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Dear Baggers, Dear Sarah Palin, etc.,
Please let me clarify: I am NOT "holding you responsible for the shooting" of Congressional Representative Giffords, the deaths of six people, and injuries to a dozen others.
Jared Loughner, by all accounts, is a pretty classic paranoid schizophrenic who could have latched on to any wacko ideology that fed into his mental illness, and acted violently regardless of the nature of that ideology.
As with the 9/11 criminals, there are some criminal acts--heinous ones!--that simply can NOT be prevented using any normal, prudent precautions. I do not believe Sarah Palin wanted this to happen. I do not believe any of you baggers wanted this to happen. I do not believe any of your RW talking heads wanted this specific incident to happen.
Nor do I believe that a rush to assign blame to specific individuals, statements, website graphics, or statements is a response that is either constructive or rooted in fact-based logic.
There you go. Happy now?
Probably not, but I tried.
That said, let me further clarify, because you are not, repeat, NOT off the hook altogether on this one.
In their horrified, grieved response to this tragedy, people are looking at the larger picture of political discourse in America today, and conflating the level of hate, vitriol, and fearmongering from the right side of the ideological spectrum with the specific delusional system that animated Mr. Loughner's actions.
And I think that's what really stings for you, isn't it?
That's why you're spinning so vigorously, trying to channel that response into neat little pigeonholes labeled "Beating up on Sarah Palin" and "Disrespectful politicization of the incident" and even the whole "Both sides do it!" meme. If you can reduce the discussion back down to the usual fingerpointing, he-said/she-said, strawman arguments, false equivalency, and emotional dog whistles, the true significance of that response will be lost, which will be a huge relief to you.
Because with a certain native emotional logic, Americans have suddenly been brought to examine the current level of political discourse in America, and indeed: Their first reaction (and it's not limited to the Usual Suspect Lefties whom you can so easily dismiss) is to conflate the hateful, divisive, vitriolic right-wing fearmongering that has served our Oligarchs so well for so long, with the motivations of a lone paranoid schizophrenic wackjob.
Think about that.
Yeah.
No wonder you're howling with outrage and pointing "Look!!! Over there!! Sparkly!! Shiny! They do it too! It's not US!!"
On some visceral level, Americans are aware that vicious diatribes, code-worded calls for violence, bitter fear- and hatemongering, and relentless shrill divisive baiting of all those with whom you disagree are very much like the mental scripts that animate violent, psychotically-deranged criminals.
And this tragic, horrendous, outrage has prompted a great many of us to look up from our reality-show-induced torpor and our disgusted avoidance of all things remotely connected with politics to actually MAKE that connection.
And now we're talking about it. It's a topic of conversation at all levels, everywhere in America.
I am not optimistic enough to hope that the discourse will manage to remain focused enough to produce a tangible, immediate shift in public perception and/or the discourse itself. No, indeed. Our dear Oligarchs are getting far too rich off the results of promoting steel-cage-mayhem divisive rhetoric in the political arena to allow that. They are already pouring money into damage control.
But I am optimistic enough to think that there might be a subtle, intangible shift. And even a small shift, if it plays out over time, could spell trouble for some of your hate-spewing figureheads who have gotten so wealthy from carrying the Oligarchs' water.
So go ahead, keep spinning.
But a surprising number of Americans who cannot by any reasonable stretch of the imagination be called "left wing shills" are on to you. They sense that no, the impassioned, sometimes inflamed rhetoric of the left is NOT equivalent to the calculated hate- and fearmongering that has become the voice of the right in America. They sense that there is something about the kind of high-decibel divisive vitriol spewed by the paid propagandists that might not be a good thing. It might even be a bad thing. And they associate that vitriol and hatemongering, quite correctly, with YOU.
I'm glad I've had a chance to clear that up.
Have a nice day. The families of all of those killed and wounded on Saturday are in for another day of hell, but you all have a nice day, safe in your cocoon of self-delusion.
explicatorially, Bright
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