left. They already have it in place... just waiting for the right event for a clampdown. They have been trying this ever since the Oklahoma City bombing."

He continued: 

Here you have a 22-year-old kid, a dopehead – marijuana – just genuinely insane. Irrational. And the first thought – the desperate hope that the losers in November of 2010 had – was that they could revitalize their political fortunes because of this unfortunate shooting of a Congresswoman in Arizona. That was the most important thing to them, and that to me is sick. You know that they were rubbing hands together. You know that they were e-mailing and calling each other on the phone saying, "Ah-ha, this might be the one. This might be the one where we can officially tie it to these guys and shut them up and shut 'em down." They want you to believe that sadness was on the order of the day, and I'm sure it was, but... they couldn't help themselves. They just couldn't help themselves. [Emphasis added.]

Not surprisingly, Limbaugh was short on the details of exactly how Democrats would go about utilizing this event for their own political ends. But thankfully, there is such a thing as daily news to pin facts to the allegations made by the pill-popping millionaires on the right who see nothing but conspiracies in every gesture of every Democrat in the country.

According to The Hill, the first freedom attacked by the left is the right to use violent language against elected officials. After waiting more than a decade for a right-wing nut to shoot a bullet through the brain of a politically moderate member of Congress, Democrats finally had the opportunity to go for the jugular of America's constitutionally protected political liberties. So what did they do?

They proposed a bill – like socialistic opportunists will – that would make it a federal offense to use language or symbols that threaten or incite violence against a member of Congress or a federal official – a protection, it should be noted, that is already provided to the president.

The alleged aim of this proposed legislation is to quell the violent language that has become so common in American politics, but below the surface it's pretty obvious that Democrats are targeting right-wingers, Tea Partiers, and extremist conservatives in general – "to shut them up and shut 'em down," just as Limbaugh predicted.

The second "political freedom" Democrats are seeking to revoke is the right to carry high-capacity magazines like the one used by the Tucson shooter this weekend. This law actually isn't new; it was in place for a decade but expired in 2004. After seeing one man gun down twenty people in a matter of seconds with a clip that would have been illegal six years ago, Democratic lawmakers in D.C. thought it might be timely to re-implement the ban.

"The only reason to have 33 bullets loaded in a handgun is to kill a lot of people very quickly," Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said in a statement Monday, according to The Hill. "Before 2004, these ammunition clips were banned, and they must be banned again."

What they're really doing is taking our guns away, and Republicans will see to it that this doesn't happen – as they did in 2008 when Democrats proposed a reauthorization bill. It died in committee.

And lastly, what Democrat-imposed unraveling of the Constitution would be complete without the infringement on First Amendment rights?

According to several news reports, the Arizona state legislature is giving the federal judicial system the finger by going against an appeals court ruling last year that upheld the First Amendment rights of church members in Kansas who had taken to protesting funerals of military service members.

The congregants of Westboro Baptist Church believe any unnatural death is the manifestation of God's wrath against American society for its tolerance of homosexuality. They planned to protest the funeral of 9-year-old Christina Green, one of the six victims of Saturday's shooting, but will be unable to now, as the state legislature has barred Westboro from coming within 300 feet of the funeral.

God sent a "soldier veteran" to Tucson on Saturday, Rev. Fred Phelps said in a YouTube.com video posted after the shooting. "Congresswoman [Gabrielle] Giffords, an avid supporter of sin and baby killing, was shot for that mischief... God avenged himself on you today, by a marvelous work in Tucson. He sits in the heavens and laughs at you and your affliction. Westboro prays for more shooters, more violent veterans, and more dead. Praise god for his righteous judgments in his Earth. Amen."

It is truly sickening... how far Democrats are willing to go in order to push their agenda down the throats of America's patriots.

This is what "democracy" is all about for liberals – violating "political freedoms" by denying people the right to threaten an elected official, banning assault weapon magazines, and stomping on the First Amendment rights of church-going Kansans who want to picket the funerals of victims killed in a failed political assassination.

This is what Democrats do when they lose midterm elections – they upend the Constitution and attempt to unravel the very fabric of this country in order to "revitalize their political fortunes" by capitalizing on tragedy.

