US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords shot (other persons killed or injured)

The Tea Party and the Tucson Tragedy

How anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic populism made the Giffords shooting more likely.

By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Monday, Jan. 10, 2011, at 6:30 PM ET
There's something offensive, as well as pointless, about the politically charged inquiry into what might have been swirling inside the head of Jared Loughner. We hear that the accused shooter read The Communist Manifesto and liked flag-burning videos—good news for the right. Wait—he was a devotee of Ayn Rand and favored the gold standard, so he was a right-winger after all. Some assassinations embody an ideology, however twisted. Based on what we know so far, the Tucson killings look like more like politically tinged schizophrenia.

It is appropriate, however, to consider what was swirling outside Loughner's head. 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.

Often the two issues are blurred together, because if government is illegitimate, rebellion is an appropriate response (hence the Colonial costumes). Conservative entertainers like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin like to titillate their audiences with hints of justified violence, including frequent reminders that they are armed and dangerous. Palin went so far as to put a target on someone who subsequently got shot. Whether or not the man who fired the gun was inspired by Palin isn't the point. The point is that you shouldn't paint targets on people, even in metaphor, or jest.

Guns are also at the heart of how the right's ideology enabled Loughner. Tea Partiers often frame the right to bear arms as a necessary check on federal despotism. "You know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies," said Sharron Angle of Nevada, who nearly defeated the majority leader of the U.S. Senate in neighboring Nevada. In practical terms, easy access to firearms empowers extremists and crazies to challenge government authority at whim. The National Rifle Association position that any attempt to regulate the ownership of firearms is a violation of the Constitution has prevailed both politically and through the courts. That means that there are few things simpler than for someone to walk into a sporting goods store, as Loughner apparently did, buy a dangerous weapon, and carry it concealed to political meetings. How should politicians protect themselves from nuts with guns? By arming themselves, of course. Absent permissive firearm laws, nowhere more lax than in Arizona, Loughner might still have been able to get a gun. But he couldn't have done it quite so easily.

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. I don't know if Loughner had health insurance, but he falls into a pool of people who often go uninsured—not young enough to be covered by parents (until the health-care bill's coverage of twentysomethings kicked in a few months ago), not old enough for Medicare, not poor enough for Medicaid. If such a person happens to have a history of mental illness, he will be effectively uninsurable. To get treatment, he actually has to commit a crime. If Republicans succeed in repealing the Obama health care bill, that's how it will remain.

Again, none of this says that Tea Party caused the Tucson tragedy, only that its politics increased the odds of something like it happening. It was in criticizing writers on his own side for their naivete about communism that George Orwell wrote, "So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot." Today it is the right that amuses itself with violent chat and proclaims an injured innocence when its flammable words blow up.

Sarah Palin, Blood-Libel Hypocrite

Sarah Palin opposes collective blame for monstrous crimes, unless they're committed by Muslims.

By William Saletan
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011, at 11:55 AM ET
Sarah Palin is outraged. In a Facebook post this morning, she responds to critics who have suggested that her target map of Democrats, which put a crosshairs-like symbol over the district of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., may have contributed to the Tucson shooting. Palin writes:

After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event. President Reagan said, "We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies … journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

That's what Palin believes. Each person is solely accountable for his actions. Acts of monstrous criminality "begin and end with the criminals who commit them." It's wrong to hold others of the same nationality, ethnicity, or religion "collectively" responsible for mass murders.
Unless, of course, you're talking about Muslims. In that case, Palin is fine with collective blame. In fact, she's enthusiastic about it. Palin was the first national politician to join the jihad against what she called the "planned mosque at Ground Zero" (which wasn't a mosque and wasn't at Ground Zero, but let's cut her some slack). In her statement, issued six months ago on the same Facebook page where she now denounces collective blame, she wrote this:

To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks. … I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: "This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened."

