The aftermath of Arizona Safeway shootings has become an erratic and impulsive ritual of poorly thought out explanations.
I don't grant graphic art the power to single-handedly drive a young man to go purchase a 9 mm and shoot a congressperson and those in her vicinity. Sarah Palin's website usage of a gun sight metaphor, while ill-advised, does not explain this shooting. Her people pulled it because they knew it would be a PR disaster not because they regret it. Her aide's claim that they weren't gun sights but surveyor stakes was laughable, but the "left" would be wise to let Palin be her own undoing on this. She has already offered condolences to a family whose loved-one hadn't died. Let Sarah be Sarah.
I don't grant graphic art the power to single-handedly drive a young man to go purchase a 9 mm and shoot a congressperson and those in her vicinity. Sarah Palin's website usage of a gun sight metaphor, while ill-advised, does not explain this shooting. Her people pulled it because they knew it would be a PR disaster not because they regret it. Her aide's claim that they weren't gun sights but surveyor stakes was laughable, but the "left" would be wise to let Palin be her own undoing on this. She has already offered condolences to a family whose loved-one hadn't died. Let Sarah be Sarah.
Bill O'Reilly is a pinhead, but nothing in his xenophobic rantings leads me to say that Jared Loughner's Saturday gore fest resulted from Billo's obsession with running down each and everything that doesn't look and sound like him.
Glenn Beck, on the other hand, shares the cadence of Loughner's tortured syllogisms, and my hunch is that if any of the right's bête noires directly influenced our young shooter, it is Beck, but not necessarily in terms of ideology. It's more a matter of method--getting out the metaphorical chalk board and drawing arrows that connects Gabrielle Giffords to a perceived threat by virtue of arrows that have mysteriously appeared on the chalk board.
That said, there is the stench not so much of tea bags but of pot smoke, Birch, and testosterone around this thing. Giffords is a motorcyle-riding attractive Jewish woman, unapologetic in her support for immigrant, GLBT, and gun rights--not a leftist to be sure, but an assured woman who won her seat in the cesspool of right-wing bigotry that is Arizona. She doesn't fit a model for proper womanly behavior and ideological identification. She apparently likes non-white people on some level. Thus, was she a threat to an emotionally stunted young white male with mental illness and a fine American tradition of paranoia and violence into which to tap?
Charles Manson famously believed that he was connected directly to the Beatles, who sent him messages through their music. He is also very smart, with real musical talent and, in the past at least, a talent for compelling weaker personalities to act on his analysis and beliefs. Loughner strikes me as someone who could have been a hanger-on at Spahn's ranch.
The only question to my mind at this point is whether Loughner was influenced by a stronger personality who compelled him to act, either intentionally or unintentionally. Ever seen American History X?
In the mean time, the mainstream press cries for quiet-ism while our government attempts to squelch Wikileaks by any means necessary. The Democrats go after Palin. The Repugs demonstrate their sensitive side. And our country lurches forward, a self-perpetuating war machine.
--Loosestrife
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