Monday, January 10, 2011

The ignored eye of the blame-storm

The web was strung from one metaphorical end to the other with blame about the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords D-AZ this weekend. Guilt was heaped on the Tea Party, Sarah Palin and the general animosity of modern politics, even as it quickly became clear that the shooter was seriously mentally ill.

The right shot back, citing the lefts history of calls for violent revolution. The amount of animosity, hate and contempt actually grew as the same people blamed it for the tragedy.

But then I went of Facebook and saw what my left-wing friends were really writing. Drew wrote:

For people waiting for me to weigh in on this: I do not feel the violence in Arizona was politically motivated, and that all the talking heads going on about it are running away with assumptions.

A psychotic young man want to his supermarket with a gun, saw a huge cluster of people, and started shooting. That seems to me all there was to it, despite who was shot.

Mario, a friend to the left of Ralph Nader, posted what turned out to be a quote from left-winger Rachel Maddow:
There is nothing to be gained from speculating on the motives and affiliations of Rep. Giffords' shooter without facts.
They were not alone. It's the loudest, angriest people on the fringes that gather the most attention, and the calm and reasonable people are far too often overlooked. It's easy to blame what you already oppose for the tragedy of the day, but it takes guts to stand up when your side goes to far.

3 comments:

  1. We can do this "on the one hand, on the other hand" BS till we are blue in the face, but the fact is it is voices on the LEFT who seek to use events like these to silence their political opponents. Certainly many mainstream leftists (like the president) are blatantly attempting to marry this shooting to "overheated political rhetoric". And we damn well know that they mean: "I don't like what the other side says, I want to use the power of law to shut them up, and if it takes a bit of populist agitation over a completely unrelated tragedy to achieve my aims, so be it"

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  2. I hate when they talk about the shooter as "The suspect who targeted a congresswoman." He targeted her about as much as a shoe targets a dog end.

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  3. Actually, it looks like he did target her. He had a fixation on her dating back to at least 2007. I suspect it wasn't her in particular, just that she happened to be the congressperson closest to him. His issue seemed to be with the vacuous way politicians talk, which he was convinced was a form of mind control.

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