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shut up and pull
climber
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Jan 12, 2011 - 12:23pm PT
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KRAUTHAMMER, RIGHT AS USUAL:
Massacre, followed by libel
By Charles Krauthammer
Wednesday, January 12, 2011;
The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.
The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence.
As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings - and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him - there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder.
Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.
A climate of hate? This man lived within his very own private climate. "His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world," said the teacher of Loughner's philosophy class at Pima Community College. "He was very disconnected from reality," said classmate Lydian Ali. "You know how it is when you talk to someone who's mentally ill and they're just not there?" said neighbor Jason Johnson. "It was like he was in his own world."
His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with "unnerving, long stupors of silence" during which he would "stare fixedly at his buddies," reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through "grammar." He was obsessed with "conscious dreaming," a fairly good synonym for hallucinations.
This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder - ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.
These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one. A classmate found him so terrifyingly mentally disturbed that, she e-mailed friends and family, she expected to find his picture on TV after his perpetrating a mass murder. This was no idle speculation: In class "I sit by the door with my purse handy" so that she could get out fast when the shooting began.
Furthermore, the available evidence dates Loughner's fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to at least 2007, when he attended a town hall of hers and felt slighted by her response. In 2007, no one had heard of Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck was still toiling on Headline News. There was no Tea Party or health-care reform. The only climate of hate was the pervasive post-Iraq campaign of vilification of George W. Bush, nicely captured by a New Republic editor who had begun an article thus: "I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it."
Finally, the charge that the metaphors used by Palin and others were inciting violence is ridiculous. Everyone uses warlike metaphors in describing politics. When Barack Obama said at a 2008 fundraiser in Philadelphia, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he was hardly inciting violence.
Why? Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest - "campaign" - is an appropriation from warfare.
When profiles of Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, noted that he once sent a dead fish to a pollster who displeased him, a characteristically subtle statement carrying more than a whiff of malice and murder, it was considered a charming example of excessive - and creative - political enthusiasm. When Senate candidate Joe Manchin dispensed with metaphor and simply fired a bullet through the cap-and-trade bill - while intoning, "I'll take dead aim at [it]" - he was hardly assailed with complaints about violations of civil discourse or invitations to murder.
Did Manchin push Loughner over the top? Did Emanuel's little Mafia imitation create a climate for political violence? The very questions are absurd - unless you're the New York Times and you substitute the name Sarah Palin.
The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Jan 12, 2011 - 12:24pm PT
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Vigorous debate to the point of passion and heated rhetoric is not only common it is necessary for a viable republic.
The debate in the Constitutional convention was so passionate and divisive that Washington enforced a gag order that no delegate was to speak publicly, to the press or remove notes from the hall. There was a justified fear of riots and public disorder.
What is going on is nothing more than an attempt to stifle free speech and score cheap political gain over dead bodies at the hands of those that cannot win a fair fight in the arena of ideas.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jan 12, 2011 - 12:27pm PT
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I think I have to visit the Script Blocking Thread.
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jstan
climber
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Jan 12, 2011 - 12:40pm PT
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Skip:
Today's unreasoning reliance on anger is very like that which preceeded the Civil War. A war in which most of the young men in the South got angry over "states rights", whatever that was supposed to mean, and chose to die in order to protect the wealthy plantation owners' slave property. Now in actual fact the slave owners could easily have just freed the slaves and would have been able to get their labor even more cheaply than before. Jim Crow showed that. Millions died - for nothing.
Today we have people of modest means furiously angry at the government while corporations reap historic profits off tax payer dollars. Loans that the taxpayers have to pay. All the anger serves as a dust cloud to hide what is actually happening behind the scenes.
The citizens of Paris were starving so they cut off Louis 16's head. That decapitation was not the real problem however. The real problem was the people stayed angry, they did not use their heads, and bought into Napoleon and the "Europe's only superpower" nonsense he was selling. Millions died - for nothing.
Angry people do not use their heads.
We are being very foolish.
Once again.
Go ahead. Tell me humans are fast learners.
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
La Mancha
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Jan 12, 2011 - 12:40pm PT
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Vigorous debate to the point of passion and heated rhetoric is not only common it is necessary
B.S.! Vigorous debate, yes; heated rhetoric, no way. When things get that far, the debate is over and the side that resorts to "heated rhetoric" and personal (meaning persons or groups of like-minded people) attacks has just lost the point. They've retreated back to the pouty, 2 year old mentality of temper tantrums and inability to see beyond black & white. Much like what has happened repeatedly to any controversial thread in this forum....
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shut up and pull
climber
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Jan 12, 2011 - 12:41pm PT
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You always have to remember one thing -- liberalism is always a one-way ratchet. I.e., free speech, constitutional rights, etc. only apply to them, not others. When liberals are screaming about the war or Bush or whatever, it is their patriotic duty of dissent, and any criticism is considered an attempt to stifle or stomp on their rights.
When conservatives protest or disagree with liberal policies, and especially when conservatives win elections, the whole perspective is supposed to change. All of a sudden, instead of dissent or disagreement being patriotic, it is "hateful", etc.
This kind of double standard has been used throughout history by those who do not want debate, but rather want the other side to shut up and get in line. This is what political correctness and speech codes -- things libs love to impose on us -- are all about.
Well, the American people see through this crap pretty well these days, and are sick of it. Calling people Nazis, haters, racists -- without a shred of evidence -- is par for the left, and people know it. It is why liberalism is such a disgrace to itself -- it is devoid of substance, and instead of trying to come up with some, it defames its opponents with the worst kind smears.