Probably most of the nation can agree with Limbaugh when he says, "to me that is sick."

The right's role in the Arizona massacre

Guest post by Dan Fejes

Dan Fejes is a blogger at Pruning Shears. He lives in northeast Ohio.

(Ed. note: I first came across Dan last November when I was doing a brief stint at Crooks and Liars, and I instantly became a fan of his thoughtful analyses of complex issues. Here is his take on the Arizona shooting, specifically a response to the stupidity of Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds. It's his first guest post for us, and we hope to have more from him in future. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out his excellent blog. -- MJWS)

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Glenn Reynolds is a dumbass and those who find his arguments persuasive are, if possible, even more stupid:

[I]f 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?

Melissa McEwan gets it:

When, a few months ago, there was a spate of widely-publicized suicides of bullied teens, we had, briefly, a national conversation about the dangers of bullying. But in the wake of an ideologically-motivated assassination attempt of a sitting member of Congress, we aren’t having a national conversation about the dangers of violent rhetoric -- because the conversation about bullying children was started by adults, and there are seemingly no responsible grown-ups to be found among conservatives anymore.

The reason the right wing is partially responsible is because it has embraced eliminationism. It has created a culture of political violence. This extremist rhetoric is almost exclusively the province of the right. There are virtually no examples of -- please pay attention to the following words -- prominent commentators and high ranking elected officials on the left doing the same. Both sides don't do it; only the right validates and exhorts its violent lunatics. Athenae:

The point that needs to be made clear as possible, loud as possible, often as possible, is that this is about people in POWER calling for violence. There have always been fringe goofballs making noise on everything from fluoride in the water to aliens in the cornfields.

The difference now is that you have members of Congress feeding these freakjobs, and a former vice presidential candidate cheering them on, and a whole news network dedicated to freaking them out and telling them where to aim their weapons.

What Reynolds fails to realize is that human psychology is complex. So are societies. As wonderful as it would be to have an unambiguous, direct, 1-to-1, "here is my last diary entry Sarah put her in the crosshairs so off I go on a shooting spree" piece of evidence to tie it all together in a neat package, life is rarely so cooperative.

Thoughtful people tend instead to look at things like patterns and environments. The law does this, too: Incitement to riot is not a crime because lawmakers thought there was a straight line between violent rhetoric and violent action, but because when you saturate the air with hate you cannot control who breathes it in. It goes out to the sane and the crazy, and those on the edge as well. You don't know how it reaches people, how it bounces around, how it can settle into an unsettled mind and incubate. All we know is this: The more violent rhetoric you put out there, the more you get back.

The fact that we will never have the kind of smoking gun evidence that unmistakably ties a specific belching of hate with a specific crime does not make suggestions of a connection a vicious lie, nor is the examining of the toxic bile spewed forth by the right an attempt to score an unrelated political point.

Advertisers spend billions of dollars trying to reach consumers, but in the words of retailer John Wanamaker, "I know that 50 percent of my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which 50 percent." It probably never happens that someone sees a Pepsi ad and thinks, I think I'll grab a cool, refreshing Pepsi right now. What we do know is, increased spending on Pepsi advertising will lead to increased sales of Pepsi.

The more you get the message out, the more you influence behavior. It is not controversial with advertising. Hell, it is not controversial with religion -- why bother proselytizing otherwise? It is not controversial in any area of human endeavor. Get the message out, influence behavior. Get the message out, influence behavior. Only inside of Reynolds' teeny tiny little brain does the widespread, top-down, continual delivery of a message have no impact whatsoever.

Sorry, I'm calling bullshit. Elected representatives, right-wing patrons, and the most famous conservative voices have taken great pains to continually bombard the base with extremism. They poke and poke with their sharp sticks with full knowledge that they will get a reaction. Like the unknown 50% of advertising that is wasted, they cannot be sure which messages will catch fire and which will fizzle out. Neither can they know which ones will inspire a more aggressive response, though I'm willing to generously grant that in their heart of hearts they would prefer to see the mere threat of violence (e.g., packing heat at campaign rallies) than the actual commission of it.