The last bit is a falsehood—proximity wasn't the motive for choosing the site—but again, let's cut Palin some slack. They key phrase to focus on is "a mosque." Palin used it twice—once in the quote, and once in her own words—so it can't be passed off as inadvertent. Her objection wasn't just to a specific imam or sect, much less to an identifiable terrorist. It was to any Islamic house of worship near Ground Zero.

Palin has never retracted this position. Indeed, she has persisted in her opposition to any mosque near Ground Zero. Her position is that the act of monstrous criminality on 9/11 doesn't end with the criminals who committed it. Its stigma extends to any mosque near the site. All Muslims should yield to that stigma. All Muslims are responsible.

"Blood libel," as defined by The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, is historically targeted not at a country but at a religion. Palin's campaign against any Muslim house of worship near Ground Zero, based on group blame for terrorism, fits that definition more closely than does any current accusation against the Tea Party.

It didn't matter to Palin that the imam behind the "mosque" (which was actually an Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero) had denounced terrorism. Shortly after 9/11, the imam, Faisal Abdul Rauf, appeared on 60 Minutes and was asked this question:

Ed Bradley: What would you say to people in this country, who, looking at what happens in the Middle East, would associate Islam with fanaticism, with terrorism?
Abdul Rauf: Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam. That's just as absurd as associating Hitler with Christianity or David Koresh with Christianity. There are always people who will do peculiar things and think that they are doing things in the name of their religion. But the Quran—you know, God says in the Quran that they think that they're doing right, but they're doing wrong.

Palin ignored the imam's denunciation of violence. Now she repudiates the massacre in Tucson and expresses outrage that anyone would associate her with it.
In today's Facebook post, Palin writes: "Recall how the events of 9-11 challenged our values and we had to fight the tendency to trade our freedoms for perceived security. And so it is today." Indeed. But when the events of 9/11 challenged our values, Palin surrendered. A decade later, she remains still willing to trade freedom, not for security, but for "sensitivity" to her supporters' anger at Muslims generally. She's willing to issue blood libels and sacrifice people's freedoms. She just doesn't want the same done to her.

kaiser sauze wrote: »

Some of those who are determined to paint him as a paid up/bought & sold Republican have done that yes. They are in the minority and are likely fringe Democrats or even people who just hate Republicans. QUOTE]

Yet, you were one of those doing that throughout this thread. :rolleyes:

caseyann wrote: »

And Ireland does not need to follow in USA foot steps as it has shown with the tiny steps it already has has caused nothing but worse crime here.

steelcityblues wrote: »

From Page 14 - I found this by yourself kaisersauze:

"The BBC, and The Telegraph, are reporting it like it is: deranged gunman, influenced by hate-speech and right wing rhetoric from Tea Party/Republican led groups, takes 2 + 2 gets 1,573,284 and proceeds to shoot a Democratic politician."

Stop pretending otherwise.

marienbad wrote: »

If axes or knives were as effective as guns, the indians and not the cowboys would have won.

amacachi wrote: »

Didn't he do it when a congresswoman who'd been on the show died? Think her name was Tubbs.

EastTexas wrote: »

That did raise a snicker though it shouldn't have, but surly you most be joking.
At least I hope so.

On a somewhat OT note, I am slightly puzzled why so many Europeans and from the looks of it some Irish gents too, are so upset about Americans having the constitutional right to own and bear arms in THEIR country?
I am sure there are some rights and privileges that are distinctly European and perhaps Irish, but I can’t imagine anybody at home and that includes myself to be upset or belittling about that.
Don’t get me wrong I am neither offended nor resentful of that but find a little odd if not just a tad small just the same.

BluePlanet wrote: »

I suppose it might have something to with the fact that Giffords was pro gun control and was shot by the sort of weapon she would have liked to ban.
Or even the fact that a mentally-ill person could walk into a shop and arm themselves with a killing machine, no questions asked.


Hardly!
If he could only fire 6 rounds before having to reload then he wouldn't have been able to shoot 20 people. You do realize that he was tackled to the ground as he was trying to reload, having emptied a 30-round clip?