Hey libs -- one simple suggestion -- grow up. Get some good ideas that you can articulate without resorting to vicious tantrums when you are challenged. Conservative ideas frustrate you -- we know -- because these ideas focus on limiting government and promoting freedom (two things that are the antithesis of liberalism today). Our ideas cut to the core of your vision -- and we know you do not like it at all. But get used to it -- you aint seen nothin yet.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Jan 12, 2011 - 01:14pm PT
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i'll go one better than jhedge; here's a link to the COMPLETE cbs poll:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/11/politics/main7237404.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
the key question: "is violence against the government EVER [emphasis mine] justified?"
again, my answer, is yes because i believe the american revolution, the french revolution, and the attempted coup against hitler were all "justified" acts of violence committed against the government
jhedge's sanctimony suggests that he disagrees and rejects ALL acts of violence committed against ANY government, which would include any acts of violence committed against the israeli GOVERNMENT
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jstan
climber
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Jan 12, 2011 - 01:18pm PT
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Skip:
Freudian slip. Here is what you wrote.
"Sorry JStan,
Your mention that Republicans are somehow acting like a bunch of Democrats in 1850 is nothing but laughable."
I never mentioned who was angry. I am arguing against loss of reason.
Your slip clearly says you yourself equate
republicans=anger
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jan 12, 2011 - 01:18pm PT
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I'm not Catholic, but I couldn't agree more with the decent people of Arizona. It's long past time for we Christians to condemn Westboro Baptist and the vicious hate that drives their Pharisaical actions, and to follow that condemnation with action to undo their damage to people, and to the Name of Christ. Although it makes my blood boil, I appreciate your post, Ken M.
John
I appreciate your post. While this does not fall into the "repub" topic of this thread, I think any reasonable person would be outraged, just as one would by these nuts protesting at the funerals or our servicemen.
It is somehow heartwarming to see the Tuscon community coming together to shield this family from this blasphemy.
I also find it encouraging that the entire legislature unanimously voted in the protections. I personally wish that we would see our leaders publically find the common paths, and do the contentious stuff a lot more quietly.
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jstan
climber
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Jan 12, 2011 - 01:24pm PT
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That was a really tough one to field, I know.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jan 12, 2011 - 01:33pm PT
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I asked before about this very popular Republican motto/bumper sticker:
PRAY FOR OBAMA: PSALM 109:8
What is the meaning of this slogan? What is it calling for?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jan 12, 2011 - 01:35pm PT
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Whatever else, in your civil war, the south in effect declared war on the north, de facto although not de jure. In particular through the blockade and then attack on Fort Sumter. (There was never a formal declaration by either side, and indeed Lincoln was quite clear that he was suppressing an internal rebellion.) Virtually all the initial acts of hostility were by southerners, and the union government, under both Buchanan and Lincoln, went out of its way to not do anything provocative.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jan 12, 2011 - 01:49pm PT
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Ken M,
Thanks for calling the actions of Westboro Baptist what they are: blasphemy.
Skipt,
I see that you've chosen to forego anonymity. We'll see if that quiets those who don't post in their own names, but who criticized you.
To all the rest of us,
I have a suggestion on the debate over rhetoric (rhetorical debate?): forget it. The American public has already made up its mind, and so have all the debators, and probably all who've read all the debators said. We won't convince each other, or anyone else, about who's right or wrong.
I got sucked in, just as I shouldn't have, by extreme views that, in retrospect, were obvious trolls. We have better things to do, such as talk (as opposed to shout) about the correct role of government regulation.
John
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jstan
climber
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Jan 12, 2011 - 02:25pm PT
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In war the two sides often become indistinguishable. If the other side runs around screaming and stoning their opponents, so too do you. If the other side tortures, you do also. The logic is you have to do it to win. You don't of course.
Thus it is in any discussion when either party resorts to personal aspersions or to intemperate verbiage they do two things.
1. they invite similar behavior directed at themselves
2. they admit they, personally, are unable to carry on civil discourse
Neither eventuality serves the general interest, which is what we all should be seeking to serve.
If you think about it, what I am trying to say here was made self-apparent when vice-president Cheney, while on the Senate floor told Sen. Patrick Leahy "to go f*#k yourself."
We have but to choose whether we will, passively, follow the Honorable Vice-President into the long dark night.
A question directed to me has, I think, been very ably fielded by our friend Anders.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Jan 12, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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"the poll asks Americans if they support acts of violence against their gov't."
no, jhedge, either you have not read the poll question, in which case you should not opine on the results, or you don't understand the meaning of the word "ever", in which case you should not opine on anything
here is the question: "is violence against the government EVER [again, emphasis mine] justified?"
no mention of america, specifically...the question asks about "government"
interesting that you claim to know what the respondents were thinking...sounds like you really might be delusional
it is refreshing, however, to find a dem/lib with no opinion on israel...so, we now know, there really is one dem/lib who doesn't condemn israel while ignoring the violence of the palestinians
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jstan
climber
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Jan 12, 2011 - 02:35pm PT
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"jstan,
Civil discourse??????????? Really, when and where in the history of mankind?????????????? I'm sure Ardi had heated debates with her peers."
This excuses us as we work against the best interests of us all?
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jstan
climber
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Jan 12, 2011 - 02:42pm PT
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Of late I have become quite conflicted.
A terrible state.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jan 12, 2011 - 02:46pm PT
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Sorry to get OT, but whatcha working on, John?
If you mean paying work, Gary, I am in the middle of some legal research and writing on an attorney-client privileged matter.
If you mean piano practice, I'm just brushing up on the Brahms Op. 76 Klavierstucke and two Beethoven Sonatas (Opp. 109 and 111).
John
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jan 12, 2011 - 02:58pm PT
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The increase now goes to Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, who supports the plan to temporarily raise the personal tax rate to 5 percent, a two-thirds increase from the current 3 percent rate.
Oh, Lordy, Lordy! The sky is falling!
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