But that does not excuse them, and it certainly does not exempt them from scrutiny when it literally blows up and the blood starts flowing. I can understand Reynolds' reluctance to be associated with, or see his allies implicated in, the massacre in Arizona. But only someone with a truly below average intellect or a deep psychological investment in remaining blind can fail to see it: the right wing is partially responsible for this. They created this culture of political violence. They cannot be denied their portion.

The Arizona shooting and the context of right-wing extremism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Offering some of the best commentary yet on the Arizona shooting, Slate's Jacob Weisberg makes the crucual distinction between what may have been going on inside Jared Lee Loughner's troubled head, "politically tinged schizophrenia," and outside:

To call his crime an attempted assassination is to acknowledge that it appears to have had a political and not merely a personal context. That context wasn't Islamic radicalism, Puerto Rican independence, or anarcho-syndicalism. It was the anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic populism that flourishes in the dry and angry climate of Arizona. Extremist shouters didn't program Loughner, in some mechanistic way, to shoot Gabrielle Giffords. But the Tea Party movement did make it appreciably more likely that a disturbed person like Loughner would react, would be able to react, and would not be prevented from reacting, in the crazy way he did.

At the core of the far right's culpability is its ongoing attack on the legitimacy of U.S. government -- a venomous campaign not so different from the backdrop to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Then it was focused on "government bureaucrats" and the ATF. This time it has been more about Obama's birth certificate and health care reform. In either case, it expresses the dangerous idea that the federal government lacks valid authority. It is this, rather than violent rhetoric per se, that is the most dangerous aspect of right-wing extremism. 

Yes, yes, yes. As I've been saying all along, this isn't just about political speech. To focus on speech, which is what the media are doing (and what even prominent Democratic/liberal/progressive commentators are doing, including Bill Clinton) is to deflect attention away from what this is really all about, that is, the context behind the shooting, and behind right-wing political violence generally, the context of ideology.

That context is what Weisberg describes, and more. It is about anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic, racist extremism, combined with paranoid conspiracy theories of the kind spun by Glenn Beck on a daily basis. It is about warmongering and fearmongering, about scapegoating the Other, the different, about terror and torture, about a mythical alternate reality of delusion, about a refusal to deal with the world as it is, about a refusal to accept change of any kind unless it is change to some mythical past of right-wing supremacy.

And it doesn't just flourish in Arizona but all throughout America, in the hearts and minds of conservatives and in a Republican Party that has embraced the Tea Party and that is becoming ever more extreme in its outlook and ideology. Weisberg writes:

First you rile up psychotics with inflammatory language about tyranny, betrayal, and taking back the country. Then you make easy for them to get guns. But if you really want trouble, you should also make it hard for them to get treatment for mental illness.

True, "none of this says that Tea Party caused the Tucson tragedy," but "its politics increased the odds of something like it happening."

And it happened, as perhaps it was bound to happen. The right may not have directly caused the shooting, but it is certainly culpable.

Hate, violence, extremism: Krugman on the Arizona shooting

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Just to drive the point home, allow me to quote Paul Krugman, who yesterday made the case that many of us have been making the past few days:

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

Put me in the latter category. I've had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton's election in 1992 -- an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence...

It's true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn't mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

Exactly. I made very much the same argument here (my initial thoughts on the shooting) and here (my further reflections on the socio-political context underpinning the shooting). It's not so much (or not just) the violent, hate-filled rhetoric of the right but the extremist, incendiary conservative ideology behind that rhetoric -- that is, the ideology that finds an outlet in that rhetoric, via the partisan demagoguery of conservatives like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh, the ideology that has found a home in the Republican Party.

Again, as we keep repeating, it's not that the killer, Jared Lee Loughner, is a straightforward conservative, a card-carrying member of the Tea or Republican Party. He does seem to be "deranged," to use a loaded and hardly clinical term -- that is, he does seem to be mentally disturbed. He is apparently an "independent," and, no, it does not appear that his agenda is specifically Republican. His views appear to be generally right-wing but on the fringe, though his paranoid conspiracy theories seem as if they could have been taken straight from Beck.

