TIME Magazine's January 24th cover story (actually two stories) focus on the Arizona shootings. I agree with some of what is said, and disagree with some.
First, this in David Von Drehle's piece, "15 Seconds, 31 Bullets, 19 Victims, a Madman and a Gun." He writes, "Take a moment to ask why Moulitas and Palin, who agree on almost nothing, would be united in targeting Giffords. The first reason is that she refuses to indulge their shared delusion that the US would be abetter place if it were run by ideologues. She is a person of moderate views and pragmatic politics, able to listen respectfully to the opinions of others and disagree without being disagreeable, which places her squarely in the American mainstream. She doesn't vote in lockstep with either party, and thus neither extreme is willing to tolerate her."
Amen to that point. America desperately needs to rediscover its center. We are being torn apart. And the worst part is that most of the people doing the tearing are doing it for their own financial benefit and aggrandizement of personal power. Palin for instance would be nothing without her caustic, corrosive rhetoric. She was a two-bit, first-term governor before fate and John McCain plucked her out of the tundra. And she would sink right back into obscurity ---albeit very affluent obscurity at this point --- if she just shut her big mouth. The little people in the rank and file of the extreme right and left are mostly true believers, I think. But the media mavens and politicos who lead them are in it for themselves, so far as I can see.
John Cloud wrote the second cover piece, "A Mind Unhinged." He and I part company when he contends,"But those who say right-wing rhetoric was the one factor tipping Loughner misunderstand the complex nature of psychosis. 'No single variable explains violence in schizophrenia.... Rather, violent behavior occurs within a social-ecological system involving a whole person with a particular history and state of health.' In short, saying Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck caused Loughner's actions is, to put it charitably, completely idiotic."
Let us note, as Cloud does, that most such madmen do not buy a gun and shoot people. Then let us note, as he does, that this madmen chose a particular target. Indeed, he reports that in 2007, Loughner had a run-in with the Congresswoman. Now let's extrapolate from these established facts and hypothesize that Loughner, nursing violent tendencies and a grudge against Giffords, visited the Palin website and read, "Don't retreat... reload," and saw Giffords in the gunsight. Is it so hard to believe that this message may have, hypothetically, been the triggering (no pun intended) event that sent him down his particular, tragic path?
As I've noted in other blog postings, anarchist theorists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries inspired men no less mad than Lougner to kill half a dozen heads of state. The notion of Leaderless Resistance relies on the proposition that lone actors and small cells, unconnected to the "leaders," will act to fulfill those leaders' wishes. Elements of this tactic can be found in cases ranging from Tim McVeigh to the SHAC 6 to al-Alwaki, now preaching hate from Yemen and recently sentenced in abstentia to ten years by a Yemenese judge for inspiring the murder of a French engineer.. and credited with influencing the Fort Hood killer, etc., etc.
The saddest thing about Palin and her ilk is that they actually don't want to see anybody killed. They shoot off their mouths in order to make big money and win big power. No matter... when a madman like Loughner shoots off his big gun, if it turns out that he was influenced by their words and images, then the Palins who are poisoning our political discourse must take their share of the responsibility for his deeds.
Cloud points out that it may take months or years to plumb the depths of Loughner's sick mind. We may learn sooner, through good police work, what websites he visited, what literature he read, what TV he watched, etc. Palin et al. can only hope he wasn't a fan.
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