"A Mob Intent on Violence" and the Second Amendment Solution

Here's Bob Filner:

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Yep, that describes the Republicans pretty well.

Oh, perhaps you were expecting me to say "the Tea Party"? HELL with that. The Republicans embraced the Tea Party throughout the election and continued to do so right until it became inconvenient now that they've been reminded that violent nutballs are not just volunteers, donors, and convenient campaign props but are actually violent nutballs.

Here's the thing: it doesn't matter whether the Arizona shootings were inspired by "left-wing" grievances, "right-wing" grievances, both, or neither.  Everybody has issues. Everybody has grievances. You're never going to achieve consensus. What matters is how the Republicans and their pet Teabaggers advocate the resolution of those grievances.

No, what's fucked up about the Rebaggers, what makes them dangerous, is their method of conflict resolution. They don't care about democratic activism, or rhetoric, or debate. That shit's for pansies. No, they're doing everything but out-and-out telling America that the solution is to grab a gun, the biggest clip you can find, lock 'n load, and start airing out anybody who gets in your way. Good ol' "Second Amendment solutions", as they put it.

So you get crazed mobs like this. You get people who can't accept that their chosen candidate was beaten by a filthy lieberal Jew Democrat, and who are told (according to Filner) by various psychotic right-wing blogs that "democracy has failed them" and that it's time to grab the AKs and go to town.

You get people like Loughner, who was deluded into thinking that he could resolve his grievances (real or imagined) with Rep. Giffords at the point of a gun.

You get self-described "foot soldiers" like Scott Roeder, who decides to resolve his grievances against abortion providers through first degree murder. 

You get ex-felons like Byron Williams who do their damnedest to kill every member of the ACLU and Tides Foundation that he can lay his hands on because Glenn Beck all but told him to.

And you get people like Jim David Adkisson, who slaughtered 3 people in a Unitarian church in Knoxville because "all liberals should be killed because they're ruining the country".

That's what you get when you have an entire party, an entire movement, that is built upon telling people that the only thing between them and prosperity, safety, security and happiness is firing as many rounds as they can into the Other.

Ross Douthat is a Pathetic, Pathetic Man

The man is so desperate to try to create some sort of association between the Arizona shooter and "leftists"—and so inept at doing so—that he has written an article about political violence that doesn't mention word one about Timothy McVeigh.

Sure, he mentions the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, and other leftist boogiemen. But when it comes to actual, horrific, politically-driven violence? Not a goddamned word. Doesn't even dodge around it or try to change the subject. Just ignores it entirely.

Yes, he also engages in a fair bit of good ol' fashioned false equivalence. He babbles (there is no better word) about how Democrats supposedly use "crosshairs" and "targets" as well, and does it while conveniently ignoring how the Republicans and their Tea Party buddies pair it with the sort of violent, eliminationist, hateful rhetoric that you'd normally expect to find on Stormfront instead of on the websites of the "mainstream" right. THAT, you'd expect from a water-carrier like Douthat.

But seriously? Not a single word about McVeigh?

That's just plain pathetic.

More on Arizona

Wee bit more in the Times about Loughner.

Don Coorough, 58, who sat two desks in front of Mr. Loughner in a poetry class last semester, described him as a “troubled young man” and “emotionally underdeveloped.” After another student read a poem about getting an abortion, Mr. Loughner compared the young woman to a “terrorist for killing the baby.”

“No one in that class would even sit next to him,” Mr. Coorough said. Another fellow student said that he found Mr. Loughner’s behavior so eccentric — including inappropriate remarks and unusual outbursts — that he wondered if he might be on hallucinogens. Mr. Loughner grew up in Tucson and was an unremarkable student at Mountain View High School, classmates said.

And yet, by all accounts, he wasn't terribly religious.

I think we can safely retire the whole "he's a leftist" thing. Leftists don't call young women "terrorists" for having an abortion.

Jeffrey Goldberg Full of It On Arizona Shootings

...which, admittedly, isn't exactly a rare thing.

But why on earth would he try to claim this?

Imagine if the Ft. Hood shooting had been covered the same way as the Giffords shooting? During Ft. Hood, commentators and politicians were falling over themselves to preemptively announce that Nidal Hasan's religious faith had nothing to do with the shooting.

Which commentators would those be? Because I happen to recall rather a lot of blather about the extent to which this guy's religious faith had EVERYTHING to do with the shooting, especially once it came out that he wasn't happy about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Goldberg either doesn't get it, or won't admit it. It may be unseemly to tie together the act of a lone nut and the right's incredible and disgusting eliminationist attitude towards anybody more liberal than Glenn Beck. But I haven't the slightest doubt that, were the guy to turn out to be progressive, liberal, or leftist, the right would be up in arms about it?

And do you know how I know? BECAUSE THEY'RE ALREADY DOING IT.

No links, because to hell with those guys, but we're already seeing wingnuts seize on the brief impressions of a few twitterers who knew the guy 3 or 4 years ago to try to blame progressives for what happened. We've already got delusional asshats trying to tie together a DailyKos commentator who said "Giffords is dead to me" and the killer, despite the simple fact that the communications we do see from the man are nowhere near as lucid as the posts that are supposedly from him.

The conservative movement and its various hangers-on are always, ALWAYS purely instrumental when it comes to their outrage over things like this. If it's one of theirs, they'll apologize their asses off, and do whatever they can to shift the blame. If it's not one of theirs, they'll scream to the heavens about the evils of the liberal-progressive-socialist-leftist-whatevers that were (naturally) entirely responsible for this.

Those of us who are disgusted and repelled by said movement need not adopt these tactics. At least, not necessarily, though damned if they don't work like a charm on the Usual Suspects in the media. But we should never, EVER forget what's going on, and why. NEVER give them the benefit of the doubt.

Because if you do, they'll just grab it, pocket it, and scream that much louder about how repulsively evil you are.