But it is wrong, I think, and as Krugman suggests, to treat him as a detached loner who acted in a vacuum of his own derangement. To do that is to ignore context, to ignore the bigger picture, the "national climate." And we do that at our own risk.

The potential was out there, and it was building -- and it continues to build. Anyone who was paying attention should not have been surprised at all.

Political violence in America: Let’s stop pretending we're shocked

By R.K. Barry 

I don't know. Is there anything that hasn't been said about Saturday's shooting in Arizona that left six dead and fourteen wounded, including Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords?

Some news coverage and partisan commentary has tried hard to place blame and draw connections or deflect blame and deny connections as the case may be.

It would have been better for progressives if the assailant were actually on a Tea Party group membership list or if he expressed his admiration for Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh in writings or other public statements. Maybe some of this kind of thing will be found. I doubt it.

It will of course be better for conservatives if little or nothing connecting the shooter to right-wing political ideology can be found. It will be better for them if information about him continues to pour in supporting the view that he is simply a sad and crazy young man.

In any case, at least for me, the motivation of this particular person is almost beside the point, much as we will go over and over it in the coming weeks.

What is more interesting is how many of our minds immediately drew the conclusion that this tragedy was the inevitable result of the pervasiveness of a kind of political speech through which we are currently suffering. It is the kind of speech that strongly suggests that those who disagree with the current conservative narrative are not simply political opponents of the right, but enemies of the state whose primary interest is in doing harm to America.

We are, apparently, a nation with a guilty conscience, which knew, at some level, that tragedies like Arizona would begin to occur as long as we continued to tolerate this kind of discourse. And, sorry folks, this discourse is coming from the right. It is the discourse of the Birthers, of those who call Obama a Muslim or a socialist, of those who suggest that the president and his Democratic allies are acting in defiance of our Founding documents and endeavouring to take away our freedom.

How is it possible to condone this kind of discourse without believing at some point that the most emotionally challenged among us wouldn't get the idea that someone should do something about this supposed assault on our way of life?

Speaker John Boehner recently refused to take issue with members of his own caucus who hold the view that Obama was not born in America. His argument was to the effect that people hold all kinds of views and that it was not his job to tell everyone what to think.

More to the point is that Boehner and his fellow Republicans know that they are riding a beast, which believes much of the nonsense about Obama and progressives being enemies of the state, and they don't want to alienate this active and influential minority.

Every time conservatives equivocate about the extent to which Democratic politicians love their country or have a legitimate claim to represent her in Congress or the White House, they provide support to those who see progressives as the enemy.

I would challenge you to sit through one Glenn Beck program, with its chalkboard conspiracy theory rants about how the left is trying to destroy America and everything for which it stands. I would ask you to consider how difficult it is to imagine some stupid bastard sitting there watching this tripe as he begins to calculate how he might pick up a gun and thus make himself a hero to like-minded Americans.

When so much of your ideological narrative is about how the other guys are not simply political adversaries, but enemies, can you really be surprised when a marginal few consider the rules of engagement to require violence? Can you be surprised, Glenn? Sarah? Rush? Bill? Sean?

This isn't about both sides using military metaphors or imagery or engaging in name-calling. That's trivial nonsense. This is about one side, the right-wing side, using the significant tools of mass media to paint progressives as a group that should be eradicated, by force if necessary, because they are a perceived threat to our way of life, to our nation. It is also about Republican politicians standing by and letting it happens, in the hope that they can ride the beast to victory without extensive collateral damage. They can't.

The incident in Arizona may not draw all the connections as neatly as some on the left would like, but if we continue on this path there will be a next time. I would suggest that we not be too surprised if that next time comes with solid proof that the perpetrator was acting in order to vanquish those elected officials he deemed un-American or not American enough.

I hope I'm wrong.

Frankly, I don't care if the tone of our political discourse gets chippy on occasion. That's politics in a free society. But if conservatives of conscience really want to do something to help ensure that events like this never happen again, I would encourage them to accept the fact that those who disagree with them politically love their country as much as they do. And I would also encourage them to turn off and tune out anyone who suggests otherwise.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)